The Most Terrible Thing That Ever Happened Again
'Equestria: Ancient Kingdom, Budding Empire'
(My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic, #1)
A Summary of the current age; Chapter One
by Arthur, a pendragon
Those who visit the enchanted land of Equestria, the home of the pony race, often come to see it as a utopia. However, one must take into consideration whilst visiting its various touristy locales that this land is ancient, and is as steeped in the burdens of its past as any other successful nation. This realm, this seeming paradise, is founded on a history of sacrifice, unceasing and unrelenting. It was founded on the bones of the fallen, and is only kept prosperous by ruthless action and harsh resolve.
Equestria is ruled by two sisters, twin Alicorns who rule with iron-shod hooves. Their names are Princess Celestia, and Princess Luna. These two ethereal creatures are much larger and stronger than any of their subjects, and are seemingly immortal. As Alicorns, they are built along the same lines as the rest of their subjects, if much larger, and also possess pegasus wings, enabling them to fly, as well as unicorn horns, making them instinctual magic users beyond compare. Both sisters also have various inborn abilities that further aid them in their duties. There are few other Alicorns in the realm, perhaps less than five are known publicly, and all seem to hold various important stations in the government, though none of them seem to have the tremendous power and immortality of the two sisters.
Princess Celestia is said (by her subjects) to have dominion over the Day and Sun, and is responsible for Equestria whilst the sun is up (and is believed, at least by her subjects, to be responsible for its rising and setting). She is rumored to be able to attune herself into the waking thoughts of her subjects, though not all at once, and generally only during times of great need. Her twin sister, Princess Luna, has dominion over the Night and Moon, and likewise takes care of Equestria during the night, responsible for the Moon's rising, setting, and phases. She is likewise rumored to be able to attune herself into the active dreams of Equestria's ponies during the night.
Until fairly recently, Princess Luna was herself the greatest threat that Equestria faced. Luna, jealous of the love that was shown to her sister, and unhappy with the fact that she ruled over a land that was sleeping and therefore virtually uninhabited when she was in power, rebelled against her sister. Luna allowed her power to corrupt within herself, becoming a nigh-unstoppable evil Sorceress known as Nightmare Moon. Celestia sealed her own sister away into the moon in order to keep the threat of eternal darkness in check, but in so doing, irreparably damaged the balance of power of Equestria.
Princess Celestia lost a considerable amount of power with her sister's imprisonment. Effectively, the realm was now nearly defenseless when night fell. In the process of eliminating her sister's threat, she lost even more power creating Nightmare Moon's prison. In addition, the duties that had formerly been shared were now hers alone, and would soon be a major strain on whatever strength she had left. Something had to be done, and soon. Enemies who had long been denied by the two sisters' might were gathering on the borders. Drastic action had to be taken.
Her first moves were to cast two Great Spells. The first was a spell of Complacency, incredibly powerful, but also temporary. This was done so that the actions she would be forced to take would not arouse the ire of the populace. The second was a Calling of incredible strength. Over the next few days, every male pony past (or just past, as evidenced by the plethora of colts included) the age of maturity made his way to Canterlot, Equestria's capitol. The first phase of her plan was almost complete. Every mustang and stallion in the land was firmly in her control, and the populace at large was gripped by a wave of lackadaisical inertia.
While Princess Celestia was in effect holding her own citizens hostage, she set about completely readjusting the social system of her realm. She made it law that every colt who reached the age of maturity was conscripted into the military for a set amount of time before being released. There were very few exceptions to the conscription: those whose families could prove that they were desperately needed to stay home in order to support said families, those who could purchase their colt's freedom with an enormous monetary contribution or goods and services in an equivalent amount, or those who were too sickly to serve. Any filly could volunteer for service, health permitting.
After sending all the able conscripts to the military, there were still many mustangs and stallions left at the capitol. She sent all of the married stallions home (they were exempt for this first conscription), then all the 4-F's who had places at their families' homes. However, there were still a large number of unattached males who still had no place within Equestria's structure, somehow unfit for service, but with nowhere else to go. These disenfranchised males wound up settling there, and as a result, the population of males, never the largest slice of Equestria's population at large, is highest in Canterlot. Ironically, most of these males ended up as part of the upper class (or serving them), and therefore their male heirs could now afford to buy or be bought out of their term of service. As a result, the largest group of possible conscripts in all of Equestria is also the least accessible.
