Leonardus, patriarch of the griffons strode through the corridor leading to the staging grounds of his castle. On the surface he looked calm, a dignified regal figure deserving of his messiac title. But his breath felt heavy, and as much as he hated to admit it he was nervous. He had endured so many years of planning, so many years of hardships and political conflict for this moment. Everything that he had ever wanted waited for him at the end of this corridor: the one glorious moment where he would mark his place in Imperia’s history.

He emerged through the open doors to the staging ground. A raucous cheer of a hundred thousand voices broke the unsteady silence. Leonardus was awed. A hundred thousand griffons bowed before him in the staging grounds below, their eager eyes looking upon their leader with love and admiration.

He walked towards the podium, his mind running over the speech that he had prepared and recited a hundred times before. Seeing his people together like this made the Patriarch bristle with pride. Where once these griffons were but mere beasts too engaged in territorial infighting to ever agree on anything, he had unified them with purpose.

Finally, Leonardus spoke, the crowd hung onto his every word.

“My children, sons and daughters of Discord,” the crowd’s ears all turned to him, the volume of his voice magnified by vocalizing magic. “Until now, we have been a broken nation. Affronted, oppressed, and exploited by the very tyrant who stole our birthright! Three millenia ago, our Great Father was banished to the void. Our home, the very nation where we began our proud existence was unjustly taken from us. All because of the Tyrant Queen: Celestia.”

The crowd gasped at how fearlessly Leonardus spoke her name.

“Three thousand years ago, our forefathers were banished from that paradise. We were banished by our enemies to die from disease, from famine, from infighting. When we came to Imperia we were lost, a homeless and broken collective of exiles. But, our humiliation did not end there. For three thousand years the Tyrant Queen has abused her power, mocking us with her meagre barter for our land’s precious resources to build her own depraved empire. I say, no more!”

“Twelve years ago, I, Leonardus willingly sacrificed myself to ensure the future of our nation. You granted me the privilege of leadership. You gave me the honour of serving you, my children. To bring to our people the absolute mastery of their own destiny free from tyranny and oppression. While the Tyrant Queen’s lapdogs cower and condemn us from beneath their facade of civility and freedom, they make their mewling claims of liberty and righteousness but look upon us with loathing and disgust. We will prove them wrong. For no longer are we that same broken collective of exiles. No longer are we the same wretches that ponykind so wrongly thought would be weakened by Imperia. While the Tyrant Queen’s lapdogs have grown fat and lavished off the land they stole from us, we have only grown stronger. For in the time you have given me, I have united our nation, I have renewed our strength, and I have rebuilt our pride.”

“On this day, for the first time since the Great Father was slain, we stand united once more. On this day those who would oppress us will hear our voice. On this day we shall act as one and we shall be forgotten no more. The path to paradise stretches out before us my children, and a future that is golden and eternal but our journey together must cross a wilderness of hatred and prejudice, and a landscape of tyranny seeded by the past sins of our old enemy.

“In three days time we will tread this path, we will begin the greatest military campaign in our world’s history. We will make these monsters who stole our home see the error of their ways. We will show them the iron and steel beneath our flesh. We shall crush them against the unbreakable rock of our will. We will sweep over their tyrannical lands like the sands of winter. With our steely hearts forged in the flames of war we will strike without warning and without mercy. We will fight as one flock, one heart, one soul. We will shatter our oppressors’ dreams and haunt their nightmares, drenching our ancestor’s graves with their blood. And as they draw their last, dying breath from their foul lungs, as we write the future of our nation in their blood, as we rise again from the ruins of our great civilization... they will know that Equestria rightfully belongs to us. People of Imperia, now is our time!”

The crowd’s deafening war cry could be heard for miles. Leonardus turned from the podium and strode back into his castle, smiling to himself. Everything was going according to plan, soon the Tyrant Queen would be vanquished, and he would take his rightful place as the messiah of his people.

“At last, we are ready.”