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// Lore and Context (Optional Chapter) 
// Story: Daring Do and the Ditzy of Infinite Possibility 
// by Antiquarian 
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Let's take a little dive into one of my favorite means of giving exposition without slowing down the story: the lore snippet. 

Many  authors put lore snippets in their stories at the beginning or end of  chapters (see Orson Scott Card and Karen Traviss) so as to give some  context to the world without awkwardly shoving into chapters. I don't do  it with all my stories, but I make heavy use of it in Homecoming,* which shares a canon with my new story Daring Do and the Ditzy of Infinite Possibility (though they can be read independently). 

Also, yes, Homecoming fans, I did go back and write the thing I never planned on writing. 

Anyway,  both stories stand on their own without the lore, but for readers who  want to go a bit deeper, it can be a fun way of engaging them. 

Some of this will be familiar to Homecoming  readers, but some of it won't be, and people who haven't read either  story in this universe may still appreciate this as an example of the  writing technique. Hope you enjoy. See my notes at the bottom for an  explanation how to make use of lore snippets like these.

For just shade of context before we start, the Homecoming-verse diverges from canon after the end of Season 4. Two of the key facets of that divergence are this:

1.  Equestria sunk a lot of money into firearms development after Tirek  left the nation functionally defenseless. There was a demand for weapons  that could hit with the force of a magic-user. Muskets and other  muzzle-loaders soon found themselves replaced with breech-loaders, black  powder revolvers, and eventually revolvers, lever-actions, and  bolt-actions consistent with the technology of the later 1800s. 
2.  Equestria and her allies would ultimately end up fighting a bloody war  with the Unified Griffon Dominion, which will be elaborated on below.  The 'Great War' holds a similar cultural significance to our World Wars.  

With that out of the way, let's look at some of the main lore snippets. Minor spoilers for the first two chapters of Homecoming:





Talon.  A name that has come to be synonymous with violence, intolerance, and  oppression. Though most recently the name of the Unified Griffon  Dominion’s paramilitary arm, its origins are with the mysterious founder  of the Great Unification Movement. 

Little is known about  the Movement’s leader before his meteoric rise to power. Rumors abound  that he was a disgraced soldier of the defunct Griffonspire Kingdom, or a  peasant from the border who saw his family massacred by raiders, or  that he was an Equestrian-educated scholar who came to despise pony  culture while studying abroad. None of these stories can be confirmed or  denied with any certainty, as even his true name has been lost to  history.

What is known is that twenty years before the  Great War, a griffon known only as Talon would emerge to found the Great  Unification Movement. His stated goal was to restore the griffon race  to its former glory, to “throw off the shackles of the lesser races” and  “replace the corrupt and vile griffon lords who have spat upon their  people by making us the slaves of foreign money and power” with a system  that was “ruled by the common griffon, where all griffons shall share  equally in wealth and prosperity.” With so many of the griffon  nation-states riddled with debt, corruption, and poverty, the appeal of a  glorious, unified, and above-all wealthy griffon nation appealed to  many.

The Movement’s platform of racial exclusivity, rule  by the masses, and equal distribution of wealth was to be achieved by  means of a centralized government which “protected griffon interests  from all threats, both foreign and domestic.” In practice, this meant  the creation of a tyrannical regime run under the absolute authority of  the Central Party, which forcibly assumed control first of Griffonspire  and then of the surrounding griffon nation-states.  

One by  one, the major griffon countries were brought under control of the  newly-dubbed Unified Griffon Dominion, their unique cultures and  national sovereignty erased by the monolithic Central Party and its  secret police. To avoid provoking foreign intervention, the Dominion’s  preferred method of conquest was to support the rise of the Movement in  the target nations, spark unrest (an easy feat in the often-unstable  griffon nation-states), and then step in at the request of the local  Movement members to “bring peace and stability.”  