When the Great Spell of Complacency finally wore off, the citizens of Equestria were left with little in the way of choice. They had always lived fairly idyllic lives, free from most worries of enemies within or without. Now they awakened from a euphoric daydream to find their male-folk gone, and that their colts would be taken from them after only a few bittersweet years of togetherness. Many called for rebellion, but found themselves tethered by their new reality. A full third of the population was gone; were actually part of the institution that they needed to rebel against, essentially serving as both hostage and hostage taker. Princess Celestia felt for her ponies, but was adamant that the actions she had taken were necessary to safeguard both their well-being and the very rights she had knowingly but unapologetically violated.
Eventually, matters calmed down. Equestria settled, and the 'new system' simply became 'the' system. Years became decades, and decades became centuries. Equestria grew very prosperous, and that prosperity gave its population great cause to love their country even as it engendered envy in other realms. There were several bush wars with Equestria's neighbors, all but one a victory.
The military had become a huge, monolithic portion of the government, yet somehow managed to become the least intrusive part of it, existing primarily on the fringes of the kingdom. Soldiers are seen only very rarely, and when they are, the troops are mostly just guarding valuable treasures and important locations, or performing public works missions such as building bridges or repaving roads. Even when there is fighting on the frontiers, the news is kept from the public, and since the armies are so sequestered away from the everyday doings of the general public, the average citizen is willing to leave the subject alone.
There were, and are, many small conflicts between Equestria and its neighbors. Until very recently, there was an undeclared but continuous low-level war with the Troll kingdom, which sometimes flared into unsanctioned pitch-battles, but every single outbreak, though fierce, has petered out very quickly. These clashes generally take place when a new Troll Line makes itself the new Master Lineage, such as the rich, ambitious Treasure Trolls, or the bellicose Battle Trolls. At the moment, Equestria seems to be in the ascendant, but the border is still closely guarded, its guardians always ready for the next skirmish.
There was a brief, yet intense, war with the inhabitants of Spectra, a far off planet that could somehow transport invading forces through space on a rainbow bridge. After slamming their respective forces together in a series of colorfully violent skirmishes, the invaders lost steam and the (remaining) troops from Spectra retreated across the rainbow bridge to report their failure to their queen, Rainbow Brite. They have not been seen for more than a score of years, yet the fact that they were not completely destroyed has led Princess Celestia to suspect that they would one day return. The conflict became known as the Red Rainbow conflict. Unfortunately, the next war was not long in coming.
The Pegasi, the winged ponies that monitor Equestria for natural disasters and other perils, are also charged with controlling the weather (an astonishingly powerful ability, which they take for granted), and keeping it in balance. As a result of their nature, and also because of these duties, they spend much of their time in the clouds. They even have a Pegasus-only city in the sky called Cloud's Dale.
One day, they came into contact with a race of small creatures calling themselves the Care Bears, each with their own individually specific markings on their bellies, evidently representing their personal strengths and abilities. The Care Bears made sophisticated machinery and structures out of solidified clouds and rainbows, as well as stars and other materials. Also, the marks on the bear's bellies allowed them to throw out magical beams of energy, using their belly mark as a focal point, evidently allowing them to create light, alter other being's emotions, to be used as a destructive force, and other, less identifiable abilities..
The pegasi thought they had found kindred spirits. The Bears dwelled in the clouds, could fly (at least with the aid of their vehicles), had body marks that closely resembled the "cutie marks" that every pony gains around the age of maturation, and seemingly spent their time performing public works for the betterment of others, mirroring the constant life of responsibility the Pegasi have been tasked with.
However, in time, relations between the two races grew strained. The bears began to interfere in Equestrian matters that the ponies felt were not their concern. They also began to push into Pegasus territory, which the Earth ponies and most Unicorns didn't realize thanks to the fact that all the problems arising were happening unseen above their heads.
After time, many diplomatic incidents, and many failed negotiations, war was declared, and squadrons of pegasi scrambled to meet the encroaching enemy head-on in aerial duels and dogfights. The majority of the fighting took place over Equestrian territory, and its earthbound inhabitants began to witness the Care Bears' cloud cars or rainbow wheels falling out of the sky on fire, it's drivers hopefully dead before the flames reached them in the cab, or pegasi dropping to the hard ground from miles above, sometimes screaming and trying to flap singed wings that no longer worked. What many thought was thunder and lightning in the sky was in actuality the clash of battle, and debris rained down instead of water.
Thus began the hardest fought war ever in Equestrian history, exasperated by the fact that for the greatest part of the conflict, the Pegasi, always the most martial of the four pony breeds, were solely involved in the fighting. That ended when Cloud's Dale itself was invaded and occupied. Princess Celestia became personally involved, leading her Royal Guard and her personal stable of mustangs into the conflict. Earth pony soldiers and unicorns were carried into the city via hot air balloons and finally made their numbers and magical abilities available.
