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// Prologue 
// Story: The Forging of Harmony 
// by The Sweezlenub 
//------------------------------//

        At the top of a frozen mountain in the bleak expanse known as Windsreach—far to the north of the land that today is known as Equestria—there once lay a village whose inhabitants were the distant ancestors of Equestrian unicorns. The unicorns of Stormchant were a reclusive and intensely bureaucratic sort, whose insufferable philosophies regarding city government repelled the other tribes from their mountain village. As the legends tell it, the archmonks of the Stormchantry controlled the sun and moon of the lands.
Irritating as the Northerners were, their continued provision of day and night to the realm made possible the growth of vegetation in the territory known as the Summer’s Vale, and so as a gesture of gratitude and confidence that Stormchant would perpetuate this essential benevolence unto their kind, the Earth ponies of the Vale gave to them what of their crop they could spare. Being a very small mountain village, this yearly ration was sufficient to Stormchant’s needs, as well as vital to their survival.
The Fjordlands of the River ponies, which were a cluster of kelping villages just south of the Vale and which lay on the coast of Frelna’s Sea, were all that separated the realm of Windsreach from the Deep South and indubitably its certain demise. The Deep South was an overgrown confusion of wastelands and primordial jungles, teeming with monstrous creatures, parasprites, manticores, and all manner of other hazards to the well-being of ponykind. Dragons lived there too, as was evidenced by the smoky winds that blew across the Fjordlands from time to time. Nopony dared to venture across Frelna’s Sea for fear of the evils that lurked beyond its distant rim. In addition to the bounty of food the River ponies’ immense skill in the art of kelping afforded them, the Earth ponies gave to them what was necessary to maintain the defense of the realm.
These three tribes lived in harmony, for they each knew that without the others they could not survive the brutal land of Rhodos. They each did their part for the Commonwealth of the North, and although it was a harsh, cruel land, together the ponies of the Windsreach endured.


* * *




The guards were on high alert on this particular day in Stormchant. Today was Enlightenment Day, the day on which the second-year students at the College would have passed down to them some of the most profound revelations in magic known to ponykind. It was historically a busy day for the guards, for it was said to be the day on which the students who would excel in the city’s governing order of monks were separated from those who would not. Every year, it seemed, there was one student who could not cope with the vast wealth of knowledge imparted to them by their teachers, and divulged or at least attempted to divulge their newfound acquisitions to the masses, revealing magical secrets of the highest order which under all circumstances ought be kept the exclusive knowledge of the city’s monkhood. Such betrayers of the Stromchantry’s trust were the guards’  targets that day. They must not be allowed to reveal such secrets, and it was the guards’ duty to stop them. And so, with eyes narrow and ready to perceive wrongdoing, ears open to the whispers and murmurs of renegades and oathbreakers, and chins held bombastically high, the guards were set off to their posts on this day of days. Traitors would surely not escape them.