Balefire bathed the land.

There were, of course, survivors…

The cities were scorched with weapons of untold power, the very land was soaked with poison, but the world was not destroyed, just a way of life. The first deaths numbered in the millions, but the death toll during the next year was even more staggering as ponies struggled to find water, food, and shelter amidst the ruins of the civilization.

In what had once been North Equestria, the survivors fought to prevail in a new age of sickness, balefire, barbarism and desperation. There were days of seemingly endless night, eerily lit by the glow of the pegasi’s cities burning in the sky. And then the sky was closed, blanketed by thick clouds that heralded an endless winter. Fetid swamps infected with magical radiation created new and terrible life forms. Windigo’s storms hurtled across the landscape with enough strength to level entire cities, and when by some freak chance a storm cloud swept in from the sea, it was warped, putrid rain that fell—balefire tainted water that stripped a pony to the bones in seconds of shrieking agony.

In isolated pockets, ponies survived and struggled against terrible odds.

Underground, ponies retreated into the safety of Stables and hoped to outlast the apocalypse.