Talon  ruled as the de facto dictator of the Dominion for thirteen years, but  did not live to see the Great War which his ideology spawned. Eight  years before the Hoofenberg Incident and three years before the return  of Princess Luna, Talon was assassinated by members of Black Wing, a  faction of rebel griffons drawn from Griffuania, a griffon state with  strong historical ties to the pony nation of Konikland. 

While  Talon’s death initially slowed Dominion advancement, the temporary  reprieve did not last. Skilled Party propagandists blamed the event on  foreign corruption of the noble griffon race (citing Equestria and  Konikland as the primary threats) and stirred up national sentiment  against all foreigners and non-griffons. The Central Party rebranded  itself as being the extension of the ‘martyred’ Talon’s will, while  their paramilitary arm took his name. 

The newly-branded  Talon Detachment was filled with the most zealous of his disciples, and  executed the Central Party’s orders with ruthless efficiency.

—Excerpt from Rising Bloodshed, a short documentary series focused on summarizing the works of Dr. Power’s The Problem From Tartarus: Equestria and the Age of Genocide.





Princess  Celestia and her cabinet had long feared the rise of the Unified  Griffon Dominion and sought to dissuade them through diplomacy and the  threat of Equestria’s superior military power. However, those threats  began to lose their weight as the Dominion gradually came to surpass  Equestria’s peacetime arsenal. Celestia and her ministers sought to  modernize the military, but could not gain Parliamentary approval for  anything that resembled “foreign adventurism” or a violation of  Equestria’s long-standing peace. It was only with the near catastrophe  of Tirek’s rise to power that the reigning princesses and their allies  finally gained the support to pass the EUP Guard Modernization Act and begin a policy of firm opposition to Dominion expansion.  

The  diplomatic efforts to dissuade Dominion expansion were spearheaded by  Equestria’s newest alicorn, Twilight Sparkle. In her capacity as the  Princess of Friendship, Twilight sought to build an alliance of nations  into a unified defensive front to intimidate the Dominion into slowing  its advance while the government deliberated how best to deal with the  problem in the long-term. She focused her efforts on shoring up the  support of friendly powers like the Konikland-Griffuanian Commonwealth,  the Duchy of Maretonia, and the Kingdom of Saddle Arabia against the  common threat of the Dominion while also building a network of mutual  defense amongst the griffon nation-states that had not yet fallen under  Dominion control. Many of these nations had once been part of the now  defunct Austail-Hungriffian Empire and were populated by both ponies and  griffons. It was here that Twilight attempted to create a first line of  defense against the Dominion. The hope was to stop the war with a show  of solidarity along the Dominion border.

Diplomatic talks  were proceeding well when the Hoofenberg Incident occurred. Most  citizens of the former Austail-Hungriffian Empire had learned to live in  relative harmony, or at least tolerance, with the other races. However,  there was enough bad blood for the Dominion’s primary paramilitary  force, the feared Talon Detachment, to exploit. Though unable to gain  control of the governments, but they were able to form terrorist  cells. On the day of the Summit, when leaders were preparing to make a  unified statement of opposition to Dominion expansion, sixty-three Talon  operatives and local recruits attacked the Royal Carriage, nearly  killing Princess Twilight and launching a brutal six-year war. 

Historians  debate whether or not Twilight’s proposed defensive front would  actually have succeeded in dissuading Dominion aggression long-term. The  princess herself is purported to have become skeptical of the  plausibility of such a success in hindsight. However, most agree that,  had the Summit succeeded in unifying the nations directly along the  border in a formalized defensive treaty prior to the Dominion’s  invasion, their armed forces would have been better organized for mutual  protection. As it was, the initiative in the early days of the war was  ceded to the Dominion, who swiftly overran the disunified defenders and  pushed into Equestrian territory, leaving tens of thousands dead in  their wake. 

—Excerpt from Spark Notes’ A Brief History of the Great War.





