1002, Equestrian Calendar (EC).
It was the month of April. It had been two years since Princess Luna's return. Canterlot, capital of Equestria, was eager as it awaited the marriage of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, more informally known as Princess Cadence, and Captain of the Royal Guard, Shining Armor.
The wedding hall was packed with guests, peasants and nobles both, and members of the families involved. It was set to be a day of great joy.
Sadly, the event would be overshadowed by a nefarious scheme.
Unbeknownst to almost everyone present, the almost forgotten Changeling Hive made its move. Queen Chrysalis, the leader of the hive, had managed to almost flawlessly impersonate Princess Cadence, who had been imprisoned in the Crystal caves beneath the city. She managed to manipulate all parties; she fooled both of the Equestrian Princesses, Diarchs Celestia and Luna, and the Element Bearers were blatantly fooled. Even Twilight Sparkle, the most suspicious of all, had been tricked into distancing herself from her friends and family before the Queen caught her, separated, and jailed her in the same caves that she had Cadence.
The wedding almost saw Chrysalis' plan succeed entirely. If things had gone right, she would have taken Equestria almost without a fight.
Two things went awry.
The first; Twilight and Cadence managed to escape the caves where they had been imprisoned. They burst into the chamber where the marriage was just about to be consummated, and exposed Chrysalis as the fraud she was.
This, however, only succeeded pushed the grand conspiracy into the open. A subsequent attempt by Princess Celestia to defeat the Queen saw only the fall of the Solar Princess in front of her subjects, a victim of the love Shining Armor had for Cadence.
With Shining's shield weakened by the Queen's control over him, the changelings burst into the city. A confused battle took place, with the unprepared Royal Guard overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The Element Bearers, reunited, attempted to reach the Elements of Harmony to repel the invaders. They successfully fought their way through a company of changelings who had been sent to prevent their entry, only to be surrounded by superior numbers and either forced to surrender or, in the case of Applejack and Rainbow Dash, beaten into submission.
With the Bearers brought back to the throne room, the Queen reveled in her victory as her forces subdued the remaining resistance and began to collect thousands of ponies to be harvested for their love.
The second thing that went wrong was that Twilight managed to free the imprisoned Cadence, who in turn liberated Shining Armor from the mental prison that he had been trapped in. Unable to re-establish the shield over the city - which would only have momentarily trapped the invaders in the capital in any case - Cadence and Shining attempted one last effort to expel the changeling invaders.
Unfortunately, Chrysalis noticed. She managed to use her own magic to stop the couple from utilizing a spell that might possibly have cast the invading army out of the city by firing one of her own spells at them and forcing them to cancel their efforts for their own safety.
The room descended into chaos. Fighting resumed as the Bearers fought the changeling drones who were still left in the chamber. Rainbow Dash managed to free Princess Celestia from her cocoon cell as Cadence and Shining had a brief shootout with Chrysalis.
In the confusion, the Princesses, the would-be couple, and the Bearers managed to escape from the Palace and the city, escaping via the sewers. Princess Luna would eventually join them, breaking out of the capital and joining up with her sister and the few soldiers who had managed to flee, along with some refugees. The party headed south to Appleloosa. There, Princesses Celestia and Luna officially declared war on the Changelings, with the news going out on telegraph wires, pegasus wings, and by train.
However, the declaration of war was largely a gesture. Most of Equestria's Royal Guard had been caught up in Canterlot, and had been captured or, in a few cases, slain. Knowing that Equestria was in no position to resist the changelings alone, Celestia issued a message, also by telegraph, to the various countries around the world. It was short, and read, in part;
"We beg, in the name of Harmony and our ponies, the assistance of our brother and sister nations. We are under attack by assailants determined to sweep the world and enslave all to a heartless rule."
The world responded. Saddle Arabia, an economic ally to Equestria, followed suit by issuing a general mobilization on April 21st, declaring war on the changelings the next day. The yaks of Yakyakistan, who had been in self-isolation for years, responded by simply gathering for the great conflict, eager for the battles to come. Celestia sent a message directly to Queen Novo, asking for her old friend's aid. The Queen of the hippogriffs, sympathetic, also declared war on Chrysalis and offered the support of her navy and army.
Others remained aloof for the moment. The dragons, traditional sky nomads who generally kept to themselves and did what they wanted, had no immediate interest in the conflict, not having high opinions of ponies or Equestria in general. Indeed, a faction of them favored attacking Equestria in the midst of this chaos, having a desire for loot and destruction. The Avalon Republic, the nation of humans far to the west, mobilized but did not reply for several days, though factories began to switch to a war footing. As the nation was largely neutral toward Equestria, no one could be sure whether or not these developments were in defense of Equestria... or a preparation to attack it in its weakness. As for Klugetown and Griffonstone, neither made any reply to the call to arms, and a number of smaller nations gave sympathetic but non-committal replies.
