Once upon a time in the magical land of equestria… There was only war.
My name is Political-unrest, and I have been asked by the royals to compile a history of the Great War, also known as the Tyrant War.
Over the past four years I have traveled across equestria conducting research. Reading casualty reports, compiling statistics, surveying battlegrounds, reading and cataloging the propaganda of the once powerful and feared Chaos Lords, reading countless journals of and speaking with generals and other leaders who conducted the war on both sides. I peered into the minds of heroes and heretics to find the facts and viewpoints of these great poneys.
Out of all of the powerful poneys, the sensitive documents and war secrets that I was granted unfettered access to, I found that it was the personal interviews that were by far the most powerful. The everyday poneys struggling under tyrannical rule, the front line soldiers who faced madness incarnate, and in particular the children that were born during this time, lived, and only now at the end of their lives have found that friendship, despite all of the evil and depredations of war, is in fact, magic.
After I believed my work was finished I presented it to the Royals. It was when Luna, Goddess of the night, patron of the intelligence services, and my boss, called me into her private chambers that I knew something was wrong.
It wasn't until I had the copy of my report thrown at my head as I walked in the door to her private study that I realized just how right I was. Thankfully Luna, gracious as ever, caught the leather bound fifteen pound print out just before it hit me. She swiftly dismissed her protege who must have been upset over me including the interview I did with her in the report. Looking back, it was perhaps not the most tactful of thing to include in a public report, seeing as she told me about her first kiss in that interview.... and when I was dating the interviewee… but then again no one could ever really say I was the best when it came to relationships.
When I was finally alone with the princess, and she gave me a proper scolding for my foolishness, she explained that while I was very ‘thorough” in my report, she was going to edit the the interviews out. As she explained, she needed cold hard data, facts and figures, that she could work with in determining the best course of action when it came to rebuilding our now decimated country.
With me never being one to be cowed in front of an authority figure, we spent the next half an hour in very heated… discussion about her decision. In retrospect accusing the goddess of the night of ‘censorship’ and attempting to become the next chaos lord… might not have been the most appropriate way to go about preserving my precious report in its original form.
After the last accusation, Luna explained that she did not intend to destroy the interviews (with the exception of her proteges which she promptly... uselessly threw into the fire. After all what self respecting researcher dosnt have copy's of literally everything?), but instead wanted me to write a ‘bucking book’.
She explained that she fully understood both my desire to protect the narrative, and voices of the war, that would soon be lost to the ages, and her proteges desire to send my ridiculously thick report through my head… looking back, I can too.
So I quickly began work on what I believed would be my magnum opus! The “chronicles of the great war”. It was a collection of what I believed to be the most interesting and informative interviews that I had conducted during my four years of research. Unfortunately despite swiftly finding a publisher, it didn't sell very well. More than the poor sales, the fact that those that did read it could barely understand or relate with what was being said, was a blow to my ego.
It was then that I decided to do something that had, at least to my knowledge never been done before. I took those interviews, along with my research, and I wrote this book. This book is written in narrative format so as to be accessible to the readers of this and other generations who have never, and hopefully never will experience the horrors and depredations of the Tyrant War. Though these events and situations may at times seem completely outside the scope of reality and even sanity, rest assured that everything I put into this narrative actually occurred.
With that explanation, and a warning for content, I present to you “The Great Tyrant War”.