Equestria Needs Stallions!
By HatePlow
Celestia was a beacon of unfaltering calmness and authority in the lands she ruled. A smile like that of a proud motherly figure graced her face at most times and yet in the gentle glow of her sun, a frown had conquered her normally cheery visage. Neither She nor her sister had known this day would come a thousand years ago. The road to ruin was not a steep decline but a downhill slant so slight it was barely noticed. Barely was the key word in this situation.
It had started off several generations ago by a stallion named Dusty Pages. To most, he was a crackpot historian who was obsessed with the way things were compared to how things are now. He would always find the slightest differences, most seeing him making mountains out of molehills as it were. Most were simple things, such as observing the size of ponies diminishing over time using complex mathematics used on ancient statues, clothing and artifacts depicting historical figures and comparing them to today. Many passed the research off as “looking too deeply into things.” Surely ponies were not shrinking over the ages, right? That’s ridiculous!
That was his most known work and the reason nopony took him seriously. It was his other main hypotheses that earned him recognition from the diarchy ruling over Equestria and eventually the entire world. He had noticed through ancient depictions in art and stories that where stallions were once abundant, they became more and more rare. The truth was, males were starting to die out in the world, not even just in the pony nations! Even Zebrica and Neighpon were being affected and though most dismissed him, the thought stuck with the solar princess and she was long-lived enough to realize that while the changes were slight, he was correct.
At the beginning of her reign upon the uniting of the three tribes, it wasn’t uncommon to see two or three colts from a large family per generation. Most couples had two or three foals given they developed the abilities to walk, speak and reason within the first two years of life. This continued to change each generation as unicorn magic became more and more a part of everypony’s daily life. Innovations such as the crystal technology increased the demand for unicorn magic and with it, the yet unseen effects of ambient magic saturation.
Truth be told, unicorns were more magical than normal ponies, simply pouring their extra magic out with each spell used. Nopony knew of the danger, nopony does even now. The wildlife slowly became more and more intelligent, prey became smarter in avoiding predators, predators became more vicious and cunning to keep up with their prey. If Celestia had her way, nopony would ever know of the dangers. Finding out that one race of ponies alone was the cause for increased manticore, hydra and timberwolf attacks as well as the eventual dying out of their race would lead to riots in the streets!
Things changed for pony relationships over this time as well. Now most couples only produced fillies with the occasional colt. It didn’t take long for this to get noticed. When it did, society changed and not even the sun princess could do anything about it. It became a subject of panic for most rational thinkers that they might die out if there weren’t enough colts. Couples started a practice most simply called “FFC” or “Fishing for colts.” They would continue to have foals until they produced a male. This only made the problem worse as the gender ratio tipped more heavily for females as many had several fillies before producing a colt and becoming satisfied.
It was not long until polygamy became popular for the more masculine stallions.
With so much influence it was easy for Princess Celestia to dedicate entire laboratories to discovering what it was that had changed things in such a way. She poured every bit the treasury could spare into a way to save her species, spending all her attention on the subject as well. Amazing advances in chemistry, engineering and eventually genetics were made as her science-inclined subjects hammered away at researching the dilemma. Scientific ethic was thrown out in the rush to save themselves and their species. The scientists working at her facility were sworn to secrecy about their findings, only able to report any findings with permission directly from her.
In her efforts to discover a way to save her subjects, she turned to her own magic. She had fine-tuned a search spell and used it to scour her world for something containing exceptional amounts of the XY chromosome the scientists had mapped out. Even the royal alicorn did not have the magic to search her whole planet so she turned to crystals and gems to contain her magic, siphoning it off to hold the amount she would need for such an undertaking.
Coupling the search spell with a teleport to caster spell, she called forth all her stored magic and that was where John Smith came in(I know, generic name). The human had astounded her, a muscular, gritty ex-convict who was almost a problem due to his violent inclinations. Whilst normally she would just sequester him into the dungeon and never speak of him again, her scientific eye was wrapped around his bulging biceps. He was masculine. So very masculine!
It took great promises of wealth, land and women for him to agree to be studied at her facility. The discoveries made were amazing, the testosterone coursing through him being nearly quadruple the amount of dragons who were the current reigning champs in testosterone production due to their magic resistance(though the ponies didn’t know that) and outpaced their expectations by far! It was then they noticed the almost ridiculous amount of magic resistance humans had. Although he himself wasn’t aware, their research was being directed to another subject by their righteous ruler who had one thought in mind.
If they could find a way to make him into a pony and have more of his kind breed with their’s... ...their problems would be gone within a generation!
It was only a month before they succeeded in their research, inspired by their recent research success. To her regret, they told him they intended to change him and he flipped out. He became immediately non-cooperative and only took a few days before escaping. Due to his lack of magic, military training or the ability to fly, pegasi troops were easily able to detain him before he got any decent exposure to their civilization. It was with regret that Celestia was forced to make him docile through mind-altering procedures(magic only, of course).
Most would be thinking that such a regal creature as Princess Celestia would do such dark things but even in such a peaceful nation as Equestria, there are dissident figures whose only goal is to cause suffering and the princess was a pacifist at heart. Killing doesn’t get anypony anywhere and she knew it. Sometimes, though, some “people” as he called them give you no other choice. It’s their personality that is the problem. It was for these reasons she had developed these spells and she regretted every single time she was forced to use it, like on poor John Smith. Once at peace, she developed his life experiences and stored them away for after the procedure.
With many hours of experimenting and one afternoon of extensive spell casting, John Smith became Jolly Sonnet, the happy, rather muscular poet earth pony. A few spells later, his personality was over-written and experiences implanted. Over the next few months, his mind would sometimes let his past experiences bleed through his made up experiences and he had a few breakdowns, fueling the royal scientists to perfect the mind-wiping and ponification technologies in the coming decades. After it was seen that Jolly had gotten married and had a jaw-dropping four colts and three fillies, plans were constructed in the sun goddess’ mind, plans to introduce a heavy number of ultra-masculine stallions to her subjects unaware of what they once were, unaware of their time in Sunshine Smile’s Home for the Wayward or as Celestia called it, “Facility 12.”
