Essays Index
History series: Part 1 - Pre-Earth | Part 2 - Ancient Earth | Part 3 - Pre-Classical Era | Part 4 - Classical Era - "Era of the Two Sisters" | Part 5 - Classical Era - Reign of Chaos

A history of the second major period of the Classical Era, the era of Celestia and Luna's original reign. This part covers Discord's Reign of Chaos. See the Borderworld Pantheon and Locations series for more specific details on some of the places and events mentioned here.

Classical Era - Reign of Chaos:
Ragnarok:
The so-called Era of the Two Sisters came to an abrupt end with the onset of Ragnarok. Though the exact causes and events were lost to history, it is known that an incident of a princess being dosed with love poison caused Asgard to descend into chaos. The dragon Nidhug left his lair in Mt. Canterlot to lay siege to the kingdom, joined by a resurgent force of demons and chimeras led by Hel, Fenrir, Paradox, and Hixelkicks. In the aftermath of the battle, Valhalla was left in ruins, the entire alicorn royal family was dead, and Loki and Svaðilfari rose again as Discord and Order respectively.

The surviving population of Asgard were forced to flee to Equestria across the Rainbow Bridge to escape the devastation, inspiring the later myths of Discord as the Devil who destroyed Paradise and chased the angels back to Earth. Many others also fell in battle, including Hel, Fenrir, and even Agamarath somehow, whose involvement in the battle was unclear, save that he was supposedly imprisoned within the Eye of Chaos afterwards.

As a result of Hel's death, the demigod Sleipnir, an offspring of Loki and Svaðilfari, inherited control of Helheim, and fashioned it into his own dark empire, while Order left the Nine Realms entirely and travelled back out into space. Celestia and Luna arrived late to the battle, and tried to defeat Discord with Mjolnir and Gungnir, the weapons of their fallen forebears. However, they were no match for the reawakened Discord, and he swiftly defeated them and turned his sights on Equestria.

The Battle of Discord:
Following the defeat of the Royal Sisters, Discord travelled to Midgard and began his takeover of Equestria, beginning by turning their Everfree castle upside down, heading east to terrorise the major Equestrian cities where most of the alicorns had fled to, and then moving southwards down the coast. The Three Tribes, desperate to neutralise Discord, assembled their forces in Baltimare and marched in pursuit, finally catching him near the Saddle Horn Peaks just south of the Appaloosan Mountain Range. There, they clashed in what became known as the Battle of Discord, a confrontation in which Discord single-handedly defeated three entire armies, at the cost of permanently scarring the land with his magic.

After the battle, Discord returned north, and began systematically dismantling the governments of Equestria. He kidnapped various national and local leaders, either driving them mad or scattering them to the far corners of the Earth, and forcibly dispersed all remaining politicians, bureaucrats, law enforcement, and military personnel. Discord's stated goal was to bring freedom to Equestria by reducing it to a state of total anarchy, and in the latter regard, he was successful. Chancellor Puddinghead, Commander Hurricane, Princess Platinum, and King Bullion all disappeared during the Reign of Chaos, never to be heard from again, and the Earth Pony Republic, Pegasus Legion, and Unicorn Kingdom all eventually collapsed under Discord's onslaught without their leadership.

Global Anarchy:
Discord's Reign of Chaos was a global dark age and period of strife which lasted anywhere between ten years and two centuries depending on the region, as not even the flow of time was consistent under Discord's influence (although in the most stable and protected locations, it is generally believed to have lasted for around fifteen to twenty years).

After the collapse of the Three Tribes, Discord set his sights on other lands, and over the next several years spread his chaos to Equestria's neighbours as well, toppling every nation he came across one by one, and leaving the land warped and distorted by his strange magic. Major cities and infrastructure were generally left intact, and access to food, water, and medical care were not notably disrupted, but life otherwise became almost unrecognisable under Discord's rule (or lack thereof). Organisations of all kinds were forcibly dispersed, leaders of every stripe from kings and emperors to small town mayors were deposed and humiliated, random individuals were gripped by fey moods that caused them to behave impulsively and uninhibited, pushing their friends and family away, and the landscape itself became a mad kaleidoscope of twisting, clashing chaos.

