The Old Worlds - Part I - To The Cataclysm

Introduction

Across the Stormy Sea, far to the east of Equestria, lie the Old Worlds. They are not called the Old Worlds because the Ponies or the civilizations directly ancestral to modern Equestria originated there. The Ponies originated in Hyperborea, which though across narrow seas far to the Northeast and now buried under the Ice Wastes, is geologically part of North Amareica. Both the Three Tribes and the Crystal Empire are of North Amareican origin: the original homelands of the Three Tribes lie under the Ice Wastes of the far Northwest, while The City of the Crystal Empire lies far to the north of Mount Avalon and Canterlot.

They are called the Old Worlds because this is where all Pony Civilization originated, 12 thousand years ago, and because 10 thousand years ago, this is where two Cosmic beings first took Avatars of flesh and walked the Earth.

Basic Geography

There were seven continents on Equus Earth at the dawn of Pony Civilization, though their outlines have of course changed greatly due to the extreme and sudden uplifts of some seabottoms and converse marine transgressions onto continents resulting from the severe isostatic shifts of the Cataclysm around 4 thousand years ago. These were (1) Draconia (the largest continent), with (2) Taura as its western peninsula and (3) Zebrica connected to Draconia by convergent land bridge to the southwest of Draconia, across the Calm Sea from Taura. Across the Sea of Islands southeast from Draconia is (4) Strailia, and across the Stormy Sea west from Taura and Zebrica are (respectively) (5) North Amareica and (6)South Amareica. Far to the south is (7) Antarctica, a chilly and desolate realm whose coast is barely habitable and prone to raids from the barbaric Shoggoths of the interior, which has thus been poorly explored by Ponies. The vast Cruel Sea, largest on the planet, stretches between Draconia and the Amareicas.

Among the major changes wrought by the Cataclysm have been the uplift of the Cannibal Sea which once separated North and South Amareica. That sea has now been replaced by impenetrable, monster-haunted jungles and swamps, deep within it is said moulder valuable artifacts of the Age of Wonders. Right after the Cataclysm, almost 4 thousand years ago, the North Amareican Seaway stretched north from the remnant of the Cannibal Sea and its swamps, splitting the continent in twain. But the return of the Ice Age 3 thousand years ago drained that Seaway, and it is now a fertile plain -- though one that might be flooded should another Cataclysm ensue.

The great Dromedarian desert of North Zebrica has also shifted its boundaries, being partly flooded in the north by a transgression of the Calm Sea and partly extended into what used to be the interior jungles, which have themselves shifted south onto formly dry deserts. The shape of the Sea of Islands, southeast of Draconia, and of Neigh-pon, east of Draconia, has altered due to frequent and violent volcanic eruptions and the depredations of the Great Beasts which seem peculiarly attracted to the Neigh-ponese islands. Stralia has seen its interior sea swell and shrink more than once during this period.

The Five Kinds

Ponies settled down and began farming about 12 thousand years BP, when the last ice fields of the North receded in the Warm Age (which would last until 3 thousand years BP, when the Ice Wastes advanced to their present extent). By about 10 thousand years ago, they had attained a Neolithic level of culture and technology -- a few towns of thousands and numerous villages of hundreds of Ponies existed, practicing a mixture of agriculture and gathering. The spread of agriculture was rapid, due to one great advantage of Ponykind -- its division into Five Kinds.

The basis of Neolithic Pony society everywhere, then as through the vast majority of Pony civilizations, were the Earth Ponies, who raised the food for everypony else. Because they are tied to the land by their talents, there has been a persistent tendency throughout Pony history for Earth Ponies to be ground down into serfdom, which began at this time. Earth Ponies have always been the majority of the Pony population -- around 50+ percent today, to a maximum of 99+ percent during the Second Meganist Millennium (including the Age of Wonders itself).

Due to their mobility and endurance in flight, Pegasi have always constituted a class of warriors and couriers. The importance of the Pegasi to Pony history is that Pony civilizations have always been in at least tenuous contact even over intercontinental distances. This was true as early as the Neolithic, and we have found rough maps of all Equus-Earth dating back to those times. Pegasi were a sizable minority of the Pony population in every age save for the Second Meganist Millennium, their numbers usually being about 10-25 percent of the total Ponies.

With highly flexible magic, the Unicorns have usually constituted a class of nobles, gentry and higher artisans and merchants. There has always been a tension between the greater cultural sophistication of the Unicorns, which is essential on the scale of a civilization, and their lesser endurance and mobility compared to Earth Pony and Pegasi. Save during the Second Meganist Millennium, their numbers have generally comprised about 5-20 percent of the total Pony population.

