//------------------------------// // Border Raid // Story: The Legend of the Wyvern Cult // by Pokota //------------------------------// Sixty years before the Ousting of Discord... It was a small village on the border of the Griffin Empire of about ten families, with all three types of ponies represented. They all worked together to survive - they didn't really have much of a choice, seeing how close they were to the borders - both to keep themselves fed and to repel the occasional dragon, minotaur, or changeling. Being on the frontier, they were also frequently conquered by one of the surrounding nations. At the time of this record, they were under the dominion of the Griffin Empire, who had conquered them just a few years before and taken them from the Unicorn Kingdom, who had in turn taken them from the Earthers, who had in their turn liberated them from the clutches of the Pegasus Republic, and so on and so forth, for as long as the village had existed. But this last, final attack on the village was no simple conquering... it was a massacre, wholesale slaughter. Even the Griffins - who in those days would have happily eaten some of the villagers - shied away from what those in the Wyvern Cult had done that day. The attack started during the early morning hours, before the sun had cleared the horizon. All those who were out and active were quickly defeated and killed. Those who had been inside their homes, sleeping or otherwise, were lined up according to age. All those of foal-bearing age were eaten by the cultists in front of the village foals, who were taken into captivity. The last thing they did was burn the village to the ground in a ceremony that only the chieftain understood fully. The ashes of the village lay there as a testament to the carnage and destruction, and as a witness of the depravity of those who worshiped the wyvern. No civilized beast could tell you where these cannibals came from, and no creature could predict where they would strike next. Every kind of creature knew that the cultists were some other creature from themself, and each species accused all the others of allowing these cultists to take root. The only common factor between the attacks by the cultists was that they only ever raided small border villages. Many creatures feared this cult, and for good reason. Their chieftains sought to summon the Wyvern, a creature strong enough to oust Discord. The chieftains all thought and taught that the only way to summon the Wyvern was through gorging on the flesh of many different kinds of creatures, until their collective memories coalesced into that single moment of enlightenment that would lead to Discord's defeat. All of the civilized creatures knew that this was bunk, of course, but that didn't stop the Wyvernites from using this as an excuse to be the worst creatures they could be. ~ An excerpt from Golden Plate's The Wyvern Cult, published in the nine hundred and ninety-eighth year of the Celestian Era.