Boiling Point
The Eternal Winter
From archeological evidence and historical accounts, historians agree that the temperature dropped as low as into the negative double digits for anywhere from two weeks to as long as two months. From accounts taken from diaries and letters, the dates link up for the length of time that tempers were at their highest concerning the Crisis.
But, eventually bad feelings gave way to brutal necessity, and the need for the cultivation of food. However, the temperatures never reached, let alone exceeded, Freezing, and thus the snow never went away. Even when the time for Spring to start came, the Weather Brigades of the Junta found that the cloud cover and air temperatures were responding sluggishly, and even when a sizable portion of the Junta’s pegasi were brought to bear, the best that they could do was what amounted to pinpricks in the cloud cover, and as 15 BW turned into 14 BW, they found that the weather became even more stubborn.
During this time while it is commonly assumed that the Unicorns did nothing to assist, the truth of the matter is that there really was not much in the way of concrete efforts that they could do other than do away with the night and just have the sun shine twenty-four/seven, which would have obviously done much more harm than good. The best that they could do, as decreed by King Aurum in 14 BW, was to add an additional thirty minutes.
However, in the end it was still totally on the Earth Ponies of the Hyracotherium Republic to produce the food for all three tribes, and in such conditions they were barely able to feed themselves, even with all of their native magic being worked to the fullest extent. The Kingdom of Unicorns proceeded to demand the same amount of food as always, and for a time the Celestine Junta did as well. However, the newly commissioned Commander Hurricane, being the practical military pony, saw the potential harm in starving the Earth Ponies. Therefore, he sent out scouts to the mountainous border regions of the Manehattan River Valley on the off-chance of finding additional food sources. It was a risky move all things considered, especially if the other tribes found out what the pegasi were doing. If they did, any chances of a substantial supplement to the Junta’s food supply would be negated. But, in what was supposed to be the summer of 13 BW, Hurricane’s scouts uncovered a small valley along the western mountains. As one scout’s field report put it:
‘The very walls are coated in green from peak to peak! And the little stream that runs through it is pure water from the spring to where it joins the tributary, the air is warm as a mother’s nose, the barrier between the cold of the outside and this over-sized ravine is so fine that one can have one side freezing and the other side more than comfortable. And I dare say that the Commander would enjoy a stay here, as the natives are most fair. Though the company they keep is unusual.’
The unusual company the scout referred to was the fact that the local pegasi all lived amongst their Earth Pony and Unicorn neighbors in peace and harmony. Records show that there was some debate among the Junta about the nature of what was, to them, a most unusual set up of the three races living together, along with how the valley in question could be so warm when the rest of the world seemed to have descended into a frozen wasteland, but ultimately it was ignored in light of the fact that they produced more food than they needed, and could in fact produce more. Of course, now we know that the fact that the three races living in the little valley together was what was causing the power of the Windigos to be rendered null and void, but the pegasi did not even know that the Windigos existed, let alone were causing all the weather oddities to begin with. But either way, when he came, Commander Hurricane did indeed enjoy himself during his stay in what the locals called Dream Valley. For the first time in almost a decade the wind was a comfort rather than a cutting force, and he and his contingent were surrounded by what summer was supposed to be, and for the first time in years they were able to partake in feasts so extravagant that at least three among them, Hurricane included, grew sick.
By Autumn Hurricane returned with a treaty for any and all excess food the Dream Valley ponies produced, all of it being classified as Highest Top Secret, keeping the whole existence of Dream Valley and their treaty with the Junta a secret not only from the other tribes, but from most of the Celestine Junta as well, all in the name of preventing a war over the territory and the ponies that lived there.
With extra food secured, Hurricane renegotiated the terms of tribute from the Republic, allowing them to reduce the gross tonnage by a third. This allowed the Republic to still have enough food for itself for the next year and a half, even though they still had to struggle hard for even the meager amount they could grow. And in fact during this time the temperatures may have risen by an average of ten degrees.
