Kelp Seashell

Ms. Starlog

Universe History 302

D10.M20.Y12.R32 AGTS

How Does Your Family Fit Into Our History? Answer in 250 Words or More.

Space is full of stuff.

Stuff of the kind that is practically indispensable to any significantly advanced civilization.

This was just the situation that Equus found itself in after Princess/Eternally-Worshipped-God-Empress Twilight Sparkle Friendship-magicked away most on world conflict. With their resources concentrated on science, it wasn't long until the first colonies began to spread across the void.

Space, however, is big.

Unfortunately big.

Impossibly big.

Massively big.

Bigly big.

B i g.

The shear vastness of the interstellar vacuum renders relatively “short” travel a lifelong undertaking and makes complete mockery of communications. Even within the edges of their own solar system, hurtling along at the cosmic speed limit, Laser and Radio Signals took months to years to get from the extremities to the core.

Solutions were dreamt, ad tested as technology caught up with imagination, but success at bridging the void came not. Even the deepest cryosleep couldn’t stop the ravages of time, and it’s assortment of associated insanities. Alicorn teleportation, once such a fantastic transporter, was found to be bound by the same lameness of light speed as all other escapes. The great minds had nothing.

And so it continued, billions, growing up, living, and dying across the light years. severed from the majority of their fellows by inexorable gaps. And there was such dying. Isolation destroyed what Twilight had once curated. Friendship and understanding was slashed to pieces by cosmic radiation and light delays.

The growing tensions caused by conflicting needs and isolation came to a head after Kuiper belt settlements of the fiercely democratic Vulpine BundesRepublik accidentally sent the wrong message to the Griffish despotism across the system; essentially calling Galarza IXX feeble, insane, criminal and completely ignorant of reality. While they expected yet another stream of 1’s and 0’s in reply, they received silence… followed by a stream of near-relativistic kill vehicles.

The damage was horrific, but mitigated by the difficulty of aiming across a light year and last minute forewarning. An entire arc of the sky was rendered nearly impassable due to the fields of pulverized asteroids.

Soon, as with wars before, nearly every major power was dragged into the war. It was a catastrophe.

Twilight did what she could to stop the Great Cascade War, first in centuries, but it was beyond her entire control.

It seemed for a while, a grand slugging match, with RKVs hurtled across space. But ultimately, peace came about through the BundesRepublik’s obsession with keeping around a militia, similar in mission, but advanced in technology to those that won their independence centuries before. A company, secreted across the void behind an interstellar asteroid, boarded Galarza XX’s capitol station and forced a surrender and disarmament.

While this nominally brought the war to an end, with both side’s allies falling in line, the fighting never stopped. Sone isolated and well-supplied bases defied orders and kept attacking, makeshift militias on the frontiers had taken advantage of the war to expand into rich areas held by the other sides, and to them, peace was no reason to stop. Only those on massive bodies, big enough and worth enough to be targeted had significant reason to stop.

Friendship had, on the whole, failed.

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This status quo carried on and on for nearly a generation, when a Hippogriff mathematical prodigy finally caused a sea change.

Magenta Seashell, OOE, HGM, Der Groß, MMH (Order Of Equestria, Hippogriff Grand Marshall, The Great, MatematikMuseumHaupman (Mathematics Museum Captain)) hadn’t intended her physics thesis to revolutionize space travel, but when getting advice from international colleagues, they soon realized that her calculations, combined with a carefully designed runic generator, could shatter that cosmic speed limit, once thought to be so… limiting.

After the six scientists realized the magnitude of her discovery, and the implications it could have for the future, they set out to congregate on Equus, in Eriskirch, Under the BundesRepublik’s orbital dome defenses. It took them more than a decade, but they finally created a device, imprecise & unrefined—if one could call .0025mm tolerances ‘imprecise’—that could propel a spacecraft faster than light. It would stretch a spacecraft out into a theoretical 2D plane that sliced through reality, while preserving 3D inside of it. With the use of conventional Magic-assisted Ion drives, a craft could travel across this plane to reach in minutes, hours or days, destinations that would have taken months, years or decades in normal space.

With their new miracle machine, the scientists returned to their nations to give each this new technology, thus guaranteeing one couldn’t monopolize it. The new Magenta Drive Factory & Dry-docks facilities went up in: The valley city Cavalese on Equus for the Vulpines; Ponyville on Equus (terrible name for a city that large) for the Ponies; Utopia Planitia on Mars for the Independent Colonial Federation; Gustavo Station in the asteroid belt for the Griffons; Firewall City on Venus for the Kirin; and Seashell herself went to Ring 0 around Saturn (Where I was born!) for the Hippogriff Kingdom.

After the Magenta Drive was introduced into Service with the Major Powers (And disseminated to minor ones), the border wars slowly died down to the sporadic state they occupy today as simply traveling to a brand new system with more resources than their wildest dreams was a much more appealing option to those in overcrowded stations.

And now today our system is mostly peaceful (except for those sporadic border fights) and all the universe is our oyster!

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Comments: Mr. Starlog:
Great pearl Kelp! I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I’m running out of time to read all you’re writing for me! (when I say ‘250 or more’ please stick to around 250-500)
You probably could have done without the first section, since just about everyone knows that part of the story, but good job highlighting the different points of view of belters and worlders in regards to the peace agreement.
Also “Sporadic”? I’m sorry hun there’s no way to classify what goes on in the belt as “sporadic”
Finally, remember to use the proper “Equestrians” instead of Ponies
At least you didn’t use fox instead of vulpine, you avoided a serious diplomatic incident there ;)

Author's Note

This was mostly a lore dump for my own benefit but it turned into a history essay so here

This is barely a second draft expect no quality