Ronald Lee is the systems administrator for one of the largest fan-made online games in the world. Though nothing new has been produced for MLP for decades now, fans old and young continue to flock to the online version of Equestria they're building together.

Of course he knew that the programs they wrote would grow more intelligent over time. With cheaper hardware and better AI, this was always expected, and a user experience allowing for content similar to the show to be produced in real time for every user was always tantalizingly close.

Then Starlight Glimmer started talking to him.

This story is a prequel to Synthesis, and doesn't require knowledge of that story. You may want to check it out when you're done here, however.

This story was commissioned by Two Bit, who also helped edit because he is an absolute mad lad. Sparktail helped too.

Cover by Zutcha

She wanted peace. She wanted diplomacy. She wanted harmony and friendship.

She got war.

With the armies of the Changeling Lands marching through Equestria, overwhelming any and all resistance they encounter, Princess Celestia has had to resort to increasingly drastic measures to save her country and the ponies that live in it. But while her sister leads the armies from the front and her ponies fight and die in the name of princesses and country, Celestia feels useless and inadequate in Canterlot. After all, she was supposed to protect her precious little ponies. How had she failed them so badly?

Those doubts and worries gradually gnaw away at her, day after day and month after month. Until one day, she reaches a tipping point, the point of no return:

She will save Equestria, no matter what it takes.

[An Equestria at War story]

Edited by LoyalLiar and SolidFire
Art by TwoTail813

What's an artificial intelligence to do when it reaches the extent of it's capabilities and can no longer improve? In most cases, either fulfill some end state goal and shut down, or, if it's smart enough, ask for clarification from its creators.

For a certain pony-based AI, neither of those is an acceptable solution.

It'll take an unexpected meeting with a being with whom it shares surprising parallels to kick-start it back into action, and nothing will ever be the same after.

Entry for the Friendship is Optimal contest.

Technically canon compliant, unless I've missed something, and while a bit of background is provided, being familiar with the original story will certainly help comprehension.

Pinkie Pie is a very busy mare. Between her friends and her family, her party-planning job and her world-saving Element duties, she barely has any time for herself. Sometimes she wishes she had some help.

This wish is answered in the form of a small changeling, lost and alone.

Little did she or he know what series of events this would kickstart, or the marvelous new chapter it would open in the party mare's life.

-----

Cover Art and Proofreading by NecroHorse.

A Gellar Field malfunction casts 800 Pre-Heresy Word Bearers into the immaterium just after the Fall of Monarchia.
When they return 10,000 years later, they are forever changed.
Gone are the fanatical worshipers of the Emperor, for in their place stand not the heralds of Chaos, but the Heretics of Harmony.

Starlight Glimmer has gone back in time. Each time Twilight tries to stop Starlight, she fails and is flung back through the portal and into a broken, twisted Equestria, ravaged by wars or monsters, each version worse than the one before, barreling toward the destruction of the world. Until she lands in a version of Equestria that ... isn't worse. It seems unchanged, happy, normal. The only real difference she can find on the cutie map is that her castle isn't there ...

... but the library still is.

Editing by Formerly Committed and JetstreamGW.

The local human, finding himself possessed of strength beyond measure in this strange world, decides to be a brutish nuisance. You know, running around half-naked, stealing cider and that sort of thing.

When his behaviour lands him in jail he casually breaks out and - more on a whim than anything else - breaks out the other jailbird too. Because that's mischief, and she had to have done something wrong, right?

They then run from Twilight, sit around a fire and sleep in a cave.

-

Ahahaha I got featured and I don't even have a picture what even is this.

A group of pony radicals try to summon a demon to overthrow the princesses. Instead they got a human. They don't know what a human is.

((Pre Princess Twilight))

((Edit: Featured 5/11/2020. Didn't expect this to go over so well!))
((Edit2: Ch.8 featured 10/1/2020))
((Edit3: Featured 10/22/2020))
((Final Edit: Featured 3/25/2021))

In an effort to keep her mind occupied, Twilight Sparkle decides to delve once again into the grand mysteries of Pinkie Pie. This time, Twilight's focus is on her claims of growing up on a rock farm: like so many things related to Pinkie Pie, the idea that somepony could grow rocks as an agricultural product makes absolutely no sense. However, the investigation eventually leads Twilight to a rather... surprising discovery.

This is the first story in The Petriculture Cycle.

Artwork by Page Turner. Now with a TV Tropes page.

The first day of school always sucks. It's particularly sucky when you're normally nocturnal.

Now an expanding anthology of one-shots due to popular demand for MOAR!

Featured on Fimfic: 10/1/2017
Featured on Equestria Daily
Now with several chapters in audio: link!
Now with commisioned music: link!

Cover Art Source

Editors/Prereaders:
Dreams of Ponies
JackRipper
Level Dasher
Jowijo

Submission for the Bat Ponies and Thestrals 2017 Competition