As this drama was unfolding, the changelings were running amok through the north of Equestria, subjugating Ponyville on the second day of the invasion and utterly sacking it. Fortunately, much of the population had managed to flee in time, as refugees from Canterlot and the surrounding lands had trekked through the town and warned them of the fall of the capital. Cloudsdale was not so lucky; as the telegraph lines and the railroads were cut and changelings were capturing airships of all kinds, along with the pegasi of the mail service, most of the north had no inkling of the fact that Equestria was now at war with an invading army, and Chrysalis, learning of the declaration, moved to make sure it would remain that way, deciding to conquer the heavily populated northern half of the country both as a means of easy conquest and for a quick harvesting of ponies for love.
It proved to be largely that. The sacking of Cloudsdale saw thousands of pegasi encased in cocoons, with their love to be harvested at will. Hollow Shades, Tall Tale, and Vanhoover were taken next, captured on the eighth, eleventh, and fourteenth days of the war respectively, with the population of Hollow Shades unaware of the impending attacks until the changelings were on their doorsteps, sometimes literally. Tall Tale received the news of the war two days before it was attacked. Sadly, their hastily organized militia, ill armed and without discipline or able leadership, was no match for the army that arrived. After a battle lasting throughout the day, the city was sacked, its defenders dead or imprisoned, its population enslaved or encased in cocoons for love supply.
Vanhoover, however, was a different story. Just north of Tall Tale, it managed to round up not only the militia, but a contingent of Royal Guards, which gave them some measure of the leadership that its neighboring town had lacked. They fortified and barricaded the town, and when the changelings attacked the day after their capture of Tall Tale, their first assault was thrown back with heavy losses. Armed with whatever they could lay their hooves, shod or not, on, in vicious hoof-to-hoof fighting, they repelled the attacking army a second time. A young mare, Grand Prix, known as a local pegasus racer, described the fighting;
"We were desperate. We knew little other than a desire to protect our families and our city. I had nothing more than the shoes fitted on me by the local farrier, a rolling pin, and my wings. Nevertheless, I knew I had to protect my foals from them. Both sides fell in big numbers; a friend of mine was pierced in the neck by a monster's horn right in front of me. The beast died shortly after that; I wasn't the only one to see it. There were always more, though. They kept coming. And we kept hacking, slashing, bashing, kicking,punching, and shooting. It was all we had left."
Alas, the town would not be a bastion for long. Chrysalis turned her attention on the town, removed the commanders of the assault, and commenced to use the tactics that had won her Canterlot. Disguised changelings infiltrated the pony defenses, capturing leaders in secret and replacing them. Large numbers sneaked into the city via the sewers; Chrysalis, remembering how her prey had escaped her in Canterlot, was not above using the same means for offensive purposes. Three days after the fall of Tall Tale, the changelings launched their final assault with the might of their horde. Attacked from within and from without, Vanhoover's defenses were penetrated and torn to shreds within the first two hours. Sporadic, on-the-moment fighting continued for two more days, but the city's fate was decided, and most historians record it as having fallen on the fourteenth day despite the continued resistance. Hundreds of thousands fled, by sea and by sky. Tragically, the changelings were adverse to letting their prey escape, and assaulted the ships and airships that were attempting to flee. They captured over two-thirds of those who tried to make their way out on land. Most of the ships were either boarded, or else burned with the green energy that the changelings fired from their horns. Uncounted numbers drowned, and more were taken away to be cocooned for food.
The changeling horde turned north and east. Though advance units had taken a strange village of ponies who rejected cutie marks even before the fall of Tall Tale and Vanhoover, Rainbow Falls proved too difficult to take for the vanguard units, but it too fell eighteen days after the war began. The Queen's eyes turned on the eastern coastal cities of Manehattan and Fillydelphia.
Of the northern cities, these two turned out to be the most prepared. Both cities had gotten word of the war about a week before the hive turned its ever-hungry eyes on them. Manehattan set up roadblocks in all significant areas, and police and Guardsponies constantly checked the passersby, using a spell that Twilight had used during the Canterlot invasion to inspect ponies and make sure they were not changeling infiltrators; the railroad bridge into the city was heavily fortified. The city's defenders took over merchant ships and armed them, surrounding their own city with vessels loaded with whatever heavy weaponry they managed to acquire or build. Fillydelphia surrounded itself with earthen forts and lines of trenches, with ponies manning positions everywhere, while adapting similar measures as its sister city just to the north.
