Difference between revisions of "Equestrian Journals"

Revision as of 00:09, 3 November 2011

Equestrian Time Line

BA = Before Ascension
AA = After Ascension
CR = Celestia's Reign

77 BA: Gnosis creates the Summer Triangle Project.
75 BA: Vega, mother to Midnight Star, is born and impressed into the Summer Triangle Project.
45 BA: Summer Triangle creates Shard of Numar.  The artifact fails to meet specifications Gnosis desired.
20 BA: Regal Sisters, Celestia and Luna are born.
19 BA: Vega dies, Midnight Star is born.  Summer Triangle goes underground, Shard of Numar disappears.
5 BA: Shard of Numar resurfaces and is transformed into the Elements of Harmony during Midnight Star's Awakening.  The Elements are embedded in five pony friends of Midnight Star.  Midnight Star and her five friends are referred to as the Six.
0 BA/AA: Ascension of the Regal Sisters.
1 AA: The Six are slain in battle with the Ancient Predators.  The elements of Harmony are collected from their bodies by Celestia.
50 AA: Military conquest of Equestria largely complete.
60 AA: Dissolution of the Old Kingdom's institutions is underway.
100 AA: Seasons begin to stabilize in Equestria.  Celestia and Luna establish a largely communal libertarian society.  Regal sisters assume religious authority.
~500 AA: Luna is banished to the moon.  Celestia's reign begins.  Elements of Harmony are stored in the Everfree Forest.
200-250 CR: City wars begin and ultimately are suppressed.  Celestia establishes a stronger central authority as a result.
260 CR: A Federal Constitution and Equine bill of rights is drafted.
500 CR: Rural revolts against federal taxes.
700 CR: Red Dragon terrorizes Equestria.  The dragon is eventually slain.
800 CR: Canterlot loses its crown as the largest city to Manehatten.
850-950 CR: Industrialization begins after discovery of unicorns with metal seeking magic.
983 CR: Midnight Star and the rest of the Six is believed to have been reincarnated in Ponyville.
1000 CR: Return of Nightmare Moon.  The reincarnated Six defeat her and Luna is returned.
1059 CR: The last of the Reincarnated Six, Pinkie Pie, dies.  Elements of Harmony are returned to Celestia.
1200 CR: First Aircraft is invented.  Ponies begin survey of Everfree forest from above.
1220 CR: Contact with world outside of Equestria is established.
1230-50 CR: Trade flows along airship lines are established.  Wealth in Equestria increases dramatically.  Regal Sisters establish the Trade Commission, headquartered in Canterlot.
1269  CR: Manehatten stock exchange established.

• "Century after century, the census reports that Equestria's population remains nearly static [2]. With an apparent abundance of food and space, what limits the growth of the pony population? Many of the theories to date attempt to model the phenomenon by invoking social or cultural limitations to reproductive drive [42]. These theories however fail to explain recently surveyed [53] attitudes towards foal-bearing and the reported occurance rate sexually transmitted infection[15]. Recent data, vide infra, suggests an external force is modulating population growth at physiological level."

- Canton Scrollsworth, abstract in Equestrian Journal of Biosociology, circa 1267 CR

• "Fossil records indicate that the three extant pony races have existed, more or less physically unaltered, for well over 50,000 years [18] and ruins suggest that rudimentary civilizations have existed for at least 10,000 years [19]. However, written records of pony history even just back to the early years of Celestia's thousand year reign are sparse. What is known of the few centuries prior to the Princess Luna's imprisonment on the moon stem primarily from the recent (relatively speaking) recovery of the Library of Gnosis. The LoG also provides some hints about the culture of Equestria prior to Celestia's rule, but they almost raise more questions than they answer. Written history from the time before Celestia's reign are mysteriously absent, save a small corpus of stone engraved writings found in ruins. A presentation of the current scholarly consensus of Equestria's history is presented as a timeline later in this document. For the detail oriented reader, excellent reviews and contextual analysis of the LoG documents are given in references [1,3,6-9]. A review of the ruin writings may be found in reference [4].

