The Lake Trot Crisis
The Lake Trot Crisis
Lake Trot today is both a recreational site and the largest freshwater source for Manehattan. Every year some twelve-million tourists flock to its sandy-white beaches, and young lovers rent out the famed paddle boats for a traditional voyage. At some twelve-thousand square miles it has the third largest surface area of any lake in Equestria, and with a maximum depth of eight-thousand feet (due to its ancient rift origins) it is the deepest known body of freshwater in the world. It is well noted for the salty hot spring that feeds into Trot Creek (a distributary of the Manehattan River) two miles upstream from the lake itself, which has been a hot spot for those wanting to soak in its waters, long since rumored to hold innate magical medicinal properties.
Before the crisis that takes its name, Lake Trot was very much as it is today: local ponies would swim near its shores and soak up rays if there wasn’t work to be done. However, in 16 BW those same beaches were also home to the majority of the armed forces for all three of the tribes, this due to how the lake being a source of fresh water was arguably more important at the time than it was before or since. For the better part of a century, the climate of the River Valley and the surrounding territories was dropped slowly but steadily. By the year 17 BW, the temperature was cold year-round, resulting in smaller bodies of water, from ponds and other lakes to some streams, creeks and brooks, freezing over for longer periods of time each year. Due in part to its depth and to Trot Creek being warmed by the salty hot spring up stream, Lake Trot managed to still maintain largely unfrozen even in the dead of winter. As one Hyracotherium soldier wrote to his family while stationed there:
“Looking out to that there big old lake, so vast in scale I can’t help but catch myself thinking it a sea, with waves and gentle pounding on the shore lulling me to sleep at night, I can’t help but think of Prayerful Pond back on the farm Ma, and how we can’t swim in it, or even draw water from it for the animals or the crops. This lake is a treasure, and if it should fall, I scarce think what will happen to the farm you and Pa and all of us young ones have worked so hard to keep from failing.”
Of course, the lake itself had been strategically important for centuries before. Such a vast natural resource, in this divisive political climate, could not be allowed in the total control of any one of the tribes, regardless as to whether or not the parties needed it. And so, the three tribes metaphorically jumped on the lake and tyrannically negotiated the rights each tribe had to it.
In the end, the final result was that Lake Trot became the corner for all three of the tribes’ borders, and in fact was the only area in the River Valley where all three tribes met. It would be the furthest south the Kingdom of Unicorns would reach, a peninsula of Unicorn influence over the whole northeastern shore of the lake, all to control Trot Creek and the allegedly magical hot spring and all the waters the flowed from it. Hyracotherium held the southern coast and Trot Brook that served as the outflow from Lake Trot and back into the Manehattan River, serving as a waterway for food tribute to the other tribes to reach and be distributed amongst the other two tribes. To the west the Celestine Junta dominated the shore, more as a venue for a constant show of force to their fellow ponies than anything else, however Lake Trot served as a good body of water for the pegasi to draw water from in order to make rain, more so as more and more bodies of water began to freeze, and stay frozen.
In today’s society, where heat sources are readily available for most of us year-round, the importance of liquid water is overlooked. During the dead of winter, as many water sources freeze over, the only way to obtain liquid water for everything from drinking to cleaning to cooking food would be to burn firewood to melt frozen water or snow if liquid water sources were not available. As firewood is a precious commodity in a Pre-Modern society due to the amount of work that goes into preparing logs, its use during a long and cold winter must be carefully monitored, lest one run out and run the risk of hypothermia.
Other than a coating of ice on rocks on or near shore that naturally comes with winter, Lake Trot had never been recorded as having frozen over, and so in the face of the growing and alarmingly worsening cold, Lake Trot was seen as impervious to the elements, an ever loyal servant to ponykind.
This importance became even more apparent as the winters grew longer and longer, with year-round temperatures reaching record lows year and after year. It is difficult to place a reliable beginning of what is now known as the influence of the Windigos on the Manehattan River Valley’s climate, with some placing the start date as early as 300 BW, but all scholars agree that the effort had began in force by 22 BW, when the climate became too cold for the local Wyvern population to maintain their ancestral nesting grounds, leading them to lash out at Celestine as they sought out new territory in 19 BW, as well as rendering a small but growing number of bodies of water being frozen year-round. At the same time, springheads in the northern mountains began to freeze, backing up groundwater and flooding ancestral mines of a number of the nobility of the Kingdom of Unicorns, and as the mining practices of the day exposed a great deal of poisonous substances and elements, this rendered the water unusable, forcing the population to emphasize on water sources further downhill, or risk freezing by using precious firewood by using it to melt the frozen water at the springs. The Celestine Junta was similarly strapped for water usage in that while the clouds held an abundance of water, the same material also built the cities and most of the fortifications they used and lived in. And the Hyracotherium, with the slowly shrinking number of usable water sources, ultimately focused its eyes on the same body as the other two tribes: Lake Trot. It was for this reason that, in the years 17 and 16 BW, the shores of the lake saw an increased military presence from each of the tribes, more than was the norm.