Discord's chaos effectively collapsed civilization on every continent, as he repeated the devastation which he had brought to the Heartland in Thoroupe, Zebrica, Neighsia, and the Southlands. Of all the lands he struck, Zebrica got off the lightest, having comparatively few large empires and kingdoms for Discord to break up in the first place, while the Southlands were among the hardest hit, reduced to ruins so effectively and so thoroughly that they never fully recovered, leaving their many treasures and ancient temples to gather dust for centuries after.

However, not every kingdom fell before Discord. Several survived by virtue of falling beneath his notice, such as the undersea kingdom of Aquastria. Some were simply spared the worst of Discord's wrath, such as Tauros, where he had spent some time and forged ties with the royal family as Loki prior to Ragnarok. And a rare few even resisted Discord outright, such as the Crystal Empire and the Valley of Eden, both of which possessed powerful magical artefacts capable of keeping Discord out of their capitals, although both still lost control of their outlying territories and were reduced to city-states.

The Law of the Land:
As Discord's chaos became the status quo, the world adjusted accordingly. The removal of law enforcement in every major city worldwide led to an explosion in crime and the rise of countless gangs and petty warlords, depopulating the cities as ordinary citizens fled to the countryside in droves. The abundance of food and the randomness of the weather, terrain, and even gravity rendered most traditional forms of trade and industry impossible, and sometimes even redundant. And in the pockets of accelerated time, generations were born, lived, and died knowing nothing but Discord's world of chaos, regressing back into primitive tribal herds and superstitious cults.

Though most of these changes were temporary, some would have lasting effects even beyond the end of the Reign of Chaos. In Thoroupe, Discord created both Cerberus and the minotaur race as tools to destroy the Arachnian Empire, while a political crisis in Tauros allowed the ambitious young Prince Tirek, already a dabbling warlock, to launch a successful coup against his father, King Vorak. In the Crystal Empire, the unreliability of measuring time by the solar cycles led to the development of "moons" as a unit of measurement, derived from the cycle of the moon's magical field. And in the Heartland, wandering deer tribes took refuge in the Everfree Forest again, founding the kingdom of Thicket, while the wizard Comet Tail the Starry-Eyed magically sealed and hid away the village of Bales near Canterlot, intending to protect its vast stores of knowledge from Discord.

Another major development during the Reign of Chaos was the formation of the Chaos Cult, as many ponies and other beings turned to Discord's side out of madness, desperation, or even simple opportunism. Though Discord did not care for insincere flatterers, and if anything only tormented them harder, he used the true believers as his spies and enforcers to keep the chaos churning in every community which they inhabited. Many cultists were even given enchanted tattoos, becoming living hosts to complex matrices of unpredictable spells which could activate at any time, any number of which could have been essential to advancing one of Discord's many mysterious and unspecified plans.

Heroes of the Reign of Chaos:
Throughout this period, heroes and champions of many stripes rose to face Discord, attempting to defeat him once and for all. Amongst the first was Clover the Clever, who attempted to avenge her fallen friends and kingdom by wielding the full power of the Fire of Friendship against Discord, only for him to easily overpower her and nearly snuff it out for good. Driven to despair and near madness by this defeat, Clover later cast herself into a bonfire and burned alive as a martyr to rekindle the Fire of Friendship once more, in hopes that the next hero to wield it would find it strong enough to defeat Discord with her sacrifice. Sadly, Clover's last wish was never fulfilled, though years later her martyrdom would be honoured by the Church of the Royal Sisters, who canonised her as saint.

Star Swirl the Bearded and his son, Sigurd, also quested to defeat Discord in an adventure known to history as the Volsunga Saga, which saw them face dragons, dark cultists, and all manner of other monsters. Though they too ultimately failed in their goal, their adventure became the stuff of legend, and Star Swirl famously struck a rare effective blow against Discord when he used his mastery of chronomancy to trap them both in an endless loop of repeating time, a limbo which kept Discord contained and seemingly defeated for well over two weeks before he broke them both out. As retaliation for this, Discord cursed Star Swirl and his entire bloodline with the Mark of Chaos, a birthmark appearing on the backs of their necks which attracts tragedy and misfortune, and which still appears in Star Swirl's descendants today.

