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// Prologue 
// Story: New Equestria: The Harmony Age 
// by Roguewire 
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In the beginning, Equestria was home to ponies and many others.  All lived in harmony, and all was good.

In Equestria, the ponies beheld a golden era of expansion and influence.  Equestria grew, and with it came a curiosity which had just begun to grow: a desire to touch the stars.  Through both magic and technology, the ponies were able to attain their newfound desire, and expanded beyond the world of Equestria; space was now within the reach of ponykind.

As they expanded, they realized that a time was approaching where Equestria would no longer be able to support those who lived on it, due to exponential population growths during their golden age.  They began to colonize other worlds in their solar system, but soon even those colonies became overpopulated.  The question arose of how ponykind would be able to expand beyond their home system and reach stars like and unlike their sun.  They realized that they had no magic which could take them to other worlds and stars--it was simply beyond their grasp and control.

One day, the ponies made a discovery which would permanently change ponykind as they knew it: the discovery, within their own systems, of a wormhole.  The greatest astronomical minds of ponykind would name the wormhole "FAUST."

Scientists attempted to study the wormhole in a bid to learn its secrets.  How had it formed?  Can it be stabilized or replicated?  But most importantly: where did it lead to?

The ponies launched a probe through FAUST, and they were astonished by the information that the probe sent back.  On the other side of FAUST was a whole galaxy, just waiting to be explored.  It was the greatest discovery that ponykind had ever made, and they named their new galaxy "New Equestria."

With the discoveries made by scientists, a special structure was erected on both sides of the FAUST wormhole, stabilizing the wormhole and preventing it from collapsing.  Millions upon millions of ponies, zebras and griffons poured through the FAUST Gate in a gold rush to claim as much territory in the galaxy as fast as they could.

One fateful day, the course of history was again changed.  Without any warning, the FAUST Gate collapsed, and the entire FAUST Gate system was obliterated.  Only a solitary planet and stargate survived the shock waves of energy which continue to emanate from the collapsed FAUST Gate.  For the ponies who remained in New Equestria, there was no turning back.  The fate of Equestria was forever lost, but the path was clear for ponykind--rebuild, or die a slow, wasting death.

New Equestria was brutal and unforgiving.  Many colonies which had established themselves starved and died, as they needed the assistance of the corporations which previously sponsored them from the other side of the FAUST Gate.  There were others, however, which yet survived their ultimate test, and these grew to become empires which dwarfed old Equestria in size and power.

The first was the Amarr Empire.  Ponies of noble upbringing and unyielding stature, the Amarrians were very religious and highly conservative.  They worshipped the lost Princess Celestia as a goddess, and they prayed to her for fortune and success.  However, over time the original identity of Celestia was skewed, and the Amarrians began to openly practice slavery; first, criminals were enslaved, but it was when they began to believe that slavery could bring them closer to Celestia, and thereby a step closer to harmony, that they began to enslave whole populations of conquered foes, in particular the zebras.  The ability to expand their reach was in the fact that it was the Amarr Empire which first re-discovered warp travel, and through this became the first of the spacefaring empires.

The Gallente Federation were ponies who rebuilt on the world of Luminaire, and had evolved to respect the notion that freedom was the key to harmony, and that the individual had rights which, while Celestia had granted them, none could take away.  The economy of the Gallente Federation flourished under their free-market system, and they discovered that an empire of the scale of the Federation was better ruled not by the hoof of one pony, but by the hooves, hearts and voices of all.  Thus, the Federation became the first of the empires to be ruled by a democracy.  They decided that they would also use their vast wealth and resources to help those that they could find.  While they are humanitarian by policy, one could also see the Gallente as pompous, self- righteous and greedy misers due to their wealth.

Just after the Federation raised its wings to the stars, another force entered the foreground.  In the Luminaire system, on the world of Caldari Prime, a colony predominately populated by griffons also attained the means to sail the stars.  The Caldari State would become a very powerful economic and military force, all while next door to the Gallente Federation.  While the Federation upholds freedom and a free market, the Caldari State was a stirct and rigid hierarchical society.  It was the megacorporations, eight of them, which controlled the state, and the needs of the many were set aside for the needs of their corporations which almost owned their citizens.  This was a recipe for fierce animosity between the Gallenteans, who saw their neighbors as dictators and corporate overlords, and the Caldarians, who saw the Gallente as greedy and power-hungry.  While both sides are correct, the people of the State are not to be trifled with--they are a fiercely competitive and patriotic people who will lay down their lives for the State if the need arose.  It was through patriotism and the corporation, thought the Caldari State, that were the keys to harmony.

