Chapter 1: Who is Marco Polo?

The breeze in the air was just perfect as Marco Polo set out on his journey to the dragon lands the mysterious and elusive trader had brought with him many wares from his homeland with him hoping to make a profit. He had some metal tools used for miscellaneous purposes. Also he had with him a cart to put all his wares in instead of carrying it around all day.  He needed all the strength he could muster up in order to pull the cart to his desired location.

Marco Polo himself was an earth pony so he would have a lot of the needed endurance to pull it. Marco had a brown coat and an orange swirly tail. His cutie mark was a picture of two crates with green arrows making them swap. It depicted his special talent being trade and bartering.

He was a wealthy merchant for his time. Since most had paid a lot of their bits to Celestia in order to fund the war effort. Although this did not stop him for he has been successful before and he will be successful again. He has been warned that the dragon lands were dangerous and not suitable for any pony. This did not stop him though. He had faced terrible creatures before and he will face them again for he was the one to go into the center of the Everfree Forest and set up a trade post so that ponies and zebras can exchange items between each other.

But since people were going poor because of the troubled time, there has been a lot of thievery. And, since Marco had been the only one to make money in trade, he had made quite a few enemies lately. He was hunted by other merchants. He had faced their hired blades since they themselves didn't want to get injured. He warded them off quite easily. Although, the attacks on him had been increasingly more severe. Lately, he had been losing most of his cargo to the mercenaries.