War. War never changes.
To say this is not to say that the means of war never change. Our ancestors killed each other with sword and spear up close, and from a distance they slew their fellow ponies with arrows and spells. Today we have machines that can fling pieces of metal at our foes, and our spells can wipe out entire cities in a heartbeat. But beneath the specifics, beneath the surface, war has always remained.
The power to kill was known to ponies from the very beginning. For millennia, ponies fought and feuded, and killed each other over everything, from religion, to justice, to simple psychotic rage. Only recently did we seek to forget this, after Celestia struck down Nightmare Moon and ushered in a new era of peace and prosperity. For one thousand years, ponies did not know war, but this peace was merely a dream. And all dreams do finally come to an end, for their dreamer will eventually awaken.
This awakening occurred without warning, as Equestria suddenly bolted upright upon realizing that the resources needed to support its increasingly elaborate lifestyle were in short supply, and in an unfriendly land. Disagreements turned to arguments, arguments to fights, and war re-entered the world.
Technology pushed this war forward at a breakneck pace, and it became far more dangerous and deadly than any war in the past. Equestria and the Zebra Empire pushed the world up to the brink of disaster. And then they tipped it over the edge.
On that fateful autumn day, when spellfire rained from the sky, the world as we knew it was destroyed. Everything and everypony was wiped out, except for the lucky few spared grisly deaths or worse by securing a place in underground bunkers known as Stables. But when these Stables finally opened, the residents had only the hell of the wastes to greet them, a twisted shell of what Equestria had once been.
Life was hard in the wastes, resources scarce, and not even the balefire of the megaspells had been able to burn away the darkness that had grown in ponies’ hearts. It returned stronger than ever, and ponies shot, stabbed, and killed each other all over again. War was no longer a forgotten nightmare, but a very real part of everyday life. The world may have been obliterated, rendered unrecognizable, but war remained, because war . . . war never changes.
Fallout: Equestria
The Light Within
It was in this broken and twisted world filled with war and hate that a stallion, nearly dead from his wounds, collapsed in front of the massive door to Stable 85. At least, that’s what I’ve been told, for they say that stallion was me. Truth is, I don’t remember how I got to Stable 85; in fact, I don’t remember anything at all from before this morning.