Bioshock: Equestria--Restoration

by Andy Soshal

Chapter 1: Prelude

Bioshock: Equestria

Chapter 1

Prelude

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria…

…there came a period of conflict, when the forces of light flickered against an unrelenting, rapacious shadow. The Princess of the Night, Luna Oneiroi Nyx, took up arms against her own sister, Celestia Sol Invictus, in an attempt to wrest control of the daytime from her. Jealousy had wormed its way into her heart, and behind jealousy came the darkness of hate, giving rise to the terrible entity known as Nightmare Moon.

Long was the battle, fierce their clash, until, finally, only the Dark Princess stood. Laughing, she took in the moment, relishing her victory...

...and in that moment, victory turned to defeat. Celestia, in a last-ditch effort, summoned the Elements of Harmony to her side, even those which had once aligned themselves to her sibling, and let their magic flow through her.

Joy, Kindness, Loyalty, Honesty, Generosity, and Magic came together, brought to bear by the Princess of the Day’s near-indomitable will, and combined their strength in a mighty maelstrom of colors. Nightmare Moon, in shock at the sudden turning of the tide, attempted retreat, but to no avail.

With a final scream of terror, she was banished from the realm, sealed into the moon to await the end of her imprisonment.

But even in the peaceful years afterward, with Discord forever singing his silent opera, Sombra adrift with the tides of Time, and Tirek locked in his fiery prison deep in the bowels of Tartarus, there was an air of tension throughout Equestria.

There were three reasons for this. The first, and most obvious, was the lack of a second Princess to complete the Diarchy. Without their liege-lady, the Thestrals, the quiet, bat-like, oft-misunderstood Pegasi guardians of Luna, felt cast adrift. Seeing no purpose in the absence of the Night Princess, they left in a slow trickle, swearing to return when their protector did. Culture began to stagnate; Luna, who often disguised herself as a small Unicorn called “Muse”, was an affluent patron of the arts, and without her guidance, the musicians, poets, and painters slowly laid aside their tools. The economy suffered, outward expansion into the Wilds ceased, and a feeling of fear began to infect every aspect of society.

The second was Celestia herself. For many years after the battle with her sister, she refused to be seen, delegating several tasks to her advisors, eventually appearing only to raise her sun and Luna’s moon. While Luna’s punishment was to watch the world go by beneath her in solitude, Celestia’s was to live with the knowledge that she had sent her sister away for something she felt could have been prevented. If and Only became her bywords, sleep ceased to have rest, and her appetite faded away. There was nothing she could have done to help her people, for she had failed her own sister…and more.

For, by her actions to preserve the world from night eternal, Celestia had robbed Equestria of its greatest weapons.

The third reason for the underlying stress in Equestria was divided into six colorless spheres, lying in repose within the ruined palace of the Twin Pony Sisters, deep within the Everfree Forest, which grew untamed and unchecked without the care of the Diarchy.

Eventually, however, Celestia’s black depression passed, though never completely. The Ponies of Equestria had built a new city for her, upon a mountain called Canterlot, and she resided in the shining white palace at its summit. They had done this act of love and devotion in the ten years that she had sequestered herself away, and Celestia, touched in her heart of hearts, repaid their kindness with her own gifts.

Schools, land grants, military expansion, tax breaks, paved roads, trade routes to distant lands…she did everything she could in her power to empower her people, to make sure they knew that, though Luna was gone, their Sun Princess would never abandon them.

But it wasn’t enough.

The years passed. One hundred...two hundred…five hundred years after Luna’s Fall, and still, the miasma of unease remained in the very earth of Equestria. Petty squabbles between the three races of Earth, Unicorn, and Pegasus Pony kept erupting, a handful of them even threatening to turn into all-out civil war. The other creatures of the world, the warlike Griffons in particular, made repeated little slights to the sovereignty of Equestria, from “mistaken” border incursions to ambassadors being extraordinarily rude.

Celestia, troubled by these events and with no clue how to remedy them, wracked her brains to come up with a solution. Finally, with no other avenue to turn to, she went to the one entity who would know, the one creature as old as Time itself.

Discord.

Predictably, he proved to be little help; the capricious creature, locked in his stone prison, only laughed at her, the psychic echoes ringing in her mind for days afterward. The only thing he would tell her was to “look for what is missing”.

For another year, Celestia worried at the problem of her crumbling kingdom, even as she sensed the foundation wasting away bit by bit.

If the current rate of decay kept constant, she hypothesized that Equestria could last for perhaps another few centuries, perhaps even until the prophesied return of Nightmare Moon…but in what shape would it be?

Discord’s riddle mocked her, in his voice, no less. “Look for what is missing”? All Celestia had to do was look to the empty space at her side and see what was missing, see the lack of laughter, of honesty, of loyalty in her life—

Revelation struck her.

The land’s troubles had not begun until after the defeat of Nightmare Moon. The Elements of Harmony, the very things that defeated both Discord and Tirek, had turned to stone, their power undetectable to even her own senses.

Was their power even more intrinsic to the very land she walked on and flew over than suspected? Could they be what kept the ponies of Equestria tight-knit and friendly to one another, what kept the other races from being aggressive?

Summoning the greatest minds of the time, Princess Celestia set them on the task of researching the Elements, to find out if they were, indeed, as necessary as she thought, and, if so, how to revive them.

Alas, Starswirl the Bearded had disappeared many, many years before, and nopony in this forum had proved to be one-tenth his equal; Celestia masked her disappointment in their failures with grace, giving those who gave their all in this endeavor commendations that led them to new heights within their fields.

Another decade passed, and still Celestia ruminated upon the problem, posing it to genius after prodigy after wunderkind, but to no avail. Time after time, she gave this issue to the brightest sparks she could find, under the mask of hypothetical problems.

Time after time, they returned to her, crestfallen at their failure.

Time after time, she would nuzzle them and send them on their way with her blessing.

And then, 527 years after the Breaking of Harmony, a small orange unicorn came to Celestia. He stood in front of her, looking up at her with wide, red eyes half-hidden by a smile, and bowed.

“I know how it can be done, my Princess.”

And so was born Restoration…