Prologue - Before Equestria

Once upon a time, before the founding of Equestria and the surrounding nations, and before the existence of the diverse creatures that called those places home, the world was a very different place.  It was a world dominated by a single, sapient species that made its living through innovation, ingenuity, exploration, and advancement.  It was a world in which magic was considered myth, and had no discernible presence in the day-to-day life of this race.

These people, throughout history, had faced much hardship, competing for limited resources.  Hindered by a lack of understanding and harmony, they warred over these resources, time and again, for centuries.  Eventually, the various nations of this world found themselves thriving in a technological age, and as they continued to ascend to greater heights, they gradually became unified.  Finally, they had forged a lasting peace and harmony.

To commemorate this achievement, the best and brightest minds that this world had to offer came together from all over the globe in one momentous effort: an attempt to uncover the next stage of their evolution.  An attempt to attain true perfection.  However, no earthly thing can be perfect, and though it is unclear what, exactly, became of this arrogant endeavor, the world was quickly plunged into chaos.  A great war, unlike any that had come before it, consumed all nations.  During this time of strife, a mysterious plague crept across the lands, causing everyone that it touched to wither and die.

It was at this time that two creatures of myth, sisters, who had been content to observe these people for the entirety of their history, decided that they could sit idly by no longer.  Using their own unique magical abilities, the siblings delved into the very fabric of reality and obtained the metaphysical blueprint for the concept of peace, and manifested it into physical form.  By unleashing the power of this newly forged tool upon the world, they brought about a great change.

The lands were broken down and rearranged, and the taint of the strange plague was washed away completely.  This world's people were changed as well, reformed into images of the beasts they had tamed and the myths they had created, as a means of escaping the plague's lingering effects.  The ruins of this old civilization were buried deep beneath newly formed continents and newly molded oceans. All traces of the old world were sealed away, and their memory vanished.  The world was given a second chance.

In the ages that followed, the inhabitants of this new world still explored, expanded, evolved, and invented, but the mysterious force of nature known as magic was commonplace, no longer existing as myth.  This world would still have its fair share of hardships to endure, but the sisters hoped that history would not repeat itself.  Unfortunately, the capacity for destruction, and the driving force behind it, the energy, still existed in this world, buried though it may have been.  Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, merely changed, and some things in this world refuse to change...