The Zebra Lands (Part I) · 11:19am Feb 8th, 2015
"What are the lands of the zebras like in the world of Fallout: Equestria?"
In the past, I have usually answered this question in private messages -- in part because of the roleplaying campaign Fallout: Beyond Equestria that I'm running wherein which the characters journey to the post-apocalyptic zebra lands -- but after finishing "Origin Story", I feel this is a good time to answer the question in my blog.
I am going to be doing this write-up in multiple parts, much like I did with my posts detailing Froggy Bottom Bog.
First, I would like to reiterate my headcanon for the geography of the zebra lands in relation to Equestria. In the headcanon that I was working with, the frozen north is Equestria's equivalent of the arctic. (While not precisely true, it is fair to say that once you get to the Crystal Empire, everything is south.) Equestria and the zebra lands exist on separate continents. The only ways to travel between them are either across the ocean or by traveling over the top of the globe and down the other side — a bitterly cold and treacherous journey which requires traveling over Shattered Hoof Ridge on the Equestrian side of the arctic cap and across a narrow isthmus on the zebra's side.
This idea syncs well with Spike's journey in "Dragon Quest" if we assume the land of the dragons is in the continent of the zebra lands and the phase of his journey depicted below is his travel across the frozen north.
The zebra lands would not be restricted to a single biome. The geography within the continent itself would as varied as that of Equestria, with a predominance of jungles, thick forests and wild plains.
“Origin Story" further postulates that the Tenochtitlan Basin, setting of the Daring Do books, is a sunken jungle basin on the northern part of the continent, adjacent to the land of the dragons. In comparison to being part of Equestria, I believe being part of the zebra lands make it far easier to understand how the Basin could be largely unexplored by ponies and how the Mane Six could have no functional knowledge of the dangers there.
art by Rublegun
In my dream, I was Littlepip the zebra. I trotted about the zebra city… not Zebratown which attempted to blend zebra heritage with Equestrian aesthetics, but a real zebra city. A city formed in a hillside forest, the trees themselves molded into homes and buildings after their roots had been tended with the most ancient and sacred of magical brews. The homes were marked with masks of friendship and welcome. There were no fences. Just carvings blessing the home and warding off monsters. Gardens of vegetables and herbs stretched around each home, and flasks hung from the branches. I wasn’t sure how I knew this is what a proper zebra city looked like (Be Smart!), but I knew it all the same.
--Littlepip, Fallout: Equestria
Fallout: Equestria presents the zebras as having lived in a strongly bi-cultural nation. The native zebra culture that is represented in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic by Zecora coexisted and contrasted with a very Roman culture that appeared to be influenced by the same source that influenced the Greco-Roman architecture of the Equestrian pegasi.
Obviously, I chose introduce Roman elements to the zebra nation as a way of paying homage to Caesar’s Legion in the Fallout games while making something more interesting than just a direct Chinese correlation. During the writing of the story, I had to take it on faith that there could a precursor civilization or similar logical influence point that would allow part of the zebra nation to have developed in this fashion. Not wanting to risk conflicting with the world-building of episodes that would air before I could finish the story, I left it open as to how this influence had occurred (save for the conjecture of one particularly biased voice who insisted the zebras were trying to emulated Equestrians). Thankfully, the show itself stepped in and provided an answer.
As we know, ponies migrated to Equestria from another continent. On that continent, the preceding pegasi civilization had similar Greco-Roman styling and a warrior culture evocative of the Spartans. The original zebra civilization, as described in Fallout: Equestria, suffered from hundreds of years of tribal wars following the destruction of their central trade city and the immediate collapse of inter-tribal peace. Anyone can imagine the impact on the developing culture of one tribe who, fleeing deep into the center of the continent to avoid the fighting, discovers a marvelous and totally empty city of clouds floating in the heavens.
art by AssasinMonkey
In my headcanon, the capital city of the zebra empire and the center of the Imperial culture was Roam (thank you, Fallout: Equestria side story writers! 
). The zebra empire consisted of the capital city and several other large cities in the core of the continent, with progressively more traditional (and often under-developed) agrarian territories radiating outwards, and the territories along the fringes of the continent maintaining a bucolic tribal culture. (Somewhat similar, now that I think of it, to the world of Firefly.) The dichotomy of “Imperialis” (Imperial) and “Jadi” (Traditional) cultures was largely between urban and rural areas. Rivers and major roads created commerce lanes, and major trade towns along them saw a peculiar blending and resulting multiculturalism.