Known history can be crudely broken into five time periods: Pre-Ascension Era, Equestrian Expansion, The Reign of the Two Sisters, Celestia's Thousand Year Reign, and the current era, which is referred to as The Second Reign. What is known of the Pre-Ascension era is limited to a document called the Preparation Accounts, which detail the Old Kingdom's monarchy and their preparations for the Ascension of the Regal Sisters. The Preparation Accounts were found in the Library of Gnosis, along with numerous other writings detailing the the astronomical, mathematical, and economic knowledge of the time. While these other documents do give a point of reference on how far we have come over the centuries, it has taken scholars a great deal of contextual analysis to tease out any details of the Old Kingdom's culture from them. From this type of analysis, for instance, it is known that one of the primary motivations for the Ascension plot was to rid the Old Kingdom of predators. The fear of predators appears to have shaped a number of aspects in equine culture, the most significant of which is the near ubiquity of adherence to a religion which we only know as "worship of the Goddess". Goddess worship is mentioned a number of times in the Preparation Accounts, but here it appears only as a vehicle for collecting magical energy to power the Ascension. According to the account the collection of energy through Goddess worship lasted centuries, perhaps even millenia. Contextual analysis reveals that the population at large did not fully comprehend the real nature of the religion's purpose, but it is clear that it also brought some measure of comfort to the population following predation. Apart from this, however, details on Goddess worship are scant at best and even more odd is that no temple ruins to the goddess have been located. The best that can be said is that the religion was completely extinguished in the years following the Ascension in favor of worshipping the Regal Sisters.

Following the Ascension, Equine armies of the Old Kingdom, aided by the Regal Sisters' power, conquered and secured the borders of what is now known to be Equestria. This period is normally thought to have taken a mere fifty years [15-16], although some contend that conflicts with Ancient Predators continued for as long as two hundred years [10]. During this time what was left of the Old Kingdom's monarchy that produced the Regal Sisters dissolved in favor of Celestia's governance. The remnants of the monarchy is still visible today in the noble lineage of the court in Canterlot, but their powers are significantly reduced. Most of the evidence from this time stems from recovered warpony artifacts. Scholarly activity appears to have been suppressed either due to the need for military power or resource collection, so most accounts of this time are second hand produced many years aftewards. It is also known that during this time Equestria's population expanded very rapidly, which is evident from the mass graves that mark the death of this Conquest Boom generation. Although the Ancient Predators were driven out in the Expansion, one of the most difficult challenges facing ponydom throughout this time was coming to grips with the consequences of the Regal Sisters acquiring total control of the weather and seasons. By all accounts this time was one of high mortality and starvation while the Sisters themselves came to grips with managing the physical aspects of the world. During this time, traditions of the Winter Wrap-up and the Running of the Leaves were started, although they took some time to be developed. Scholarly writings in the few centuries after the Expansion tend to focus on principles of maintaining balance with nature -- which continues even to this day.

Four hundred and seventy four years of relatively peaceful development in Equestria under both Sisters followed their Ascension and the Expansion Era (depending on how you define the end of the latter era). The sisters' dual reign ended abruptly with a falling out between the two sisters, the story of which is well known, and resulted in Celestia banishing her then crazed sister Luna to the Moon. Thus began the Thousand Year Reign of Celestia. Years since have used this moment as a reference; this review is being written in the Twelve hundredth and fifty eighth year of Celestia's Reign (abbreviated 1258 CR). Despite the return of Luna, now 258 years ago, the practice of recording years in CR has remained."

- Preface to "Introduction to Modern Culture", circa 1258 CR

The Physical World of Equestria

Description

Equestria is a medium sized land-locked country, approximately the size of Germany, surrounded by mountain ranges on all sides. There are a few passes in the mountains that lead out of Equestria, but these are buried deep in forest. The terrain within Equestria contains plains, temperate forests, desert, and mountain ranges. The most ancient towns and cities are situated in mountain valleys, but some of the newer (and larger) cities are on the planes. The desert areas are, for the most part, unpopulated, except at the fringes.

Inhabitants

Present-day Equestria is populated largely by herbivorous creatures, the largest of which include: Equines and Bovines. Equines are the dominant population by many measures. There are three equine species: Earth Pony, Pegasus Pony, and Unicorn pony. Some carnivorous creatures exist, but are limited in range to the eastern borderland forest known as the Everfree forest. Within the Everfree forest, there are a veritable zoo of creatures. This account focuses primarily on the pony controlled region of Equestria, however, and within this domain only herbivores are present (with few domesticated exceptions).

Pony Population Centers

Canterlot, the governmental seat of Celestia's rule, houses nearly a hundred thousand ponies. More populous cities, such as Manehatten, Fillydelphia, Coltimore, and Trottingham exist. The majority of the pony population, however, exist in rural villages with a few hundred to several thousand ponies in each. These villages are dotted throughout mountain valleys and the central plains region.

