High Sun 20th 3474
It would help me to greatly in my research work if wars didn't get in the way. That sounds flippant, but it's simply the truth. I have my duties as a Duchess to consider, though part of the problem is deciding exactly what those duties require me to do, or rather how much I _should_ do. Equestria is about to be invaded, and we must decide how to respond.
It appears that both our neighbours to the north got wind of the trouble last year, and thought that while we were weakened by internal strife, they might do some border raids for fun and profit. I speak, of course of the griffons of the northern mountains, and the Taurun nomads of the steppes.
It was easy enough to say that I wouldn't interfere with overwhelming power when it was all nice and theoretical. It's different now, when I could resolve the situation without any-pony getting hurt, whereas if Luna and I do restrain ourselves, ponies that trust us will almost certainly die, following orders we give.
Sounds an easy enough choice, except that in one case we could only safeguard our ponies by exterminating the opponents. It would be easy, with my Solar sight I know exactly where they are, and could Flame Flash right into the middle of them. From there I could introduce each of them to a personal pocket of super-heated plasma, hot enough to vaporise iron. End of invasion.
The Taurun should not need that level of force; they can be handled conventionally, now that Luna's and my own Sight can tell our forces where to position themselves to intercept their invasion route. They and their western cousins the Buffalo are nomads, travelling around in tribes and grazing the land. Actually, some scholars say we ponies were not too different before we discovered agriculture and magic. But whereas the Buffalo are content to travel around their own lands, the Taurun are of a more truculent character.
While in normal times there is some trading going on, rare herbs and cows milk for tools and cloth, occasionally some tribal chief gets the brilliant idea that they can just come down and take what they want. Then they form into a great barbarian herd, with helmeted horns, and storm down into Equestria, looting and pillaging. Ultimately they get driven off, the cost depending on how long it takes to marshal the professional guardsmen of the Fifes to oppose them.
However, their leaders are not stupid, and if we show that we are ready for them, not divided and intercept them just beyond the borders with a sufficient force, it may come to a short battle, or maybe just a string of formal challenges and duels, but they will turn around and leave. They're bigger and tougher, with horns they can use as weapons, but they can't match us in technology, magic or organisation.
Rereading what I just wrote, I wonder if some non-pony upon coming into possession of this notebook would decide I'm a hypocrite, or should that be hippo-crite? For all of my very gung ho attitude about equality between ponies, I sound rather dismissive of other races. Actually, looking back at past entries, I see I've used the word pony in cases where the word people might have been better, covering all the intelligent races, as if ponies were the only race that mattered.
However, my own nanny was a goat, and one of the people who taught me better than that. Maresia's nobility has always tried to minimise discrimination against non-ponies within our borders, though as you can imagine, many other Fifes are less enlightened. Sheep, goats, donkeys, they all contribute to society, and shouldn't be looked down on simply because they're not equine.
Note to self: Go through that Law Codex and make sure it doesn't make the same mistake. If a creature can understand the concept of justice, they should have its protection.
While I want ponies, and the other intelligent inhabitants of Equestria as well to treat each other equally, I'm not going to make the mistake of thinking of them all as equal in ability. Pegasi fly, unicorns do magic, earth-ponies are strong and tough and understand the land, sheep grow wool, and goats can navigate mountains like no other, while donkeys are the best travellers over the lands.
My love and tolerance has limits. I can admire the griffons for their flying ability and toughness in battle; otherwise I wouldn't have sought them out as opponents when I was younger. The Taurun are also strong and tough and not only live, but also thrive in very harsh conditions.
However, if they attack my land, and my people, pony or otherwise, they will be met with whatever force needed to stop them, and I will be right there alongside my warriors, fighting them. I will also consider every advantage, every way we are better than they, and make my plans to use those strengths against their weaknesses.
Of course, just because I consider every advantage, doesn't mean I'm going to use it, which brings me back to the problem I referred to. Using our full powers could smash both invasions easily, but set up massive problems in the future. We have to be careful to avoid even the appearance of privilege, whether it's because we are noble, or because we are Alicorns.
