the D.R.A.G.O.N.s Archives

by Scout Charger

the time before

“Spike, what can you tell me about the time before Earth Ponies, Unicorns and Pegasi unified and founded the first Equestrian Realm?”

Accessing database storage alpha 7.13.8-D … Access granted

…

It was a dark time indeed. Subsequent ages referred to the pre-Equestrian era as ‘the age of strife’ ‘the time of hatred’ ‘the dark ages’ or simply as ‘the terror’.

Even modern historians can only make guesses at what was before this period or how long it actually lasted. The estimations range from about two hundred years up to several millennia. On a side note, neither Princess Celestia nor Princess Luna are willing to provide information on the matter, despite the fact that both admitted to be old enough to have seen even the times before the disputing tribes.

“Sorry to interrupt, but can I ask a question?”

Of course you can. What would you like to know?

“Do you know How old the Princesses are?”

Yes.

“How old are Princess Celestia und Princess Luna?”

“Ah ah ah my little pony. It’s not polite to ask a mare’s age.”

“Ooookeeeeyyyy… what was that?”

That was an automatic recording by Princess Celestia which she asked me to play whenever somepony asks for her or her sister’s age.

“So she doesn’t want to be asked how old she is?”

That would be a fair assumption. Do you wish me to continue on the first subject?

“Yes, please.”

So, where was I? Ah yes, since nopony knows how long the separation of the three tribes actually lasted we can’t say how the relations of the tribes changed over time, or if they changed at all. All available data, aside from a few legends without a clear indication of their age, stem from the last 50 years before the unification.

Shortly after the accession of King Silver Hoof, the father of the famous Princess Platinum, he declared that all Earth Ponies had to bow before the Unicorn Kingdom and pay tribute for rising the sun and moon. The demand was laid down in his 17th proclamation and accounted for one third of a year’s harvest. Most of the Unicorn nobility considered this very generous of them since, to them, tending to sun and moon was much more important and difficult than simple farm work or tending to the weather. Therefore they considered an equal spread between the tribes more than just fair.

The Earth Ponies, as you might have already guessed, were deeply insulted by this demand and refused the proclamation since it would leave them with barely enough to feed themselves, least of all the Pegasi which also demanded food as payment for their services.

Considering latest estimations on the population of the time we can see why this proclamation turned the underlying tension between the tribes into open hostility. Unicorns only made up roughly fifteen percent of the overall population, Pegasi accounted for an estimated 25 percent and therefore nearly 60 percent of the living ponies at the time were Earth Ponies. I’m sure you see how this demand was rather ill received by the other tribe’s leaders.

The Earth Ponies simply refused to deliver more food than previously to the Unicorns, which took this as a grave insult to their personal and national honor. The Pegasi felt the proclamation was presumptuous and therefore decided to show the Unicorns Kingdom who was in charge of the sky. For two months afterwards the Unicorn Kingdom was almost constantly covered in heavy thunderstorms and blizzards.

After the two months the Pegasi thought they made good enough of a point and switched the weather over the Unicorns Kingdom back to its normal schedule. At this point the whole situation would have ended if King Silver Hoof had seen reason and accepted that it would be too costly to pursue his proclamation further, but he was nothing if not determined.

King Silver Hoof saw the weather the Pegasi brought to his kingdom as a declaration of war and the refusal of the Earth Ponies as an act of treason. The latter is most interesting simply because Unicorns and Earth Ponies had vastly different assumptions of their relations towards one another. Unicorns always considered Earth Ponies to be servants of their kingdom, while Earth Ponies never actually had a unified state and mostly considered the Unicorns rather rude customers.

“Wait wait wait wait. There was no Earth Pony state?”

From a legal point the Earth Pony tribe never united under the rule of a single individual or faction. While the Pegasi where essentially a military junta and the Unicorns had formed an aristocracy, the Earth Ponies remained splintered into small groups mostly defined by common heritage or shared living space.

They had a common cultural basis, which lead to prospering trade between different families and all available sources claim that no Earth Pony ever went to war against another Earth Pony. Even in this day and age Earth Ponies are considered dependable, honest and loyal, especially to their friends and family.

The Earth Pony tribe at the time was mostly organized into big family groups of several dozen ponies. Those families then formed local groups of three to twenty families that either lived in one big settlement or at least close enough to each other to be considered neighbors. Each family had a matriarch or a patriarch, normally the oldest pony of the family. Local group’s patriarchs and matriarchs then met once every few years and selected one of them to be the representative of their families. Today such a representative would be similar to the major of a town.

If multiple local groups were faced with a common threat the elected representatives of all involved groups would meet, discuss their further actions and, if needed, selected one of them to represent all groups. Chancellor Pudding Head only came to power because the entirety of the Earth Pony tribe saw themselves threatened and therefore a representative of the entire tribe was needed. Neither Princess Platinum nor Commander Hurricane ever learned that there actually was no unified Earth Pony nation which they could actually have negotiated with, though most likely the individual families would have accepted any deal Pudding Head would have made. Earth Ponies always had great trust in their leaders.

“Ok, first time I ever heard that. Anyway, what did happen after King Silver Hoof considered himself at war with the Pegasi and thought of the Earth Ponies as traitors?”