Tensions began to rise amongst the forces of the Republic when the First and Fifth Armies descended to the Junta Militarized Zone on the Western coast of the lake, followed over the course of the week with the Third and Forth. While the Royal Army, the troops in the employ of the Crown, were as famously stoic as ever, the mercenary forces of the Nobility, under the command of Viscount Arsenic, looked on with mixed feelings, and none entirely positive. Meanwhile, the Viscount looked on with a calculating and ambitious eye, and made preparations for war.
At the same time, it is believed, Wind Whistler met with Star-Swirl about the situation. It could not have happened any later than the Third Hour of the Graveyard Watch, because that was when Star-Swirl requested awoke King Aurum for a private audience, where he explained the situation to his liege. We know this because Princess Platinum, then a very precocious five-year old, had managed to sneak in to her father’s chambers and eavesdropped on the conversation, remembering it well after the Great Warming when she wrote her memoirs.
‘…Star-Swirl went on at great length about what one General Wind Whistler discussed with him concerning the actions of the Junta’s sovereign over the next few days. When the extent of the graveness of the situation was impressed upon him, father seemed stunned and almost at a loss as to what to do. Meanwhile, Star-Swirl was confident as to what he wanted to do: Pull back the soldiers at the lake, and have as many unicorns as possible help him in launching assault upon the Pegasi city itself using an artillery spell of his own design. My father, however, did not totally agree as to the situation.
“You would have me order an attack on Celestine itself from this very keep. Star-Swirl, that would draw their forces upon us. I cannot risk my citizens to invasion here in the mountains. I cannot risk open war.”
Star-Swirl was unimpressed with father’s concerns.
“With all due respect Aurum,” he told my father, “whether you would risk such a thing is irrelevant, for it is quite clear now that Sullamander will, and in fact is risking it as we speak.”
“Be that as it may, old friend, it would be the pinnacle of irresponsibility for me to order our forces away from the Lake, the setting and goal of the attack. I’m sorry old friend, but I will not help you aid the enemy.”
“I have told you already Aurum: Wind Whistler is not our enemy. She and I have had a long and most cordial discourse in person and in dispatch for years, and I can tell you with complete honesty that she is honorable and above all dependable. If we let her take the lands around the lake, we will have them returned with the successful conclusion of this conflict.”
“I’m sorry old friend, but I cannot bring myself to do that, the Court would rise up regardless of the outcome. I will warn our forces stationed at Lake Trot, as well as the information you have given me Star-Swirl, with orders to help the Pegasi aligned with this Wind Whistler in securing the coast from Sullamander’s forces.”
At that, my father walked to his desk and began writing.
“Aurum don’t be a fool! The one in charge of the army there is Arsenic, his father and grandfather both orchestrated your family’s murder! His youth was all that spared him, but he is by no means meant to be trusted with this information!”
“What else can I do Star-Swirl. There is no guarantee he would follow an order to retreat, not with the Pegasi on our very doorstep. At least this way I can know that I tried. I’m sorry Star-Swirl, but I cannot aid you. Not today.”’
In the aftermath of the Crisis, as the Kingdom of Unicorns consolidated their forces at the command center for the Lake Trot garrison, an unopened, sealed envelop bearing the Royal Seal was found amongst the garbage of Arsenic’s office, indicating that the Viscount received his orders from his king, but never bothered to read them. At the time it was long-rumored that the lands of the Hyracotherium Republic were loaded with untapped and virgin veins of precious gems and metals. Given Arsenic’s vain personality and well-recorded greed and lust for treasure and power, the consensus is that the Viscount longed to take the Lake, carving out a personal Viceroyalty for himself to both set up a trading monopoly between the tribes, and to also use it as a staging point for conquest campaigns of the Republic, without the influence of either the Crown or the rest of the nobility to hinder him. So when Bridle Chomper’s Fifth Army attacked, Arsenic not only resisted the Pegasi assault, but also sent the other half of his forces south to conquer the Earth Pony coast of the lake.
Further south stood the Republican Army of the Alfredo Sauce. The ultimate result of Puddinghead’s recent attempt to ‘modernize’ the army, it was officially to protect the Hyracotherium Republic from the “Evil Lich-Queen of the Cuttlefish of the Damned,” but in practice the military used it to monitor the situation at Lake Trot. Reason being that there is no evidence either archaeological or modern or even in Folk Lore that there was ever an undead ruler of Cuttlefish at Lake Trot, of the infernal sort or no, mostly due to the fact that Cuttlefish are in fact marine and not freshwater dwelling.
