Lanterns of Equestria – Blackest Night
PROLOGUE: IN THE BEGINNING
Once upon a time, in another universe, there was darkness.
It was the era before reality became defined, at the point before existence that constitutes all came to be, in the time before the very concept of Time itself existed, when the Universe was anything BUT.
There was nothing, nothing but an absolute, lifeless darkness that stretched infinitely in all directions.
And for a time, it was the way things were.
Then, at an unspecified point of history, a spark was struck, either by design, or accident.
And there was Light.
It was WHITE Light of Creation. In later days that point of history would come to be known in many names: Genesis, The Big Bang, the Dawn of Time, the Carving of the Heavens, Alpha, the Beginning of Everything, and so on.
The absolute darkness in the universe was replaced by the Light, and for a while, it filled all of reality with its brilliance.
From this beginning came many things – among them Time, Matter, Energy of all kinds, Electromagnetism, Gravity, Nuclear forces, etc. From all this, stars were born, planets came into being, galaxies would fill the filaments, and the Universe as we know it came into existence.
And from this Light, came the ENTITY.
Again, no one knew whether the Entity came naturally, or was the product of some design, but what was known is that before life, the Entity was its embodiment.
Overtime, the Entity began to affect the universe around it, and from its very existence, life arose. It gave birth to the living beings that would come to populate the infinite worlds across the vastness of the cosmos, and as the embodiment of all life, all life is linked to it, and it to all life.
For a time, all was good.
But it did not last.
With the advent of life, there was imbalance in the cosmos. The darkness before creation was not pleased by having been displaced by the White Light, to have nothing filled with something, to have impassiveness replaced by action, to have lifelessness given over to life.
Eventually, this darkness, the BLACK as it would be call, sought to regain its dominance over universe, by eradicating all life.
It battled the White Light, and it was stopped by the White Light, but this victory came at a price: In the process, the White Light of Creation was splintered into seven different colours.
At the same time, as life evolved across the Universe, they experienced various feelings as they struggled to survive and prosper, a byproduct of their existence. These feelings became Emotions. There were seven primal emotions in all, and the Seven Colours of the WHITE came to represent them
And so from the first living things, came the Emotional Spectrum.
In each instance, when they arose, the Entity's power touched them, and the first life-forms that experienced them became entities that embodied them:
WILLPOWER came into existence when life first moved on its own accord. When transformed into power, the GREEN colour of the Light represented it, and the whale-like Entity of its Embodiment came to be known as ION.
Before long, the creatures on the life-bearing worlds escaped the oceans and into the land and air. As life hunted other life for subsistence, other life fled from those that hunt. The terror that drove their struggle for survival became an emotional power: FEAR, and with it, the YELLOW entity PARALLAX was born, bearing the form of a monstrous insect.
The imperative of life was reproduction, and when life became aware of it as a concept, to experience the imperative as an emotion, and with sentience the concept shed its skin and grew beyond the mere passing on one's genetic material, the VIOLET light of LOVE was ignited, and the PREDATOR came into existence, wearing the form of a predatory reptile.
As time went on, life-forms became secured in their own existence, and grew a craving for more than what it needs to survive. When the first creature devours more than what it needs, it becomes consumed with AVARICE. The entity of greed, ORPHIDIAN, took the shape of an ORANGE serpent.
With sentience, emotions became more volatile. With the first murder, when one life killed another not out of necessity, but from the extreme emotion felt of being wronged, the entity of RAGE took the form of a demonic bull, crimson RED, and it bore the moniker of the BUTCHER.
Living came with many trials and hardship, and more often than not survival was a slim possibility and life despair at their own predicament. HOPE was born from the first act of prayer of a sentient being, and ADARA took off upon BLUE wings.
And at last, with emotions, came understanding, and COMPASSION is offered to all. The cephalopod form of the PROSELYTE stretches across the universe with its many arms of INDIGO.
It took billions of years before sentient life would discover the power behind the emotions they experience, and then harness them for their use.
When one of their numbers caused irreversible damage to the Universe in his thirst for knowledge, distorting space-time and resulting in evil and entropy unleashed upon all cosmos, The Malthusians, the first intelligent lifeforms in that Universe, took responsibility of their own actions and became the immortal Guardians of the Universe. They sought to combat and contain evil across the Universe and oppose those who ruled by fear.
To this they needed an army to establish order across the Universe. The first army, the robotic Manhunters, failed with their limited programming that culminated in the destruction of all life in an entire Sector of the Universe.
Shamed but undaunted, upon Oa, the world at the centre of Creation, they found ION, the embodiment of Willpower, and learned how to manipulate its Green glow. They forged a Central Power Battery to store this energy. They forged Green Power Rings to allow life-forms to manipulate this power by thought alone, and established their second Army: the Green Lantern Corps.
For billions of years since, the Guardians would seek out individuals who have the most willpower, the ability to overcome great fear, and arm them with these rings, and the Green Lanterns would police the Universe, battling evil wherever they tread.
But as time went on, the task became difficult as various evils and menaces arose and the Green Lanterns struggled to keep it contained.
Then they learned of the Prophecy.
In the forbidden final chapter of the Book of Oa, which its laws upon which the Green Lanterns took as their guiding principles, it was prophesized that other Lantern Corps shall be formed, each harnessing the powers of one of the other six emotions in the Emotional Spectrum.
A War of Light will follow as the Lantern Corps battle one another over conflicting goals, and at the climax of the conflict, the Black, the darkness before time and the enemy of the White of which all Emotional Entities descends from, shall rise once more and tries a second time to destroy all Life and Emotion from the Universe.