He when the Pegasi made no further move against him he assumed they massed an army and therefore did the same. First he gathered as many craftsponies and architects as he could and had them fortify every major city in his kingdom. The walls of Neighbylon and Troyt date back to his reign. His defenses where considered impenetrable even by Praetor Lightning Strike, one of the highest Pegasus commanders at the time.

He considered himself lucky that the Earth Ponies were stupid enough to still deliver their goods to his kingdom after their quote unquote ‘rebellion’. But when even after several years the Pegasi didn’t assault his strongholds he thought his defenses strong enough to go to the.

So he gathered battle mages and their acolytes from his entire kingdom and ordered what, outside the Unicorn Kingdom, marked the start of a thirty year long war. Historians later dubbed it ‘the wendigo war’ though some ponies found the title ‘food fight’ much more to their … taste.

“Did you just make a taste pun about a war for food?”

I liked that one.

“You’re a really strange AI.”

I was designed and build by her Royal Highness Princess Twilight Sparkle, based on the mental imprint of her number one assistant. She even named me after him. Even though a few alterations were made, his dedication to his duties, his loyalty to the princess and his love for comics are the baseline of my personality matrix.

Furthermore, I’m glad to inform you that my system is working inside specified parameters and my last system error was logged 2.479 hours and 33 minutes ago. Therefore I am not strange, but perfectly fine, thank you.

“Ahm, can we please get back to the war?”

Yes of course.

Approximately six months after the 17th proclamation was made public King Silver Hoof ordered his first, sixth and tenth battle mage division to destroy Pegasi outposts near their borders and tasked the second and third division with keeping the weather over the kingdom in check.

Simultaneously he ordered his remaining fourth, fifth, seventh, eighth and ninth battle mage divisions to bring the traitorous Earth Ponies back in line.

The Unicorn armies conquered several major Earth Pony settlements and many small surrounding homesteads.

Within a half a year he had expanded his kingdom to nearly double its initial size and thought himself on a good way of conquering the Earth Pony tribe. What he didn’t know it that in this half a year both of the other tribes gathered their strength to strike back. The Earth Ponies had formed a coalition to fight back the invaders and prepared an army, while the Pegasi waited for the cold of winter to set in before they wanted to strike at the Unicorns’ supply lines, essentially making them freeze and starve to death.

What King Silver Hoof didn’t know however was that his regular citizens struggled to keep the food supply up and running, without the goods from the Earth Ponies the agriculture of the Unicorn Kingdom was barely enough to keep them afloat.

One month later the first great battle between the Earth Pony army and the Unicorn Kingdom’s battle mages was fought near a temple that is only known as the Oracle of Dolphin.

The Earth Ponies had crafted suits of armor unlike any the world had seen before and historians of the time claim their army numbered about 7.000 ponies. Even if we take conservative estimates of 3.500 Earth Ponies in battle armor, they still outnumbered the Unicorn Kingdom’s battle mages present ten to one.

After barely 30 minutes of fighting the entirety of the Unicorn Kingdom’s ninth battle mage division was destroyed, all it’s mages killed and most of the acolytes put to flight.

In the later war the tribes developed a three way stalemate of sorts.

The Unicorns were unable to push back the massive armies the Earth Ponies could field and retreated to their cities and defended their mighty walls. Since the Pegasi couldn’t field enough heavy weapons to lay siege to an extensive fortress city they stayed clear of the Unicorn Kingdom and considered the sky over the kingdom lost.

But the Earth Ponies had no such powerful defenses and so the Pegasi raided many Earth Pony settlements and kept huge parts of the tribe’s army on garrison duty to minimize the losses in food and civilian population. At the same time the plundered food and resources allowed the Pegasi to maintain their population and their army throughout the war.

Since they had neither flight nor magic the Earth Ponies resorted to ingenuity and science to further their war effort. They attacked and besieged many Unicorn cities; even managed to break a few of those mighty walls. Constant Pegasi raids kept them busy though and most likely prevented the annihilation of the Unicorn Kingdom. With the combination of a reliable base economy, a drive to develop technology to match magic and flight of the other tribes and an enormous numerical advantage, many historians hypothesize that the Earth Ponies could have actually won the war, even if it would have taken them a century or two.

But this never came to pass because the Wendigoes brought the long winter.

Terminating connection to database storage alpha 7.13.8-D … procedure concluded.

Would you like me to comply a list of related topics?

“Yes Spike, show me what you got.”

Recommended topics to proceed from here are:
- Pre unification Earth Pony culture
- Pre unification Pegasi culture
- Pre unification Unicorn culture
- Earth Pony battle doctrine
- Pegasi battle doctrine
- Unicorn battle doctrine
- Equestrian combined arms doctrine
- The long winter
- The Wendigo war
- The great exodus

Personally I love the story about the great battle of the San Palomino Plains where Princesses Celestia and Luna led the charge against the last remnants of Discords first ‘reign of chaos’.

Or would you like to ask me something about an unrelated topic?

“I think I would like to hear about…”

Author's Note:

Ok, now for some organisatorial stuff.

Any of you who has a Question for Spike the D.R.A.G.O.N. or who want's to learn mroe about a certain topic may feel free to ask their question in the coments of the last released chapter. I will then either pick one at random or, if there are more than just a handful of people partaking in this story, I will pick the one with the most votes.

by the way, all answers will effectively be my own headcanon, I will try to make is as logical as I can in regards to the series but you have been warned.

Let's see how this one progresses.