starswirl's entry on the dark chaos war
The shades were created before the time of Discord by a dark dragon who was the king of a nation that had never been known to the world before. His name was Nox Void and he had knowledge of magic so dark it was almost a violation of reality. His kingdom was called Nexus. The first shades, known as Shifts, were created to act as the soldiers of the kingdom. Over time however the sunlight started to kill them off. Void was worried for the shades as they were what made up his kingdom's population.
It did not help that his nation was located in what would later become known as The Southern Badlands. With the fact the shades were made of the physical darkness, which is why the sunlight proved deadly to them, the dragon, to find a way to keep his subjects alive, delved even further and deeper into his black magic. But as the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. With more knowledge he gained of dark magic he started to lose more and more of his sanity until he was completely insane. But he had done it. He had altered the remaining shades to imitate living creatures, turning them from constructs into the life forms known as Homunculus.
Eventually his insanity and the unwavering loyalty of his creations had finally created a massive threat to the balance of the world, of light and darkness. The world's magic had responded in the form of discord who at the time saw that with Nox Void around wouldn't be able to spread his image on the world. And thus began what was known as The War of Darkness and Chaos. The Draconequus known as Discord summoned the six most powerful archdemons of Tartarus to occupy the ranks of his generals and lead his army of beasts. They would later become known as the Six Titans of Chaos and even later The Harmonic Titans. The war itself took seven millenniums, and with black magic corrupting Void more and more each day he had changed into a shade himself.
I personally witnessed the final battle when pony kind started to become sentient. By this point void had created his own versions of Discord's creations in the form of shades. The counterparts of the Timberwolves were the Hell Hounds. They were the exact opposite of the wooden constructs as the hounds were made of the darkest of fires. To counter them Discord himself had asked me if I and some of my kind wanted to learn magic. This was the start of the Unicorn race. That was when I decided to call myself Starswirl.
Void countered us with humanoid shades called Mages and discord countered by creating the soon to be known Pegasi, and Griffon races. Void again countered with his own flying force which he called Wyverns. Discord yet again countered with Hydras and Void countered with shape-shifting beings called Mimics that eventually evolved into what was soon to be called Nightmares. They were basically the pony versions of shades.
Soon the Hell Hounds started to mutate gaining three heads and thus were renamed Cerberus named after Discord's own pet dog that had three heads. Soon the Shifts started to wear armor, wield a sword and a shield, and soon came to be known as Guardians. Then came their assassins known as the Shinobi. Discord countered this with the Cockatrices and Chimeras which spurred Void into fusing some of the Shades into hybrids and his own version of Chimeras.
I quickly saw that this went from a war to a contest of who could create the most races. But in the final battle a third party came. An earth pony had started to develop what was later known as vampirism becoming the first vampony. He was named Sangue and was nicknamed Ripper due to his brutal technique in battle where he would use his immense strength to rip his opponent’s apart limb from limb. Then new monsters and demons began to appear. Some of the demon tribes started to become our allies in this time and as a result the Shade species as a whole developed the ability to see demonic auras and the battle ended when Discord absorbed some of Void's insanity.
The chaos caused by this caused massive earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and hurricanes. This sadly forced Vlad's young son Crimson Fang to take control in the death of his father after an earthquake caused an avalanche to fall on him, killing him instantly. Fang soon became known as The King of Monsters and was later nicknamed the King of Fear, due to his habit of scaring criminals, who were deemed to be too dangerous to allow to continue living by his kingdoms courts, to death.
The young king then spent the remainder of the war trying to figure out a way to seal away both Void and Nexus as a whole. Discord vanished soon after Sangue’s death, and Void seemed to be sane again. The Shades started to develop genders by this point and Void soon married a shade wyvern named Crescent Eclipse. They soon had a son named Tamashii Souto, later nicknamed Soul, who became Fang's childhood friend as, despite the king's age of forty two, he was still in the body of a colt. Apparently due to the fact he was a natural born vampony he would age slowly and never grow old. Both started to grow at the same time. Despite having at least three decades apart in ages the two quickly became the best of friends nay brothers in all but blood according to Fang's mother, Scarlet Sky. Then tragedy struck both as both Crescent and Scarlet started to fall ill.
