A Lore Dump Regarding the AU + Griffon Breeds · 8:36pm Jul 14th, 2021
One of the people reading Fólkvangr asked about the griffon races. That information is bound to be incomplete because of the nature of the story, so I made a bit of a lore dump for the people reading Fólkvangr that don’t want to bother with Piece of Parchment, and it also compliments some of the information in that story too.
Not that I don’t think Piece of Parchment is interesting on its own right. I love that story with all its moving pieces. But I’m aware that some people are only interested in the griffon part of the story and couldn’t care less about why Celestia hid all that happened in the war or how that relates to the whole story about the Black Sun and ponies taking over the world, Twilight and Cadance figuring stuff out, or Luna going Westworld on ponies. And vice-versa.
All that I will say here already does or will take part in a story or another in some way, and it is a bit more than only the races, but it is important to understand the relevance of the griffon races.
There are three important characteristics of Equestria.
1- Everything has a magical edge to it,
2- The world exists because Harmony must sustain itself.
3- If things get to a point when Harmony will be destroyed because the world got FUBAR, the process of the Black Sun is triggered, everything returns to the singularity and creation begins anew, but magic transcends causality, so Harmony can adjust in the next cycle.
As Discord explained in Piece of Parchment, “Too much Order and nothing will happen. Too much Chaos, and causality is completely irrelevant, making existence impossible. Just enough Chaos and just enough Order, and not only a reality can exist, but it can dream through Magic and Harmony is created.”
Think of Harmony as the Force in an animistic world. It gives purpose to things and ponies are the tools it employs to move magic around and sustain itself. Why ponies? Because of the way The Harpy started it all, and because the pony mind is built around the idea that they must fulfill a destiny and have the Elements of Harmony to guide them, while griffon minds are much more independent.
Harmony is the flow of magic as living creatures do their thing. Particularly ponies. It reacts to what happens in the world. Celestia describes it as a song and ponies as the melody their destinies play. Harmony is like a song; it ebbs and flows. If a wrong note is played, others react, and the song is healed. If there was a war to be fought, brave ponies would be born. If there was famine, farmer and merchant ponies would instinctively try to fix the problem.
When Celestia lost the Elements of Harmony, six special ponies were born which could wield the Elements to mend the wound that was Nightmare Moon.
When the sun shines on the surface, it provides energy for photosynthesis, and with that energy also comes magic. Plants, as everything else, are made of a duality of material and magical. The process of photosynthesis has a counterpart in the magic attached to that plant that works with the magic that flowed with the light.
Even inorganic matter has magic associated with it. A rock has magical energy linked to it that is associated with its purpose (to sit there). A living being also has magical energy associated with it and animals have souls which are the specialized magic that attaches to them and animates the body, but it’s more complex since the ‘self’ of a sentient being is a combination of mind as a product of the brain and that also has a counterpart in the magic as a product of the soul.
When a pony uses their telekinetic magic, the magic in their soul will connect to the magic in that object and their telekinesis works. When they teleport, they connect to the magic associated with spacetime and ‘miraculously’, they do something that is technically impossible.
Three points out of this…
1- Magic isn’t a quirk. It is integral to the functioning of the world.
2- Souls are a thing. Living beings are a duality of physical body and magical body.
3- Souls, being pieces of magic that animate living beings, will travel around and a single soul will be different beings, much like the same particles will be part of different bodies. But griffon souls can only be griffon, and pony souls can only be pony, as they work in different ways.
All of that is also true for griffons. They can fly, same as pegasi. They can walk in clouds. In the AU they can also enchant weapons, structures. They use runic magic such as Swordmaiden’s sword. They can use magic in their language, such as The Lion casting spells. There is a caveat, though, but it’s not important right now and is a spoiler for Piece of Parchment.
All of that is an expression of the magical part of the griffon. Such as using their wings to shield themselves from a war hammer or Grunhilda going Bruce Banner on the pony bounty hunters.
With that out of the way, all griffons of the present are a combination of the different variants, and each variant is the same original, ‘flavored’ with the magic of the place they lived. Given enough generations breeding within themselves, a population of griffons that hasn’t had contact with another population will show different characteristics, relative to the place they live. That created the variants in the first place, and as they bred with one another, they disseminated the magical characteristics of each into the others.
Magical traits are Lamarckian inheritance, and they will influence the physical traits.