It's going to be hard to maintain our popularity, or promulgate a code of law for everyone, if we keep reminding everyone that we are exception, and can incinerate them and smash their homes to dust if they do something we don't like. I don't care about the popularity, but the social changes we hope to start are important.
This led to our first big fight. Thankfully, Luna's powers are less well suited to blowing stuff up, illusions and transformations and dream magic, though I'm sure she could improvise. She argued that if we couldn't haul out our full powers at this time, when could we? Not so much with the Taurun, but the griffons, who are a much tougher proposition.
Naturally, she doesn't want whole-scale elimination, any more than I do, but she believes they can be scared straight, if we simply demonstrate the power they are up against, without the need or expense of mobilisation, or risk of casualties. By that, she means flying up, challenging them, and defeating them.
Maybe it would work for the Taurun, but I've fought griffons before, and they don't scare easily. I'd have to kill a good number of them, before they'd finally get the message. The worse part is part of me wants to, as there are certain griffons who deserve very little mercy, and Maresia has far more of a bad history with them. Our northern border is close to the southern border of Gryffindor, separated only by the narrow strip of barren ground known as the Badlands. The villages north of Canterlot have suffered even worse depredations.
To understand why requires a geography lesson. The heart of Gryffindor is a wide bowl shaped valley in the mountains to the north, verdant, but with spires and mesas of rock scattered through it. Until I espied it with my Solar sight, it was pretty much a legend told by travellers, but the description does seem to be accurate.
The north-western corner of the northern range comes down into a salient, like a southwards pointed unicorn's horn, and at it's tip is the Canterhorn, the mountain where Canterlot is, hence it's alternate name as the Hornberg. Further up the salient are a number of mountain villages, mostly wool farming and mining based. They have a mix of ponies, goats and sheep, and are nominally part of the King's own demesnes.
Our problem is that the griffons claim the main range of mountains as their own, and have in the past tried to expand their borders, though there hadn't been a major incident in over a century. However, any-pony, anybody, going up into those mountains, even the part that is supposedly Equestria, is at hazard from their wide patrols. Their definition of 'border' seems to be 'anywhere we say it is'.
The villages are mostly safe, but there are still occasional disappearances, though no proof that they were responsible. There are plenty of other hazards, after all. So luckless explorers, prospectors and lost villagers have vanished and tales of what happen to them are a favourite subject of campfire horror stories. The nicest ones have then enslaved, the less kind ones involve the fact that griffons do eat meat.
My Solar sight, when I turned it that way, confirmed that the stories were true, though less common recently than those same stories would have you believe. I'd like to think I helped with that. Even before I became an Alicorn I was a match in the air for any griffon, and able to outrun any group big enough to swarm me. I occasionally went looking for trouble beyond the Badlands, mostly to blow off steam when I couldn't buck the horn off of some particularly moronic unicorn noble.
My interference led to a reduction in captures and people going 'missing', though I didn't realise it at the time. Maybe it's just as well it never occurred to me to check things with my Solar sight before the recent unpleasantness. In my unstable emotional state after what happened last year, I might have done something… excessive. However, I can lay to rest one particularly wild rumour. Although not for lack of trying in past times on the part of some male griffons, there's no such thing as a hippogriff.
Why hasn't the King put together an expedition to deal with them? In short, politics. Considering most of our nobles were looking to their own Fifes first, and the worse hit areas have considerable populations of non-ponies, he could never have gotten enough fighting ponies to mount it.
Of course, there's also the problem that sending an old fashioned, primarily ground bound army with only a thin screen of pegasi as air cover and scouts through mountainous terrain to attack an enemy that is fully at home in the mountains and the air is probably less than strategically brilliant. I may be no general, but even I can see that that we'd have been the ones getting mounted, well and truly mounted.
Back to the present. One of the things we found out when we did our rounds was that there was an upsurge in the number of griffon sightings north of Canterlot, and bovine sightings on the borders of the northwestern Fifes. Naturally Luna and I cast our sight that way, and found out that several clans of griffons had formed an alliance and were intending a major raid, believing us divided.