While the security measure proved to be effective - several changelings were caught and imprisoned in Manehattan, with a group of police narrowly preventing one captive from being mauled by an angry crowd - it was also heavily restrictive. The militias of these cities - they could hardly be called an army, given their lack of supplies and military-grade arms - as well as civilian ponies were constantly being checked, and a great feeling of distrust fell over both cities. Furthermore, Equestria had been entirely unprepared for any major military conflict; it's Royal Guard, though armed, was hardly more than a more heavily armored police force, with perhaps two thousand on-duty ponies and five thousand reservists; few of the latter had received more than elementary training. Neither city had an overabundant supply of food. Worse still, without supply lines to the rest of the country, Fillydelphia, once cut off and surrounded, would have no means of resupply. Manehattan could be resupplied by the sea, and maintain communication by the same, but it was as ill-equipped and armed as the other cities that had attempted to defend themselves. Fillydelphia's mayor sent a despairing message to Celestia, saying that the city could not expect to hold out without an army coming to help them within the next two or three days;
"Our arms are insufficient to hold back the black tide about to engulf us. Send an army or we will perish in the next couple of days, maybe three at best.
It would be one of the last messages that got out before the telegraph line was cut by the changelings the same day.
Equestria was on a knife edge. Celestia issued a general mobilization the same day that she and her sister had declared war, but it did not reach most northern towns soon enough. The more sparsely-inhabited south, with the exceptions of Baltimare and Los Pegasus, was not as capable of providing recruits as the north would have been, and when battalions of conscripts arrived, the Diarchs had few arms to give them. Uniforms could be supplied, but armor for elite units would take time, time that the Princesses feared Equestria didn't have. Moreover, feeding the new army would also be a challenge, given that much of the south was desert or swamp-land.
It was also obvious that newer arms were needed. While Equestria had been privy to arms developments around the world, it's Royal Guard had been armed largely with spears for earth ponies, hoof blades for pegasi, and combat magic for unicorns. Luna's small Lunar Guard was well armed with crossbows and all sorts of melee weapons, but did not have the numbers for a sustained battle. Celestia sent out an urgent call for gunsmiths and powder-makers, but they too would take time to arrive and begin assembling weapons.
The situation was not as bleak as it initially seemed. Chrysalis' initial advance had seized a great deal of land and "food," but it also required occupation. While the hive's numbers remained large, it was weakened by having to station drones in and around the conquered land. In addition, ponies who had hid during the recent attacks began to hit back, attacking scattered changelings and freeing cocooned family and friends. While small in scope, these attacks angered the Queen, who sent even more of her army away from the primary assaults to punish the rebels and ensure a steady supply of love to her armies. Though changeling morale was high, Chrysalis was annoyed with the response to her invasion by the foreign powers. While she didn't doubt, at least now, that she could beat them and conquer them too, she knew it would mean that her conquests would be more costly from here on out.
On the twentieth day of the invasion, as changeling armies reached Manehattan and blocked the railroad bridge on the landward side, and as their forces neared Fillydelphia, Celestia was given a telegram from the Farthest Reaches. Human soldiers, backed by naval dreadnoughts and armed with bolt-action rifles, machine guns, and quick-firing artillery, had landed. Since the message didn't indicate whether or not the Avalonians troops were here to save Equestria or wage their own war against it, Celestia and Luna feared the worst.
Other news, more welcome, arrived. Saddle Arabian troops, armed with rifled Jezails (a type of rifle-musket) and iron cannons had landed in Horseshoe Bay, and their navy was on its way to Manehattan to aid in the defense of the city. Queen Novo's forces, though smaller, were also en-route, with a personal letter to Celestia promising that the Hippogriffs would arrive within the next three days of the message's arrival.
Stressed, but with renewed hope, the Royal Sisters began to set up a defensive line north of Appleloosa and just south of Froggy Bottom Bog, with the nascent Equestrian armies setting up in disconnected positions stretching from Ghastly Gorge to Dodge City. Though their arms were limited, the Equestrian army was bolstered by the escape and survival of its Princesses. Coupled with speeches by Celestia and Luna, the army gained hope as the changelings dithered in the north, preoccupied with the intention of capturing Manehattan and Fillydelphia and holding onto the territory it had taken.
The only unknown factor at the moment were the intentions of the Avalonians to the south. Were they coming to take what they could of Equestria, or were they coming to aid it?
Celestia, anxious but determined limited in troops and supplies already, decided to take it on faith to focus on the worse threat in the north, and chose to simply ignore the human army, except for a few scouts sent to keep an eye on it and a party of diplomats to discern its purpose.
As the changelings fully surrounded Fillydelphia and maintained their blockade of Manehattan, multiple armies and navies converged on Equestria. But would they be enough to save it?