This prophecy would come to be known as the "Blackest Night". And despite the efforts of the Guardians to prevent it, nothing could stop it from coming to pass.
Sure enough, other Lanterns Corps were born as the sentient beings, both good and evil, discovered the other Emotional Entities and their powers:
When Sinestro, a former Green Lantern that had fallen to evil, seeks revenge against the Green Lantern Corps, he asked his allies, the Qwardians, to forge Yellow Power Rings that could tap into the emotion of Fear, of which PARALLAX was the embodiment of, and thus the Sinestro Corps was formed.
The Zamarons, female offshoots of the Malthusians who refused to abandon emotions and became the Guardians of the Universe, discovered how to harness the Violet light of Love, the domain of the PREDATOR, and created the matriarchal Star Sapphires, in hopes to protect and spread the power of love across the Universe.
Atrocitus, one of the few survivors from the Sector that the Manhunters had massacred of all life, became consumed by rage in his hatred for the Guardians of the Universe, whom he blamed for the loss of everything he loved. Having discovered the BUTCHER, the embodiment entity of Rage, he created the Red Lantern Corps, composed of individuals across the universe which have been wronged severely and was overwhelmed by anger and hatred.
Larfleeze, a former slave and criminal, discovered the Orange Power Battery of Avarice, upon a world in the Vega Star System billions of years ago, and became the wielder of its light as Agent Orange under the corruptive influence of OPHIDIAN. While he had made a deal with the Guardians to remain in the Vega System, a misunderstanding caused him to believe the deal was violated, and thus the Orange Lantern was unleashed into the universe.
Realizing the Blackest Night would come to pass, two of the Guardians of the Universe left the Guardians to seek an alternate power to which could help the Green Lanterns in the struggle to come. They discovered the Blue Light of Hope, ADARA's domain, and formed the Blue Lanterns along with their greatest champion, the missionary Saint Walker.
The Green Lantern Abin Sur, who learnt of the Prophecy himself decades earlier, discovered from the tribal natives of the planet Nok how to harness the Power of Compassion, embodied by PROSELYTE, and formed the Indigo Tribe with one of the natives, using the power of the Indigo Central Battery and the Indigo Rings that force empathy and compassion upon even the worst creatures in existence.
And at last, the players were assembled, and the War of Light ensured.
The struggle culminated upon a world called Earth, the third planet from its Sun, which for intents and purposes was insignificant, save for a few things – the most important was that it was there that the Entity, the embodiment of all life, was hidden by the Guardians of the Universe ages past.
It was upon this world, now populated by a thriving race of sentient beings, the Black made its move to eradicate all life from the Universe. Its herald, Nekron, arose from that world, and created the Black Lantern Corps from the dead of that world and those across the Universe to facilitate the destruction of all life, with the ultimate goal to find and destroy the Entity.
Against the threat of Nekron, the Black and its Black Lanterns, the various Lantern Corps set aside their differences and made war against them.
Together with the heroes of that world and helped by the White Entity itself, they combined their power, and vanquished the Black Lanterns. Thus the Blackest Night came to pass.
But then, an unexpected complication arose.
In the aftermath of the Blackest Night, The Guardians of the Universe, frustrated by what they perceive as the climax of a string of failures in their war against evil, were finally pushed over the edge.
Having judged their second army, the Green Lanterns, as failures, they ultimately made the conclusion that the only way to impose order upon the universe was to conquer it and wipe it clean of free-will and all other emotions.
Unto this, they created from their own flesh and advanced science their Third Army, and unleashed upon their own Corps and towards the Universe in their collective madness. These beings would assimilate other sentient beings into copies of themselves, and wage war across the Universe.
It was at the advent of this threat did our story begin.
Unbeknownst of all, while the other heroes and Corps struggled desperately to stop the Guardians' Third Army, the pantheon of Emotional Entities plotted in secret to preserve their own existences, in the event that the Third Army prevails and all free-will and emotions are purged from the universe.
Using their respective powers, they scoured the Universe, and then beyond, seeking a place where their power could seek refuge.
Eventually, they found that refuge.
In another parallel universe, far away from their branch of realities, they found a world both vastly similar and different from those they knew: like the planets of their universe, this world bears diversity of life of many kinds, each individual capable of a complexity of emotions.
Unlike their universe, the emotions of that world in the parallel universe have actual power, in the form of magic.
The Emotional Entities knew magic, of course – one of the Green Lanterns once wielded a special Green ring that was powered by magic. But whereas in their own universe magic was a secondary force hidden at large from the inhabitants of the universe and wielded by a few, in the parallel universe magic was the underpinning foundation of the reality, and which was affected strongly by emotions there in addition to spells and rituals, hence giving emotions power.
Whenever thinking creatures of that place reaches emotional balance, Harmony is achieved. When they worked together, their magic joint by emotions that embody friendship, their magical power is increased to the point it could even overwhelm gods.
As far as the Emotional Entities were concerned, it was perfect.
And so one night, as battle raged across the stars, seven special power rings were formed.
And unto each ring the Emotional Entities bestow part of their essence, and instructed them to seek out individuals on that parallel universe world that best embodies the emotional power they contain.
The rings were then sent to the parallel universe.
The portal that enabled their passage was promptly shut, never to reopen.
They came to rest in orbit high above the world, gathering at a specific spot over the planet where the flow and diversity of emotions was the strongest.
A land called Equestria.
And they waited.
LANTERNS OF EQUESTRIA: BLACKEST NIGHT