However, in the Spring of 11 BW there was a cold snap. In spite of the convenient timing, it is believed that it was completely natural and not the work of Windigos. But the effects fell in their favor nonetheless, because the suddenness of the drop in temperatures brooked ill-will among everypony, which sustained the cold and in fact made it worse, especially when the New Year rolled around.
In the Kingdom of Unicorns, Star-Swirl the Bearded read the signs and realized that the now six-year long winter was not natural in the slightest, because records show how he sent a number of letters to high-placed officials in all three tribes he had managed to befriend over the years, requesting an emergency summit, with the leaders of all three tribes present. The intent: to work out some kind of solution to ensure the survival of every stallion, mare and foal in the valley.
The Shouting Congress
The fact that not only was the proposal for a summit meeting of the three tribes concerning the weather made, but all three agreed and made arrangements to meet, shows that, on some level, the governments of each tribe knew that something was wrong, and none of them could fix things alone. It also showed some willingness to hear out what the other tribe leaders might have to say. Sadly, what Star-Swirl called the Winter Emergency Summit, history calls The Shouting Congress.
The historiology of the Shouting Congress has shifted the blame of its failure many times in many different directions, commonly pinning the blame on either Commander Hurricane, Chancellor Puddinghead, or King Aurum. But at the end of the day, the simple truth is that the personalities and situations of the individual leaders each contributed equally, and if even one of them was either more even-tempered, freer to act, or more coherent, or been replaced with somepony else entirely, then something resembling success would have been possible.
Commander Hurricane, as is well known, was used to a soldier's life where orders were given or received, and those orders were carried out. The one giving orders either knew everything, or knew the pony who knew what he or she needed to know. He was used to either giving orders, or taking them. While he was used to brainstorming with his Chiefs-of-Staff, they were still his inferiors, never before had he the need to brainstorm with equals. Furthermore, Hurricane was especially set in his thinking of the inferiority of Earth Ponies at the time, which would prove to be especially important a decade later. Historians agree that the Summit would have gone better had his daughter and Second gone in his stead. Private Pansy, having spent the better part of a month with her future husband, Earth Pony and Hyracotherium Republic citizen Trencher, very recently at the time, would have had a better understanding of the political situation of the Republic, and would have handled Puddinghead's eccentricities with much more grace and tolerance than her father.
In spite of what the traditional layout of the Hearth's Warming story says, Princess Platinum was still just eleven years old at the time, and hardly a proper delegate for such an important event. Rather, it was her father, King Aurum, who attended and represented the Kingdom of Unicorns. however, given the tenuous hold the throne held over the nobility, King Aurum felt he was unable to truly act in the best interests of the three tribes, and in fact had to somehow fill out the ridiculous demands of what the court wanted out of the Summit, or risk another attempt at toppling the monarchy that had killed his family twenty years earlier. As such, it was less King Aurum that sat at the table, but rather an abominable amalgamation of the most powerful nobles of the Kingdom of Unicorns that was situated opposite Hurricane and Puddinghead. In such a situation, it is little wonder that the image Aurum presented to the other tribes was so poor. The princess herself saw the eventuality, and suggested that Star-Swirl the Bearded go instead. He was always happy to anger the court, and they would be unable to do anything about whatever arrangements he made in the name of the Greater Good. However, Aurum and Star-Swirl were both still concerned about whether or not ponies in the court would take advantage of Star-Swirl's absence and plot against the crown. Ergo, the powerful unicorn stayed behind, praying that the nobles that attended the summit with Aurum would not make a fool of their king. Which they did.
Puddinghead was mother-bucking insane.