The Earth Pony army consisted of six-thousand troops divided into four regiments, each with their own battalions of cavalry, dragoons and infantry, all of whom were under the command of Lady Cripps the Pink, who had a personal score to settle with the Kingdom of Unicorns.
Her mother was the daughter of one of the larger apple farmers in the Republic, while her father was an anonymous stallion of the Kingdom (most likely one of the many “Gentlecolts without Inheritance” who sold their services as mercenaries) who seduced Cripps’ mother at the consent of her parents under the promise both by legal contract and by a “Gentleponies’ Agreement” that he would marry her. However, after staying with the family for almost a month he left in the middle of the night without so much as a word of good bye or even a note of where to find him, leaving the young mare pregnant. Growing up, Cirpps was raised by her single mother and family, and as an adult harbored a strong dislike of Unicorns in general. So much so that as an adult she took the Noble title of Lady for herself as a way of mocking the Kingdom, and when she heard about Puddinghead’s raising an army for use in the event of a Unicorn attack, Lady Cripps left her family’s farm in the care of her servants and used her influence and wealth to secure a commission as the Commander-In-Chief of the new army.
When she arrived at her new command in the spring of 16 BW, she was, put simply, disappointed with the “roughshod and positively gruesome nature of these soldiers. They have no concept of discipline, and are more a danger to themselves with a weapon than to the enemy.”
Even though she had no formal training as an officer or soldier, Lady Cripps the Pink took to commanding the six thousand ponies under her like she had with the virtual army of hired hooves who worked her family’s orchards every year, and within two months’ time turned it around into arguably the most efficient army the Republic produced in the latter part of its existence.
As the armies of the Junta massed to the west, Lady Cripps could tell the signs of the storm of battle coming, and took what little time she had available to prepare for war. Ultimately it was a simple matter, as the troops under her command had drilled and drilled the procedures until they could do it in their sleep. Furthermore, even though the level of alertness ordered from the Republic could be described as ‘mindful,’ Lady Cripps instead kept her army at constant High Alert. In the end this constant readiness may have saved hundreds of lives, as when the Junta attacked at dawn, and the Kingdom ambushed them minutes later, the ponies of the Hyracotherium Republic proved to be able to launch a much more resilient resistance than all projections had previously suggested, even before the Armies of Downdraft and Torrent attacked their fellows.
To the northeast, as previously discussed, stood the armies of the Kingdom of Unicorns. The core was made up of the Royal Army, consisting of soldiers solely loyal to the Throne. However, they ultimately numbered about two-thousand total, and so did not have the numbers necessary to sufficiently guard the Kingdom’s coast of the lake, so a second army of between four to ten thousand mercenaries, depending on the current wage paid, supplemented the forces present, all of these under the command of Viscount Arsenic. Universally described as spiteful, haughty and by today’s standards sexist, and the son and heir of one of the leading families behind the 30 BW massacre of the Royal Family, Arsenic only gained the appointment through a combination of court manipulation and possible murder, in spite of the fact that he all but openly admitted to plotting to decapitate the Throne for personal power. In the months leading up to the war, he maintained an open and caustic exchange of letters between himself and Lady Cripps. Partly because of this, it is commonly depicted in fiction that Arsenic was Lady Cripps’ father. Which would be an equally impressive and illegal feat, considering that he was only two years her senior.
And finally to the west amassed four of the five main armies of the Celestine Junta, each outfitted with four-thousand regular infantry, twenty-five hundred air cavalry, and one thousand Shock Troopers, the elite of the Junta’s soldiers and masters of Lightning Martial Arts. The name is not an artistic nuance: the Lightning Martial Arts involved the use of actual lightning in combat, making them among the most effective and feared of the Junta’s forces. In total, this amounted to sixteen-thousand infantry, ten-thousand cavalry and four-thousand Shock Troopers, for a total of thirty-thousand soldiers verses the six-thousand Republican Soldiers and the ten-thousand Royal and Mercenary soldiers of the Kingdom.
At dawn, the Celestine Junta opened the assault, with the Fourth and Fifth armies pushing east into Kingdom territory. At first the Unicorns seemed doomed to being cast from the field, however the much celebrated Charge of the Illuminated Brigade bought the Mercenary and rest of the Royal Army enough time to reorganize the defense until nightfall. On the second day of battle, the Unicorns were given a second reprieve by the Fourth Army when they turned on the Fifth with an assault from behind. Seeing weakness in the Junta’s forces, Arsenic ordered his forces to attack the pegasi. Over the following hours all land that had been lost the day before was regained, and Arsenic ordered to press into Junta territory, while also ordering almost half of his forces to the south to invade the Hyracotherium Republic, paying no mind to his flank along the coast, in spite of the warnings and reports from his generals and advisors. Historians agree that, had Arsenic not been so greedy or arrogant and withstood the attacks, towards the end of the Crisis he would have been in a more advantageous position to gain land by day four or five, when both the Junta and the Republic forces were exhausted.
