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// Prologue 
// Story: The Hidden History of Equestria 
// by Elijah Wyatt 
//------------------------------//

This is the story of Armello, the country that was forgotten after Equestria's founding, and how the two neighboring countries would each have a deep effect on the other, with only two knowing that the other one ever existed.

During the great winter the country of Armello's citizens' were all separated into groups, with a bitter racism that made the winter grow even worse, and which in turn made their racism even stronger, and so on and so forth, however there was light in the reasonable fair minded ponies. When Equestria was found, a new land without an endless winter, all three groups that found this new land eventually bonded with each other, and with the power of their friendship defeated the windigos, and then would move most of their ponies to this new country, however there were many who refused to leave for this new country.

There were the ponies whom despised the idea of sharing a new land with the other races of ponies. There were the ponies who could not leave their country that they had lived their whole lives in, and their forefathers too. There were the ponies who were not, at the time, ready to leave on a trip to a new land, either too weak, old, pregnant, etc. A large number of ponies stayed in Armello. However, the windigos had been permanently defeated. After a month Armello returned to its former glory, however the bitter racism was not resolved, and after everything returned to "normal" Armello split into four new countries, the magical only country, Magicia, the pegasus only country, Aria, the earth pony only country, Randor, and the all inclusive country, Unitaria.

Very soon after that, the ponies from Magicia started a war against ponies of all other races, with Randor being their primary target. This lead to ponies from both Magicia and Randor to defect to Unitaria, who just wanted peace. However Unitaria was peace loving and wanted no conflicts from keeping refugees from other countries, so they were turned away, and founded their own country called Justarce, whose main goal was to promote peace for all and defend any and all ponies who want refuge from war.

There was much outrage among Unitaria by the actions their government had taken, and so many ponies who wanted to fight for everyone's right to peace, defected to Justarce to protect everypony equally, not just themselves.

However, Randor was happy to oblige Magicia, and saw the cowardice of the defectors of Justarce as outrageous, while the ponies Magicia thought even worse of Justarce than Randor did. However, Unitaria's positioning was in the middle of both Justarce and Magicia, and Justarce and Randor. Which brought the war to Unitaria's front door.

Meanwhile, Aria wanted as little to do with any pony as they could.( they did not want war, they just wanted to live by themselves)

One might ask, why did the ponies who wanted peace not just leave for Equestria? Well the answer is simple, the path to Equestria was through Magicia's kingdom, and very soon after they declared war and the defectors defected, they created a magical barrier to protect and isolate their land from outside intervention. They even managed to maintain their own ecosystem through magic. The ponies of Aria managed to survive on their own through doing the all of the labor themselves, and the ponies of Randor relied on natural weather occurrences to maintain their country.

So the stage was set, five countries, four of which at bitter war with the others, and no windigos to calm their bitter hatred.