Similarly, the Taurun had their own raiding plans, though thankfully they weren't coordinated with the griffons. This is unsurprising, as their mutual enmity is legendary. However, both were about to storm down into Equestria and take everything that wasn't nailed down, and in the case of the griffons, everyone. Not that the people would be nailed to the floor, that would be silly, unless you had specialised horseshoes that could lock into a raised hard point on the floor that _was_ nailed down, giving the same effect.
Note to self: Redesign the platforms of the ballista and troop chariots with such a system. It would allow a non-magical alternative to sticking charms.
I'm shying away from the uncomfortable bit here. Some of the griffons leading the invasion are also some of the most frequent leaders of the smaller raiding parties. I want to see them punished, and Luna does even more, as most of the worst events happened under her moon. While I would wish to capture them, and gather evidence and have them answer for their crimes, that's going to be impossible.
My only evidence is Luna's Sight, and mine which as I've already said we can't use as legal proof. However, they have made themselves targets by taking part in this attack, targets I can legitimately harm. Part of me feels ashamed, that I _am_ being a hypocrite not sticking to that principle of a rule of law I was speaking of. Another part of me wants to let loose on them with my full powers so badly it _scares_ me.
Apart from the special privilege argument, there was another one I posed to Luna. If we take care of this all by ourselves, we set up a situation where all the ponies of Equestria will start to rely on us to do it in future. They already rely on us to manage the sun and moon for them, but that is genuinely a task no one else can do. But if we do everything, protect them from every hazard, we could end up harming them as much as if we do nothing, not physically, but in other, more subtle ways.
It comes down to our values. Both Luna and I believe in an equality of opportunity for all throughout Equestria. Unfortunately, that includes an equal chance to take risks, to fight for and defend what they believe in. This task is something all ponies, and others if I can convince Sergeant Major Apony, can take part in. If we take that away, aren't we saying they're not able, not worthy to determine their own futures?
It was that argument that finally convinced Luna. So we have come to a compromise. There are things we can do in preparation beforehand, new tools and weapons that should help and our Sight ability will give a massive advantage to our forces. Also there are things we can arrange outside the arena of combat to help minimise casualties, and make best use of the inevitable confrontations.
When it comes to the actual battles, we will each lead a force as part of the general mobilisation, but most of the actual commanding will be left to our own chosen captains. I am going to be with the force that goes after the griffons, while Luna takes the force that will face the Taurun. That was almost another argument, but I have more experience fighting them, and I've been a flyer all my life, so it makes sense that I'll understand the enemy better.
There's another reason I want Luna to take the Taurun attack force, I will be targeting the offenders we've identified when I go into battle. I will restrict myself to purely physical attacks, but I don't intend to pull my blows. Luna has a much lower chance of having to kill, even if she gets to battle, or duel a Taurun chief.
There is a valid military reason to focus on them; they are effectively the captains of the Griffon force. As well, if they can be killed (there, I admitted it) then it may be easier to convince the remaining griffons that going after Equestrians is a losing proposition. So future ponies and others won't have to worry about being some griffon's feast.
One thing I have agreed with Luna in the spirit of our non-interference pact if not the letter, is that if they surrender, I will treat them as any other prisoner even if it is one of those that ate or enslaved ponies. Of course, knowing griffons as I do, it is unlikely that any of my targets will consider it. In combat, I will strike them as hard and unrelentingly as possible, but I will not destroy them in cold blood, and I will not torture them, in or out of combat. I will not let their atrocities drive me to my own. That way leads to the Pitiless Sun.
I've rambled enough. I have designs to create, plans to develop, and ponies to warn. I will help to the utmost of my ability, but I will fight as a pony, not a siege weapon. The ideas I've had to minimise our losses, and maximise our effectiveness will rely as much on the courage and discipline of the Maresian Guards, and the skill of our artisans as on our own powers. It will be tough, but I don't think either will fail us.