Star-Swirl had intended the summit to last for about a week, with the possibility of extending that time should anything promising developed. However, it only lasted twenty minutes. Hurricane blamed Puddinghead and the Republic of hogging all of their food for themselves, Puddinghead, in one of her more lucid moments, blamed the pegasi and the Junta for the freakish weather that hampered their efforts to grow any food period. Now on the defensive, Hurricane turned the blame onto the unicorns of turning the weather impossible for the pegasi to properly control, while Aurum, wanting to reduce the tense atmosphere, refrained from continuing the blame game and simply tried to deny any unicorn involvement, followed by a long list of 'requests' that would 'end the late unpleasantness in the favor of us all,' which anyone could tell was in fact what the Unicorn Court wanted out of the summit. This included everything from annexation of territory to larger shares of food to reparations from the Republic for damages done to the private yachts during the Lake Trot Crisis. Hurricane, distrusting the unicorns, took the ploy as good as an admission of guilt (with the 'requests' being demands to be met while the unicorns held the rest of the ponies hostage), and stated so, along with a short diatribe of racial slurs against both the King and the Chancellor, the latter of whom then began a five minute bought of mimicking Hurricane and repeating his every statement. This, naturally, enraged the Commander even more. King Aurum tried to restore order by asking Hurricane to calm himself, but only caught the pegasus' ire directly, which ultimately more or less ended the meeting right then and there. The combination of Hurricane's brashness, Aurum's outrageous demands in the stead of his court and inability to act independently, and Puddinghead being Puddinghead, led all three leaders and their parties stormed out at the same time.
The Tri-Serendipitous Expeditions
Even contemporaneous sources say that most of the population thought that their leaders could have tried harder to have made progress at the summit. Star-Swirl famously became cold to Aurum for months afterwards for what he felt was a betrayal of his teachings, and their principals From Princess Platinum's memoirs, she remembered spying on Star-Swirl and her father, and remembering quite vividly of the former calling her father 'a sickening snake, a slimy hagfish, spineless and slippery. A shark, hungry for security and unable to support himself upon the land of Standards and Morals. A Leech, sucking on the blood of those destined for death so that he might outlive them.' However, what was done was done, and everypony of each tribe felt that each tribe could do without the other tribes. This ignoring how the Junta and Kingdom could not grow food on their own, and that without the pegasi and unicorns, the Republic would be greatly disadvantaged in defensive and productive matters.
But nationalism would not bring warmth to the ponies of the tribes, and for the sake of survival each of the governments made motions and policies to find greener pastures. Literally in the Hyracotherium's case.
In a moment of lucidness, Puddinghead requested Smart Cookie to come to her office and hammer out the needs of the Republic in order to survive, and what routes would best carry out those goals. This became the 'Colonial Initiative Act.' This legislation would allow the government of the Republic to fund expeditions outside of the valley to find a new land for farming. The long-term goal of this bill was to settle the supposed new land, and then over time move the populous and the government to this land, in effect abandoning the pegasi and unicorns to their fates of hypothermia and starvation. Within hours of the bill being introduced to the senate it was passed at a ninety-nine point five percent for.
In a letter to her husband, Smart Cookie expressed horror at the bill and what it meant for the other tribes.
"Death. Death Able Smith. That is what we are consigning our fellow ponies too: Cruel and Unusual Death by robbery of the belly and robbery of the blanket. 'Tis murder! Nothing but the most cold-blooded murder and nothing else! And what is worse is that I am the progenitor of this murder most foul. Of mares and stallions, too old to move out of their beds for the pain in their joints, and of tiny little fillies and colt, too young to have found their calling in the world, too young to create the wonders of their races, be it the crafting of spells, or the joyful wonder of the eagle's flight.
"Murderess! Infanticide! Genocide! These shall be my crimes Able Smith. These sins are even now being carved into my very soul with Death's scythe, glowing white-hot with the fires of Hell. You have laid down with a murderess! Your children have the blood of an Infanticide in their veins! My parents have brought forth a Genocide from their loins! Monster! Demon! Devil conceived in the bleakest womb! That is my nature! This is my fate!
"My prayer, if there are Just gods in this world and the world beyond, is that each and every expedition shall fail, and we shall all die with our fellow ponies. For any race that can imagine such a murder, and desire to bring it forth with joy and celebration, is not a race the world should suffer to live."
