Hey Everybody!

Just wanted to get a few general guidelines out on the table for those who want their stories to be within the "canon" of the universe. Obviously you're free to take them in whatever directions you want otherwise. This thread will contain spoilers for Last Pony on Earth, so if you haven't read it, please do before coming back here.

1. PoV characters must not be human. The HPI will be explored in future stories, so portraying someone from it as a main character is almost guaranteed to render your story non-canon eventually.
2. Characters should probably be from earth. They may be from Equestria, but take a look at "Equestrian Characters" below if you want to stay with the universe canon.
3. Characters must take the form of one of the races from the Friendship is Magic property. The show is generally preferred. Ponies, Bat-Ponies, Changelings, Gryphons, Zebras, Minoaturs are all fine. However, as a general rule, the "pony" races are most concentrated in north America, which other races are more likely to appear in other locations.
4. No Alicorns, Draconequus, or other godlike beings, except for those already extant.
5. The "World-building" of the far future is still ongoing, so be aware stories set too far in the future may be rendered non-canon by future stories.
6. You do NOT have to write your story as a journal, or post on a daily schedule.

For those who are wondering, here are a few more facts about the general process of what happened to the world. Chances are these facts aren't known to anyone in-universe, (or if they are, it's knowledge hard won).

1. The number of people left behind is about 1/5000,000 worldwide, with substantial local variation. In Last Pony on Earth, it seems the survival rate leans heavily towards the 1,000,000 level, given a total of 4 characters have appeared in an area with a population of 3.84 million. This is just a probability, though, and it's possible for small towns to have multiple ponies or big cities to have none at all. Survivors are rarely on their own: Generally where one appears more already have or will follow.

2. There is no viable criteria for predicting who gets left behind. Families are no more likely to stay together than groups of friends, and being older or younger does not seem to be a factor. Having useful skills or not having them doesn't help, nor does how "nice" you are. Instead, those left behind are those who can adapt to having a new body the best, those whose souls match their new body the best.

3. The transformation process itself is often imperfect. Nature-loving hippies can be deprived of the nature magic of earth ponies, just as pilots end up grounded zebras and the most loving people in the world end up changelings. In very rare cases, the transformation can also switch around more than just somebody's species, such as leaving them younger or as the wrong sex. This process does not seem to be reversible and has no clear cause, however you can always tell someone who ended up a mistake because of their...

4. Cutie Mark. Most left behind already have cutie marks, corresponding to their greatest passion or talent, and conveying the usual benefits of a cutie mark (obviously Equestrian species without cutie marks don't get them). Children or infants too young don't start with them though, as well as ponies who haven't discovered their "passion" in life, whatever that might be. This includes those who think they have, but in reality have yet to learn whatever their greatest talent is. Those rare cases of improper transformations (see point 3) also never have their cutie mark to start. Transformed ponies acquire their cutie marks exactly like native Equestrians, and the range of cutie marks extends to objects and things that might not exist in Equestria (such as automobiles, planes, ect)

5. Transformation imparts very limited instincts, such as reflexive ways to move and use the pony body. It does not rewrite the human personality. It does change other unconscious factors though, such as changing the tastes preferred and putting a greater subconscious weight on friendship and companionship. All can be ignored. Becoming an Equestrian does not rewrite the mind.

6. Without a teacher, unicorn magic and flight and weather magic and so-on might take months or even years to learn. Other things, such as walking on clouds or an earth pony's durability and strength, are accessible right away.

7. All animals are becoming gradually more intelligent the greater the time elapsed since May 23, 2015, the day when the "Human Depopulation Event" took place. These changes are most centralized in mammals, particularly hoofed species. Many other species have noticed smaller changes, however. Earth horses have not become ponies, however, this effect seems most pronounced on them. Eventually all animal species will reach the intelligences they demonstrate on Friendship is Magic, and then stop. This means that non-hoofed animals with not form advanced tribes and cultures, no matter how much time passes.

Hoofed creatures, on the other hand, will (over a few hundred years) begin to develop the concepts of individual identity, language, tribe, ect. Those with contact to ponies might learn much faster, while those in isolation might taken even longer. Eventually, native populations of animals such as deer and bison might become their own tribal societies, similar to those we observe on the show.

Other animals won't ever develop language, and might eventually be taught to recognize ponies as the natural "stewards" of the planet, just as animals seem to recognize ponies this way in Equestria.

8. Vehicles. Moving vehicles with human occupants all disappeared the moment the Event took place, vanishing in that instant that took the rest of humanity. They left without a trace, though there is one exception. Should every passenger of the vehicle be one of the few that stay behind, the vehicle will remain at its previous course and speed, leaving a stunned pilot/driver to recover from a total bodily transformation without crashing and killing everyone aboard. Otherwise, the plane/bus/car will vanish, and none of its passengers will stay behind. This process isn't entirely perfect, and irregularities are more likely the further from earth's surface you were.

9. In order of commonality (in North America), the most common species are: Earth Pony, Unicorn, Pegasus, Zebra, thestral, all other races combined.

10. Despite what you might expect, nuclear radiation from power plants is actually not that common. This is because the HPI has devoted all their resources to visiting plants and collecting both spent and unspent fuel. They do not get to visit every plant before cooling ponds overheat however, and minor nuclear disasters are more likely in Asia or Europe (which they visited after North America).

11. While it seems in some ways that Earth is becoming like Equestria, the orbit of the sun and moon and the weather remain stable in their pre-collapse patterns unless pony magic interferes with it. Even in these cases, it is likely that normal earth weather will re-assert itself if the magic is not actively maintained. The magic to permanently take control of earth's weather does not presently exist in all Earth's Pegasai and unicorns combined; much greater numbers and training would be required for this to happen. Changing the weather locally, even in an area as wide as a small town, might still be possible for a determined team of pegasai, but worldwide things are going the way they always have been.