The zebras of the Minmatar had the misfortune of being immediate neighbors to the Amarr Empire.  As such, they became the first of the ponies of New Equestria to be placed into bondage in such a fashion.  Consisting of multiple tribes, the Minmatar were enslaved in entirety until just after the Battle of Vak'Atioth, in which the Matari zebras staged a massive rebellion, which resulted in the formation of the Minmatar Republic.  An empire ruled by a parliament, it is the most numerous but the weakest in strength.  However, alliances with the Gallente Federation make a simple Reclamation, a crusade of conquest by the Amarr Empire, far too difficult to perform.  The zebras believe that one pony is capable of anything, no matter the size and difficulty of the task.  It is through strength, they believe, that one can attain harmony.

The Jove Directorate was the fifth, and possibly most powerful of the empires to exist in New Equestria.  Originating from a far-away colony of the crystal ponies, the Jovians became one of the most technologically advanced empires in the galaxy.  Their power was demonstrated at the infamous Battle of Vak'Atioth, where a crusading Amarrian fleet, several hundred ships large, was intercepted and obliterated by a small contingent of Jovian warships, including a mothership-size warship.  While the Jovians had unparalleled military strength, they did not use it to conquer their enemies.  Instead, the Jovians used their technology to better the rest of the galaxy--they gave to the empires the technology of using the capsule to integrate a single pilot with a warship, and gave them the technology of cloning to make the capsule pilots effectively immortal.  Their technology took a great toll upon the Jovians, however; in an attempt to reduce the flaws within their race, the Jovians genetically modified themselves repeatedly.  This led to a genetic disorder dubbed the "Jovian Disease."  While it was not contagious to other races, the Jovians with this disease wasted away in a severe depression, eventually losing the will to live.  With pressure from both the outside and the Jovian Disease, the Jovians retreated back across their own borders and shut down their stargates.  To this day, the people of the Jove Directorate have never been seen outside their territory.

It was not until about a hundred or so years ago that the Divine Sisters, Princesses Celestia and Luna, suddenly appeared within the borders of the Amarr Empire.  Their arrival almost caused a complete upheaval, and prompted the emperor of the Empire to abdicate the throne and offer it to Celestia, who found that the was revered and worshipped as a goddess. Reluctantly, seeing as it may be the only way to prevent the galaxy from consuming itself in chaos, Celestia took the throne of the Empire.  She released a message to the ponies of New Equestria that she and her sister would remain to safeguard harmony within the reach of New Equestria, and that the Amarr Empire would coexist peacefully with the other empires of the galaxy.  Naturally, this was received with some suspicion, and was not well-received by the people and nobility of Amarr, who were a crusading and conquering herd. As such, Celestia enacted a mandate that forbade the gathering of any more slaves from outside of the Empire; all slaves traded within the Empire had to come from within, not without.  While Celestia was less than popular with the nobility, the religious parish of the Empire worshipped and adored her like a deity, and accepted her decree with open hearts and hooves.

Today, New Equestria is kept in a tentative peace, one that cannot quite be called harmony.  With the establishment of CONCORD, a paramilitary entity tasked with keeping the peace between capsuleers and empires, the parts of the galaxy tightly held by the empires are some of the safest places in New Equestria.  However, there are still places of backwater which are owned by the empires, but are too far-flung to be properly secured by the empires or by CONCORD.  Finally, there are the areas in which the empires have no reach.  It is a lawless, hostile wilderness where only the strong survive.  The areas of null-security space are far from lifeless, however; countless groups of pirates, miners and capsuleers alike roam the vast expanses of these regions, forming alliances of their own with strength and power comparable to the empires.  Regardless of being a minority, it is the capsuleers that are the most powerful force in the galaxy, and it is they who will change the face of New Equestria and bring about the next age of harmony.