The Bar At The End Of The World (Prologue)

At the end of the world, there is a bar like no other. A black-plumed griffon wipes the oaken bar that despite the mars from aeons of drinks and whatever passes for cigarettes of the bar’s patrons, is perfectly clean already. In fact, it never becomes soiled. Behind him, there is row upon row of bottles, clean glasses, everything he could conceivably need. No matter what’s ordered, he always has the ingredients on hand to make it. One can hear through a swinging door the chatter of kitchen staff making pub food recognizable anywhere.

        Entering, you may think you’ve been here before. All at once, you have, and you have not. This is a place seen in a fever dream, by those whose hearts stop. For this place, this watering hole at world’s end, is reserved for those some may foolishly dub the ‘damned’.

        In one corner, the Headless Horse is listening to Charlemane speak of his legions of illegitimate children.

        A stranger in a black coat and rakish hat entered some time ago, and listened to a grey mare recount her tale. It was a good one. Long, but not long enough her rapt audience (who had heard it before at least once) lost interest. But it was winding down, the stranger waiting her turn to speak.

        “If I’m going to tell you about the adventure of my life -- explain how I got to this place with these people, and why I did what I’m going to do next-- I should probably start by explaining a little bit about Pipbucks...” She smirked triumphantly, as she ended her story at its beginning...

        The stranger cleared her throat. “Tha’ was a right good story, I’ll gi’e ye tha’ one.”

        The stranger tipped her hat up to reveal a disfigured face still coated in graveyard muck. A mare, white in coat and three fourths mechanical, winced. A new story enticed the ears of everypony present, and a hush (never silence, here, no..) fell over the comfortably smoky room, an expectant quiet punctuated by the clink of bottles and glasses.

        “But I ken y’ve all hert its ilk afore.” The keeper laid a drink at her hooves, the mare sipping slowly from it. She gained strength and sighed softly. The harsh burr faded from her voice, and her face unfolded from itself. Scars faded, wounds healed, as she collected her thoughts.

        “Now, you’ve gotten most things right from where I’m standing. But my story is my story, and there ent none quite like it.”

        A stallion murmured, and it broke the spell of quiet cast by the stranger.

        “Is it tragic?”

        “Is it a comedy?”

        “Is it scary?”

        The mostly-mechanical mare. “Is there love?”

        The gray mare who had told her story before the stranger had spoke, her words cutting through and ending the chatter. “Is there a happy ending? Does it end in sunshine and rainbows?”

        “That’s as may be. I leave such judgements to you all. An’ nae, it ends on a magenta sunset.”

        “Then please, tell us.”

        “Tell us!” clamored the massed horde. She cleared her throat again. “Okay. A little bit o’ history afore I start...

Luna returned to Equestria to find things better than they had been. Better than she’d expected her sister to run things in her absence.

The mighty zebra nation objected to Luna’s return to rule, citing pseudoreligious nonsense. War breaks out, Equestria responds viciously and is victorious within five years of hard fighting, with surprisingly few casualties. The zebra lands are annexed, her people enslaved that did not willingly become bottom-caste citizens.

The princesses returned to their normal way of doing things- they fractionalized. Equestria became a nation ruled by three separate governments- a Day Court, a Night Court, and the Enclave of the ponies themselves.

Somehow during these years Equestria crumbles. The nation dissolves and becomes three pieces, held together by a shaky truce (more of a three-way standoff, really). Echoes of the Diesel Age had brought about the Magic Era, and after the dissolution Science gave way to the Atom.

Equestria and its neighbors became thaumonuclear powers, although the conquered Zebra nation clung to its coal and Equestria itself toys with harnessing the power of water and the rays of the sun.

It is not known what finally sparked off the war, what lead Luna against her sister again. That era, her Fall, is a footnote in a censored text of faerie stories, nopony knows whether or not the reasons she had for the first time around held true still.

But after thirty years of open warfare between the three sides a thaumological device was detonated in Canterlot, killing tens of thousands instantly, destroying a full sixth of the city. Leading Celestia to believe she’d been fired upon and to retaliate in kind. Destruction was mutually assured, Equestria died over the course of eight minutes.

But when the ash settled... Equestria, and war, arose anew.

Because war, war never changes.