The Sea Ponies were once of great importance to Ponykind, especially before the development of large sailing vessels which could be crewed by Pegasailors (later, after the disappearance of the true Sea Ponies, called "Sea Pegasi") able to control the winds and hence move major cargoes across transoceanic distances. Their populations were difficult to ascertain. The Sea Ponies retreated from the other Kinds during the Second Meganist Millennium and it is believed they have vanished by hybridization into the Deep Ones, Merfolk, Kelpies and other aquatic sapient races. The last pure-blooded Sea Ponies vanished during the Age of Discord.

The Flutter-Ponies -- semi-eusocial lepidopteran-winged telempaths -- were of great importance to Ponykind during the time before the Neolithic, when their deep understanding of nature, ability to communicate with animals, and abilities both to absorb love and give it back for healing purposes were very valuable to pre-agricultural Ponies. They were never numerous at all, having stubbornly remained wild gatherers despite the growth of Pony civilizations, and seem to have utterly vanished during the Age of Discord. This is a pity, as their ultimate weapon -- the coordinated pulse of combined telempathy and telekinesis called the "Utter Flutter" -- would be valuable to an Earth now menaced by the Shadows.

A Single Cultural Sphere

One can postulate an alternate Earth in which the dominant sapient species was limited to purely land and sea-based communication, and lacked the ability to control the winds for the purposes of sailing. The continents of a world dominated by such an unfortunate race would probably develop in almost complete isolation. This would result in terrible consequences when technological progress and exploration finally re-united this species -- cultures and diseases developed in isolation would devastate each other. Whole civilizations would go crashing down and their knowledge be lost for ever.

This never happened to the Ponies. Worse things (such as the Cosmic Games of 8 to 6 thousand years ago, the near-Extermination of Ponykind by the Viprallans 6 thousand years ago, and the Cataclysm of 4 thousand years ago) have happened, but rarely have Ponies tried to exterminate one another -- and never on a civilization-wide scale. Genocide is a crime almost unknown to Ponykind. Nor have diseases ever been able to stay sufficiently isolated to strike with real fury against Pony populations in true virgin-field epidemics. The awareness that Ponies are not threats to one another on a really large scale has been their pride -- a pride which Random Flag is doing his best to bring crashing down, in his attempts to provoke massive warfare between the Kinds.

The Fertile Spearhead

Agriculture began around 14 thousand years ago in the Old Worlds primarily in the area where Draconia, Taura and Zebrica come together -- a roughly triangular region stretching from Draconia Minor and its vicinity in the northwest to the valley of the Ndush to the southeast, to the Sebekh River Valley (Sebekhemet in northeastern Zebrica, with a center roughly from Soosea on the east coast of the Calm Sea to Qannu along the Two Rivers at the western head of what is today the Aspan Gulf, in the ancient land of Eden. By 12 thousand years ago cities of several thousand Ponies existed in this area, and the first regular systems of hieroglyphic writing had been developed.

Interestingly, the first Pony civilizations were not entirely built by Ponies. In Draconia Minor the key elements consisted of Earth Ponies ruled by an elite of Pegasi and a small caste of Unicorns. In Sebekhemet, the ruling race seem to have been hybrids of Earth Ponies and Zebras, with a Unicorn Priesthood and Pegasi hired as mercenary warriors, who gradually merged into the Ancient Sebekhemeti. In Qannu the original inhabitants were Onagers, with an elite composed of Seapony-Onager hybrids, who were gradually supplanted by and merged by populations of the main Three Kinds of Ponies (Earth, Pegasus and Unicorn). In Ndush, a large Donkey and Earth Pony population may have been ruled by a hybrid Viprallan aristocracy (if true, proof that the Viprallans were not in the beginning entirely hostile to Ponykind). In the Far East, the land we now know as Chi-Neigh was from early times under the domination of the Celestial Dragons (which is why their continent is called "Draconia") who seemed to regard their whole land as their "hoard" and hence were able to attain unusual levels of enlightenment for Dragonkind.

Because of the existence of long-distance communication by Pegasi and Seaponies, these new techniques rapidly spread all over the world. At least small towns of agriculturalists soon existed on every continent save Antarctica, seeds of civilization whose existence would prove important when two entities from Beyond the Earth decided to make this planet their personal playground.