So, there are different griffon breeds “under the hood” that can interbreed, and they generate mixed blood individuals with no discernible distinctiveness unless they are particularly pure, and the purer they are within their own variant, the closer they’ll be to the original, since they all stemmed from the original griffons.
The Children of The Harpy (the Ditty Harpiyi) are the original griffons that The Harpy created magically in the Stormy Eyrie. It is a chain of mountains deep within the Frozen North, lost to the Windigos. They lived in the mountains and the clouds, and they worshiped the lightning storms which were a manifestation of The Harpy before she was dragged to the realm of the mortals (or the Allmother, Mother of Storms, the Raptor Queen). She directly taught them how to griffon and they were her perfect little kittens.
Before the Windigos came, they had already started spreading away from the Stormy Eyrie and built Griffindell in a place they decided reminded them of the Stormy Eyrie. They also disputed land with the pegasi to the west.
But that didn’t matter because the Windigos came and ruined it for everyone. They brought all manners of undead and corrupted creatures (they corrupt the magic in things as they were meant to cause the world to end and start again for reasons relevant to Piece of Parchment and the story Twilight and Cadance are uncovering.)
The Astrani are the modern descendants of the Children that fought the monsters brought by the Windigos (the painting in the steakhouse in Canterlot) and allowed the others to escape, and griffons that have high kinship with the Astrani are typically the most powerful, because they were directly connected to The Harpy.
The Astrani are kinda like the Dúnedain. All griffons have a bit of them, and they are just more awesome. Also, think that since they are the root from which all griffons came, if a griffon is pure enough, they are technically Astrani. But there are no pure Astrani anymore, as they were absorbed by the other variants.
Lord Gilad, Grigory, Gallensa, Gwineth are all Astrani as they can be (mostly Astrani). Of the canon characters, only Gallus is Astrani.
The Nartani are the descendants of the griffons that first migrated to present day Snow Mountains Hold in the northern part of Griffonia.
When the Windigos attacked, the griffons fled from the Stormy Eyrie and some of them realized that they couldn’t just keep running. They stuck their talons to the frozen landscape and decided that weren’t willing to give more land to the Windigos. Since Griffindell was one hell of a defensible position, they fortified the city and built other fortified cities in the lands claimed by the Eternal Winter from where they fight the monsters that drift from the Frozen North.
So, Griffindell was originally built by the Astrani and the Nartani fortified it, but they were so close still that they were technically the same.
As time passed, the Nartani specialized the Astrani’s powerful physique and sense of honor. They internalized that they were bound to keep the Windigos and their spawn from advancing further south and they have incredibly skilled enchanters and fighters. They were called the Lords of the Skies and they prefer the mountains and the cold. Their way of life made them hardy and resilient and the magic in Snow Mountains will heal griffons that go there.
Griffindell is the traditional home of the Lord of the Black Gates, the big badass griffon that is responsible for commanding his vassals in ruining the Windigos’ day. Only a griffon that is a direct descendant of the founders can rule the city. If there ever was a griffon that could claim to have the blue blood to rule all the griffons, it is Lord Gilad, because not only is he Astrani, but he is also a descendant of the first Nartani.
Most of the griffons in the north are almost pure Nartani because they isolated themselves in their forever-winter lands and they resent the southerner griffons, as Gerdie said in Fólkvangr. More on that later.
Think of them as the Gondorians. They hold the gates against the evilest of evils.
Master Gabriel, Gerdie, Grunhilda, Gehenna, Gilberta, Grigory’s friends (except Gallensa) and Lady Geena are all Nartani.
The Shaddani are descendants of some of the other griffons that kept going southeastward while the forefathers of the Nartani held the line against the spawn of the Windigos. They settled on fertile land and on the beaches. They inherited the Astrani’s ingenuity and adaptability. Their survival instinct. They became great builders and merchants. Their ‘thing’ is that they are resourceful and have great problem-solving skills. They were the first griffons to domesticate cattle since cows weren’t as intelligent as ponies and were less skittish than the deer.
They were called Lords of the Plains and prefer windy grasslands.
Think of them as the Dunlendings.
Gilda is a Shaddani, and they are rare. More on that later. King Grover and Empress Geneviere were both Shaddani, although The Harpy will lie and say that Grover was Saddani. She’s quick to blame the pony blood for ‘griffons that don’t griffon right’. More on that later.