Instead it was a disaster. The forces of the Junta eventually reorganized and returned the attack with force by day four, and this time their press into Kingdom territory would not be reversed. Before the end of day five, the Unicorns lost Trot Creek and the pegasi would continue to press the advantage until the end of hostilities. Meanwhile the attack against the Republic proved to be an even bigger embarrassment, with the Earth Pony defenses proving to be absolutely impervious to attack, and the border region became littered with the bodies of scores of dead unicorn stallions. In addition, the Republican Navy would prove to be an additional thorn in Arsenic’s side in the form of off-shore artillery attacks in addition to the beaches being another avenue for invasion. With the center unable to hold, the right flank collapsing, and hundreds of mercenaries deeming the entire exercise not worth the wages they were being offered (and abandoning their posts by the hour starting on the third day), the Viscount could only watch as his dreams crashed around him. One aid who survived the battle claimed that Arsenic was unable to comprehend where he had gone wrong.
‘How can this be possible? These are damned bloody earth pushers by spirits’ sakes! They have no intelligence to organize a proper sandwich let alone an army, and are lead by a bleeding mare at that!’
To the nobility’s great displeasure, Arsenic would commandeer tens of private yachts starting on day four to fight the surprise threat of the Hyracotherium Republic’s navy, but it would prove to be far too little, far too late, and in the evening of day five he would die during the last naval battle of the Crisis.
To the south, the Junta, against all odds, was not doing much better against the Republic than their Unicorn counterparts, never so much as able to push the Earth Ponies back an inch, and eventually the Alfredo Army was actually able to gain ground by the third day, and towards the end was able to gain an alarming amount of momentum against the Junta forces. For centuries the exact reasons why an agrarian society of farmers with a miniscule military culture was able to stand up to, and eventually push back, what by all rights should have been the mightiest military power in the region, even with General Wind Whistler’s civil war concurrently being waged, has baffled military historians. The matter was unable to be settled until 799 ANM when historians and volunteers were able to re-enact the Crisis on a smaller scale using the most accurate recreations of the equipment and armament available. The conclusion reached for the Republic’s success was their weaponry, though military enthusiasts would greatly disagree with the use of that particular term.
When Puddinghead took office, she dumped large amounts of money into what she considered amounted to ‘revitalizing’ the military. The most extensive development being what she called ‘Overt Covert Arms,’ which in the end amounted to weaponized pastry recipes. Cakes, breads, cookies and especially pies were baked in such a way that, when thrown, become just as effective as any sized cannonball. From the looks of the recipe, there should be no way that (as an example) a cupcake, if fired from a cannon, would be able to hold together, let alone dismember an entire formation of soldiers. And for years, pegasi and unicorn military experts professed that the Republic success instead came from the audacity of using pastries in battle. And yet contemporary and modern accounts show that just such impossibilities were happening, and that it is possible, as the use of thrown variants of the Puddinghead Apple Pie recipe in the recent Appaloosa Stampede Riot shows. And yet, if a pegasus or unicorn pony were to bake one of the pastries using the recipes, the result would be a simple, ordinary baked good, no different from any normal member of its kind, but if an Earth Pony were to bake the same pastry with the same recipe, it becomes a deadly piece of ordinance. The most logical conclusion is that it is a subconscious spell of Earth Pony magic that makes Puddinghead’s recipes work.
Military hardware or no, the Republic’s forces were still outnumbered. However, all experts agree that the tactics of the Hyracotherium was what saved the day for the Earth Ponies. Upon reading surviving copies of Puddinghead’s manifesto on what she claimed to be the superior tactics of a proper military, commanders have either laughed or shuddered at her descriptions of troop movements, which essentially amounts to full frontal assaults, regardless of the obstacles. And by all accounts, Lady Cripps followed the manifesto to the letter. However, military analysts suggest that Cripps used the insanity of the plans to her advantage, banking on the fact that the Junta’s soldiers, with their more extensive military knowledge and training, would expect more than what they saw, and thus doing half of the work for her in defeating them. Considering that the forward commanders of the Junta were convinced that the Earth Pony attacks in front of them were in fact a diversion, and that they had more troops hiding behind the surrounding hills and forests, waiting to ambush them in an obvious trap, all are agreed that Lady Cripps the Pink’s assumption, had she made any, was dead on.