Playing With Ponies

Around 10 thousand years ago, two Cosmic beings of great power noticed the nascent cultures of the Earth and descended from the stars to take forms of flesh and blood, the better to play with Ponykind. One of them took the form of a beautiful Alicorn mare who has passed into legend as Epona, but whom certain radical schoalrs have insisted on identifying as being an earlier incarnation of none other than our own beloved Sun Princess Celestia, and taught the arts of civilization and morality to the early Pony Civilizations. The other was a twisted mismatched creature, who passed into legend as The Twister, and has frequently been identified as an earlier form of Discord: he raised up strife and opposition to the early civilizations, and caused the first great wars to afflict Ponykind, including both wars of Pony against Pony and of monstrous races against Ponies.

Some of the legends present these two Cosmic beings as enemies, some as friends or even lovers, and some suggest that their relations were stormy and fluctuated between all three states. Regardless of the case, their conflicts both raised Pony civilizations into the Bronze and early Iron ages, and resulted in the awakening of old monstrous races, and the appearance of new ones. It was at this time that the Flutterponies first began to retreat from the other Kinds, for they greatly feared The Twister and did not entirely trust Epona.

As time passed, the two Cosmic beings began to quarrel more frequently. 8 thousand years ago, their friendship broke, and rather than destroy the Earth in their conflict they both quitted our planet. They left behind numerous Late Bronze to Early Iron Age Pony civilizations, especially in the Old Worlds, and numerous roused monstrous races -- also especially in the Old World.

Extermination and Salvation

The next two millennia saw the recession of Pony civilization before the monstrous races, their resurgence as they developed and deployed iron weapons, and then their virtual extermination by the monsters, especially the Viprallans led by Tirek the Annihilator. Viprallan culture was centered in the Ndkusha, the highest mountains on the planet before the Cataclysm, and consequently the Time of Extermination fell most heavily upon the Ponies and other Equids of the Old World. By 6 thousand years ago, among the last remaining free Ponies on Earth were the inhabitants of Dream Castle, located in what is today the Everfree Forest, which was then a normal land rather than the hell-forest it was during Luna's Exile and the period immediately afterward -- in other words, in eastern North Amareica in the New Worlds.

Then came the Advent of The Megan, a mysterious and possibly non-equid female being who slew Tirek, established Paradise Estate, and established a new philosophy of organized warlike resistance among Ponykind. The pulse of this new philsophy, born on the wings of Her favored Disciples Wind Whistler and Firefly, among others, spread all across the planet, and it originated from the New Worlds. Over the next thousand years, Ponies rallied and rose everywhere, driving the monstrous races into hiding or retreat -- in point of fact, as radical scholars would claim, essentially exterminating many of them.

By 5 thousand years ago, not only had the Ponies terrified most of the monstrous races, but also four out of five of the main Pony Kinds. For the Earth Ponies fought more fiercely and bred more rapidly than any other Pony Kinds, while at the same time the magics of the planet seem to have become temporarily-exhausted by the previous Cosmic interference. Weakened and outnumbered, the Unicorns, Pegasi, Seaponies and Flutterponies increasingly retreated from the Earth Ponies, while the immortal Ponies of Paradise Estate -- many of whom had personally known The Megan -- hid completely behind a Veil from all other Ponies.

Wonders and Cataclysm

Over the next millennium, the Earth Ponies gained utter dominion over the Earth, with all non-Earth Pony sapients hiding from them. Considering themselves merely "Ponies," for the other Kinds were now considered mere myth, they developed an advanced technological civilization and stood on the threshhold of expansion to the other worlds of the Solar System. The main centers of their civilization were North Amareica, where some faint traditions from the other Kinds still survived, Taura, which was the most culturally advanced region, and Chi-Neigh, where the Celestial Dragons now hid behind Earth Pony forms but still secretly ruled the land.

Then the Earth Ponies rediscovered Paradise Estate, and the other Pony Kinds, and magic -- which the scientists of the Age of Wonders regularized into paramagnetics. Over the last millennium, the Earth's magics had regenerated, and a Pony named Starlight proposed the construction of great engines which would harness the paramagnetic power of the whole Solar System to create a paramagnetic vortex which would allow Ponies to have whatever they desired without the need for physical instrumentality.

The engines were switched on -- and something went wrong. Not only did the engines explode, causing great direct devastation, but something changed the whole Solar System, somehow shifting into a geocentric cosmology. Immense tidal stresses wracked the Earth. Mountains crumbled and new ranges arose Seabottoms rose and elsewhere seas slopped into the centers of continents. The Age of Wonders died in the Great Cataclysm; the monstrous races re-emerged to terrorize Ponykind. In the first day, 90 percent of Ponykind died; within a year, less than 1 in 100 of the several billions of Ponies that had hoped for Paradise remained alive. A new dark age had begun for Ponykind.

Three of the four Engines had been located in the New Worlds; there the devastation was the most extreme. Once again, Pony civilization centered on the Old Worlds.