There is a giant spoiler about Gilda that I didn’t include, but the gist of it is that griffons that are paying attention see that Gilda is special. The magic in them subconsciously sees the magic in her and they know she’s not to be fucked with.
She’s basically a combination of statistical improbabilities that make her incredibly important to The Harpy.
The Haderani are the descendants of the griffons that kept going into what is today the Saddle Arabian desert. When they arrived, they came into contact with the equines that lived there. To the griffons, they looked like ponies, they smelled like ponies, they sounded like ponies their language was similar to the Ponish the earth ponies spoke and they tasted like ponies. So, they were ‘tall ponies’.
Most important, Haderani’s ancestors thought that was a nice desert, and since they didn’t want to be too close to the Shaddani’s ancestors, the tall ponies were graciously allowed to live with them as long as they kept paying tribute. So, the Haderani remained nomads until later when they realized they could make those fancy irrigation systems the Shaddani had come up with if they made the tall ponies work for them.
They were the Desert Lords and they liked it dry and bloody. They were the most imposing leaders and became the core of the Griffon Empire.
Think of them as the Easterlings and Haradrim.
Goldina, from Fólkvangr is a Haderani, and so is Geordi from Piece of Parchment. Emperor Grigor was Haderani. They are the rarest variant. More on that later too.
The Saddani are the cousins of the Shaddani which lived on the beaches to the west of Griffonland (the Griffonstone area). With the ingenuity they brought from the Shaddani, they built ships and traveled past the ocean. There, they mingled with the ponies, and they gave origin to the hippogriffs. They were the fierce griffons the paleolithic ponies made contact with in Piece of Parchment during Cadance’s dream.
So, the Saddani are related to the ponies, through the hippogriffs.
Most of the griffons in modern times are Saddani and for practical effects, they are mixed blood because they don’t instinctively try and keep their bloodlines pure. They include Greta, her husband, Gabby, Gustave le Grand and the vast majority of the canon griffons.
The Nartani, Shaddani and Haderani will fluctuate between Astrani and Saddani and since the Saddani are a hot mess of everything, they lose purity the more they fluctuate towards the Saddani, but the more they fluctuate towards the Astrani the more they become ‘flavored Astrani’ since the Astrani was the branch they all came from anyway.
Then Discord screwed up the world and when The Harpy first came to the world of the living and saw what had happened after the griffons fled the Stormy Eyrie, her reaction was as follows.
The way to fix that would be to keep the Nartani, Shaddani, Haderani from breeding with the Saddani. Therefore, she introduced the griffons to the wonders of ultranationalism, but when the empire started crumbling, she was forced to hide or Celestia would find her and kill her. Again.
But! The griffons of the present don’t care for any of that. They don’t even know that there were supposed to be different races of griffons, or even that there was a griffon empire, much less that griffons even had contact with the Windigos. To them, the northern lands are a mythical thing and the only concrete thing from there is the game meat.
Celestia and Grover destroyed all evidence of the empire and the Cult of the Harpy because they wanted the griffons to forget The Harpy and the northerners will go as far as claiming that Celestia has intentionally encouraged the griffons to interbreed the different variants, and most importantly, breed with the Saddani because that ‘polluted’ their blood with pony blood.
Hippogriffs are biologically impossible. Griffons and ponies should not be able to breed, much less generate fertile descendants. It is magic that makes them possible, and the more they mixed, the more their parents learned how to care for their young until they became viable.
Griffon and pony biology are incompatible.
Griffons, as The Harpy intended, were obligatory carnivores and ponies were preferential herbivores. The pony diet is composed of fruits, greens and grains. With civilization, they started baking complex foods in the form of pastas which included eggs and milk into their adult diet.
But because of the Saddani disseminating the ‘pony blood’ from the hippogriffs, they kind of became omnivores, but not quite. It’s mostly a cultural thing. The quantities of carbohydrates that the ponies can deal with trivially will wreak havoc on their energy metabolism. There are also hormonal problems and digestive issues.
This is arbitrary, inspired by the fact that big cats can’t deal with sugars in the real world.
Basically, griffons on a pony diet may not necessarily develop deficiencies or grave diseases while they are young but as they grow old and both the biological machine and its magical counterpart grind the gears, they become more vulnerable to stuff like arteriosclerosis, diabetes, degenerative brain diseases.