In later years, the pegasi would hold Lady Cripps the Pink as the ideal military strategist, first in irony, and eventually as a matter of course, especially in more humorous works, where she is used as the Eternal Opponent that any pegasi military commander will eventually face, and ultimately fail against. The usual model in literature follows as such:
‘So there I was you know, [some sort of military activity, such as ‘on patrol with my buddies’] when all of a sudden, I hear a noise coming from [a small or unlikely place for an attack to spring from, such as behind a tree] , so I look and all of a sudden there’s this [a large number of troops, such as a battalion] of Earth Ponies there! And they proceed to kill all of my buddies! How the hell did four hundred ponies hide behind a freakin’ tree!? It must have taken some sort of tactical gen-- ….CRIIIIIIIIIIIIPPSSSSS!!!!!!!’
Speaking of the pegasi, Lake Trot proved to be the one of the worst battles of the Junta’s existence, nearly as bad as the battle of Celestine’s founding story. Units lost track of each other, and communications broke down, leaving the generals blind to the nature of the fronts. Eventually platoons were cobbled together from different units based on proximity than official assignment, often times even from different armies. The most famous being The Burning Timber Wolves, made from no less than sixteen platoons from all four armies. When word reached troops from the First and Fifth armies precisely who was in charge of the mutiny and why, they all flocked to the fledgling emergency unit, killing their superiors if needed. Under the assumed command of Captain Lightning Flash (formerly of the 409th Infantry, Third Army) the Burning Timber Wolves would play a key role in wiping out the Unicorn garrison Headquarters with what may have been an F4 tornado on the third day of the Crisis, along with many other targets over the rest of the Crisis. Commander Hurricane himself would award Captain Lightning Flash and other officers in the new unit with the Lightning Cross for bravery and perseverance and taking the inititive in battle, and made them an official unit on the roster, and when she was appointed Second, Hurricane would go one to place Private Pansy as their unit commander. The Burning Timber Wolves are in fact still in service, having been reorganized as an Emergency Response and Stunt Flying unit famed the world over: The Wonderbolts.
However, triumphs were not the only results of the confusion. With communications unreliable, commanders were often left with faulty or vague information, and in the now-or-never environment of a fierce battle, those same commanders had to make the call that instance, sometimes leading to a nick-in-time save, and other times leading to many otherwise avoidable tragedies. One of the most famed and celebrated in folk lore being the death of General Torrent.
On day four, reports came to General Downpour of a hostile command post being set up within Storm Front range of her own. Given the state of the armies there was no way to verify where the information came from, and for who it was originally intended. And yet if the command post was for either of the Fifth or First Armies her own command post, as well as the lives of Downpour and her aids, would be forfeit. So, she made a judgment call and ordered an attack. However, the messenger was from Haymaker’s First Army, and it was intended for General Haymaker herself, and the ‘hostile’ command post was the field HQ of General Torrent. However, when word reached Downpour, it was far too late.
Torrent, her staff and her inferiors fought famously, lasting well into the early morning before the task force Downpour sent finally broke into the command room, slaying everypony within. The Last Stand of Torrent would be a source for songs, plays, novels and paintings for centuries to come. It stands as the greatest example of Celestine Tenacity and unwillingness to give up, and it was fought against their own allies.
When Downpour learned that Torrent was dead, and that she had ordered the pony she famously said loved as a sister was killed on her orders, she could not stand it.
“The general then got real quiet, and had this far away look in her eyes. And no matter how we tried, we could not rouse her. I saw in her eye a single tear fall, though no one else seemed to notice the quiet display from our famously stoic commander. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, there was a sense of a heart-rending melancholy. I will never forget her next words.
“‘I fear I have been in this business to long Miss Tailor. You find that with the years the line of Enemy and Friend blur. You are in command now Miss Tailor.’
“And with that she removed her armor, unsheathed her sword and slit her throat. It all happened so fast we could not act, could not think, to stop her. I cannot forget that.”
—Major Wing Tailor, ca. 43 AW
From primary sources, historians estimate that the temperature around Lake Trot was around the mid-forties on the first day. On day three, some personal diaries of more observant soldiers and officers take note of a light snow and the waters of the beach being frozen under about two inches of ice that was not present that morning. By now, historians calculate, the temperature had dropped by half that of what it was two days previous, and by nightfall it is believed that the temperature dropped an additional ten degrees, sending the ice up to a dozen yards from the coast. The Windigos’ work had begun.
On day five the Last Naval Battle of the Lake Trot Crisis was fought between the Republican Navy and what forces Arsenic could cobble together to constitute as a ‘navy,’ resulting in the total destruction of his navy, and his own death, and by morning the next day the lake was totally frozen over, the temperature possibly dropping as low as the negative single digits. The fighting would continue until evening, as more and more ponies noticed that the formerly blue waters of the lake were white, and solid. Major Wing Tailor sent a flight over the lake to get a grasp of the situation, and when they returned her greatest fears were realized: Other than the hulks of the Republican Navy in the north-eastern half of the lake, the entire lake had been frozen solid from coast to coast, and it was thick enough to stand on even in the middle. By moon rise the ceasefire orders were being sent out, and requests for Parlay received by the commanding officers.
