For millennia, Equestria was dominated by its legendary rulers, the Alicorn Princesses. So grotesque were the abilities of these god-like creatures, they were capable of maintaining the Kingdom of Equestria in a state of almost universal happiness – save for the odd disaster, or invasion by some dark monstrosity or lord of chaos. The ponies under their rule showed next to no discontent, and when they did, they did not remain in the safety of the Kingdom for long. The age of the Princesses would end, however, shortly after the ascension of the Fourth Alicorn, Princess Twilight Sparkle, once a humble student, but then an unchecked and unchallenged scientific genius who was nothing short of a mad god to her terrified subjects. Her dream was the creation of an artificially happy population – ponies incapable of doubt or fear, who would merrily follow the Princesses no matter how horrific the calamites that befell them. This proved too much for a single mare – once a friend of Twilight’s, whose identity has since been obliterated completely from Equestria’s history by royal authority. This mare would live on in history as a leader and liberator known as the Pink Lady, and her rise to fame and power would usher in one of the darkest chapters of pony history.

The Pink Lady, known to have been an eccentric and often bizarre character, rejected Twilight’s ideal of unshakable happiness, believing that the true value of joy lay in the fact that it was not guaranteed, but had to be spread and cherished, not enforced. Her perspective that authority should love all equally rapidly developed into a system of communist democracy that opposed Equestria’s capitalist monarchy in every respect; furthermore, the vast number of dissidents within the Kingdom meant that the Lady had no shortage of allies and supporters. As her influence grew, the Alicorns attempted to snuff her and her growing number of followers out for good through force; but, far from the resolution they had hoped for, the result was more catastrophic than they could have ever imagined: the first major rebellion in the entire history of equine civilization.

In the relative safety of Equestria’s north, the Pink Lady used her strategic and mechanical intellect to form an army of pony rebels and creatures of the many races the Kingdom had all but enslaved – the Pink Army – and armed it with powerful tanks, airships and many strange but dangerous technologies. Her war on the Kingdom would set every corner of Equestria alight; in the resulting battles, countless thousands of lives were lost and for a short time, it seemed like the Lady’s indomitable forces would ultimately triumph. But in the end, Equestria’s incredibly advanced technology, mighty air force and the direct intervention of the Alicorns themselves won the day for the Kingdom, and the Lady was forced to gather up her surviving forces and flee across the seas to the lands of the Frozen North. Though her followers were depleted, a steady flow of refugees allowed the Pink Lady to establish a new nation in the cold, barren lands: the Soviet Pony Republic. This small but resilient country was directly opposed by the Holy Equestrian Alliance, formed when the Princesses rebuilt the shattered Kingdom into a brutal police state. The Kingdom of Equestria was gone forever, and no longer could the Princesses trick their citizens into believing that all was well in their small, isolated world. Now, only brute force could guarantee their rule.

In the decades after the Pink Rebellion, the Alliance would mount several half-hearted attempts to destroy the Republic for good; all, however, failed. Eventually, the two sides settled into an uneasy peace, with the Alliance troubled by the constant danger of internal malcontent and a small, rising power in the seas to the nation’s east, the underwater Aquestrian Empire. The Republic, in turn, was continuously harassed in its own lands by vast swarms of parasitic Changelings expelled from Equestria, in addition to other monstrous dangers. Neither side, it seemed, had the resources nor the willpower to finish the struggle that their leaders had begun. Once, war had raged, and there was a chance that it might not burn so brightly again for a very long time.

This was not, it turns out, to be. Its armies swelled by a race of pony clones, the so-called clonies, the Republic would mount a surprise attack on Equestria’s western coast almost a decade after the failure of the Lady’s Rebellion. This was a terrible shock to the entire world, for even many in the Republic itself believed the Pink Army to be incapable of such a vast undertaking. But, the Pink Lady demanded it, and her followers obeyed; as it turned out, her preparations had been fairly thorough, at least compared to her last attempt. However, the Princesses had not wasted their time either, transforming the Kingdom’s army into a truly massive force capable of taking on any threat in existence, and preparing the Alliance for exactly the modern war that it would end up fighting. The conflict that followed would be called the Three Powers War, and would involve almost every known fighting force in the world in one way or another. It was, and remained for some time, the largest, and most famous, war in pony history.

And all of it is just about to begin, under the command of one of the Pink Army’s strangest and least talkative Commanders, an unremarkable earth pony officer known as Squeezie Heart. Squeezie was a miniature horse of humble origin, as were most of his family and friends; but, like many other creatures that were not expected to have a great influence during the War, his decisions would change hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives both born and unborn. It was a terrible shame, then, that to begin with Squeezie Heart had no confidence or self-esteem whatsoever.

The story of how Commander Squeezie Heart and his associates managed would be remembered by ponies for a dreadfully long number of years. And this, give or take, is it. Next Chapter: Prologue Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 51 Minutes