//------------------------------//
// How We Got To This Place With These People 
// Story: Friendship is Paracausal 
// by Cinder Script 
//------------------------------//

Equestria was never a simple land. Honestly, Equus in general has always been a particularly "interesting" place to live. Most worlds' legends are about fighting monsters and going on heroic quests to save the world. On Equus that was Saturday morning, and thoughtfully would wait until just after breakfast more often than not. Attacks by giant bee bug bear monsters, rather than being the end of a very short and very bad day for a large number of people, would more than likely end up as merely a side show to a spectacular wedding. 

Equestria, compared to the rest of Equus, could best be described as a conflux of all the interestingness that makes up Equus' unique proclivities. Reasons for this rose and fell throughout the ages, with two excuses consistently present. First, any place run by an immortal creature that moves the sun is going to be a hot spot for shenanigans, exacerbated when two to four ageless entities, whose power output can best be measured in terms most commonly used for tectonic plate mechanics, end up sitting on a variety of thrones. The second is more personable; Its inhabitants, and their offspring. Ponies are already pretty inclined towards weirdness, their traditional armories having weaponized pastries filed between hammers and spears for instance. Their children are known even more for bizarre occurrences, in what can best be described as magically induced coming of age adventures. When a parent's first response to their adolescent being escorted home covered in tree sap and noodles by an officer of the law is to squeal and give both a big hug, your concept of normal is going to be skewed.

Whatever the reason, not a week went by in most Equestrian towns without something interesting happening, even without the yearly attacks by creatures with an eye for Armageddon. So if you look at things from that perspective, it really shouldn't be a surprise when they're the first to respond to reports of stars winking out and a new entity appearing near the surface of the fourth planet in their solar system. Within the day they established the first foundations of a space program, and within six months they had managed to put eight individuals on the planet's surface. 

When the expedition to Minmus arrived, it carried a single representative of each of the great species of Equus. In an act of unity and friendship not seen since the machinations of a history forgotten lunatic, every nation of Equus came together to reach the stars. And so eight beings stepped off their lander, each looking upon the barren world in wonder. Not because it was a new world, untouched by any sentient beings in all its history, but because it had been. Just recently, in fact. Before their very eyes, the barren hellscape they had been expecting was experiencing its first rainstorm. Cresting a nearby hill, they found It. The Traveller. A great orb of indescribable material hovering in the center of a storm of Light. Minmus was being terraformed, the perpetrator before them, and Equus made what has been argued to be its greatest friend. Reports of the moon princess' reaction have been lost to time.

Equus' was thrust into a Golden Age, The Golden Age, achieving in years what had once taken centuries. Aging was abolished, the solar system settled, and friendship reigned. That's what the books will tell you, but nothing is ever that simple. Yes, age and disease became things of the past, but death is nothing if not stubborn. The solar system was colonized, but the darker deeds of groups like Neigh Corp are lost to time. Glimmer and Engram were discovered, ushering in a post scarcity society capable of creating nearly anything, including things best left buried. Friendship did her best, they all did of course, but even demigoddesses are fallible. We call it a Golden Age, and to a lot of creatures it was that and more. It wasn't perfect, but it was good. 

All good things must come to an end, as the saying goes. We call it The Darkening. Scholars call it The Collapse. Everyone who survived it call it "another cider." Records are pretty spotty, but we know a lot more about what happened during it than the days leading up to it.

The stars were consumed. A great sword cleaved Minmus in twain. The screams of gods rang across the sky. The heavens became dust in the wind, and that dust was Darkness. The sun burned black. The Darkness claimed our world, our lives and homes meaningless beneath its power. 

Darkness won. But Darkness is not eternal. The Traveler protected us. What we faced in the Darkening was the runoff from a battle between deities. And though The Traveler has slumbered since, broken and dead, Its Light won out over The Darkness. 

That's when the First woke up. Her Ghost pulled her out of the ruins of a ruined train, and she started walking. No one remembers her first name, least of all her, but her friends used to call her Spark. She was the first Guardian, coined the name actually, back when most of us were called Lords or Ladies. She's gone now, left not too long after we got our heads together. She gave us our first real sense of unity, lead us into doing some good instead of fighting among ourselves like immortal foals, and then flew off past the Reef. No one's seen her since, in the flesh anyway. You'll see her statue in the Tower's Firebeak Courtyard, watching over the memorial flames with her friends.