The Question of the night was ‘what now?’ The lake, which the now dead Sullamander had hoped to claim totally for the Junta was solid ice, denying anypony of victory.
If one were to go by conquests as a deciding factor, then by all rights the Junta should have had the right to make any claims it pleased, having taken Trot Creek and huge swaths of Kingdom lands, and even after taking the losses taken at the Republic boarder, the Celestine Junta controlled some sixty percent of the lake coast. The Hyracotherium Republic did especially well, claiming the vast majority of the Unicorn lands, leaving the Kingdom control of only three percent of the lake under their control, and with one in ten of the Royal Army dead and most of the mercenaries abandoning the fight, it was a tenuous hold at that.
So it was with a little surprise when the terms of negotiation came down from the Junta with the commander’s seal, and even more when the terms were dictated: No reparations paid, and territories exchanged to the return of their Pre-Crisis positions. There is no illusion then or now that Hurricane would give up territory gained in battle to the other tribes out of the goodness of his heart. Rather, with the recent death of his beloved Wind Whistler, he felt duty-bound to fulfill her wishes, which was to see the balance of power in the valley maintained. Being the only one allowed to sign any treaty by law, King Aurum agreed to the terms without so much as a minute to consider, and when the nobility inevitably protested how he did not even try to gain more favorable terms, Aurum was oddly blunt in his reply.
“If you desire to renegotiate these most favorable terms, you are free to take it up with the several thousand disgruntled and ill-tempered brutes currently making themselves comfortable in your estates and lands, and guarding them with their thunderbolts and swords and spears and general tendency to be more than happy to gut anypony who makes them even the slightest bit displeased. Assuming of course they don’t smite you on sight on your way there due to boredom.”
Lady Cripps the Pink was also quick to accept the terms, calling her troops back to the Pre-Crisis lines even before the ink was dry on her signature. The Senate was especially at her accepting a treaty on her own power, when the Senate was the only authority that was allowed to negotiate international agreements, calling the treaty illegal and void, and that Cripps was seeking power for herself. There were calls for pressing criminal charges, a court-martial, and one especially hot tempered senator calling for her to be tarred and feathered on the spot.
The Republic citizens and soldiers, however, had a much different take on the event: High off of fighting off not just the Unicorns, but also the Celestine Junta, the mightiest military power in the whole valley. Cripps was hailed as a national hero, and her taking the initiative signing the treaty and giving the Unicorns and Pegasi their land back was a show of moral superiority, refusing to take anything from a defeated foe even though one had the right to it, in effect spitting in their face, and saying that what was theirs was not worthy of being taken.
When Cripps trotted to the Capitol building to testify, she was followed by a massive parade of grateful citizens, singing her praises. The scene is described in contemporary sources with foals running up to her to hug her legs, of old mares in tears thanking her for protecting them, and a mass if ponydom that stretched for nearly a mile. Seeing this support Cripps had, the Senate inquisition lost most of its momentum, with the prosecution being half-hearted at best. In the end the charges were dropped. Cripps would resign her commission when it became clear that the threat of invasion was gone, returning to her family’s farm, remaining with the agrarian life for the rest of her days.
In the wake of the Crisis, Lake Trot was rendered worthless as a resource, as the water all three tribes needed from it was locked under several feet of solid ice, and so within weeks the entire coast was abandoned. Except for the occasional unicorn who made the dangerous trek across the frozen water to salvage wood from the ghost ships of the Hyracotherium Navy before the crushing forces of the ice sank them.
The Crisis also left a lingering reminder in the cost of lives wasted. Out of the thirty-thousand troops of the Junta, only some five-thousand would survive, most of the casualties being by their own forces.
But per capita, the army that suffered the most was the Royal Army. Due to the nature of their business and loyalty being stronger to coin than anypony, it is impossible to accurately calculate any losses amongst the mercenaries, but of the two-thousand knights of the Royal Army, only five-hundred would survive the fighting. King Aurum, Star-Swirl the Bearded and Princess Platinum would spend the next decade and a half rebuilding the army.
Meanwhile, the Republic Army of the Alfredo Sauce suffered only one fatality: Sergeant Pepper, choking on a deviled-egg sandwich.
With the last source of liquid water frozen, firewood became all the more of a precious commodity in order to melt snow for water. Smiths’ forges would now need to be closed for even longer periods of the year to save on fuel, rendering a damaged tool needed for farming or mining useless, further hurting the Hyracotherium’s ability to grow food.
The next sixteen years, the threat of war would continue to smolder, content to play in the background as the fight for survival took center stage.
