Crimson Warden

The legend of the Wardens is as old as time itself, some say. Others say that the Wardens are the remnants of an ancient precursor race who withstood the tests of time and the near extinction of their people; who lived before ponies even achieved intelligence. Fanatics even believe them to be an alien race all of their own, or perhaps the mere act of an all powerful deity who decided to play with equiniti. Whatever the case may be in reality, all that is known for certain is that there are only twenty worthy of the title Warden.

 The original four Wardens, the Grand Wardens, decided in secret to share with the world, the entirety of Equus as a whole, the secret to their seemingly infinite power; so began the Warden projects across the globe.

Candidates who wished to be reborn as a Warden had undergone cruel, inequine gene therapy in hopes of joining the ranks of the world's most powerful and most respected group. Successful applicants who survive the reconstruction of their very DNA gained seemingly impossible control over one of the four basic elements that even the greatest of unicorn mages couldn’t achieve, where they would then be divided into one of five star ranks within each element type -called a faction- beginning at one for the lowest, ending at five as a Grand Warden.

Over generations, successful subjects began becoming more and more commonplace, until such time as the mandatory limit of twenty began to be reconsidered to that the size of an army. As the gene pool began to spread out and expand amongst the creatures of the world, the quality and purity began to degrade thus virtually solving the overpopulation crisis of its own accord.

These now-considered rejects became known as Bars and when left to their own, began to breed new variants; some able to adequately control two or more factions. But as the number of controllable factions within a specimen increased, their ability to adequately control them diminished until the point where it wasn’t uncommon to hear of a Bar becoming unstable and experiencing what became known as Rupture: where the DNA in a specimen became unstable and violently self destructed.

Eventually the Grand Wardens began a grand scale purge to forcibly eliminate unstable Bars all while outlawing gene manipulation practices that offered a position as a potential Warden, upon threat of death. This naturally brought dissent among the globe's populace, with inquiries about how to tell who was pure blooded, who was just a normal Unicorn or magic user, and who was manipulated and to be put to death. Years of research later and science discovered a tagline in a pure blooded Warden’s DNA denoting their status and as such almost instantly silenced attempts to restore the race of Wardens. The Bar Hunts ended as a simple goal to let pure Wardens survive with the minimum populace of twenty, five of each faction and free to do whatever they please.