I should probably explain that. See, after the Darkening, everyone who survived did what they could to stay that way. We still had a lot of Golden Age tech, including the stuff in the aquifers that keeps everyone from dying of old age. Anything in someone's hooves got put to use pretty quickly, either keeping themselves alive or making someone else dead first. The Golden Age never cured the fundamental weakness to bullets, so a lot of people ended up banding together to keep themselves alive. 

That's when we started showing up. Before The Traveler died, or went to sleep if there's a difference, it saw that everyone would need new defenders. So it took all of its remaining Light and gave each little mote a breath, creating the Ghosts. The Ghosts spread across the system, hunting for someone worthy of wielding the Traveler's Light. Usually a corpse, but not always. The Ghost will search the entire system and beyond to find them, and when they do they pour the Traveler's Light into the new Guardian, resurrecting them from the dead for the first time of many. Spark may have been the "first," but there's better than even odds she wasn't the literal first one found by her Ghost. She certainly wasn't the first one who showed up, getting back up after getting filled full of holes. I won't try to defend most of the Lords and Ladies, and anyone who would try wasn't there. They did some horrible things, and yeah, a lot of them deserved the fates they got. The Darkening tore up more than our bodies and planet. I don't think anyone can describe what its like, to look at The Darkness and come back. The ones who did and were still sane are lying, one way or the other. 

It was about the time that we were making a good showing of trying to finish what The Darkness started when Spark stepped up. She joined up with someone who actually deserved the title of Lady. Lady Treebreaker, of the Oak Pillar. She gathered up every Lady and Lord who wanted to protect others, and started fighting back the Warlords. It started pretty small, but if you've seen the kind of damage three Guardians can do, imagine what three dozen can do when armed with Golden Age weapons. It was Spark who figured out how to kill us, and with Lady Treebreaker keeping her followers in line, they wiped out or recruited the Warlords. It was a bloodier time, but it set the groundwork for a belief that remains today. Guardians protect people, no matter the cost. 

Somewhere along the line they came across a growing settlement, protected by a single pony. The pony wore all white, her face hidden by a white mask, and her voice was soft. You've probably seen her, if you've spent any time in The City. They found The Speaker, and finally found someone who could show them how to build something out of the ash. The Speaker and Lady Treebreaker and Spark all came together, and together they hashed out a plan. Even if they had to crane their necks to look the Speaker in the eye, they were equals.

That plan, as should be obvious by now, was The City. The Last City of Equus, if you look at the archives. Its not exactly the last city, and certainly not the last settlement, but its the biggest and the best defended. They built it miles away from Old Canterlot, beneath the Traveler. Its been hanging there ever since The Darkening, providing the closest thing we have to natural light. So we built a city underneath it, surrounded it with walls, and have been expanding ever since. If you close your eyes, and drink enough without your Ghost fixing it, you can almost remember what real sunlight felt like.

If it weren't for that Light from the Traveler, and Equus being a bit neurotic when it come to evolution, everyone would have starved ages ago. A lot of stuff will grow from raw magic alone, some things have even adapted to grow off of the Light, but it's the Traveler's light, with a lower case L, that lets us grow most of our crops. As tasty as Moon Noodles are, we've come to rely on the Traveler for a lot. Food, protection, and something to believe in. You can thank the Speaker for that last part, she's done a lot over the years to keep everyone unified, and belief in the Traveler is pretty ubiquitous. 

So what really keeps everyone way from each other's throats? There's a lot more history I could go into, and if you ask I'll probably do it so don't give me that pout. Let's focus, at least for now. The Council is the primary ruling body of the City. Its got representatives from every major faction in this city, those that're left after the Faction Conflict, including the Vanguard. They mostly keep things running smoothly in the City, with the Vanguard reps primarily present to listen and advise. The Speaker sits at the head of the table, but its been decades since she last spoke during a meeting. The last time was after the Disaster of Mareius, when we went to war with the Hive on the moon. It didn't end well, and we lost a lot of heroes. The Speaker spoke, declaring no Guardian would go to the Moon under the Vanguard's flag, and hasn't piped up in there since. The Vanguard agreed, and the Council has stayed out of Vanguard matters ever since. It was the Council's idea in the first place after all, and when nobody dies of old age that much blood on someone's hooves tends to weigh pretty heavily.

