//------------------------------//
// The Crystal Empire 
// Story: A Complete History of the Kingdom of Equestria 
// by Book_Wyrm 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 4: The Crystal Empire 

Before we dive into the subject of the end of the Era of the Two Sisters, we must look at another important piece of the Equestrian continent, the Crystal Empire. The Crystal Empire is located on the ruins of an unnamed Yak city. It has a temperate climate, a sharp and magical contrast to the frozen wasteland surrounding it. Inside its borders, the grass grows green and the sky is blue, in comparison to the wild gray tundra. The Crystal Empire is protected by a magical shield produced by a love infused and powered object, the Crystal Heart.  
Yak legends say that the land on which the Crystal Empire resides was abandoned by them over two thousand years ago, after the attacks of the mysterious shadow crystals, identified today as umbrum. About fifteen hundred years ago, the crystal ponies came to the North. Their own tales say that for centuries, they lived on the tundra in nomadic herds.  
By about thirteen hundred years ago, the crystal ponies had begun to settle into villages, though they could grow little food. Their numbers than were probably less than a hundred. Scattered across the central tundra, the small villages traded with each other.  They were interlinked by marriage and species, with a few even venturing into the mountains and creating the first trade links with the near unreachable Yaks,  
It was into these villages in the year 302 P.E that a unicorn mare named Amore was born. Unicorns and pegasi are rare among the crystal ponies, but a few, such as the famous healer Radiant Hope, have been documented, and those few are among the most powerful of their kinds. Amore, like many, was a filly of great power.  
When Amore was about ten, as her own records show, there came the Blizzards. The Frozen North was engulfed in snow. In the case of the north, it was caused by a great snow dragon. For a year, the tundra froze over, and the few crops the crystal ponies produced shriveled.  
Young Amore was digging in the snow, when she came across a blue crystal. Bringing it home with her, she discovered its power to produce warmth and even melt the snow when love was present. Amore took that gift and began to fuel it with her own love for her people and family. She poured so much of her power and love into it, with the help of the other villagers, that it drove back the snow, carving the crystal into the form of a heart. Grass sprouted and the sky became blue. In the center of the village, where the heart and Amore sat, a great crystal palace appeared. She gained her cutie mark at that same moment.  
Outside the influence of the Crystal Heart, as the magical crystal is known, the wasteland is still frozen and blizzardly. But inside, the land is one of the most beautiful known to pony kind. In this land the crystal ponies thrived. The Heart’s magic kept the monsters of the north at bay, and it did not allow danger within their borders while fully powered. They elected the young Amore as their queen. She grew in beauty, power and height, being described as a cream coated mare taller than Princess Luna, with a long pink and purple mane and the cutie mark of a crystal snowflake, which is represented in the flag of the Empire 
For three hundred years, the Crystal Empire thrived, Empress Amore, as the Crystal Ponies called her, at its head. The name the Crystal Princess is of Equestrian invention, to correlate with its own Princesses, and the term Crystal Queen is used by the crystal ponies for anyone who rules them and controls the Crystal Heart but is not Amore herself.  
Amore’s magic and soul was tied to the Heart itself, and while even the smallest shard of it existed, she too lived. Thus, it is suspected that even today she is not dead, but somehow imprisoned by Sombra, whose title of King was granted in the Crystal Imperial style.  
Empress Amore welcomed the Tribes upon their arrival to the Equestrian lands. She maintained friendship with both them and the even more remote yaks. Each year she hosted the Crystal Faire, to rejuvenate the Crystal Heart and protect the Crystal Empire. An overlooked but immensely important part of the Faire, however, was the admittance of Yak and Equestrian ambassadors, to add to the Heart’s love and for symbolic purposes.  
These friendly relations led to friendly relations between the Empress and the Princesses. Multiple visits of state were made by the rulers of the two kingdoms over the well over a century of their coinciding reigns.  
After centuries of peace, the Crystal Empire met its greatest challenge. Completely unprepared, it was left in shock. In 127 E.E, A unicorn named Sombra rose up from inside the Crystal Empire, and somehow incapacitating Empress Amore, usurped the throne. Enslaving the crystal ponies, he began to raise an army of mind controlled or evil ponies and umbrum, shadow monsters of the north who could produce illusions and many other forms of magic, and had great power, though the Crystal Heart had the power to destroy them.  
A young healer, Radiant Hope, escaped the Empire and came to the Castle of the Two Sisters to plead the Princesses for assistance. They came, for the sake of the crystal ponies who faced suffering unparalleled in history. Chained and tortured, they were forced to dig up the land of their corrupted homeland, in attempts by Sombra to reach the umbrum buried far beneath. At this time, the Yaks closed their borders to all after Sombra attempted to raid them. This ban would last for many centuries.  
During the two-year war that followed, as was explained in the last chapter, the Crystal Empire suffered heavy losses. Its small population slaved away in or outside the Empire. On the battlefield, they were individually controlled by umbrum, prisoners saying that the shadow monsters used their powers to create illusions, leading the ponies to believe they were fighting the umbrum themselves.  Nearly a third of the population died during those years. With Sombra’s defeat, the crystal ponies were finally liberated, but banished to a dormant exile in the Ice Crags until their return, afterwards making them living links to the far past.