To my shame, despite all my years adventuring in the Tenochtitlan Basin, I only learned a passing amount of the language spoken in the rural areas and the outlying villages. I schooled myself on the Imperial language – that spoken in the central cities, for it was the language of their government and military. And as I had a penchant for finding myself in trouble with them, the ability to smooth-talk my way out of that trouble saved my feathers on several occasions. Likewise, I grew very adept at translating the ancient glyphs that were often the key to understanding the ruins and artifacts that were the focus of my endeavors.
The zebras put us to shame by being more willing to learn our tongue than we were to learn theirs. Within their trade centers, such as Bahari Soko, many zebras strove to learn Equestrian. The method of education involved nursery rhymes and a rhythmic learning structure which is so at odds with Equestrian schooling that I cannot imagine how it would make learning our language any easier. I would be hard pressed to consistently express myself in the form of poetry.
—Daring Do, “Origin Story”
In the post-apocalyptic zebra-lands, isolated pockets of civilization would certainly exist wherein the area’s dominant pre-war culture is the entire foundation of the current one.
However, the major cities would have taken the brunt of Equestria’s retaliatory megaspell assault. Many of the fringe territories would not have fared much better as they would have been host to decades of warfare. Because of the geography of the two continents, a large amount of the fighting (particularly for the first ten years) occurred in the form of sea battles and on the shores of the zebra lands. Therefore, the areas that would have had the greatest population of survivors would have been the far rural territories and the trade towns that were both too small to be megaspell targets and too far inland to be hit by direct fighting.
As such, the emerging zebra civilization in many areas would likely be built on a gestalt of the two previous cultures, including a blended creole language. Even a traveler from Equestria who knows one or both of the original zebra languages may find translation and communication challenging.
In the next blog, I’ll expound on the features and dangers one can expect to encounter in the zebra lands! 
art by Yakovlev-vad
A very interesting start to these, and certainly going to be a bite of knowledge to look forward to.
Very interessant.
The fact is nobody have any idea of what does China (and the rest of the world) looks like in Fallout Franchise, so I think it would be great to have an idea of what are the remains of Zebra Empire, since we know Equestria suffred (and still suffers) from the war.
Let's wait until next post blog
Grrrr.
Can I borrow some of your world building chops? I promise I'll return them in one piece.
Wow. This was very interesting to hear your HeadCannon of the Fallout Universe.
Neat.
I enjoyed this one quite a bit. Would make a great video.
Kkat will do a world the nature of magic, Like is it really magic or biology, and what types of magic are there, this comes zebras who seem to not have inherit magic like unicorns.
Zebras are so rad
Very interesting and informative.
Edit: Had to change that. Sort of had a misinterpretation of things there for a couple minutes. Still it's interesting to note the difference in methods the two nations used.
It's thing to think about. I can only imagine what effects it would have psychologically when the surviving zebras viewed what was left of their land after Equestria retaliated. Even more so as the years past and they didn't have the huge cities to build the weapons they once used to keep the flora and fauna in check during and before the war.
I see Zebra civilization being slightly better off than Equestria, as Equestria's megaspells would be more focused on accuracy rather than pure destructive force, therefore more citizens and more of the environment would have survived.
See in my upcoming FO:E story I have a faction of the Zebra's that are trying to reclaim their ancient glory but with technology so something not unlike Red Eye but they have a less insane way of going abut it.
All the same this just gives more space to work with
I expect a map of what Kkat just described before the next blogpost.
Also how long did the war last?
so the first ten years were mostly navel battles. Now we must know more about the FoE navy.
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Oh? Whoever you have drawing your map has just under a week then.
Or are you just expecting it of the community? (I personally wouldn't expect my blog posts to inspire art. To the best of my knowledge, "Origin Story" didn't. However, considering all the artists in the Fallout: Equestria community, it's possible.)
