--------BEGINNING OF ARC 1--------
--------Beginning of Act 1--------
The sun wasn’t up yet, but one rather unfortunate griffon was. It’s safe to say that very few would have been very thrilled at rising at this time of the morning - and I mean morning in the most technical sense of the word - but this griffin did it everyday, without complaint. Not that anyone was else was awake to hear any complaints that he might have given, were he to complain.
A groan would be all anyone would really hear at this hour in the morning if they were awake - unlikely given that even the most savage and stupid of beasts valued this time as their time to sleep. This groan would be the familiar groan of someone dragging themselves out of bed to face a new day, a necessary but disliked ritual. The griffin, who would be barely visible, would stumble down his cloud steps to a small and minimalist kitchen - a small and easily forgotten monument to how time consuming weather management was in these days - especially when done alone. In this kitchen there would be two things on the table. These two things would be boring and mundane to the common reader without some explanation.
These times were a different time, you see. The rule of the Council over Equestria (then known as the Kingdom of Seven by some, by others as the Empire of the Council or the Equestrian Empire by the modern historical “layman”) saw coffee rise to national prominence as being very fashionable and “Equestrian”. Coffee made the Empire run, as they said. The crop had been discovered and brought to Equestria almost a millennia earlier, and in the fertile soil and amiable climate of Equestria the crop had been easy to grow in great abundance and quality. The export of coffee filled the coffers of early Equestria, then only in reality a city-state, which paved the way for its eventual conquest of what we know as Equestria today as well as bordering kingdoms that were once part of Equestria.
And so this griffin whom I have gone to great lengths not to reveal the name of made a cup of coffee, boring and mundane by our standards but a gift from the gods by his, and went about to the business of beginning to set up weather, a task that was boring, strenuous, at times dangerous, but most of all very lonely.
Had he been looking right now, and could he pierce the dark veil that shrouded the land, he would have seen another early riser in Baltimare. This pony, like our purposefully unnamed griffin, thought she rose earliest. Her rise from the black abyss that is the ungodly hours that are just before sunrise could be credited as much more graceful than that of the griffin’s - no groan accompanied it. Indeed, the rather large earth pony impressively made almost no noise moving through her morning ritual.
This ritual was another formed of habit and necessity, only this time it involved a house firmly rooted in the ground - interestingly enough, it had been for many generations, and was almost undisputably the oldest structure not only in the town but in the region. But the age of her house and the nuances of the history of her bloodline mattered little to this pony, who didn’t tiptoe across these floors as though they were an ancient relic of an equally ancient family, but rather as though she wished to be done with touching the place as quickly as possible. The kitchen she entered was, in stark contrast to the other kitchen we have discussed, very large and very cluttered. But, in unsurprising similarity to the previously mentioned kitchen, it also carried the highly patriotic commodity of coffee. If you were, in fact, surprised by this, then you haven’t been reading all of the story. Might not want to skim the longer bits.
This pony had little care for the vaguely patriotic coffee she was grinding into a delicious and stimulating beverage. She tended to be a more clear-minded pony, who steered well clear of distracting nuisances, be they others or pointless conundrums between others, and tended to think in a very clear, logical manner that was unforgiving but fair, in the sense that it was the type of mind we would expect of our judges.
This pony was no judge, however. As her father and forefather, and their fathers before them, she was a farmer. Plain and simple, the farm of her ancestors is the reason Baltimare even existed, they had extracted crop from this soil for longer than any pony’s memory could ever hope to stretch. This did not make it an easy task, but it was immensely rewarding and had won respect for her family throughout its entire existence, and the family name, which I will not tell you as I must remind you that we are going to great lengths to leave these characters unnamed, carried great weight in the town still, and was considered among the, if not the most, respectable and prestigious bloodlines in the region. The farmer reaped the benefits of this as she reaped her crop, but unlike her crop she did not much appreciate or value it. She did not think of the honor of feeding a town and continuing a legacy, but instead her mind drifted to what she thought were greater topics as she snuck out of the farmhouse, eager not to wake her sickly mother, to get to the business at hand.