Discord the Defender:
With the Chaos Cult acting as his eyes and ears across the planet, Discord would periodically disappear during the Reign of Chaos to either go time-travelling, or to visit outer space or other universes, during which time he both kickstarted the Neighgyptian Revolution under Anubis, and also became known to the Galactic Alliance of Andromeda. Many of his off-world excursions were purely for fun, but Discord also frequently had to defend the Borderworld from interdimensional incursions and alien invasions, to which he had made the planet vulnerable. One of his most notable such feats was killing the star dragon, the last of an ancient species of world-eaters, the bones of which still float in high orbit over the planet today.

Discord also frequently had to defend the inhabitants of the Borderworld from each other, as the gangs and petty warlords which had risen in the absence of law tried to exploit his chaos for their own ends. Discord spent many years either directly or indirectly toppling aspiring dictators, thwarting organised uprisings or invasions, and generally keeping anybody from filling the power vacuum left by his enforced anarchy. One occasion saw him protecting the city of New Manesterdam from Griffish raiders by bringing the Statue of Unity to life to fight them off. In another instance, Discord defended the Heartland from an invasion attempt by Queen Teneblight of the Dragon Empire, which ended with the fall of both the Dragon Empire and Yakyakistan, the liberation of the goats, and the scattering of dragonkind across the planet.

The End of Chaos:
Discord was eventually defeated by Celestia and Luna, who, much like their mentor Star Swirl, had spent much of the Reign of Chaos questing in search of artefacts capable of countering him. Their journeys took them to Zebrica and the Southlands in search of the Artefacts of the Ancients, to Neighsia to seek the help of Mage Meadowbrook, to the protected cities of the Crystal Empire and Daylight in hopes of borrowing the Crystal Heart or the King Machine, and in their darkest moments they even sought after the likes of the Alicorn Amulet or the Inspiration Manifestation. However, their paths eventually led them back home to their Everfree castle, where they were forced to confront the belligerent deer who had since moved in. The deer unintentionally served as the Tree of Harmony's trial for the Royal Sisters, who demonstrated their virtues by dealing peacefully with the inhabitants of Thicket, proving themselves worthy to wield the Elements of Harmony.

Sensing the threat of the Elements, which he had dealt with in previous incarnations, Discord quickly crafted the Plundervines as a contingency plan. It was his intention to feign ignorance, strike a pose, and let Celestia and Luna turn him to stone and think that they had defeated him. The plan was then for the Plundervines to sprout up shortly afterwards, choking and killing the Tree while it was vulnerable without the Elements, while also kidnapping and containing Celestia and Luna so that they could not protect it. With the Tree's death, the lock on the Elements would then reset, freeing Discord. Without the Tree's safeguards, he could then easily steal the Elements from the imprisoned princesses before letting them go again, now helpless to stop him.

The one flaw in Discord's plan was the effect of the Elements, which did not just imprison Discord, but also purged all of his chaos magic from the surrounding area, starving the Plundervines of the energy they required to overcome the Tree's defences. With this, the Plundervines never sprouted, and Discord truly was defeated, a victim of his own hubris. This event marked the end of the Reign of Chaos, and the return of the rule of law to the Heartland.

Acknowledgements:
-Discord's capacity for fucking with time and its potential to explain some of the weird timeline issues of his reign was suggested by Forderz in a comment on one of Oliver's Random Points About Canon blogs.

random individuals were gripped by fey moods that caused them to behave impulsively and uninhibited, pushing their friends and family away

Did they at least create impossibly beautiful artifacts, the craftscreatureship of which being of the highest quality?

As retaliation for this, Discord cursed Star Swirl and his entire bloodline with the Mark of Chaos, a birthmark appearing on the backs of their necks which attracts tragedy and misfortune, and which still appears in Star Swirl's descendants today.

Okay, as a citizen of the Internet, I must ask: Is that a freaking JoJo reference? (And even if it isn't, I wonder which familiar modern ponies bear that mark.)

And all that effort in putting down petty tyrants and would-be conquerors... No wonder Discord settled for the current arrangement. So much less work on his part to sustain it.

7436720

I must ask: Is that a freaking JoJo reference?

Also kind of a Berserk reference at the same time TBH.

I wonder which familiar modern ponies bear that mark.

Quite a few! It actually shows up in several of my stories, most prominently in Van Helsing, since it's a JoJo crossover (among other things). Though, not sure if you remember it, but you've actually read one major character reveal scene already in Dragonfall. Chapter ten, if you need a reminder.

A few canon characters also have it, though the only one I can reveal here without spoiling any future story plans is Time Turner.