The war lasted twenty years.
you zebra stuff did rather inspire my thoughts on it. albeit i have different plots to it all. largely that it is divided between cultures. the roman inspired one and a more shamanistic culture.......
thought i had is that zebra are equine whose inherent power is theri ability to craft powerful things. they are actually capable of conciously pouring energy into almost anything they are working on, be it a sword, a potion, or just a basket. those of the roman type culture are those whose power focuses largerly on crafting objects and tools, often weapons. on the other side are potion makers and mystics. they are in reality the scientists and backbone of the zebra, if a smaller population in comparison. if they did invent things like that zebra assault rifle in your story, the roman type zebra would be the ones to create it, but it would be the shamans who would give it that fiery final touch.
it is also where their protective power house resides, amongst the shamans............ had the idea that in general populations of beings in equestira's world would require an individual of considerable power, an alicorn equivalent in a way. else creatures like Chrysalis would have just conquered them.
2779159 I suppose that would make sense though.
They would mostly have to get over a big body of water to get to Equestria or a small part of land were they could easily be tracked and picked off. Going over water sounds like the safest bet.
But also considering problems really seemed to pick up after the pirate kidnappings, it makes sense that Equestria would be very weary of of naval assets or air assets coming over from the zebras lands after the war started.
Great to hear about this finally - I'm interested to see the rest of it.
The thing that always stuck in my mind was SteelHooves, mentioning how the Zebras had robots and machines far more advanced than Equestria, since they couldn't use magic. I kept thinking of giant robotic guardians around their cities, roads that would only form themselves for authorised traffic, maybe even cities themselves built on the back of walking machines. In my mind, that was why zebras like Zecora left the homeland - to practice traditional arts like brewing and alchemy away from modern progress.
2779231 true. But both nations would have a large navy just to keep the other form roiling on into their lands. which asks the question "What the hell happens to the equestrian navy?" In my story I do go into that a bit, but without any solid information, I left it more or less vague.
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People are always interested in maps, and I believe this is the first time we've gotten an in depth look at what you think the world looks like. So yes, I'm hoping the community churns out a map.
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The Equestrian and Zebra navies, and what became of them, would definitely make an interesting topic for a world-building post. It's not something I've really written about since Fo:E stories and games tend to focus on overland adventures. (I did touch on the fate of one Equestrian warship in my blog post Good Pony and New Futures.)
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2779288 Of course on the side note to that, it paints an interesting view of the effort of the zebras to get the machines over to Equestria as well.
Either small long lines thin lines of troops and machines over land and snow or huge convoys of ships speeding to Equestria's coasts to deliver their attacking force. sea battles must have been fierce.
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*squee* cool. The next story I have planed will be heavy on what became of the navy in the west ocean. There must have been many leftover ships still floating around with a full crew. If they thought Equestria was lost, then they would have settles somewhere less destroyed, or keeped on fighting for years after. To tell the truth, it's an untapped resource for story's, and I so want to have pirates in Fo:E, that and ghost ships full of crazy ghouls.
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that be an interesting story to see someone wight.
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If they make a map I would love to see it posted onto here. Make my life so much easier as a prospective gm for a RP session.
hi hi
I like the way you explain the integration of the different cultural elements in the zebra civilization. Although, I tend to treat it as more of a tri-cultural nation, with African, Roman, and Chinese influences, the insights on how those aspects interact without being a casually mushed together mess is very helpful.
I hope nobody minds if I post some musings I've had on the zebra lands as well. When I started game mastering a Fallout Equestria roleplaying game, I was expecting it to be a short one-shot. Get a group of random people, test the rules a bit, and maybe if people enjoyed themselves, we'd play two to four sessions. Then when it became clear that the game was going to keep going, I whipped up a bunch of stuff that involved exploring the Zebra lands, and drawing some inspiration from Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics, since they were all relatively unexplored at the time. This week is going to be the game's three year anniversary, and we only ever made one foray into the Zebra lands. (Funny how things go sometimes.)
On location, things were a little bit different, with the Zebra lands being located to the East of Old Equestria. While an isthmus had once connected the two lands, I had wanted to allow the characters to explore some of the relics of the war, and so I surrounded the original isthmus with a dried up seabed. The seabed would have been home to any number of wrecked naval vessels. (I also put in a weather hazard that was said to be caused by some of the more unusual Equestrian megaspells. What the Zebras called manastorms, would have made crossing the seabed more difficult, where getting struck by a lightning bolt could turn you into a potted cactus.)
