//------------------------------// // I. Homeward // Story: Starship Ponyville: Homeward // by Vylet Pony //------------------------------// Space. Surely nothing could be more uncertain in such a primitive age. Very few things are so equally beautiful as they are terrifying. The hearts and minds of many have been saturated over the centuries, wondering and desiring, with the prospect of an unfathomable cosmos. They ask if it all has meaning and they ask if it should make sense... It is, perhaps, that in so much thinking they become shy to the possibility that all this wonder is for naught. These questions are asked out of mortality; so many look up to the stars, to feel as if they know all the secrets, when they are clueless of where they are walking. The story so far. [A summary of Horse Friends, Control Freaks & Mystic Acoustics] On December 8th, 2028, The pegasus “327” was born in the secluded authoritarian Unity of Statera; a state hidden from the rest of the world, created from the remains of Starlight’s Equality Village and its ideals. During its founding, It had been taken over by the powerful unicorn Satellite, whose origin was shrouded in secrecy. 327 grew up an outcast and spent her early childhood without a family. She eventually escaped the city shortly after her seventh birthday; a feat that no other Stateran had accomplished due to the high security forces and city walls. 327 was taken in by her adopted parents, Elden and Amber of Equestria. As mediated by Princess Celestia herself, she was given a more proper name: Satyrn. Although content with her new family, Satyrn lamented never knowing her true parents. She made a promise to herself that she would one day go back and save her family. On June 30th, 2034, Celestia devised the Starship Ponyville program in secrecy. She had begun with a small team of scientists and engineers, aided by Twilight and Luna. The mission of the program was to search the cosmos for habitable places for expansion; Celestia had claimed that overpopulation and a decline in resources would soon threaten Equestria. The princesses had kept this program from out of the public eye. Murmurs and stirrings of fears and superstitions had plagued Equestria for as long as monsters had appeared from the sky. There were hardly any beings in the land that wouldn’t protest against a space program. Princess Luna became tasked with monitoring the activities and dreams of ponies across Equestria more closely than she had in times past. She was asked to use the information gathered to recruit the most well-equipped members for the starship’s personnel. Around this time, a company called PegaSystems broke through the market with devices that allowed non-unicorns to harness the power of magic. This was viewed as highly controversial and unethical by many, but the PegaSystems products were sold at high volumes and with staggering success. Not long after their technologies became acclaimed, Celestia covertly partnered with their research and engineering teams to use magic technologies for the starship program. Adaptive Magic Channeling Devices (AMCD’s) became available to the public soon after this partnership began. These devices were capable of letting individual users have access to magic, like unicorns did. Over the years, Satyrn exemplified an incredible capacity for academics, particularly in the sciences. At a young age, she designed her own gunblade, displaying a certain interest in the art of war. However, during the beginnings of her life in Ponyville, Satellite had trained and deployed an assassin whose goal was to find the girl, believing she would eventually reveal the location of Statera to Celestia. By 2048, Equestria had become entrenched in a civil war. This came as a result of The Black Hoof, a terrorist organization that denounced the corruption of Celestia’s rule. Civilians began to fight on the accord of these terrorists, dividing the lands in conflict. One consistency that remained between the warring sides was the widespread whispers regarding how quickly and mysteriously The Black Hoof had come to be. The Equestrian Civil War lasted for nearly two years, and Satyrn had served under the Royal Equestrian Military Division as a strategist and analyst. The conflicts eventually ended when the Winter Alliances (a pact between the Equestrians, Griffins, Yaks, Dragons, and Hippogriffs) captured The Black Hoof’s acting leader, Feather Light. However, after the war ended, in late November of 2050, Satellite’s assassin found Satyrn in the eastern Canterlot bazaar. Failing to kill Satyrn, he was pursued by her through the marketplaces and into a hi-rise construction site. There, Satyrn captured and killed him, discovering a numbered branding on his forehead; she recognized the brand similar to her own "327" from Statera. Having forgotten about her past for some time, Satyrn traveled to where she remembered the city to be; she found it had grown into a fortified bastion that was surrounded by a mist, obscuring it from the rest of the world. The following day, Satyrn went to warn Celestia about the presence of Statera, but Canterlot was already under attack by the Stateran state’s militants. This offensive crippled post-war Equestria, leaving it nearly defenseless. Celestia planned a covert counter-offensive after word of Statera’s possession of WMDs came out from orbital scans. Satyrn led the operation, joined by Sylver, a veteran aide-de-camp of Princess Celestia. They infiltrated the main Stateran spire where Satellite used Satyrn’s last blood relative, 328, as a means to bait her into aggression. After killing 328, Satellite revealed this to be Satyrn’s brother. This infuriated Satyrn, remembering the promise she made as a child to save her family from Statera. Satyrn fought Satellite in a final battle, defeating him sheerly in a vengeful display. Satyrn was in a coma for roughly four days, having endured the devastating battle against Satellite. When she recovered, Luna invited her to be a commander on the Starship Ponyville, having displayed prodigious skill and leadership. By this time, the ship’s crew had grown to nearly 10,000 members, and the ship was set to launch within two months. Satyrn accepted this position and began preparations with Princess Twilight. On February 10, 2051 [Sol 1], the crew boarded the Starship Ponyville beneath the outskirts of Ponyville and launched into space. The Equestrian public had not known of the starship’s existence until they saw it rocket into the late night sky. Starlight Glimmer and Princess Luna were left to lead Equestria during Princess Twilight and Princess Celestia’s absence. Outrage and protests transpired throughout Equestria as a result of the ship’s launch; news outlets reported on the widespread betrayal that the citizens felt, as the princesses had denied the existence of a space program throughout the past few decades. A broken Equestria was left to watch a New Equestria unfold.