So, does anyone have any worldbuilding ideas for Mustangia? Here's mine (which is going to be used in Seasons of the Heart). Mustangia has no cities, only tent villages. It is a highly mountainous land filled with wide meadows and covered in flowers and and forests. It is home to two races, Deer who live in the forests and Mustang Ponies who live in the valleys. Mustangs began as a religious movement among Earth Ponies who believed civilization was unnatural and Ponies should live as their primitive ancestors did. This was around six-hundred years ago. They live in herds made up of one stallion and many mares and foals. They have no agriculture only grazing. Mustangs were persecuted in Equestria and driven out, despite Celestia's attempts to grant them protection. They migrated to the Great Valley, which was under Deer rule, and obtained permission from the Deer King to settle there. They fought off invasions from the Minotaur Union who soon discovered that Mustangs will ferociously defend their homeland. They are a protectorate of Equestria, having no government of their own. Equestria later aided Mustangia against the Roan Empire. Mustangs are fiercely proud of their heritage, simple in their tastes and often uncomfortable in "big, confining rooms" as they have no buildings.

Equestrian Ponies often see them as oddball eccentrics, but many admire the purity of their way of life and have joined them.

5801447
Not really. Mustangia is one of the fifteen provinces and states of the Concord Union of Equestria. It's one of the three western plain provinces, with Haven to the north, Everfree to the south, the Western Bounds Territory to the west (on the other side of the Drakenridge Mountains) and the Free State of Cannover to the east (up on the Asturcón Plateau).

It is the bread basket of Equestria, with some of the most fertile land on Atlas along the Vanner River.

I Like it!!!

5801447
I have a somewhat similar idea of the place.

In my headcanon, the Vale of Mustangia was originally a griffon territory - sort of a free-range hunting ground home to earthponies, cattle and all kinds of other species, enclosed by natural land borders. With permanent settlement harshly discouraged by their avian overlords, they lived as wanderers, learning to hide themselves in the forests and even defend themselves with primitive anti-air weaponry. (Griffon tolerance for these practices varied, but at most they were able to drive it underground for a generation.)

The news of ponies being hunted by griffons as food took time to to reach the ears of the Equestrian Crown in a credible manner, and even then, political reasons meant that Princess Celestia leaned on Griffonstone to stop it rather than intervening herself. They did not, and in the course of time this and other differences led to a war - one during which Equestria managed to seize both the Vale almost accidentally while in pursuit of their other strategic objectives. (The borderlands which had previously separated it from Equestria became the province of Vanhoover, which to this day has a notable griffon minority.)

With new lands claimed, pony settlers slowly trickled in. In the largely empty Vanhoover, they came to build and farm in the same way as would later be seen in the Mild West. However Mustangia came with a sizeable native population of both ponies and non-ponies, and the new governor, the earthpony Sheer Cliff, was given orders to "bring our lost sisters into the civilised fold" but not so much in the way of funds to do so (the war had been expensive). So she took the natural and sensible route of appealing to the Crown the public wealthy cattle barons looking for a place far from the prying eyes of the law. (Well, it makes sense if you realise that her husband's family were big in that field.)

You see, sometime in the past century slavery had been officially abolished in Equestria, which meant cattle and other livestock had rights now - and while most former owners had been well-compensated and still largely managed to hold on to their herds, quite a few were feeling insecure in their social position - what if Celestia tried to give cows citizenship next? (It may seem ridiculous looking back now, but in that age many suspected that the abolition was just a lead-in to full equality for the former slave races - as did in fact happen with donkeys.)

The promise of a new land, far from Crown oversight and with a substantial native cattle population as well as room to pasture them and even opportunities for black-market meat trade with the griffons - well t's no wonder they were as drawn to the place as if it was under a "want-it need-it spell". (If they considered the native pony population at all, it was a a recruitable cheap workforce, with the more generous-minded ones thinking of it as a way of civilizing them.)

To be continued (if anyone's interested...)

6812999
Fascinating.

Anyway, the barons came to Mustangia one by one, some driving their herds and others looking to gather new ones from the native cattle. With Sheer Cliff's backing, they enclosed most of the land as pasture - but as more of them arrived, the slices of land available became smaller, and the cattle more confined.

And of course, the native ponies found the land they had once wandered freely (albeit under constant threat of predation) closed off with fences made by logging the forests. There were also quite a few heavy-hooved attempts to encourage them to move to the trading posts that were springing up and/or to take low-paid work as labourers and guards. And while the degree that they felt kinship with their cattle neighbours may have been a little exaggerated in popular history, they certainly got on better with them than the outsider ponies who looked down on them for their ways - and many wondered how long it would be before they would be rounded up, too.

