I hate this stupid country.

No, really, I do. When I was first dragged into going here I was told how nice it was. How everypony got along and had funny accents and were sweet and friendly and practically oozed maple syrup from their pores.

Even from above, it's disappointing. In other cities, there's things that made them unique. Canterlot was all marble and gold paint where it wasn't gold plated, Manehatten was all steel and glass and sharp-edged but at least had a certain charm to it, and even flying around Hoofington was a experience, because even if it was all overengineered towers and heaps of scrap it was still pretty interesting to look down on as long as you didn't head into the Core.

But Tauronto wasn't even slightly dangerous in it's bleakness; bland. It was all mostly grey concrete and dull towers, with a few gems here and there. The tallest building was the Caledonian National Tower, and I had seen enough of it over the last century or so that I would be happy just to see the whole thing tip over and fall apart already, like it should have.

But no.

Everything in this city is just ready to tumble apart because all the ponies in it are just trying to cling on to the past, undead and otherwise. The Reavers are a bunch of half-crazy ghouls who have gotten it into their heads that they are better than living ponies, but when the only really big groups of living ponies around the place are a bunch of reformed unicorn supremacist and a Nightmare Moon cult, they might have a point.

But there's the whole problem! There's no 'fresh blood' heading into Tauronto. There's no one around to shake up the political scene, and now it's all starting to decay. Red Eye tried to do it a decade ago, and no one has seen a pony with his banner in just as long since one of his diplomats ended up face down in a pile of his own organ meat. The Steel Rangers got kicked out and haven't returned since, and the Reavers just stripped their old place of junk and blew the rest up with explosives.

Even the rest of Caledonia doesn't really bother with going to Tauronto; apparently, it was too close to the Equestrian border to be worth the trip. The ponies of Dise rarely came around to caring what happened around Tauronto, which pretty much meant that no big group of Caledonian ponies really cared about the place. Most just heard about the Reavers and didn't even bother to talk about the crazy ponies who thought they were special or the cultists.

At least my home was, uh, homey.

Also, pretty swanky.

About thirty years ago I just decided that it wasn't worth it just staying around in the Tower, so I tried to pick out a nice place to settle down.

Because I had a terrible sense of humor and/or luck, the apartment I managed to track down was apparently last owned by a pony who had some sort of moon fetish or something. Everything was either black or silver, from the shiny granite tabletops to the black carpeting that was even on the walls and ceiling. I didn't really need a bed, but the sheets on it was made of silk and the frame was made of some dark wood which was pretty untouched by the elements, and I think the bedding was actual griffon down or something.

Besides the basics, though, the place had probably suffered more from me living in it than it did for a hundred years of nopony caring for it. When I came here, most of the decorations- most having some sort of cheesy star or moon theme or something- were pristine and only a little dusty. But living tends to break things, and I stripped all the paintings and hanging ornaments off the walls and put them into one of the closets, so my own stuff could get some breathing room.

Of course, that just made the room look worse. It went from being the home of some pony or another who liked the sky a little too much to being one of those homes with newspapers pinned to the walls, with headlines highlighted and connected with strings; I had three computer terminals set on one table and I had a filing cabinet worth of papers on another. It was all old military and wartime stuff; I didn't come here often enough to get bothered that my house looked like a conspiracy nut's. I had my old clearance card that gave me authorization to look over pretty much anything that wasn't locked down by one of the Ministry heads or the Princesses, and I had a bunch of files printed off a army database and took my time getting them all up here, where I could obsess over ten thousand and fifty-nine sheets of outdated information for the sake of things.

But I didn't live this long because I didn't look over everything I could.

Take my armor; before the war ended, both Royal Guards were changing up their old traditions in the face of modernization. The original branch of the Royal Guard, the one better known as the one that traditionally guarded Canterlot, managed to get along just fine for centuries with hoof-forged steel armor with some decent enchantments. Really, it sufficed pretty great right up until the Changeling attack that happened during the wedding between Cadance and Shining Armor, and plans for more military-minded armor popped up a quarter-way through the war. It sort of resembled a combination a more upscale suit of combat armor with all the trappings of the old uniforms, including a old-style chamfron that just looked obsolete. But, even then, by the time the war was ending there were memos flying around to replace the guards wearing the old-style armor with ones trained to work with some of the newer models of Power Armor that were being discussed; models, that were inspired by the very royal guard armor they were set to replace.

The entire idea of the T-47 armor was to give ponies a sort of advanced blend of metal and magic between them in the battlefield, which is what the armor of the royal guard once was, when 'advanced' weaponry included new ways of making spear tips and wing blades and all that jazz. While it would be fun to just think that both the Ministries of Arcane Science and Wartime Technology just collaborated on their own, Twilight Sparkle's brother was once the head of the royal guard and Applejack's brother was once a solder before he became a martyr. I didn't think it was much of a coincidence that the Empire had their own plans for advanced magical protective armor in the works a year before Equestria did, even if the former relied more on enchanted gems rather than the latter's advanced spellwork.

Now, 'Advanced' Power Armor? Enclave Power Armor? Mostly inspired by the traditional armor of the Night Watch.