For  decades, Equestrian firearms had been largely neglected by both the  military and the civilian market. Muzzle-loading muskets had existed for  over a century, but never reached the point of being standard-issue  amongst the military or even a popular civilian home defense weapon. The  musket’s slow rate of fire, cumbersome nature, and inaccuracy led to  most preferring the crossbow. Even the coming of the rifled firearms  (and the corresponding spike in accuracy) and the higher damage output  of the weapons relative to crossbows were not enough to offset the  general antipathy towards the technology. 

As such,  Equestrian small arms saw little use outside the borders, where the  stopping power of guns was prized by independent ranchers and Equestrian  Rangers for use against monsters. Modern firearms like the first  generation of Sharps breech-loaders were purchased in small numbers for  specialized military units, but not funded for full production. 

That  all changed when Tirek nearly conquered Equestria. With memories of  having their magic forcibly stripped away fresh in their minds, it was  suddenly much easier to justify the development of weapons which had the  stopping power of magical blasts but didn’t require a mage to use. 

Public  and Parliamentary sentiment on the matter shifted enough that Secretary  of War Hard Contact and Prime Minister Duke Golden Crown (known to his  friends and detractors alike as ‘Fancy Pants’) were able to attach the Equestrian Small Arms Development Program to the bluntly-named EUP Guard Modernization Act.  However, the margin for passing the Act had been so narrow that  compromises had to be made, and the Program received little funding.  Recognizing the importance of the Program, especially in light of  worrying rise of the Unified Griffon Dominion, the reigning princesses  of the Equestrian-Imperial Commonwealth quietly paid for the Program  themselves. 

Sharp Wit’s famous Sharps Rifle (and its  smaller cousin the Sharps Carbine) was the first mainstay rifle issued  to Equestrian and Imperial troops in large numbers. While this  breech-loader had a slower rate of fire than the average battle caster,  it was more reliable over the course of a pitched battle and could be  used by all three pony races. The power of the weapon was sufficient to  overcome the magical shields of even great combat mages like Shining  Armor given enough time and numbers, and it was functional over longer  distances than most offensive magic. 

Accurate,  hard-hitting, and reliable, the breech-loading rifle would be the  backbone of the Equestrian Armed Forces for the first half of the Great  War. Even as it was gradually replaced by more modern lever-action  Spader and Turner Rifles, the Sharps was a common sight on the  battlefield, and it remains the preferred weapon of sharpshooters even  to this day.  

—Excerpt from Called Shot’s Arsenals Abridged: The Weapons of the Great War, Second Edition





The  Unified Griffon Dominion’s development of the bolt-action Mk II Needle  Rifle and rapid-fire Organ Gun were nearly disastrous for the Equestrian  military. For all the Sharps’ virtues, it was unable to compete with  the Mk II’s volume of fire, and the Equestrians had no counterpart to  the Organ Gun. 

Fortunately, Equestrian R&D had one  major advantage over the Dominion: a thriving free market environment.  Unlike the Dominion, which was a totalitarian regime with absolute state  control of the markets and corresponding intellectual property, the  Equestrian culture and economy promoted entrepreneurial methods and  free-thinking. This led to dozens of inventors stepping up to solve the  problem. Spader, Clyde McColt, Chatter, and Time Turner were all largely  unknown before the Great War, but their development of the next  generation of Equestrian Firearms rocketed them to national prominence.  Unlike Sharp Wit, who had been a gun-smith before the war, none of these  new inventors had any significant experience designing firearms. Spader  was a farmer with a head for metal-working whose son had been killed in  the first year of the War. Clyde McColt was a self-described hillbilly  who wanted to be able to shoot more rapidly and had been tinkering for  years to that effect. Time Turner was a peaceful inventor who only  reluctantly turned to weapons-development; his tacit research partner,  Endless Chatter, was a disgraced locomotive engineer whose designs had  been dismissed as being ‘too wild’ by her previous employers. 