12. The MLP franchise and fandom as we know them do not exist in the Ponies After People universe. There are no bronies.

13. Characters need not begin on May 23, 2015. As a matter of fact, they might be sent as far as 10,000 years into the future. Characters like this will travel with all their clothing and anything else they may've been carrying, or any vehicle they were driving or riding. In every case, they have no memory of the lost time and believe the date to be May 23, 2015. Of course they may soon see evidence to suggest otherwise...

14. Due to factors in the main story, satellite phones still work. There is no way to discover this without characters trying them, however.

I'll probably add more facts as they become more obvious in the story.

There are a few unique factions in the universe. You may use them in your stories, however canon stories must follow the rules below:

Between the dates of May 23, 2015 and August 9, 2015, there were Equestrians on earth. It's not clear exactly how many ponies traveled to earth. They might've appeared in any part of the world, and appeared to travel around at random. These ponies...
1. Are most likely unicorns, or else a team of multiple ponies that includes at least one unicorn (otherwise, they can't get back home)
2. Are NOT Mane 6, Princesses, or anyone else important from Equestria. Nopony who was needed back home could risk being cut off and stranded on earth forever. Canon ponies are okay so long as they don't meet either of these criteria.
3. Are likely to know all the information Luna gives to Lonely Day during the big reveal. They are not likely to give any of it.
4. Instead, they're looking for signs of civilization. For ponies of any race that have become leaders. These they're going to invite to come back to Equestria with them, to meet Princess Luna.
5. Anypony they take will be given a tour that will keep them in Equestria until sometime after august 3rd. At that point, they'll be told that they "can't be given the answers after all", and returned to wherever they came from.
6. These ponies will be told to "Find Lonely Day", and likely be given many gifts, including minor magical items, just not the answers to what really happened. They will not be given spellbooks or guides to Equestrian magic for the other races, however.
7. After August 9th, Equestrian ponies will not be found on earth, unless some disaster strands them and they can't get back before Equestria drifts apart.
8. Ponies who wish to might remain in Equestria on the day they "should" be sent home. If they do, they're kept isolated until Equestria and earth are separated, and only then are they told all the juicy secrets. They won't live long enough to see earth again, though they're likely to live as celebrities and have many interviews/ect about what earth was like/what becoming a pony was like/ ect.

Any human characters left behind after the event are members of the Human Preservation Initiative (HPI), a multinational organization headquartered in Raven Rock. About 500 total people managed to survive the event as humans inside. They...
1. Are extremely vulnerable to magic, which to humans is a deadly radiation.
2. Require shield suits or bulky generators when outside of their bunker.
3. Use technology perhaps five years ahead of what existed in 2015, all the experimental stuff that wasn't available to the public at the time of the Event. As time progresses, their technology continues to increase, but slowly.
4. Their shields produce a sensation of extreme fear in all animals and magical creatures (including former humans). Former humans are much better at ignoring this feeling than animals or natural-born ponies (the children of former humans count as natural ponies for this purpose). Some ponies are known to respond with aggression to this feeling, though most simply flee as quickly as they can.
5. At first, the HPI ignored ponies, believing them to be animals. As the Event progressed, some of their scouts died due to proximity to a few angry ponies. Following this disaster, and until July 27, 2015, the HPI had a "shoot to kill" order for all ponies they saw. The pretense of a single pony in a mission area would usually be reason to evacuate all ground personnel and attack the pony with remotely-operated drones.
6. After July 27th, the HPI stopped shooting ponies, and instead used drones to instruct them to leave the areas they needed to use.
7. The HPI's main focus after the Event was to gather fuel from nuclear power plants (both spent and otherwise) as well as to properly shut down each plant they visited. This task continued until they recovered fuel from every plant they could, all over the planet. After that, they turned their attention on gathering valuable technology. Machinery, servers, raw materials, ect. By then, they'd taken to avoiding ponies, and prefer targets with no arial signs of pony occupation. They won't come within several miles of obvious pony settlements even while the "shoot to kill" order is in place.
8. The HPI rarely formally interacts with ponies directly. They maintain a formal alliance with a single settlement, Alexandria. Anypony wishing to deal with them must use Alexandria as a go-between.
9. The location of their headquarters is a closely guarded secret, and anypony who travels too close would likely be killed long before they got too near.
10. Are a multicultural, multiethnic organization. With very limited exception, none of its members are older than 25 (except for skilled engineers and technicians). After July 27, they are still likely to respond fearfully to ponies and avoid them, using drones to interact at distance when total avoidance is not possible.
11. Its ships, tanks, and people are completely immune to magic. Unicorns cannot levitate their weapons, weather pegasai create falls apart when HPI planes fly through them, and earth ponies lose their strength when they get too near. This effect doesn't last forever; sooner or later their antimagic shields will be overwhelmed and fail, causing near-instant death to all humans inside.
12. Are not hostile to ponies as a whole after July 27, 2015. There is no pony-human war (yet).

Right after the Event, a few simple unicorn spells are enough to cause the shield to fail catastrophically. After a few decades, their shields have shrunken from the size of shipping containers to the size of milk-crates, and can resist active magical attack for several minutes. These shields also allow them to travel into areas irradiated by nuclear fallout, areas that might kill ponies who tried to venture inside.

In-Universe Resources:

The following are guides to various species created by characters from the Ponies After People universe. While not arbitrary canon the same as the list above, it contains generally accurate information that may be helpful if you have a character of a particular race in your story.

Thestral/Batpony

More will be added if/when they're created.