1 Introduction and Foreword
By Twilight Sparkle
In my life, I have been through many trials and challenges, from the relatively mundane – opening stores, helping friends and family face their personal demons – to the truly apocalyptic; time travel, defeating and then befriending Discord, and banishing Lord Tirek back to Tartaros. But I couldn’t have done any of these things were it not for my friends; Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. These five ponies, among countless others, have helped guide me ever since I came to Ponyville.
But by far the greatest challenge any of us have faced came just last year, when the Storm King attacked Equestria and conquered Canterlot. My friends and I were forced to flee Equestria entirely, to seek help beyond our borders. On our journey we saw many amazing places, and met amazing creatures of all shapes and sizes, several of whom became fast friends. But I also came to a realization; Our land faces dangers far beyond what I ever expected back at home in Ponyville. I realized that the six of us, that I, could not do it alone.
That, my dear students, is where you come in; as students of the School of Friendship, you will be taught by myself and my closest friends, learning to spread the Magic of Friendship, within Equestria and far beyond her borders, so that we can all build a better world together. This book will serve as your primer to Equestria, our culture, history, biology and society. I have enlisted the aid of experts in the various topics covered, including agriculture, science, magic, fashions and etiquette – some of which may be familiar to our equine students, but I certainly hope that even they will find something they didn’t know, and be willing to share that knowledge with other students, and perhaps even other species you may meet in day-to-day life. Your professors will issue you additional reading material and suggest books to you that cover each topic in far greater depth than this single text can possibly hope to cover, but I hope this book will give you plenty of food for thought and a good grounding in what life is like in Equestria, and our outlook on the world
With that, I would like to finish by saying that I am so very proud to have you all here at the school. It is my hope that you will all flourish, growing both academically and in your love for each other. I know you will all go on to do great things. Please know that if you ever need anything, you should always feel free to come speak with a teacher or the Guidance Counsellor, Starlight Glimmer.
-Headmare Twilight Sparkle
An Abridged History of Equestria
By Princess Celestia
The Origins of Pony-kind
In the Beginning, Celestia made the Heavens and the E-…
No. No, my little ponies, Griffons or whomever else has the great good fortune to be reading this. I was not responsible for the creation of the world in which we live, much as some ponies would have you believe I was. Equestria’s history predates me by many, many thousands of years, and in this chapter I would like to take you through the story of this land.
No written records of our earliest ancestors exist, but we can observe some things about our origins from archaeological findings. We know that once, ponies could not even speak, much less farm, build houses, or any of the cities we have today. This period of Equestrian pre-history is known as the Paleo-pony period. Ponies roamed the world, Unicorns and Earth ponies living in matriarchal herds – A few mares, and the stallions who followed them, sired foals with them, and from whom they were able to gain protection from predators – and Pegasi soaring the skies in flocks. They were grazers, going wherever the food was most available. All we truly know of that period is that drawings left on rock outcrops and in caves seem to indicate an outbreak of “Cutie Pox”, a most unpleasant disease which causes an outbreak of multiple Cutie Marks on the sufferer. Nopony knows where it came from, and it appears to have vanished as quickly as it came on.
The world may have existed this way for thousands, perhaps millions of years – scientists can never truly decide amongst themselves. However, what is known almost for certain is that ponies eventually began to settle. At some point around 15,000 years ago, there is evidence of ponies beginning to use fire to cook their food. Whether this was a pony discovering a burning bush after a lightning storm caused by the Pegasi, or a Unicorn discovering the secret to conjuring a flame is not known, but the sudden shift to cooking their food allowed a relatively swift advancement.
About the same time, evidence suggests Earth ponies shifted from their purely grazing ways to the use of agriculture – first gradually and sporadically, but eventually Earth ponies had entirely abandoned their roaming and begun to settle in specific places, growing the food they needed to survive and allying with groups of cattle in the same areas, with whom they traded food and protection for a share of the bovines’ milk. They did this with a success arising from their inborn magical gifts. Meanwhile Pegasi had long known of their ability to change the weather for their own benefit, while the Unicorns had been raising and lowering the sun and moon since time unrecorded, but neither had truly put any thought into how it affected the other two tribes. The fact that the Pegasi greatly assisted the Earth ponies by providing rain for their crops, and the Unicorns provided the day and night cycle all had come to rely upon, barely seems to have crossed anypony’s mind at first. But eventually, the other two tribes noticed what the Earth ponies had.
It began with the Pegasi, the naturally more belligerent of the three tribes. Flocks of Pegasi would begin to raid Earth pony farms, demanding a share of the crops which were far more abundant and easily had than the foraging they had relied upon. The Unicorns were less aggressive in their efforts, but soon the three tribes were in a constant state of bickering over the fledgeling roots of civilization. Somehow, despite all this, the three Tribes continued to advance; Languages eventually developed, first very different in the three tribes, but soon they even began to merge. The Unicorns – obsessed with the stars – began to develop stone cutting technology and metalwork so that they could build high, stone towers to be closer to these celestial bodies, Earth ponies developed and improved buildings to protect them when they were done tilling their crops for the day, and Pegasi took to forming permanent homes in the clouds, in the earliest incarnation of what would become the city of Cloudsdale.