Pony Politics

Ostensibly Equestria is a Monarchy with Celestia and Luna as its co-rulers. In reality, the Regal Sisters devote most of their time to maintenance of Equestria's physical properties (see Management of Equestria), than they spend on organization of social structure. Thus most ponies would say that they live in a democracy, where the majority of governmental activity starts and ends at the city level. Outsiders to Equestria refer to the country as a libertarian monarchy. There are some federal level laws, saliently the pony bill of rights and laws governing inter-city interactions and trade. To handle inter-city relations and manage disputes, Canterlot has designated certain cities to be county seats and has placed courts there to handle such matters. Throughout the centuries the role of canterlot has waxed and waned, but by most standards it has always played a minimal governmental role. There is a minimal federal tax to support the maintenance of roads, county courts, public education, and the royal army. Nowadays, however, the majority of Federal funding comes from heavy taxation of export revenue. Canterlot controls the sole Zeppelin port, which is the only high volume means of moving goods into or out of Equestria. The level of taxation on exports is no small source of friction between royalty and business ponies. The population at large, however, is largely oblivious of these issues, as export trade has only been in existence for less than a half century. It is unknown how much wealth the Royalty have benefited from taxation and for what purpose they are using these funds. Some economic estimates place the Royal revenue at several billion bits per year.

Management of Equestria

A consequence of Celestia and Luna's ascension was the complete relegation of the physical properties of Equestria to their management. Everything from the rise and fall of the sun, to weather, gravity, atmospheric composition, etc came under the sisters' direct management. Fortunately for Equestria, this was foreseen and thus the Royal sisters were mostly prepared and equipped to handle the basics. Unfortunately, it took several centuries to iron out the details. In the meantime the Expansion Era was fraught with many ecological mis-managements. Nowadays, however, Equestria's ecology is highly stable and well managed, thanks to an efficiently distributed workload. Pegasi control weather, earth ponies are predominantly responsible for land maintenance, and unicorns assist in various ways. This tightly controlled management of Equestria is both its great strength and political weakness. Should harm ever come to the Regal Sisters it is unknown what manner of chaos Equestria will be thrust into. On the other hand, the absolute power of the Regal Sisters has allowed them to create a near perfect defense of Equestria. A few invasions were attempted after the Ascension and Expansion, but thus far all have been met with utter and complete disaster. Celestia has been known to employ localized depressurization, oxygen depletion, and mountain creation to destroy or block armies. Furthermore, the high predictability of weather and land management allows Equestria to have extremely stable and market responsive agricultural output. In the recent era of trade with outside nations via zepplin lines, Equestria, under the guidance of Finance Minister Hoofshire Bathaway, has developed a reputation for a shrewd commodity and export driven economy.

Princess Celestia

Origin

Celestia's Ascension to god-hood has little to do with any single action on her part. Centuries before Celestia's birth, the monarchy of the Old Kingdom, beleaguered by invasions from the Ancient Predator kingdoms and suffering from a great famine, sought a way to unify their people and defeat their enemies. It was under these conditions that King Eomer Hoofton II secretly sought the help of Gnosis, a powerful unicorn with an unscrupulous reputation. Numerous councils were held and ultimately Gnosis presented a bold plan: they would create a god. To transform a mortal into a god, a great deal of magical energy would be needed. Initially, Gnosis proposed mass ritual suicide to harvest the necessary energy, but of course this was not approved. In the end, the monarchy approved a long-term plan to siphon energy from the population via a ritual prayer in the Elder Tongue that Gnosis had devised. The prayer would steal energy from whomever spoke it and transmit that energy to a collecting device. In order to encourage the long-term use of such a prayer it was also designed to bring tangible relief and serenity to those who uttered it. The monarchy provided the necessary social engineering and ministrations to construct a religion around the ritual prayer. For the next few centuries the religion gained widespread use and the collecting device, a large subterranean crystal hidden beneath Canterlot's court, was filled to capacity. Gnosis managed to sustain himself, as a part of his bargain for helping the monarchy, by extracting some essence from the collection crystal. Meanwhile the monarchy bred themselves in order to create a mortal with characteristics that would be able to handle the Ascension ritual. Celestia and later her sister Luna were the first candidates in the eyes of Gnosis who he felt could survive the ritual. Thus it came to pass that, after several decades of preparation, Celestia and Luna underwent the Rite of Ascension and were granted their god-like powers. In an unforeseen consequence of the rite the collecting crystal was destroyed and with its destruction Gnosis reportedly died.

The Ritual of Ascension

Celestia and Luna may appear to have strange powers compared to standard gods in a D&D setting. This is because the Ritual of Ascension, as Gnosis conceived it, was not just a straightforward "You become a god" spell.

In mechanical terms the Ritual of Ascension did several things. First it created a small Outer Plane (see for example Astral Seed. Celestia and Luna were then granted divine rank sufficient to make the entire outer plane their godly realm by transferring the cumulated energy stored in the crystal to the Sisters. Finally, the properties of this Outer Plane, namely the Sisters' godly control over it, were merged with the Material plane via wide-spread permanent planar breaches, cast via Alter Reality repeatedly. At the time it was thought that continued breaches linking the outer realm with the material plane would allow Celestia and Luna to ultimately control an arbitrary sized section of land on the material plane, but the intercession of the existing pantheon prevented this. It may seem remarkable that the plan was ever permitted to begin by the pantheon. For this, we have the bickering indecision of the pantheon to thank. It was only until the growth of Equestria was deemed too great that the pantheon decided to step in. Since that time, Celestia and Luna have entered the pantheon, albeit at very low rank and low influence. One of the great strengths of Celestia that goes unknown to the population at large has been her ability to make alliances and deals with other gods in order to prevent any further intervention on their part. See godly politics section.