I later learned that Discord had reappeared and had started to absorb natural magic, replacing it with his chaotic magic and as a result began warping reality. Void started to become insane once again and young Tamashii saw his kind go from the kind beings they were into evil, feral, yet very intelligent, beasts in every sense of the word. His mother had revealed to me, in secret, that she was the daughter of a pony and Guardian Shade. And thus was slightly immune to the insanity.
Sadly Discord had absorbed too much magic from the Shade queen and Fang's mother. They died soon after, as the natural magic in their bodies was tied to their life force. Crescent disintegrated into particles as a result of the magic that was keeping her in this existence was taken and Scarlet, well her case was different.
Her magic had created two odd ponies that had the traits of all three tribes, unicorn, earth ponies, and pegasi. I knew that Scarlet was a unicorn, and that her husband was a threshal so I knew Fang was at least similar beings such as these two. But this was the last straw for Void. The white filly formed from the light half of Eclipse's magic and the blue one from her darker half were targeted by Void as his view was that their creation was what had killed his own wife.
Fang was horrified at this and decided to protect his new sisters to the best of his ability. By this point Tamashii had become a full guardian shade and was helping his friend defend his family. I decided to help out as well because I still was young enough to help out. Fang had set out with an odd crystal seed he found in his castle’s vault, which contained various magical artifacts, and planted the seed before gathering the six arch demons that Discord had made his generals and called up seven more. One was unable to create a body of his own and so possessed a young kitten that had been walking in the area. He told Fang that his name was Cheshire and was soon taken in as Fang’s own pet cat.
With Tamashii by his side Fang called up all the magic that he and his friend could. And with this massive amount of power he placed a seal upon Void and the Kingdom of Nexus using the power of the arch demons as the locks. The seal took its toll on the shades by forcing Nexus to become part of Tenebris, which was a parallel dimension of our own, Lux. While Tenebris was aware of us before Nexus had become a part of it they were never able to interact. I know of this land for I was told of its existence by a fourth, grey, alicorn with a mane of blue flame who called himself Hades, The Creator of Demons.
The seal secretly had a fourteenth lock. Part of Fang’s soul. Due to this Fang lost his memory of the war and what he did while his arch demons scattered to keep the seal in place, except Cheshire, of course, who liked his position as a king’s pet cat. I heard that Void had cast out Tamashii from Nexus for his betrayal to the shades. I knew that Tamashii would not survive long in direct sunlight was a cloak as a gift from Fang.
The last time I talked to the young exile he told me he was going to travel the world and train for the day that The Kingdom of Nexus and his father reappeared. I handed him a few years supply of Eclipse, small crystals that were made of solid light and dark magic. I made these in honor of Eclipse, whom I had created them for, to extend her resistance to sunlight, they would allow her to stay in contact with the sun for two more hours than a normal shade could. I told him that they were his life blood should he ever lose the shadow cloak that Fang had given him. Then to my astonishment the young knight transformed into a stallion like the Nightmares only he looked like a normal unicorn pony.
He had explained that it was his grandfather’s pony DNA that granted him this power. And that was the last I saw of him. In a letter I received during my time training Celestia and Luna, the two fillies created from Scarlet's magic he had lost his own memory from a delayed effect of the seal, as he had given the seal part of his soul so that Fang would not die. Nothing can live without a soul. From what I gathered my theory is that he can regain those memories when the seal is weakened enough for shades to cross over to our world.
Fang, who had become a god after he and Soul sealed the Nexus away, had forgotten he even had two sisters and I raised them as my own. It wasn't until near a thousand years on my death bed did I discover what had become of the seed Fang planted. It had become a crystal tree called the Tree of Harmony. When the day of my death began to approach I told Celestia and Luna where to find the Tree of Harmony and when they left to confront discord I wrote this last entry in my private journal that I have hidden in my old home, Golden Oaks Library.
I charmed this journal of my life to only reappear when the mare of dawn and dusk and the king of monsters are wed and return to the threshold of my old home. I leave the two ponies, the shade prince, and all of their friends with this warning.
The time has come for wrongs to be righted and for a new era to begin. When the seal is broken the shadow dragon shall arise and begin to cover the world in darkness. Find my old friend Time Turner, he will explain and help you on your journey.
- Starswirl the Bearded. Age 2400.