However, it eventually became apparent that the conflict between the three tribes would hinder the growth of any of them: Around 10,000 years ago, the Unicorns and Pegasi discovered there was a far easier means of getting the food they wanted; they threatened to withhold their natural talents – the Unicorns would not raise and lower the sun, nor would Pegasi alter the weather, unless the Earth ponies bowed to their demands to provide them with food. The Earth ponies could do nothing but agree, but this relationship fostered deep animosity between all three tribes: The Earth ponies hated both the others, considering the Unicorns arrogant and pompous, and the militaristic Pegasi hot-headed and quarrelsome. The other two tribes shared this view of each other, while considering the Earth ponies ignorant and useful for little more than growing food for them, each tribe unable to see beyond their own wants. This relationship would continue for many centuries, until finally matters came to a head.
The Birth of a Nation
The winter of 2 BE (Before Equestria) was bitterly cold, and unusually long. So long, in fact, that it lasted well into the following year, and showed no signs of abating. Crops failed across the land. Food became scarce – a rumour even persists that the ponies of the old Pegasus Royal Legion were forced to eat the plumes on their helmets in an effort to survive. The situation became dire, and tensions began to fray even worse than before.
The three leaders of the tribes at the time – Princess Platinum of the Unicorns, Chancellor Puddinghead of the Earth ponies, and Commander Hurricane of the Pegasi – convened a summit in an effort to find a solution, but it took a mere matter of hours for relations to break down; Each tribe blamed the others for the blizzard that was sweeping the land, harsh words erupting in the great hall. As arguments raged, initially nopony noticed, but it seemed as though the more they argued, the harder the storm raged. Eventually the 3 delegates, along with their seconds – Clover the Clever of the Unicorns, Private Pansy of the Pegasi, and Smart Cookie of the Earth ponies – stormed out of the summit and returned to their own homes, to lick their wounds and decide what to do. Through an odd quirk of fate, all three tribes came to the same decision on the very same day; They would all go it alone and depart to find a new land to call their own.
And so the three pairs of ponies set out in search of a new land, The journey was long and difficult; No records now relate how long the ponies wandered for, but eventually they all came to a beautiful new country; the land was lush with plant life, the air was warm, streams flowed clear and fresh, and most importantly there was no snow. But the three pairs soon found each other, and immediately fell to infighting about which of them would claim this new land. No sooner had they begun to argue, than a freezing wind began to blow; the snow had followed them. The six ponies soon found a cave in which to take shelter, but it did them no good. Even in that cave, the three leaders fought over who should own what floor-space. As their bickering heightened, a terrible thing happened; the wind whipped through the cave, almost seeming to carry a terrible neighing. The temperature plummeted, and snow began to fill the cave. The blizzard had followed the ponies from their old home.
Even now, the 3 leaders continued to argue. Their hatred for each other seemed only to heighten as the ice crept over their forms, freezing their bodies as hard as their hearts. The same would have happened to Clover the Clever, Smart Cookie and Private Pansy, as the Windigoes circled overhead, feeding on the hatred and anger filling the cave. But as the three huddled together, they discovered something magical; They didn’t hate each other,
It began with Clover the Clever’s realization of the danger they were in. He was, of course, the first to recognize the Windigoes for what they were. He at once knew the cause of the blizzard that had driven the ponies from their old home, and had followed them to that cave; their own hatred and infighting. But things did not need to be this way. Ponies could get along. They could even be friends! It was Private Pansy who first admitted it; If she could be said to hate anypony, it was Commander Hurricane far more than Clover the Clever or Smart Cookie. Though she was quick to remark that she didn’t so much hate Commander Hurricane, as “really really, really really really really really, really really really dislike her”.
This was all it took; Smart Cookie and Clover the Clever admitted that they liked each other just fine as well, and as they huddled together amid the encroaching ice, Smart Cookie summed up their new feelings for each other in just 5 words: “Whatever happens, we’re all ponies.”
Just when it seemed they must all freeze solid, their bodies left as cold as their hearts had once been, a remarkable thing happened. Just before the ice consumed them entirely, Clover the Clever’s horn blazed with violet light, summoning a flaming heart above them; the Fire of Friendship. The warmth of friendship and love banished the Windigoes and freed the 3 tribe leaders. The six ponies left the cave, to gaze out upon a wide, green land, of beautiful plains full of grass, lush forests and tall, majestic mountain peaks. They decided between them to settle in this new land, not as three separate tribes, but as one united nation.
And, my dear little ponies, in the words of Pinkie Pie, “That’s how Equestria was made!”