Really, it's not that big of a stretch; the armor of the Day Watch is heavy and built for bigger builds while the armor for the all-airborn Night Watch is slimmer but generally more suited for flight. Say what one wanted to about baseline power armor, but it wouldn't matter if you somehow strapped rockets on each hoof and prayed; it wouldn't be feasible.

Advance Power Armor is a entirely different beast than regular power armor, though, mostly because, while it has fewer magical enchantments running the whole show what enchantments it does have tend to be pretty useful. The weaponized scorpion-tail was based off a old archaic thestral weapon that consisted of a cave scorpion tail and a pony who was stupid enough to tie a freshly harvested tail to his own and use it as a flail, and the idea that the wearer of the suit should have more control over their actions when the question of choice vs. safety came up was a relative innovation to most ponies that the zebras had always operated on, among others.

It took me the better part of a year to get all that information cataloged, and what I got from it was this; absolutely nothing. I knew half of it already, and I know pretty much everything my armor does and does not. But history, alas, is all that ponies like me have, and if anything it's not like there's never not going to be a use for it.

Like, for instance, my own people's culture. Thestral history is mostly a mixture of all the worse parts of the other three pony tribes, mostly because the system of caves that weave under Equestria is pretty harsh and breeds isolationism like a plague. The traditional thestral settlement consisted of fifty or so ponies who were all probably related to each other in some way who had lived in the same general cavern for little more than two generations. It is likely that each family would lose at least one foal for every three that were born, from reasons ranging to jealous stallions being unsure that the child is their own to simple starvation or lack of nutrients.

Starvation was the biggest factor in keeping the population low, and unwanted babies were often simply left to die for predators if the parents did not feel that they could care for it. Communication between groups tended to be hard, as different groups often develop their own degenerated form of the baseline verbal language and differences like that could make what would be a perfectly simple statement for one thestral a bunch of gibberish to another who grew up in a different cavern.

Because of this, cooperation between clans tended to be low.

The high point of thestral culture and society was a city in the southeastern part of Equestria, located in a small mountain range that was never named by surface ponies, about five hundred years before the great war. This city was known simply as Nocturne, but the reason behind the name was lost as well; there was some speculation about it being the name of some great ruler or another, but talk is cheap down in the caverns and no one really cared about the previous generations unless a member of it happens to be nearby. Regardless of that, five thousand thestrals - half the entire population - lived within it's rough walls, and half that number lived in settlements that were reachable in a weeks flight from the city.

I grew up in one of the little villages near the city, and I remember when Princess Luna went to it see see what became of her servants, not long after she returned herself.

I was ten then.

A day after she arrived to Nocturne, half the thestral species was gone. Those who survived were told only to bring weapons and food, and to leave all else behind. I had neither and didn't have any parents or guardians, so I went with a group of similar-minded to be trained to serve the princess more directly, in a special facility located near Canterlot.

Luna committing mass murder of five thousand ponies might come to some as being unbelievable, or perhaps even unwarranted, but perhaps a general run down of what I suspect her arrival to Nocturne must have been like would help.

For instance, I don't think the rows of surfacer ponies bound in chains and kept in pens outside homes and public buildings were a good first impression of the city, or the blood-stained temple to Nightmare Moon where the surface ponies were led into to be butchered and eaten by the high priests.

Those who did not live in the city were not sad to see it go. It was ruled by murderers and monsters and things that had no right walking in a place once blessed by Luna. I did not know what she did, or how she did it, but after a day she arrived to the dark heart of our people she sent the entire city deep into Tartarus. Later, she once said that those who were innocents were shuffled elsewhere, but where she never said.

Regardless, out of those who had remained truly loyal to her, she took us into a cavern which had a entrance at the base of Canterlot, where we had assistance in creating a new settlement for our people.

It was as true a city as the one up above on the mount, and it was entirely unlike the rough rock and clay of Nocturne. Few hungered and few felt the need to murder one another and gnaw on the bodies of the recently deceased for nutrition. The bronze spears and bone helms that had served us for generations gave way to true metal armor and arms, much like but entirely superior to the ancient antiques that were prized in the caves for being the best things available. Luna, most importantly, magically implanted knowledge of the modern language of Equestria within us, saving us the need to learn it in it's entirely. No longer was the thestral species bound to clinging to the past.

It went pretty well until the bombs fell, because I was completely out of the country and couldn't go with the rest of my people when they fled. I have a general hunch about where they ended up, but I have no way of getting there. I know I am not the only thestral out in the world that's left, but I seem to be the only one within Caledonia, which is fine by me, really. I can't bring myself to go to Canterlot, either, because I know I would have to face the truth about my own mistakes, and what I could have done to not be in the position I am in, two hundred years too late.

And so, I sit in my apartment, in shame, because I had just left a filly I loved with all my heart to nigh-strangers who were almost certainty were going to get in trouble, and I wasn't sure if I was going to go get her back. A Steel Ranger traitor and the descendent of one of the most brutal individuals I have known to exist in the frozen north were now looking over my little girl, at my behalf.

I cannot help but think that I made a terrible mistake, doing that. I must believe it's a better choice for her than it is for me, though. I cannot be around as much as a little filly like her needs and she's damaged enough, already, and I can't help with that at all.

She's not a monster, despite what her mother was, but I have been doing my best to surround her with them. Reavers and Dragons and Sea Salt and Minotaurs and Me.

At least my lair has air conditioning.