Starswirl The Bearded was known as the electus magi in his time. He ventured into the depths of magic far beyond anyponies imagination. He was able to do this through his marvelous mind, a mind that was able to channel ideas and piece them using unicorn magic. Learning magic is simply training your horn ,an evolutionary trait in unicorn which is thought to have been result of evolution creating an tissue to contain magic energy, to break it's boundaries and manipulate time and space through different methods, not much is known about these methods just that some ponies were better than others and Starswirl was one of them.
Now Starswirl was no gifted unicorn he would say himself that he had to take the hard route to success, what made him special and so revered was his to this day unique cutie mark, no one has ever seen it but himself, he makes it a top priority that it remains secret, why, that is something i cannot tell you. What we do know is that his special talent was for creating spells and not conjuring them and this caused problems, his work would often be delayed by months occasionally years because he simply couldn't learn the spells. one the things he sought to do to fix this problem was to hire apprentices, those of which he felt possessed the magical ability to perform these spells. The First of these unicorns was known as Clover the clever, who along with Princess Platinum was able to unite Earth ponies, Pegasi and Unicorns together. Starswirl was still young when this happened. Soon the new kingdom of Equestria was founded and the Three Races united together in harmony this was great time of prosperity for everypony as they began to leave the dark ages and began to live in fertile sunnier fertile lands that would receive equal amounts of sunshine and moonlight. It was at this point Starswirl work begun to dry up. Everything seem to be in order and there seemed to be no desire for anything more than what they already had. Even Starswirl was considering early retirement and spending his prime years relaxings on the beaches of las pegasus, maybe he could rent a penthouse his discoveries had made him quite wealthy although he didn't live the lavish lifestyle of other ponies, namely the canterlot ponies.
His plans were put to a halt when he arrived. Nobody knew when he arrived, nobody knew where he came from. Legend has it he has been around longer than pony existence and due to the large amount of harmony between the ponies, was released to bring balance between harmony and chaos. He had no name although the ponies gave him a name one that he'll adopt and be forever remembered by Discord.
Starswirl's magic was no match for Discord's god like chaotic powers. Discord ruled for what seemed like eternity, no one knew exactly how long he reigned as he had removed the convectional ways of time clocks would go at different speeds and the sun and moon would rise and fall at random. It took two powerful alicorns by the name of celestia and luna were eventually able to summon magical objects known as the elements of harmony these were able to turn discord to stone, although order was brought back to equestria, chaos still lingered on although in smaller amounts.
Starswirl, who had heard tales of the magical abilities of alicorns, was in awe of the newly appointed princesses. He then took the place as Celestia mentor in hope of realising a magical potential he never thought was possible, this is where the chronicles begins.