The northerners will also claim that the pony blood has made griffons more docile and easier for Celestia to control. They get sick more easily and culturally have accommodated to the pony culture of docility and acceptance. And that is why the northerners resent the southerners. They have ‘forgotten themselves’ and have forgotten the sacrifice of their ancestors and their battle to keep the Windigos at bay. They squandered the gift of life The Harpy has given them.
The thing is that the Shaddani and the Haderani lost numbers because of the war Emperor Grigor lost to Princess Celestia and King Grover (the Nartani too, but they are isolated anyways), and thus the ideology that prevailed was the one that ponies are friends, not food.
The Cult of The Harpy would be lost if the northerners hadn’t kept it. Grover almost succeeded in erasing her from the collective griffon memory.
In the present, with the Chancellor messing things up and The Harpy engineering the whole conflict (and also the start of Twilight and Cadance’s adventure), the only thing that prevented a full-blown war was that Celestia hadn’t forgotten what happened. After the war she honored the Nartani’s wish that she left them alone to their mission of guarding the north and she never allowed an occupation or sacking of Griffindell, she has given griffons ample space in the matters of meat and hunting, she declared that the griffons can have their king if they want, and in the past she also has helped them protect the remnants of the empire (mostly the Harpy’s Swordmaidens) of retaliation from the griffons that won the war.
It was the reason Star Swirl was there to witness what (Saddani) griffons did to Ghadah and the others. He was there to observe because Celestia knew that shit would hit the fan in the wake of the war. In fact, she protected the griffons from the changelings, because Chrysalis wanted an all-out genocide of all the Nartani. Celestia also made sure that the diamond dogs didn’t go extinct, and that peace prevailed. That was why the world decided on the Equestrian Confederation and sat her at the Golden Throne.
In the end, the problem between griffons and ponies is cultural and stems from the eternal war that Celestia and The Harpy wage with one another since the first version of the world when alicorns appeared because griffons kept hunting the ponies that ought to be left alone so that they could keep nature working and Harmony healthy.
Celestia wants everyone to be friends and she will claim that griffons are omnivores, that the variants are a fabrication, and that they don’t need to ‘murder innocent creatures’ (and that is another can of worms because deer, cows, and other animals are intelligent enough that they can hold a conversation, but the way their souls were wired made them remain wild rather than civilize). As far as Celestia is concerned, griffons can live just fine with fish, shrimps, like the hippogriffs.
Of course, The Harpy (through the northerners) will say that Celestia only says that because Hippogriffia is the world’s largest producer of fish, that she wants griffons to be docile, and that when the world was made, some creatures, ponies included, were supposed to be prey for the griffons, who were supposed to rule the world.
Gilda believes the griffon side, but with caveats. She knows that The Harpy’s story that ponies used the Windigos as a weapon is bullshit. She believes that there is a way of coexistence, but she is more worried with surviving at the moment.
Twilight, in PoP, at the same time, is learning and will figure out what made Celestia use Grover’s attempt at erasing the empire and The Harpy from history to hide something else that happened in Equestria.
She directly taught them how to griffon and they were her perfect little kittens.
I freaking laughed so hard at that line.
however!
Thank you for wrting this up. it was VERY enjoyable, very helpful, and now i have my claws on solid ground, persay. I think it's neat that Gilda is a rare breed. with Gallus, I guess he's rare-ER? cause he's astrani?
Poor Gabs, stuck in the masses with the usual griffs. XD
either way i CAN'T WAIT FOR MOREE!!!!!!!
HNNNNG!! *flails and warbles*
also Gilda and Grunhilda need to snuggle more. LOTS MORE. ^^
5555056
I aim to please.
Gallus is The Lion's brother. Much to The Harpy's despair, he wants nothing to do with her and he is also dating hippogriff royalty. I'm actually writing a comedy bit with the two when I'm not working on Fólkvangr of Piece of Parchment. Anyways, he is more Astrani than the other variants, that is why he counts as Astrani. Imagine that there are some thresholds that make them count as a variant or another. The important thing is the practical result. He is rarer than Gilda, but in the end it also counts that Gilda is willing to open up to The Harpy. She's gonna be pivotal to the whole thing!
I mean, Gilda is an important canon character. No way I wouldn't give her the spotlight. Right?
5555063
eeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!
love it more now!
and ooof, Gallus love's dat hippogriff rump XD
well I look forward to it.
.....also...MORE SNUGGLES!!!!
This was very informative about some backstory I was curious about, thanks!
5557137
Hey, that was the goal.