Despite  their varied backgrounds and lack of prior direct experience, it was  their genius which saved Equestria and its allies from near-certain  defeat. Spader- and (to a lesser extent) Turner-model lever-action  rifles phased out the Sharps as mainstay infantry rifles, and the Turner  Carbine replaced the woefully limited Sharps Carbine as the primary  weapon of the Air Corps. McColt’s Colt revolvers were issued as a  reliable sidearm, and Chatter’s infamous multi-barreled revolving  Chatterguns proved to be far deadlier than the Dominion Organ Guns.  Meanwhile, Sharp Wit developed new gun sights, starting with the already  deadly Sharps and eventually modifying all mainstay Equestrian  firearms. 

The new weapons gave Equestria a technical edge  in small arms which the Dominion couldn’t match and never recovered  from. With the might of the Equestrian industrial base and a flexible,  motivated military arrayed against them, the final years of the Great  War would become a low, painful road to defeat for the once-mighty  Dominion.

—Excerpt from Called Shot’s Arsenals Abridged: The Weapons of the Great War, Second Edition





The  Equestrian military was woefully understrength before the war.  Generations of peace led to fewer and fewer resources being allocated to  national defense. This created the joint problems of, firstly, limited  personnel and funds and, secondly, the fact that what few personnel and  funds they had were spread too thin, with substandard equipment, green  units, and poor logistics. 

When Celestia and the sitting Government finally managed to ram the EUP Guard Modernization Act  through over the intense objects of the Opposition, they began to solve  the problems of outdated equipment and neglected logistical  infrastructure. Unfortunately, the greatest problem of all went  unresolved: personnel. Even as the Guard finally received modern weapons  and proper funding for the coming war, they lacked the numbers to use  them. Despite numerous recruitment campaigns championed by all four  princesses and each branch of the Service, the numbers remained low in  most provinces.

This changed abruptly with the  assassination attempt on Twilight Sparkle. Outraged ponies flocked to  recruitment stations across both Equestria and the Crystal Empire. Soon  the EUP had more applicants than it could process.

However,  training these ponies still took time, and in the early days of the war  the mostly green Equestrian units suffered massive casualties at the  claws of veteran Dominion soldiers. This created a desperate personnel  shortage even with the windfall of new recruits, which led to a lowering of standards at the recruiting offices. 

Common  jokes of the time included, “Eye tests? We don’t check ’em, only count  ’em,” “Live ponies pass,” and “If you can carry a tune, you can carry a  gun.” 

—Excerpt from Victor Hoofsen’s Casualties of Peace





Now,  anyone can read either of the associated stories without reading these  lore dumps and still know what's going on. However, the advantage of  lore snippets like these is that they make the world feel that much more  alive to those who read them.

Think about Lord of the Rings.  You can watch just the movies and know nothing about the world and  still follow what's going on. You can still enjoy the story.

However,  if you know some of the contextual lore (e.g. the history of the Elves  and the Dwarves) it makes certain scenes a lot more meaningful (e.g.  Gimli's humble request that Galadriel give him a single strand of her  hair is monumental if you know the context). It takes something  fairly straightforward (Gimli and Legolas start off not liking each  other and become best buds) and deepens the appreciation for the  significance of that thing (they overcame literally centuries of bad  blood and became like brothers). 

Including lore snippets like these above takes ordinary interactions (e.g. in Homecoming,  Dash and Applejack talk about their preferred firearms) and raises the  stakes (those weapons they talked about were getting invented mid-war  and were the difference between life and death). 

Even if you  don't end up publishing these lore snippets, I encourage writing them -  it's easier to write a deep world if the author knows that world's  depths - even if no one else ever sees the full background, the world  will feel more alive because what you write will be informed by the  greater context you have in mind. 

Something to think about.





*A note on Homecoming.  The story contains the Suicide/Self-Harm tag in relation to one  specific scene which happens much later in the story and, at the time of  this post, isn't even written yet. No one dies, and things improve for that character.