The Manehattan River Valley could maintain the livelihoods of ponykind for only so much. The days of the Hyacotherium, the Kingdom of Unicorns, and the Celestine Junta were numbered.
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Oh. My. Gosh. This chapter beat the crap out of me. BUT! It's finally here! [luna]HUZZAH![/luna]
Anyway, in Japan, dishonor was a pretty big deal, and sometimes the only way to get it back would be to commit ritualized suicide known as Seppuku, or Hari Kiri, which involved taking a dagger to your stomach and slicing from one side to the other, leaving yourself to bleed out. Due to the gory, painful and long nature of the death, it was seen as the perfect way to redeem oneself. In contrast, the Junta generally sees suicide as a cowardly death, except for a few exceptions. The Heroic Sacrifice in TV Land is a good rule of thumb for what might/might not get an exception. Downpour’s case is borderline. Her enemies may justifiably claim that she only killed herself to escape a court martial, but everypony else would see the circumstances and see it as a self-imposed “eye-for-an-eye” type of thing. Either way, they don’t really care for long, drawn out and showy suicide rituals, a
bullet to the brainknife to the neck will suffice.Am I the only brony who read, upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/BriefHistoryTime.jpg
Cuz this reminds me of that, both in title and in abridgement of their respective fields.
And now to Hearth's Warming Eve, or perhaps the less-sanitized version.
Great work, here. I love the pastries only being effective if earth ponies baked them.
1666411
Good Creed Story:
"So. Fresh bunch'a recruits straight off the regimental home world, huh? Got your heads full of propaganda and not much else, lemme bet. Well, listen to me and listen good, kids - probably half of what you know is nothing but ambull-shit, and you'd better get that through your heads now rather than getting a traitor's lasbolt through your head on the battlefield. Now, you pray to the Emperor like you should, and if you don't the Commissar'll blow your head off, and that'll be a mercy compared to what I'll do to ya if I find out 'fore he does - but don't be thinkin' for a second that recitin' the Litany of Protection makes you invulnerable on a battlefield.
Sure, you'll hear stories about brave Guardsmen that charged enemy positions armed with nothin' but their lasguns and their bayonets and won - and I'll even admit that probably a couple of them are true, but in an army that numbers in the billions one or two of ya are bound to get lucky every now and again, so it don't really say much. No, kids, they might make for inspirin' stories, but fanatical charges aren't what win battles. Battles are won by determination and tactics. Lemme tell you about this one time our regiment was servin' under the command of General Creed.
Never a finer tactician has the Imperial Guard ever seen than that General Creed, let me tell you. He came up with plans so devious and cunnin' you didn't even have a hope of figurin' out how he'd done what he'd done 'less he explained it to ya himself. We were fightin' on Kavara IV, what'd used to be a good Imperial world till the taint of Chaos found its way down there and turned loyal citizens into traitorous scum. At the time we'd been shipped off, we thought we were just gonna be helping the local PDF put down a small insurrection, but what with the ways of the warp by the time we got there it'd turned into a full on rebel uprisin' and all the nobles were already dead or in hidin', and another army led by General Creed had arrived to bring it back under control - we'd been missin' so long they thought we'd been lost to the warp, you see, and sent another off in our place - so we wound up joinin' forces an' bolsterin' their ranks.
Now, we got deployed into one of the urban centers that'd been taken over almost entirely by the heretics, goin' through clearing buildings of resistance and tightenin' the noose around their filthy necks. Only been gettin' minor resistance until a couple of hours in, when we stumbled across a fortified plaza that hadn't been in none of the intelligence reports. So there we were, pinned down by enemy fire, usin' rubble for cover and hopin' to the Emperor that'd we get some artillery support soon, when all of a sudden there's a tremendous rumblin' off to the right, soundin' like a column of tanks comin' up towards the buildin' we'd just cleared.
We weren't gettin' nothin' about armored support on the vox, so we was sittin' there shittin' ourselves wonderin' where the traitors had got tanks from, when all of a sudden the front of the buildin' just collapses out onto the street and a damn Baneblade rolls right on out in front of us. One blast from the main gun and it turned the heretic's position into a crater. The vox lights up and we get ourselves a message - "Armored Support courtesy of General Creed", they say. Now that's tactics, kids - we never saw it comin', so those traitors sure didn't. The application of overwhelmin' force at just the right spot at just the right moment'll turn the tide of any battle in your favor.
I took a look at that buildin' again as we were marchin' down the street in the Baneblade's wake, though. Funniest thing, the only hole in it was the one the tank'd made on its way out. How the hell we missed it when we were clearin' the place I don't know. How the hell Creed got it in there in the first place, I'm not sure I WANT to know - but let me tell you, pulling that off must've taken one hell of a tactical genius."