Quite far away, in fact to a distance from the opposite side of the town from the farm, which was a good couple of leagues from town in the first place, stood a cold, unforgiving building. It was built like a fortress, which one should find reassuring - it technically was a fortress, but it had only ever been used as a barracks. This was where the local garrison ate, slept, and trained. It is worth noting that Baltimare hardly needed a garrison at all, it was never under threat of foreign attack and there was practically no crime. As such the soldiers on duty here tended to get a little stir - crazy and one might say that the barracks actually caused more disorder in the town than it eliminated - but the observation would be irrelevant, because the barracks was most certainly not leaving this growing town, which would likely find a need for it sooner rather than later.
The soldiers adhered to a militant regime (surprise, surprise), which consisted of a rise at dawn exactly, followed by a short breakfast and rigorous training exercises. Peacetime drills in Equestria were hated by almost every soldier in the military, but the maxim “Train hard, fight easy” should be remembered here. The soldiers, thanks to this uncompromising preparation were always ready to respond to any threat, be it three hundred foot long dragons or a group of bandits coming to raid, the mandatory Peacetime Drill Contingency kept all soldiers across the Empire in a constant state of perfect readiness, as well as soreness for those who had been in the military under about five years.
One of the few soldiers who did not much mind the drills was actually just waking up (of course, he was unaware of the great lengths his narrator went to avoid mentioning his name. In all honesty, I doubt he knew he had a narrator). He made a cup of coffee with the unerring air of a pony who worked on routine, and by sheer repetition had transcended the need to use eyesight to confirm action. The cup of coffee was hardly more than a ritual, but it was an important one. Coffee was considered essential to the military - army suppliers who sold less-than-promised quality coffee to the military could actually be executed, and on occasion were. However this soldier did not think of any of this but rather how much he just wanted to finish these drills and exercises and go out on duty - it was far more interesting and colorful than the grey stone of the barracks.
However, not all workers of the Council woke up to stone and brick surrounding them. Far away from the barracks, a pegasus woke up to look out upon the town of Baltimare. Baltimare was not the quaint little town it used to be, but it was by no means at all a city. While it is true that it was growing rather rapidly, it was still just a large town and not the sprawling metropolis it is today. However, it was growing to the point where the bureaucracy, by nature inefficient, was having difficulty keeping up with the growth in the town, which led to there being only one pegasus to run all of the mail.
This didn’t much matter, however, as not many sent mail to and from to the town - it was too out of the way, and it was a still a town of old blood, where urbanization would not be seen for some time, when it finally became the commercial center it is today. Correspondence to family out of their picture combined with privatized shipping and the mail situation reveals itself as not being dire at all, allowing this mail mare to rise comfortably after dawn and amble over to a washroom and make herself presentable before eating an actual breakfast.
Afterwards she would go down to the post office, collect the mail that had been dumped into the box and organize the outbound mail before collecting the inbound mail and going in to town. A word for the Equestrian mail system - it used a regional system, where mail would travel from the sender’s home to a local post office, where it would be sent to a regional center, which would send it to another regional center that covered where the mail was to be delivered, where it would then be sent to the local post office of the destination. There it would be sent on to the recipient. With two daily collections a day at the regional centers and a relay system for mail, letters could be sent across the continent in under a week - quite the achievement for a civilisation without any access to steam power. It also meant that the local mailmare’s job was quite easy - put the outbound mail in the proper box and distribute the inbound mail were the only two responsibilities of a mailpony. Thus our mailmare could easily afford to meander along her route and still be done with work by just a little after noon, easily stopping to chat with just about everypony she saw.
Of course, as easy as the mailmare’s job was, being a magistrate in the region, especially given a competent governor and semi-competent bureaucracy. As such an alicorn in such a position, like the one who will feature prominently in this tale, could easily afford to rise late - or sometimes not sleep at all. His duties involved some paperwork (easily ignored) and noticing problems in the town to report to the governor and local council (each wanted to be the first to hear about it), but in all honesty with an overly-large garrison in a small, quiet town there was no trouble except that which came from the garrison itself, and that was the responsibility of the garrison’s commander. Also he was supposed to preside over the local justice system, which meant nothing as all civil cases went to a regional court and there were hardly ever any criminal cases in Baltimare.
