Many of these so-called ponies believe they were the first to discover the land that is now known as Equestria. They were wrong, of course. Those idiotic Humans, inebriated Dwarves, and the pitiful vomit-inducing, tree hugging, frolicking Elves littered the landscape first all the while living their simple, boring lives. The ponies and the other smattering of races moved here over time from some other land. If they were still here, the various original races meeting the ponies would have made for a bit of a chaotic first contact considering they used dumber cousins of the ponies as labor and mounts. It's too bad that didn't happen, oh I could have enjoyed watching that carnage with a nice bowl of salamander eyeballs.

But, well, one or one-hundred powerful wizards attempting magic beyond their capabilities on magical artifacts beyond their comprehension tend to make things go... explodey. In a single snap of my claws the entire human race, and all of the other "intelligent" races as well, were simply gone. Vaporized in a magical wave of energy. The landscape left even more magically scarred than when the Tower Heart of the old Dark Tower went kaboom. We minions fled back to the Netherworld from whence we came and waited for the land to heal, and hopefully for some other race capable of thought to come knocking at its gates.

We waited a long time for that and now we should really get around to finding a new Master, none of the races showed any real promise so we need to do this ourselves. Giblet seems to have found something promising while digging around the cave of a local dragon (the dragons seem to have gotten smarter too), so I'll have to go give that a look-see and pray to Darkness nothing weird comes out of it.

But as I always say... Evil always finds a way.

-Gnarl, the Minion Master, on the origins of Equestria

When Twilight first began her experiments in trying to figure out better ways to access the Aether, the realm of magic and souls just outside their physical realm, she did not expect to make significant progress. After all, pony kind has been trying to find out the answer to that line of thinking for centuries.

When she felt herself connect to the other realm Twilight accidentally manipulated its energies in a different sort of way. The Aether bent to her will much easier than before. Getting just a bit too excited, Twilight played with the Aether a tad too freely and the reality-bending powers of the outer realm sucked her into its bottomless depths.

Fortunately Twilight was able to direct herself back to the material realm using the closest, and brightest, soul she could find as an anchor. And the second she looked up at the skull of the skeleton sitting on top of a golden throne, she knew life was about to get more... interesting.

(A crossover with "If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device")