But regardless of Smart Cookie's misgivings, the expeditions were more than successful within twenty days of the passing of the bill. Once they made it through the Manehattan Mountains, it was discovered that the terrain became gently rolling hills, and for miles and miles and miles it was nothing by virgin soil, freshwater lakes, gentle rivers and streams, all of this making land more fertile than any farmstead in the Hyracotherium Republic, Dream Valley, and the whole of the River Valley they called home. And all of it totally untouched by the icy winter that had gripped the River Valley.
Within an hour of word returning to the Republic, the senate sub-committee formed to manage the expeditions was reorganized into the sub-committee in charge of surveying the suddenly much expanded view of the world just over the mountains. While the new land was being mapped out, the senate debated and drafted legislation that would enact phase two of the agenda. Called the "Homestead Act," it would divide the fertile land into two-hundred acre lots, assigned to any family able to move immediately, with a twenty-year no interest mortgage and the understanding that they would develop and cultivate the land for farming, said mortgage intended to fund the government during the settlement and transition periods in lieu of taxes. Even before the votes were tallied in the senate the regional boards of commerce were swamped with farmers whose farms had either failed or were rapidly heading that way, and desired a fresh start.
It was soon discovered that the land discovered had enough land for every stallion, mare and foal in the Republic to have a two-hundred acre farm, with miles and upon miles of territory left over, dwarfing the land in the Manehattan River Valley by a factor of a thousand, in theory securing agrarian society for generations of farmers getting their own plots of land, along with prospects for future urban centers. With the prospects of the citizens of the Republic secured, the Homestead Act was passed with only one vote, Smart Cookie's, against, and the first homesteaders crossing the Manehattan Mountains on New Year's Day of 9 BW. Among these being Trencher, an Earth Pony who up until then would have been overlooked by history, if it weren't for his part in events to come.
But in the skies above, the Celestine Junta was far from idle.
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As soon as Commander Hurricane returned, he ordered Pansy to call an emergency meeting of strategy with the Chiefs-of-Staff. The next morning, the five highest ranked generals in the Junta, Second in Command Private Pansy, and Commander Hurricane locked themselves into the Situation Room, planning the next move for the Junta to make without being dragged down by the Hyracotherium Republic and Kingdom of Unicorns. From the minutes of the meeting, General Heart Throb was the first to suggest abandoning the valley entirely, seeking out new territory for the Junta so that they could survive. As Commander, Hurricane was the only one who could have the final word on any plan. After consulting with the other Chiefs-of Staff and considering the matter, on the condition that the ponies of Dream Valley be brought with them. While it is tempting to see this as an example of genuine loyalty and love, the truth of the matter was much more pragmatic: The Celestine Junta were nothing but soldiers, and not a single one of them knew how to plant a seed, let alone tend to crops. Bringing the Dream Valley Ponies with them to any hypothetical new land was nothing more than good sense.
Long into the night, the seven ponies hammered out the strategy of what would become Operation Withdrawal.
The plan was simple: Phase One would be to organize a long-term regiment intended to seek out the territory beyond what was controlled by the Junta for any prospective areas that the Junta could move in to with relative ease.
Phase Two would center around setting up permanent settlements that would double as redeployment depots and lookout points. during this the Dream Valley Ponies would be moved into the land to use as they saw fit.
The third and final phase would be the longest and most audacious of the operation: The entire city of Celestine would be moved from its anchored position over the Manehattan River Valley, and transported to the dead center of the newly carved out territory. The estimated effort would require every single pegasus in the Junta, from the youngest foal able to fly on her own to the feeblest mare, to push the cloud city in six-hour shifts, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And it would be a slow affair to ensure that the city was moved intact and unharmed, meaning that the transfer would take anywhere from twenty to fifty years.
Most ponies would suggest that it would be easier and more practical to either dismantle the city into individual blocks and move them into place, if not abandon the city entirely. However, the city of Celestine was the heart and soul of the Celestine Junta, a combination of natural capitol and sacred holy land. The concept of abandonment or damaging the city, even temporarily, was not only unthinkable, but vile.