So it's little surprise that over time, tensions grew between the locals and the settlers - a bit of trespassing on pastures here, a little harvesting of all the good plants there. Eventually, things came to a head, and several bands began attacking any "civilised" pony that approached. Others broke down pasture fences (which led to cattle being confined to their barns) or even attacked and burned storehouses - to those who had lived under the shadow of griffon rule, ponies who walked the ground like them did not seem so much of a threat.

But with the Governor on their side, the barons could set loose the military on the "savages" while bringing in mercenaries to protect their farms. And it didn't stop there - Sheer Cliff soon decared that there was no point in waiting for the locals to seek out civilisation on their own, and began a mass program of gathering and "educating" them. Of course, this education was paid for by the barons' taxes, so it was only natural that they would have first say in how it was conducted...

Those Mustangians who weren't rounded up fled to the forests and hills and became guerrillas of a sort. None of them thought to look outside for help - those among them who knew of wider Equestria had no reason to suspect that the barons were anything but representative of it, and did the governor not act in Celestia's name? But many of them also realised that this was different than the griffons, who had picked them off one by one while maintaining a stable population - the settlers, while not quite so individually willing to kill, wanted to end them as a culture. It looked like the last age of the Mustangians was nigh...

6813062
A bit of a problem - If as you and I suggest they are non-farming wanderers, why is her cutie mark a chicken?

6813200
Her special talent is gathering eggs.

6813243
That's farm work - i.e, agriculture.

6813246
Maybe she collects them from wild chickens-which would be very dangerous. Maybe she hunts chickens.

6813250
Are eggs even useful to ponies who probably don't bake?

So who saved the day? Well their names are Mustangian legend, so there's no need for me to repeat them - the brave band of creatures who took a chance on Harmony and brought word of what was going on in Mustangia to Princess Celestia herself. And just in time, too - the conflict was escalating. with Sheer Cliff and her backers stirring up Vanhooverites against the allied locals and manoeuvring sympathetic Guard units and mercenaries into position for a final purge.

Celestia's order stood down most of the Guard, but some of the barons foolishly moved anyway, perhaps hoping to eliminate inconvenient witnesses or solidify their position as a fait accompli. The Guard and the Mustangians actually ended up working (warily) together to suppress the rebels in short, rather one-sided conflict.

(to be continued)

6813250
(Yep, it's alive again. Or at least, finished.)

After the fighting was over, Celestia had the rebel cattle barons' land broken up and appointed a native Mustangian, Riverbed, as Governor in Sheer Cliff's place. One of those who had journeyed to inform Celestia, she had shown the most interest in Equestrian society, and the Princess charged her with bringing it's benefits to the inhabitants of Mustangia - pony and otherwise - without force or the loss of their traditional way of life. It... was a lot harder than she expected (and she wasn't expecting easy) and the process took a couple more governors to complete, but by the end of the century the province was recognisable as modern Mustangia.

Speaking of modern Mustangia, it is still the least urbanised province in Equestria, and unlike the runners up ,that's not because it's full of small villages and hamlets. The only permanent settlements are a handful of towns, housing only a quarter of the native population (closer to three-quarters in winter) but almost all of the necessary facilities for modern Equestrian civilisation, from schools to hospitals. Most of these towns actually have more cows in them than ponies, the less intelligent creatures having no real cultural attachment to the nomadic lifestyle and preferring the security of settled living. (Some would say that this is a sign they are actually the smarter ones.)

The remaining pony tribes still stay on the move, only stopping at a town for a few days when their carefully-planned travel paths pass through. In the wild they still gather food and supplies in the traditional way, but one might wonder where they get the bits to purchase goods and services during theses stopovers. The answer is a mix of winter jobs and tourism - the Mustangian lifestyle has been successfully promoted as an alternative to outsiders for a long time, but it was the coming of the train lines (well, line) to the province that launched a true boom in getaways for bored urbanites and even farmers.

Nowadays most herds have several "guests" running with them, accepted with varying degrees of grace - the fees they pay are shared among the herd more-or-less equally. The experience is enhanced by the Mustangian weather, which is only minimally curated compared to the Equestrian standard - it actually gets natural winter from over the Northern Mountains, although holidays in said season are rare given that most of the herds hunker down in town for it.

Despite all this, Mustangia still doesn't exactly break even, and much of it's modernity is funded by national taxes, which does cause some divisive opinions. Some say that the Mustangians are long overdue to choose between their traditional lifestyle and modern conveniences, and cutting off the free money would force them to. Others say that said culture is in fact being artificially preserved in a theme-park form as an exotic experience for Equestrians. And the recent first contact with the buffalo of the Mild West, who live a very similar lifestyle, has added a new layer of complication to the province which prides itself on it's simple ways.

6963175
Interesting.

6963854
Just glad to finish it, really. Feel free to ask questions!