The difference between Zebra and Equestrian megaspells was actually something that I took an interest to, and I enjoyed thinking of the various hazards that might be different from simple balefire radiation. In my mind, there were a number of major Zebra cities that weren't physically destroyed, but like the magic equivalent of a neutron bomb, everyone inside was still killed. A piece of advice given to the team was "Don't go into a city unless you have a death wish." They may be filled with all sorts of wondrous things, but that is because trying to scavenge them is one of the most dangerous things to do. That was part of my rationale for why the Zebras hadn't recovered more, even though they didn't have the SPP clouding their skies. (Of course, the adventure would inevitably require the heroes to enter one anyways.)
On the topic of Zebra rhyming, I like to use a blending of the explanation used in this blog with an idea I got from another story. (Where upon looking at Zecora's surface thoughts, someone remarks that she doesn't just speak in rhymes but she thinks in rhymes, something that requires tremendous mental discipline.) I wanted to keep the notion that Zecora is like some kind of incredibly self-disciplined guru, while still allowing for other zebras to rhyme as well. That lead me to think about what purpose rhyming serves in the first place.
My thought is that rhyming is a polite form of emphasis. Similar to how people in our own culture might put Extra. Emphasis. On. Every. Word. Rhyming on the other hand, shows that you have seriously considered what you are saying and that your words should not be dismissed lightly, but without the vaguely aggressive brute force. So naturally, rhymes would have a common place in teaching, since students would naturally associate rhymes with something they are supposed to pay attention to, which would extend to learning foreign languages. So Zebras who aren't fluent in a foreign language would end up rhyming a lot as they have to take the time to consider each sentence, but even Zebras like Zecora who are fluent, would have a reason to rhyme if they want to show that they are speaking with consideration. (It also would give people playing characters in the Zebra lands an excuse not to rhyme, if they didn't feel up to the challenge.)
Reminds me of the RP Campaign I did for my own Zebra Lands setting (which, I had to end due to a lot of reasons, one of them really being inexperience and just being too worried about getting zebra lore "right"). Though, I was actually pretty close with you on the rural and urban cultures in the Zebra lands to be a bit different. Though, concerning the Caesar, my headcanon had it that the Caesar and his tribe that mostly was in charge of the country were the relatives of a zebra hero who managed to unite the country's various tribes into one Empire. May make more zebra characters now thanks to your post :).
Fascinating, especially on the sociological angle. The ruins of Old Pegasopolis being such an influence on early zebra culture is a wonderful concept that blends the two settings in a fascinating way.
Zebra land info. I'm all about zebras. My OC is a zebra.
THIS POST IS LIKE PORN TO ME
So very fascinating, I love world building.
Philweasel has done some terrific stuff with the Zebra lands in Fallout Equestria: Black and White. Of all the side fics it's probably put the most effort into expanding the zebra culture and history. Alas, it's ofcourse its own beast, rather different from this vision, but I'd really urge more people to check it out. It also gives probably the best explanation on Star Demons I've seen to the date, heavily tied to the Zebra culture, ofcourse.
I'm really interested in seeing how these two visions compare in the future...
Pretty much exactly what developed in my head for the short story "Xenophobia". After all, Zecora's bucolic African-inspired culture wouldn't have naturally developed into much of anything like Imperial Rome. So for my own story, I came up with the same rationale: that a relatively new Imperial society was in some ways displacing, conflicting even, the original.
Glad to see I happened to be on the same track.
My only problem here is that the Daring Do episode is actually very clear about where the Tenochtitlan Basin is --- or rather, where Daring Do herself lives, which apparently isn't terribly far. The "animated squiggle-path" uses the canon map of Equestria, ending up in the woods east of Vanhoover. So far north, in fact, that a jungle biome seems impossible, except --- well, that's what the Rings of Scorcherro are for, obviously. It's a sunken valley, but the jungle can't thrive and definitely can't expand without more heat.
At no point do any of the ponies cross arctic wastes in this episode, either. If doing so is a requirement to get to the Zebra Lands, then the Basin would have to be on the Equestrian side of the polar ice cap.
Oooooor maybe it was magically transplanted in the years between Dash's team-up with Daring as the final solution to Ahuitzotl's never-ending machinations. Making it the zebras' problem.
Yeah. Yeah, THAT'S the ticket...