Operation Withdrawal was approved at midnight, and the next morning names were put together for the new unit tasked with seeking out new territory for the Junta. Placed in charge of the whole operation was none other than Private Pansy. A copy of her orders from her father that has survived suggests that he had the utmost confidence in Pansy's ability to manage an army of any size. But one section in particular implies that he was sending his beloved daughter away for potentially years due to a 'clear need of her own duties outside of the Junta, to discourage foul rumors of inadequacy, and far away from any dirty distractions from fulfilling her utmost potential.'
Considering that her run in with the farmer Trencher was very recent, Hurricane was clearly trying his best to see to it that she stay as far away from the Earth Pony as possible.
But overprotective parenthood or no, Hurricane was right to pick Pansy for the job. The first order of business was to set up a mobile platform for the ponies under her command to live and work from as they carried out the expedition. Such platforms were common enough in the skies over the River Valley, scores of the small cloud-constructs stood guard, allowing soldiers on patrol a place to rest, fix a meal, and monitor developments below with easy.
However, this platform, codenamed Pegasus One, designed by Pansy herself, was a platform on a much larger scale. Covering forty-seven square acres, Pegasus One was the size of a small hamlet, could comfortably accommodate four-hundred and twenty ponies, and had a small Thundercloud forge, a hospital, exercise room, and a briefing room for organizing missions.
When Hurricane questioned Pansy about the need for such a massive platform, Pansy is said to have told him:
"You are sending me and a whole battalion of troops into the unknown regions, for months or even years on end, to scout out lands for settlement that we have no idea is even hospitable, let alone capable of sustaining a population near the size of the Junta. How does that sound like self-sustainability is not required?"
The construction of Pegasus One took seven months, well into the next year. Pansy used the time to examine hundreds of troops, all volunteers, for her complement of soldiers, taking the best of the best with her. When the platform took off, it was with celebration from the whole city unlike anything seen in years, with escort by the Burning Timberwolves.
Having had patrols and sorties along the mountain ranges for centuries, the Junta had the best idea out of the three tribes as to what lay beyond, and thus had several targets of promise, though the ponies of Pegasus One quickly realized that all of their targets were part of the same whole. The mission was expected to take years, but Hurricane got this message within sixty hours of Pegasus One crossing the border:
"Phase One complete. Maps coming shortly. Begin Phase Two."
While caught off guard by the suddenness of the development, Commander Hurricane ordered the construction of more mobile platforms modeled (if modified) on Pegasus One. These platforms would serve as the seeds of additional pegasi cities and defensive fortresses around the territory claimed by the Celestine Junta.
Meanwhile, Private Pansy was charged with managing the troop assignments into the new territory, stationed at Pegasus One, which was ordered to maintain a security position to monitor the situation on the ground for potentially hostile activity near the main pathway the future immigrants, and eventually Celestine itself, would travel. In order to carry out its new mission, the Chiefs-of-Staff ordered that Pegasus One, under the watchful eye of Private Pansy, be expanded in both size and accommodations for the now much larger complement of troops to be stationed there, including living quarters and zones for non-military personal to conduct business with the troops on and off duty. This in effect turned Pegasus One into a city that, once completed, would be second (if distantly) only to Celestine itself in scale and population. To better reflect this change in status, Pegasus One would in turn be renamed: Pegasopolis.
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Of the three tribes, it was the Kingdom of Unicorns that dragged its hooves the longest on the subject of seeking a new land. Not due to feelings of obligation to the other tribes, in fact the idea of abandoning their fellow ponies to the ice and snow was being discussed even before the Shouting Congress. No, the issue was the fact that doing so would mean abandoning their ancestral mines, and leaving behind their hordes of gold and jewels. And in fact, a full half of the nobility of the Kingdom and their families would choose to remain even as the rest of the ponies abandoned the Manehattan River Valley, subsequently freezing to death. It would not be until 5 BW that the more sensible ones agreed that all the treasure and lands in the world would not be worth dying of malnutrition or hypothermia for.