The war in the city itself was a brutal affair. The bears were driven back, street by street, yet never easily or without heavy cost. They fought in closed formations, marching forward and backwards through the thoroughfares and constantly blasting isolated ponies that tried to break their ranks, whilst their animalistic Cousins fought from building to building, and room to room. Phalanx after phalanx of Care Bears had to be stampeded one after the other, always at tremendous cost, especially to the Earth ponies who provided the majority of the fodder for these attacks, even as Pegasi braved Care Bear crossfire from windows and pillars to launch attacks on the rear of formations, and Unicorns lobbed magical artillery from afar.
Unicorns formed hunter-killer teams to take out bears in Cloud-tech vehicles, and bears arced killer rainbows out from behind ruined buildings and shattered architecture. Eventually, after much loss, the bears were driven off, and any survivors who could not withdraw were shown no quarter, their stuffing scattered in the winds to drift to whatever hell they assuredly deserved. The conflagration became known as the War in the Clouds. The Care Bears were thought to be gone forever, but have since reemerged, and seem to be gearing up for a second round. Even now, the war is still being felt in the population. There are relatively few males born each year, and though the population of Equestria is now rising, it is many times smaller than a realm of this size should have.
The war with the inhabitants of a land of sentient food came right on the hooves of the War in the Clouds. The land was ruled by a strawberry queen, and had been considered a serious threat for years. Princess Celestia took the forces that had just been involved in the fighting in Cloud's Dale, and threw them straight into the heart of her rival's country. The battle hardened war ponies, savage and embittered by weeks of nonstop combat, devastated the enemy, and the fighting was over almost before it started, resulting in complete and total victory. Much of this was due to the brutal efficiency and hard-won experience that Equestria's army brought to the fight. Enemy combatants, and not a few civilians, were thrown down and stamped into the earth from whence they came with an eagerness that withered the enemy's resolve to fight any further.
Princess Celestia wanted to make an example of the realm, one that would warn off enemies new and old. She struck the records of its very existence from history, utilizing a Great Spell cast between herself and every Unicorn involved in the invasion. They shrank the land's surviving people to the size of sprites, and banished them to a far-flung corner of the land, their very memories tampered with so that they forgot about their stolen kingdom and their devastated, exiled people. Equestria then annexed the land and began colonizing it. Those who can still, or will, speak of the invasion call it the Shortening. This war, along with the war that preceded it, are called the Hub Wars.
There were a few more conflicts, but they were always so small as to be barely worth mentioning.
There was a short, explosive showdown with the migrating race of dragons. The fighting was quickly brought to an end in a rare showing of two sides simultaneous ceasing hostilities. The dragons realized that they could not kill the ponies in significant numbers fast enough to keep their hoards, eggs, and hatchlings safe, and the ponies realized that winning a fight at a fifty for one exchange rate was, at the end of the day, still a loss. A reluctant peace ensued, with the ponies allowing the dragons safe passage through Equestria, as well as providing large piles of edible materials for the dragons to consume (instead of ponies) left along the flight path. An egg from a highborn dragon noble was given as a hostage, and should the dragons go back on their word, that hatchling's life is forfeit, and the dragon noble may then demand steep concessions from all other dragons.
Recently, there was a small conflict between the bison that roamed the plains and badlands and the inhabitants of one of the many colonies being set up throughout the Equestrian borders. The bison objected to the colony's location, it having been set up within the bison's traditional migratory path. The settlement's inhabitants, understandably, refuted those objections, and made preparations to defend their town, Apple-oosa. After a tense, but ultimately painless fight, an agreement was reached between the settlement and bison herds, and the juggernaut that is the pony war machine wasn't even involved. Just another, if happier, example of a new empire starting to stretch its muscles.
Several other issues have arisen in the recent past, such as the rise, fall, and ultimate redemption of Nightmare Moon, or the attack on Equestria's reality by the chimera known as Discord. There were rumors of a Changeling infiltration of Equestria's capital, Canterlot, though all such rumors have been squashed with alacrity. There have also been attacks from ever-present threats such as diamond dogs, rogue dragons, and other nuisances. However, few, if any, of these incidents are in the official records, as they were taken care of "in-house," as it were, and are of such a trifling nature they can be safely set aside as legitimate concerns. Still, there can be no doubt, should the lives of her citizens be threatened, Princess Celestia, once again reinforced by her sister Luna, will draw from the might that she has amassed over the last thousand years, and that she will evidently continue to amass in the next thousand.
End Chapter
The End. Deal with it.