Sleipnir Colony - A Short Story Collection

The great Equestrian Empire was not always a vast empire of planets that covered the galaxy. Indeed it very much used to be one planet on its own. Equestria.

Around 400 years ago, Equestria was in dire straights. Big ponies meant that land was at a premium, food supplies were becoming more and more expensive and harder to get hold of. Celestia’s best advisers of the period recommended that one of two things be done to the behemoth of a Princess to prevent an oncoming catastrophe within what was back then a kingdom. Realistically there was only two choices.

• Stop ponies eating, growing and destroying their own planet.
• Allow ponies to continue to eat and grow, but off planet.

After a few days of musing in her thoughts, Celestia decreed that option two in the long term was much more viable. Such a monumental decision has taken its toll, she had grown several thousands pounds more in size due to panic consumption through the myriad of tubes supplying her ever growing mass. Suddenly, a huge amount of funding from the royal treasury was poured into the sciences to advance space travel. Unicorn magic could only get so far and it only account for one third of their race.

What land was left on Equestria not taken up by farming or mammoth fatties was quickly developed into vast shipyards that would be capable of building the first exploration fleets. It was here over the next several decades that E.T.F put together and prototyped the first of many of these vessels that would lead ponykind into the stars. There was one problem however, the power needed to jump these monstrous ships was far beyond what any single Unicorn could provide, at least the smaller ones…

Celestia herself was known to have had her powers grow the larger in size she had gotten. Raising the sun for her, so she had described once was no longer a concentrated chore of a spell. It was as easy as blinking. The bigger she got, the easier it became. The scientists of the E.T.F started to wonder if any other Unicorns on the planet at the heftier sizes would possess similar magical properties. The fatter they were, the more powerful they became.

After more testing on a number of candidates and with technologies developed to enhance and increase the magical properties of spells a few of these magically powerful Unicorns were chosen to be the cores of the ships. As of yet, no jump gates existed or had even been invented or built to ease transport around the galaxy. These Unicorns were immensely powerful, having to teleport the ships vast distances aided by computer calculations and the newly invented ship jump drives. Once they arrived to a potential planet they had to use their magic to terraform it as well. There was one thing they couldn’t do, which was get the ships from the yards on Equestria into orbit. Using the drives of the ship combined with the teleportation magic would be catastrophic for the surface of Equestria. Only Celestia had the sheer power to teleport these vessels into orbit whilst they were idle. The drives then fired up once they left the system.

Over the next decades and centuries, ships were constructed at a vast rate as with the ability to now grow freely, there was a mass exodus from Equestria. The planet gaining the status of royalty and nobility that only the most important ponies in society had which allowed them a spot on the world. The new colonies were almost sold as ideal paradise worlds where ponies could be as fat as they liked, in some cases sly companies even advertised the new worlds had facilities to make them Princess sized. All a lie of course, but once ponies arrived they often didn’t have the money to sue or return to Equestria.

Naming conventions for new colonies were controlled by the Princess’s, with Celestia often getting the final word. Often these were ponies of history with a few exceptions here and there. As time wore on, more and more colonies were established as ponies grew fatter and fatter. Quickly, Celestia found herself the monarch of an ever expanding empire, both literally and with her subjects. Her mandate to put more money into the sciences brought exciting new technology to make space travel a breeze for those of the plus sized nature. Large cargo transports for moving food from breadbasket worlds to urban ones, the network of jump gates to easily move ships between established colonies without the need for the huge hefty Unicorn navigators to be on board. Right now, The Empire was flourishing. Ponies were happy, content and growing bigger every day. It seemed as well that Equestrian ponies were the only truly sentient race in the galaxy, so far. Most worlds chosen were barren wastelands that were terraformed into lush paradises. A few planets had been found and marked either containing primitive creatures or there were other races that had some sort of control of the planet. None however seemed to have made it much beyond a tribal stage. They were left alone, although a few established colonies shared a system with a planet such as this.

Celestia was no fool either, in the early days a war fleet had been present to escort most colonial expeditions, however after finding no resistance to encounter after hundreds of years of terraforming this fleet was eventually semi-mothballed above Equestria, to guard the homeworld in case there ever was a threat. Equestria’s shipyards always as well contained plans to build warships if needed. The fleet above the planet always being retrofitted with new technologies to fight off any would-be foes. Some joked it was the easiest job in the fleet, often captains of these vessels were removed because they spent all day eating, eventually growing too hefty for the ship to be able to support them anymore.

Sleipnir itself, founded as the 4th colony in the Epona cluster is still fledgling. Quickly however it is starting to catch the eyes of those around it, an interesting mix of ponies inhabiting it as they too grow their way into sizes once deemed impossible by their ancestors. As with all her colonies, Celestia has her eyes on it…

Which brings us to the present day. Roughly 35% of the current galaxy has been colonised for use by giant, jiggling fatties. This brings Celestia to the same issue she had when it was just one planet, eventually The Empire will no longer be able to sustain itself if ponies continue to grow and grow and eventually occupy all liveable worlds within the galaxy. Already, her scientists are working on new technologies that means ponies one day might be able to leave the galaxy and colonise far off ones. Their hunger limitless, this seems like the only option to keep her race expanding. Where this will take them however, who can say.