-Sergeant Karls addressing new recruits to the Hirian 204th, shortly before being relieved of duty and sent for psychiatric evaluation due to inexplicable urges to scream incoherently.
CREEEEEEEEEEEEED!!!! I mean, CRIIIIIIIIPPS!
Also, I noticed that the Republic's pastry weaponry is similar in concept to how orks fight; the ponies magic makes the pies into weapons in the same way the orks WAAAGH! energy makes boxes of gears and bullets into semi-working guns and rocket launchers. If anyone else tried that they'd get dessert/ the gun exploding, but for Earth Ponies/orks it works
Am I the only one who feels kinda bad for the unicorn nobility? I feel like it's like a long treatise on how much they suck.
At least when the other sides screw up, it seems to me it's done with a certain extreme that's crazy but still awesome.
mediarushes.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/reaper.jpg
images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2009/6/22/39295_md-Creed,%20Tactical%20Genius.jpg
Wow the Celestine Junta really fell apart there, defiantly not their finest moment.
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That is an interesting story. However, since members have the option to edit comments, I don't see why you needed to double post.
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Probably. Remember that the Princess Platinum is basically a typical member of the Unicorn nobility rather than the Princess herself. Now, imagin an entire government from the upper echelon down made up of such individuals... Yeah, they aren't going to amount to much.
1668341
To be fair, it's not like they expected to be betrayed, or deal with such a massive Fuster Cluck.
1668666
I think you missed the part where the Junta managed to conquer 60% of the coast, and after the crisis they still held what they did before the Crisis (AKA: One-Third).
Now, the Unicorns on the other hand, with losing all but a tiny sliver of their holdings... Yeah, that's embarrassing.
1668810 Whoops, forget I ever said that.
1668653
That was my bad honestly. I just posted without realizing that. After I had posted I figured it out and facepalmed.
1670033
No big deal, just Copy/Paste the story and delete the extra.
1668653
I know, I just feel like it's the reverse classism that permeates the source material that bugs me.
This bit missing something?
Also, lol at Pansy being put in charge of the 'Wonderbolts'.
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Not anymore! ^_^
Excellent... EXCELLENT!
Work is impeccable, as always. Additional moustaches for excellent use of best meme ever.
hell yeah this updated!
"Cakes, breads, cookies and especially pies were baked in such a way that, when thrown, become just as effective as any sized cannonball"
Oh my GOD.
This is not only hilarious, it makes total canonical sense.
1717444
A better comparison would be a mixture of Gandalf and Merlin and leave it at that. ^_^
Also, Sergeant Pepper was the only Republic fatality. Did Sergeant Pepper have a band?
I always thought of pie-fight warfare as counting coup rather than pony magic, something Celestia instituted to reduce violence.
One casualty...who choked on a sandwich...this might be the most lopsided battle in history. I just feel bad for the other armies after reading that. It's like I want to laugh at them, but I feel bad, like I would be laughing at the slow kid or something you know?
Unicorns to right of them,
Unicorns to left of them,
Into the valley of Death
Flew the six hundred.
GRANT US THE POWERS OF CHAOS!
Now I am in my element! I'm just disappointed that no one had METAL BAWKSES.
Also, if they hold their blades in their mouths, how do they slit their own throats? That being said, anyone who could achieve such a feat deserves a gift from the Ruinous Powers.
The Senate was especially at her accepting
Upset, I'm assuming?
I see Cripps as Pinkie with an eyepatch. I just can't see it any other way.
The Crisis also left a lingering reminder in the cost of lives wasted. Out of the thirty-thousand troops of the Junta, only some five-thousand would survive, most of the casualties being by their own forces.
But per capita, the army that suffered the most was the Royal Army. Due to the nature of their business and loyalty being stronger to coin than anypony, it is impossible to accurately calculate any losses amongst the mercenaries, but of the two-thousand knights of the Royal Army, only five-hundred would survive the fighting. King Aurum, Star-Swirl the Bearded and Princess Platinum would spend the next decade and a half rebuilding the army.
Per capita? If you mean as a portion of total population, surely 25,000 pegasi is a bigger portion than 1,500 unicorns. If you mean as a portion of the army, 25,000 out of 30,000 is a staggering 83%, surely ranking among the worst KIA rates ever recorded by a force of that size. Meanwhile, 1,500 out of 2,000 is 75%, also extremely bad, but a significantly smaller percentage. (Also, probably more recoverable due to the smaller size of the total force; however, the militant nature of the pegasus society at this time probably outweighs that factor.)
Yeah, they should've kept their old name.
Hmmm. kind of one-sided. I appreciate the Republic's ability to upgrade its forces having borne fruit. But the fact remains that suffering only one casualty makes little sense. Being able to throw lightning bolts should have charred more than a few Earth Ponies for the Junta.
Also, the Kingdom is a joke.
2979297 YES!