Of course, Princess Platinum had a plan. Even before her father's deathbed appointment of his daughter as his heir to the throne, the then twelve-year old princess worked out a long term and complex agenda.
First, using the royal treasury, her family's personal wealth, Platinum (by a pseudonym) paid bands of mercenaries to go beyond the mountains to seek out new lands for citizens of the kingdom to settle. Within months they returned with news of mountain ranges beyond that proved to be more full of riches than the entire Kingdom. Rewarding the band with one of the veins they found as payment, Platinum quietly began funding the gentry, gentlestallions of fortune, and what few nobles were loyal to the throne to move out of the valley to set up their own lands of residence beyond, and to bring their families as well. By doing so, Platinum secured a loyal population base who would be more than willing to do as she asked, one that far outnumbered her court. Furthermore, by taking the lion's share of the new veins, Platinum was able to finance the restoration of the Royal Army to the proud status it once held, far beyond what middling, pathetic force it was at the time of the Lake Trot Crisis. Recognizing that the land would be structured differently than her homeland, Platinum dubbed it Unicornia, though she had no intention of it remaining as such. From her memoirs, her long-term goal was a feudal, Oligarch Despotarchy, with her stepping down from power, where the populous would be ruled by a Triumvirate with absolute power over the land, and whose members would be required to rule with competence and willing to ignore their peers in favor of what was best for the populous, and with no hoofholes where a nobility or court could be able to weaken their rule. Over time, enough Earth Ponies and pegasi would be invited to live and work in Unicornia, being treated as equals to unicorns under the regime to invoke solidarity and peace (failing that, then supporting their own states to generate trade), as subjugating and dominating any sizable population would be a constant drain on resources that were better spent elsewhere.
In 7 BW, after the settlers had managed to found their own dominions, and her new palace was well under way in its construction, Princess Platinum announced the existence of the territory to the court and began the task of maneuvering their thinking into one favoring transitioning the government out of the River Valley, though, from her memoirs, it is clear that she would otherwise happily abandon them to the cold if it weren't for Star-Swirl's presence, and the need to seem like an innocent and loving princess with no ability to connive to save her life.
The Decade of Settlement
Over the next decade, from 10-0 BW, the three tribes largely ignored each other as they went about exploring and settling their new territories in what is now Equestria, ranging from the lands just on the other side of the Manehattan Mountains and into modern day Baltimare, Boasttown, and as far inland as the foothills of the Canterhorn. The layout of each tribe's settlements wound up being with the Earth Ponies settling the south, the unicorns to the north, and the pegasi and their Dream Valley allies in the middle. Now, in the traditional story, the three tribes were caught by surprise by each other's presence in the new, idealic land. However, the reality was much more complex.
Given the proximity that the respective colonies had to each other, and overlapping territorial claims each tribe had, there is simply no way that the governments weren't even somewhat aware of the others, even if subconsciously. In fact, near where Fillydelphia is today, settlement maps from each tribe show that a silver mine, a homestead, and a mobile platform were all in sight of each other.
Fortunately, everypony was too distracted by the complicated and time-consuming task of colonization and settlement to put too much effort into the movements of the other tribes. Usually. However, as always, there were exceptions. One example in particular being Private Pansy of Pegasopolis, and Trencher, whose homestead in a stroke of suspicious coincidence was situated within a short flight from Pansy's assigned station.
But, the peace via willful ignorance could not last, and in 0 BW the territories the tribes first found had been settled, and they found that they could not expand into the rest of their claimed lands, as one of the other tribes had already settled them. Furthermore, old tensions rose again, with some members of the unicorn court demanding that the Earth Ponies give them tribute as they did in the old lands, the Earth Ponies demanding the other tribes get off their land, and the pegasi caught in the middle and threatening military action if the other tribes did not stand down. And in this tumultuous political situation, Private Pansy found herself pregnant. by her Earth Pony lover Trencher.