Notable results

Celestia/Luna's godly control of a portion of the material plane is actually tied to a small outer plane via wide-spread planar breaches connecting the material plane to that world. This has a few odd consequences. If one passes through the final breach boundary on the way out Equestria there is a noticeable "boundary" condition effect. The gravity and atmospheric pressure is mostly equalized, but not quite, and the difference is perceptible. The topology of the breach is not perfectly spherical. In fact, near the edges it is porous. The exact topology is a closely guarded state secret, as it has obvious military consequences. Celestia's divine rank is actually fairly low, although she permits speculation to the contrary among mortals. Even the most powerful gods of the pantheon do not exert the same extent of direct control over the material plane as she does. The precarious nature of Celestia's position in the pantheon is well known in some circles, but within Equestria is nearly unknown. In fact acknowledgement of other gods within Equestria is one of the few activities that Celestia has been known to suppress. Godly Politics:

The pantheon of gods consists of three main powerful factions: those concerned with magic, those concerned with life, and those concerned with death. Other factions do exist, but they are not powerful enough to cause trouble or even to care. It is Equestria's strong magical and vitality that has allowed Celestia to make continued and long-lasting ties with gods of the former two groups. While the creation of new gods in the pantheon is rare it is not generally prevented, unless the existing pantheon feels threatened by the new entry. The creation of Equestria involved many new lives, much magic, and much death. Thus numerous gods in the pantheon saw it as a positive development -- and frankly it was a fairly novel occurrence that piqued many a curiosity. Now centuries later some of the pantheon are unhappy with how blatantly utopian Equestria has become, particularly gods of death. Fortunately for Equestria and Celestia, she has managed to maintain at least a quorum of support. Because gods are immortal they still consider Equestria to be experimental.

Personality

Celestia was born into a position of high demands and high stress. Unlike her sister, she has excelled in this environment. Celestia is usually seen to be "serene", but this is more or less a mask she wears. The following list describes her traits:

Impatient: Celestia is ostensibly a forgiving and just ruler, but she has a sometimes unsubtle way of getting her way and getting it quickly. A favorite tactic of hers is to handle dalliance by circuitous promotion and delegation. If one delays in carrying out an order for the Princess, one may soon find another pony just as smart and capable having already done the task and now occupying your job. If the pony doing her bidding cannot thus be replaced, but is not performing to Celestia's standards, that pony may find themselves seeing the less serene side of the Princess. Didactic: Celestia has a genuine interest in teaching others. She personally oversees a number of higher learning institutions, the most famous of which is housed in Canterlot. A shrewd way of looking at this particular trait is to say that Celestia wants a large pool of competent minions. Visionary: There are many revolutionary concepts in politics, magic, and strategy that Celestia can claim responsibility for. Open Minded: Apart from maintaining her position as god of Equestria, Celestia is fairly open to new developments or other ideas presented to her. There are very few cultural practices, devices, or actions that Celestia forbids, so long as they do not infringe on her ideals (which are now codified in the pony bill of rights). Zero Tolerance: This may seem an oxymoron when coupled with "open minded", but it works, so long as you accept that Celestia can be open minded within a fairly general boundary. Outside the boundary, however, Celestia has been known to be downright brutal. Sub-Cultures which don't align with ideas like, "All gender orientations are treated equal", quickly find themselves restructured. Celestia's most common trick is to use cultural dilution, either by moving a large population of approved cultural adherents in or by dispersing the unapproved culture with relocation programs. The latter is more rare. In some extreme cases, ponies are exiled outside of Equestria. It is Celestia's policy to avoid killing anypony at all costs. Loving: Few see this side of Celestia, but she genuinely loves her sister, Luna. Sisterly love... It is unknown who else Celestia really holds dear. So many other ponies are expendable to her and she is known to dislike much of the royal court and bourgeoisie, despite using them for various tasks. Twilight Sparkle, when she was alive, may have been an object of true affection for her, given her relation to Midnight Star, whom she loved as much as Luna. Apart from this, Celestia espouses a policy encouraging love and friendship between all ponies. Troll: Trollestia is one personality that Celestia loves to indulge, often in the name of instruction. Given her position, she finds endless amusement from how often she can get people to think she is serious, when in actuality she is joking around. Much lulz were had, although most ponies don't get it, which of course makes Celestia only enjoy it more.