As we know, the Tree of Harmony was created by the first Bearer of the Element of Honesty and Starswirl the Bearded as a sort of safety deposit box for the Elements.

However, the Elements themselves predate Equestria, stretching back to the War of the Deer.

Who created them and why?

THE CREATORS OF THE ELEMENTS?

The Ring-Tails are native to a small island near Zebrica, and live in primitive treetop villages. However, any archaeologist will tell you that these primates have a long history...

The ancient ring-tails (often just called Lemurs) had a civilization on par with ancient Shetlantis and Lemuria (Which, ironically, had nothing to do with lemurs). It is believed that they helped the Antelopes during the War of the Deer by building a sort of superweapon, but at the end of the War, they hid the weapon away, then used a massive megaspell to destroy their civilization and blast their entire race back to the stone age.

If the Elements were created by the Lemurs, they are a remarkable piece of work, having altered their safety box beyond its intended purposes- the Tree was made to hold the Elements, but NOT to create a magic box containing the power of pure friendship or a full-sized castle.

THE PROOF

Why does this put the Lemurs as the potential creators of the Elements? It was explained by a former treasure hunter when the box was being studied, before Tirek attempted his recent take-over

"Ancient Lemurs were big on making powerful artifacts, devices and weapons, but they were also big on really redundant safety features. They were the first culture to create combination locks and safety triggers."

"See, you have to know your Lemurs. Paranoid little primates. The Elements? Very Lemur-designed mentality. Think about it: a harmony super-weapon that requires at least two to six bearers who embody the six principles encoded in the gems. All of them have to be in agreement for it to work, and if any of the Bearers tries to use their Elements against another Bearer, they cease to work for those Bearers permanently. That's a lot of safety features."

"And this this box? That just screams ancient Lemur influence. I made a few preemptive attempts to open the box... before rethinking it, that is... and learned a few things. Six pre Cirro-Roamin thaumatic style locks, each with a different key. Pick-proof. Internally aligned so that all six keys have to be inserted, and turned simultaneously. Those are the kind of safeguards the Lemurs put on their most powerful and dangerous artifacts. As powerful as the Elements of Harmony were? Safe to say, whatever's in this box is most likely an upgrade."

In addition to this, according to Sunset Shimmer, the Elements even contain an emergency fallback. If one of the Elements is separated from the others- say by taking it into a pocket or parallel dimension, or by one of them being deactivated somehow- it will unlock certain default abilities that the Bearer can use.

This is all important, as the Lemurs were SUPER-cautious, because they knew how dangerous their weapons could be. The last time the ancient Lemurs used one of their widgets that had six keys, a series of islands sank beneath the surface of the Grey Ocean.

THE ARGUMENT

The problem is that while the design of the box the Elements created fits the Lemur theory, the Elements themselves don't fit the function.

The Elements are completely benevolent, never actually killing anything, explicitly designed to avoid doing genuine harm, no matter how aggressively used, while other Lemur weapons were often fatal (hence the whole island-sinking).

So does this mean they didn't make the Elements?

Not exactly...

The Elements are very malleable as far as superweapons go, as evidenced by the fact that they have become infused with the Six Harmonious Virtues which ponies and a few other species revere. It's entirely possible that before they were hidden, they were FAR more destructive...

WEAKNESSES?

It's more or less a given fact that all spells have some weakness. Fire spells are cancelled by water, the killing curse can be averted by bananas, and even the strongest shield spell is no match for my ancestor Morpheus's famous tactical shield-breaking maneuver

so it's obvious the Elements have a weakness... but we can't determine what it is. The most obvious answer might be if they were separated, but their fallback system prevents this.

The other option is pure concentrated chaos, but this seems to also not be the case...

5014535
That shield-breaking bit? Fucking hilarious.

5014581 thanks!

5014599 Although is it necessary to have all of these posts stickied? It's getting hard to navigate this forum since there's so many posts now. We need to group these together.

5014608 agreed. I already have a post for sapient race navigation and country navigation

the general idea is that sticky posts are "canon" to the universe of this group. it's just that since i'm the one who regularly posts, mine overtake the others. I read all new posts in the group, or they send me an email, and I either yea or nay its canon... icity... ness...

there are other "canon posts" besides mine.

5014624 Alright. So what should we do then?

5014668 "Navigation Posts", or "Locators", tend to cover a specific subject. they are divided as necessary, and contain links within them

the titles are in all caps

examples include the Sapient Race Locator and the Country Locator

that's all I have so far.

Oh yeah the slam your face into the shield until it gives strategy!

5015260 it. works.

5014677 Well aight