So where does that leave us? Well, we've managed to hold back the Fallen for the most part, despite a few sieges of The City. The Hive have mostly stayed up on what's left of Minmus, digging out tunnels in the fragments. The Vex have been doing Traveler knows what throughout the system, and we've done what we can to kick them out whenever they show up. We're holding the line, seeing what we can take back whenever the opportunity presents itself. Shakes has his Crucible, letting Guardians blow each other up for fame and profit as the best funded training exercise you'll ever see. Lady Treebreaker will sometimes show back up to run her Ironwood Banner, though her and Shakes keep butting heads. And then there's the Vanguard. 

They're the ones who're going to point you at things that need to die, and more often at particularly interesting vistas to look at. They're split up into three groups, one for each discipline Guardians trend towards, and are headed by three Vanguards: Guardians who act as mentors and cat herders for the rest of us. Each Vanguard is responsible for their class of Guardian, loosely collected as Titans, Hunters, and Warlocks. They've all been around for ages, but none of them are the original Vanguard. And yes, they're all girls. If that surprises you, you haven't been around Equus long enough.

Rock Candy is the Titan Vanguard. She's calm, and confident, and she never ever smiles. When she does its because she's proud of you, and when she frowns you're about to realize what it feels like to be kicked into a thin mist. The others are more energetic, and get more things done, but she's the one who keeps everyone together. She's an earth pony, and might as well have been the one to start the idea of Titan Orders. She'll never admit it though, she's all business until someone's in real danger. She's got the highest number of failed missions out of anyone authorized to give them to us, but she's got the lowest casualty count. If you want a story about how things were in the Golden Age, find her off duty. Her Ghost has been gone for a long time, but that hasn't stopped her from being one of the baddest Titans around, and she'll trade first hoof accounts of legends for her namesake treat.

Then there's the Hunter Vanguard, Bubble-8. She's an Exo pegasus, one of the sentient war machines you'll sometimes see running around. One of the oldest Guardians in the City, even if she doesn't act it. Don't go out for drinks with her, she cheats. If you've got the patience to keep up with her pranks, antics, and complaining? Well, her instincts usually aren't wrong, as long as gambling isn't involved. She's been trying to get out of the job for a while now, ever since she lost the Vanguard Dare to Prism, but no one's been willing to take her bet. She's better at field work, according to her, but the Hunters haven't been better organized in years. She's the reason we've got the courier beacons keeping everyone in contact, and she's actually managed to get Hunters to give scouting reports instead of just wandering around forever. Just be careful if she ever offers to swap stories. Half of what she says is an exaggeration, half is lies, and somewhere in there is the truth. 

Last one is the Warlock Vanguard: Gabriel. Her mentor was a minotaur, and she's a griffin. The Warlock Vanguard's never been the same species twice, much less "normal." Don't let her cute looks, small stature, or being leader of a bunch of Light wielding librarians fool you. She'll rip you in half and shove a shotgun up your tail if you get on the wrong side of her in the Crucible. Then laugh, pick you back up, and take you out for dinner if you put up a good enough fight. She's an exercise in opposition, and one of the first Skydancers if the rumors are to be believed. A good girl regardless, and basically the smartest one in the room ninety nine percent of the time. She's also the biggest supporter of Guardians trying to find out about their past, much to everyone's frustration. It doesn't help that her mentor was the one who championed the law banning that kind of research. 

And then there's you. What are you going to do? I'd like to have a plan, but where you go I go. I spent long enough trying to find you, I'm not going to just abandon you. But I would like to know what you had in mind, after we're done training. You handled yourself really well out there, you know. Don't know if I mentioned that or not. Have you decided on a name for yourself yet? Me? I'm Ghost, your Ghost. Trust me, I can tell when you're talking to me. 

Fine. I'll be Pip. But I get to name you now. Hey, no whining, its only fair. How about...