It is easy to see this alicorn as a shelved aristocrat. He had always tended to land himself in trouble at the expense of his family’s honor and reputation - something which they hardly took liking to. Other times he was a social recluse, quiet and withdrawn, a social burden on his “more civilised” family, who secured his position far away from the city of Equestria and the luxury of the family estate, which the alicorn resented.
Of course, Baltimare was rather picturesque and quiet, and one really couldn’t help but like it. He rose to a bright sunny day. Predictably, he went to make a cup of coffee, despite it being completely unnecessary. It was a matter of fashion, even if no one was around to see it. The Empire, after all, had practically been built on coffee, and most everyone under the Council’s protection drank it. As he sipped he shuffled some papers and signed some documents, no doubt making him feel a little more self-important and firmly lodged in the idea that aristocracy was necessary to keep any country running, and that this state would fall apart if it kept letting lowborns into the administration.
In the case of one particular “lowborn” he would have been very correct- to let him into the
\administration would probably cause the absolute and complete destruction of whatever he was set to manage. Not that his particular changeling had any interest in going under public employ. He was a wandering bard, which wasn’t exactly a high income job, but let him travel quite often and see the world. He didn’t experience much hardship in this walk of life, and really looked at everything around him with a more carefree manner. Currently he was hitting on the innkeeper of the inn where he had stayed the night before.
The innkeeper was not particularly amused by any of the changeling’s “funny” jokes or transformations, and in fact was giving him such a cold shoulder she had to throw out the pot of coffee she was making when it froze solid, as well as restart the fire that had been extinguished by icy rejection. Despite the fact that he was ruining his own coffee - that he had already payed for - he persisted with the futile romantic effort. Three pots of coffee later he took a hint and walked away with dampened spirits but a consolation prize of a hot mug of coffee (the innkeeper told him it was the only thing warm to him in this inn and walked away, disgusted). He walked outside with the mug and watched the increasingly busy town as he sipped at his coffee, still all smiles.
Later he would go down to the marketplace and provide music to the place, something which was greatly appreciated anywhere. In fact, a recent trend in the prosperous empire had been to be a patron of the arts, particularly music, for public enjoyment. As such, a bard such as our devotedly unnamed changeling not only had all food and room and board in the region covered by the governor, he was also collecting money from the wealthy in the region in exchange for certain songs, and appreciative tips from all the townsfolk. This method of patronage allowed the arts to flourish and for our changeling to travel wherever his heart took him across the continent.
The latest riser in all of Baltimare was a unicorn. It was only an hour or two before noon when she rose from her slumber. At this point all of the town was up and about, and she was the only one not somehow active. People often complained of her laziness, and as such she was not the most popular mare in all of Baltimare, but she tended to be too easygoing to really be disliked. She tried to pull her mane and tail into something decent with mild success before making her way downstairs to her kitchen (it is worth noting that most homes in Equestria had two stories, because for some reason it was thought to be a good idea to separate the place where one woke and where their coffee was by a dark staircase). There she made a light breakfast, which would later be augmented by a late lunch, as well as a cup of coffee to dispel the lingering drowsiness.
Next she made her way out the front door with nothing but the key to her house. She lived quite a ways around the bay from Baltimare. Today Baltimare easily covers the area, but in that day she had a good half-mile walk to town. A more scenic walk you could not hope for. To her left was a vast plain, cultivated with all kinds of crops and trees, that belonged to the oldest family in Baltimare. Truly it was beautiful to see golden fields of wheat along with strong trees with vibrant, green leaves swaying in the wind. The wind itself blew from her right, out from the cool waters of the bay. Many a time she had gone swimming in the brilliant blue bay. Over the bay she could see the land that protected it, which was rather flat and allowed a view all the way across the ocean, a deep blue and mesmerizing abyss of mystery.
For now, however, she was focused on the bay, which was the subject of her research. Had she stopped to peer into her study halfway down the stairs, I would have presented you with some of the research she had done on this bay sooner, however, as she did not, you will have to go without an explanation of the mysterious magical energies rising from the bay. However beautiful it looked, it would soon be the source of a great hell to be let out into the land.
At the moment, however, all was well in Equestria and all was well in Baltimare, and seven important individuals had been introduced but conspicuously not named.