C	“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” - Joseph Goebbles
Prologue

	Ever since the first ponies crawled from their caves and discovered the killing power of rock and bone, violence has always come easy. Sure, there are various social restrictions, views, and what-not on the topic, but the underlying emotions, be they hate, anger, greed, or what-have-you, are recent. The racial memory of violence has always been a vital part of our mental makeup. Even the most gentle-hearted, kind, ‘soft’ pony is easy to drive to violence, given the right thoughts are forced on it and emotions pulled. So, it was little wonder that the return of war and chaos to the world of Equestria would happen. The thing was…nopony expected it to happen so suddenly.
	To the inhabitants of the Equestrian mainland the war began suddenly and silently, turning an otherwise ordinary Tuesday afternoon into a hell of fire and destruction. To those more informed, however, it came not at all as a surprise. Why else would the Apple family farm close down, the town library’s two occupants suddenly leave, as mysteriously as they had arrived? The local fashionista, gone alongside the gaudy bells and baubles from her shop, alongside the quiet veterinarian up the street?
	Now, as it is seen, the general populace of Ponyville weren’t the most observant of folk.  After all, why would they be? They simply went along, living their happy lives' until the day the bombs rained from the warming fires of dawn. The first wave of attacks on the Equestrian heartland was, by far, not the beginning of the war. The 'Emerald Conflict', as the war is officially known, began almost eleven years prior, with rumors of the first splinters of the Griffin Concord, the various exiled ponyfolk, and the Diamond Federation. Some say the Emerald War was inevitable, a balance of nature after a thousand years of relative peace, and dare-say, 'harmony'.
	The story that the little colts and fillies know of the creation of the land of Equestria and such is flawed. For example, it assumes that the Equestrian existence had only, well, existed, for approximately two thousand years, after the birth of Celestia and Luna, and, as an opposing force, the creature 'Discord', as one could expect, embodying the opposite of harmony; the disorder and chaos of all things. The story goes, as is told, that after a thousand years of 'chaos', or what is now known as 'normality', Celestia and Luna combined their alicorn [Alicorn: A pony with the brawn of a earth-pony, wings of a pegasus, and unicorn horn.] powers to 'trap' said Discord, therefore sealing off all major disorder in Equestria, whilst simultaneously cutting off all communication with the burgeoning world.
	As can be deduced from careful analysis of Equestrian papal and official records, the decision to begin the period of forced isolation was Celestia's, much to her sisters dismay. Upon learning of the supposed 'traitorous behavior' of her sister, Celestia utilized the 'Elements of Harmony', [probably magical-energy weapons of enormous behavior, most likely computational elements] to imprison her sister, under aforementioned traitorous pretense, to the planets' single natural satellite, the Moon, which is consequentially referred to as “Luna”.
	As is rather humorously pointed out, this is all totally wrong. Now, to avoid boring immensely the readers of this narrative of the Emerald War, one simply has to refer to the modern scientific texts as to the creation of the planet and celestial sphere, which, at the time of publishing, is Flamerunners' Guide to Advanced Astrophysics, available at your local library.
It was a bright, sun-shiny day in Equestria, a Tuesday like any other that had gone before, and as everyone 'knew', would go on as such. Twilight Sparkle was in her library home sorting books, as was her usual want, alongside the baby-dragon Spike, re-organizing the shelves and books that lied therein. Applejack had been quite awake for a usual time, having arisen early to attend to the apple trees that had grown too old, or grown too awkwardly, and was ready to cut them apart and down. Rarity was doing as could be expected; only recently awake and going through the ordeal of preparing her breakfast. Fluttershy had also been 'up and running', to put it colloquially, for the better part of the morning, feeding her animals and appropriating resources. Rainbow Dash, the most active of the six, was up and zooming throughout the aerial thoroughfares at breakneck speed, and Pinkie-Pie, the ever-eloquent, if ditzy, 'party-pony' was sleeping off one massive wanker of a hangover.
	The earth-pony designed firebombs that fell upon the sleepy town were the common variety of weapons, Mark 77's, and as such, gave the inhabitant of Ponyville chance at survival. As it were, the nuclear weapons that were deployed against the major targets of Manehattan, Coltcago, Detrot, and such were heavy, radioactively 'dirty' weapons, slamming them with the equivalent of around 240,000 tons of TNT. The Equestrian capital, Canterlot, was targeted with multiple GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bombs, [MOABs] and was totally destroyed. 'Ancillary targets', like Ponyville or Appleoosa, were simply firebombed into ashes. Major targets were assaulted with aerial machines of heretofore unprecedented size, with many records stating said machines, now dubbed ‘aircraft’, of having metal skins, cigar-shaped bodies, and wingspans of one-hundred and eighty feet, with wing areas of four thousand square feet. These monsters of the sky were dubbed ‘Flying Arrows’, but are better known by their technical designation, the B-52 ‘BUFF’ Stratrofortress.
	And, thinking of it, ashes was what was left. An account of the War as informal and potentially fictional as this one will probably be viewed with some scrutiny, but alas, tis’ just another consequence of telling the truth of the matter.

Even when the truth, to the politicals, is an inconvenient one.


Chapter 1