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The Hearts of Equestria; Storm, Earth and Fire
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Topic Started: Apr 17 2013, 08:04 PM (122 Views)
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Nightfury
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Apr 17 2013, 08:04 PM
Post #1
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The Three Hearts of Equestria
Before Equestria was populated by the three races, overseen by the royal sisters, it was a wild and untamed land. The area known as Everfree spanned the entire southern region, and storms whipped across the country carving devastating swaths. This suited the newly titled Equestrians fine – it was the life they knew north, and all the better now that they were united. They lived for many years, and carved their way through Equestria’s wild forests and wilder life in order to make a place for themselves.
However they outgrew their bounds soon enough and the population soon began to outrace the slow expansion of their race. The wild skies proved hostile to the pegasi, who gained and lost their capital of Cloudsdale with every change in the angry winds. The trees were thick and the earth was fertile – though not only for the earth ponies, who fought back the treeline only to have it grow in upon them. And even the unicorns had no sway when Timberwolves came to steal their young, or dragons decided to rest nearby and blot out the sun with their smoke.
Still they endured – by strength and friendship they endured – and Equestria prevailed against all things of nature. Not wind nor weed, nor beast big or small could break their spirits or their strength. They came up with new ideas, new spells – the trees were put to use for walls and machinery, while spells and science helped tame the land’s wild fauna. Slowly, but surely, nature bent to the stalwart strength of Ponykind.
However, it was not nature that deigned to bring them down.
Chaos was at the heart of the spirit that found them to be fitting slaves, and Discord was the name he took for himself when he came from the far northwest. A spawn of disorder from the very origins of the world, he found them as a cruel and vicious joker who took enjoyment in the torment of his new ‘subjects’. For hundreds of years, he ruled Equestria as an ever-changing and ever-violent place, only ever making things worse for its population. He created fanciful things, a mismatch of creatures – manticores and cockatrices, which he unleashed at his leisure. On a whim, he would make mountains sway in the wind, or weather change on a click of his fingers. Truly, the end result of all his projects was the same – misery, for all Equestria’s residents.
Though, in the end, nothing truly lasts forever. The two sisters, goddesses of sun and moon, came to Equestria in much the same fashion though with far better results, as they tore down the nonsenses that Discord had made, and finally Discord himself, imprisoning the volatile spirit in a prison of cold, hard stone. Even then they still had an issue: The powers that Discord had laid upon the land still lay there, rooted in every deformed creature and twisted plant. They had leaders, now – the twins that had saved them took them under their wing, but even their power was not enough to lessen the hold of the random magic that sparked freely without rhyme nor reason.
It was decided between them then – the Elements of Harmony would have to be used once again. With that power – generosity, honesty, kindness, loyalty, laughter, and magic, the energy that Discord had used was drawn from the earth and the sky. But he had not only added to the land – Discord was not one to waste his own strength when there was other manipulation to be had. The life energy of Equestria was corrupted, and violated, and it was with heavy hearts that the sisters locked away the greater part of the magic that had once taken root in their land.
The process could not destroy the power, only contain it. And contain it; it did – though concentrating it all the same. A maelstrom grew in Cloudsdale, swirling and hiding its powerful core. Everfree grew deadlier than ever, new flora radiating outwards from somewhere deep in the thick trees. And in the newly-founded capital of Equus, a few miles south of modern-day Ponyville, a flaming heart of crystal formed – known then as the Fire Heart, and now as the Crystal Heart of the Crystal Kingdom – the lens that allowed for the other two others to exist, and a manifestation of friendship that had not been seen since the banishing of the windigoes that hounded the ponies almost to their end.
The two other hearts were recovered, in time. Pegasi rushed to reclaim their capital, but in the end it was their leader, Commander Thunder, who reached the core of the storm, giving his life to reclaim the pegasi’s capital city and claim the Storm Heart. He was the last of the pegasi to bear the title as a leader of their people, military strength finally taking a backseat to peace. Similarly, the earth ponies knew the work of the land better than the land knew how to resist them, and soon the thorny Wild Heart was uprooted and handed over to the princesses.
The three hearts were harmless when removed from their respective elements. Together they were locked away in Equus’s tallest tower, just above the quarters of the two sisters. The energy of the world, the hearts were created by some of the most powerful artefacts known to any of the races, and so they were kept close at hoof for all the damage they would cause if released. But with the hearts away, the world lay still – as it does until the present, for the most. The storms quieted and weather bent to the pegasi as it did in their lost home, while earth ponies tilled and farmed and branched out among the trees that once hemmed them in.
It was a new, golden age for Equestria - and the land finally unfolded to them, allowing them to spread from Manehattan and Fillydelphia in the west to Detrot and Tamplevania in the north. Anywhere they went, the land unfolded to them, giving them prosperity where once they only had toil. They had nothing to fear – the other races that had just started to make contact did not think them worth any ill will, and the three hearts were locked up safe from any danger, protected by the princesses that loved them and protected them. So happy were they with their lot in life that it only came as more of a shock when one of their beloved princesses turned against them.
Nghtmare Moon was the name she took when she turned against Equestria and her sister. The change, simple as it was, greatly altered her attitudes – from a rarely-seen night princess to a dangerous and angry queen. She denounced her sister’s rule, and denounced all the things that had been done, even going so far as to try and wrest control of the three hearts from her sister, and unlock their power again. It was fortunate for all of Equestria that her sister was still stronger even with Nightmare Moon’s scorn, and that the fallen princess failed to shatter the key that was the crystal heart. However she did manage one thing, blasting the Wild Heart with enough magic to pierce its lock. This created an explosive release of the energy the Heart possessed – creating the area that is now the Everfree Forest, and dooming the city of Equus. Celestia knew the Heart would not be successfully contained again, not without her sister to assist – so she sent it away to parts unknown. It is said that the random teleport sent the Wild Heart hurtling far across the sea, to take root upon the island now known as Everfree Isle.
After Nightmare Moon’s defeat, it was decided that the cores were too dangerous to remain together. Celestia decided that the cores, so laden with magic, could not be simply locked away and unused. So she made a decree only a year after the Nightmare Moon incident that the crystal heart would go north to the struggling fringe town that would one day become the Crystal Kingdom, the core’s energy shaping both the ponies living there and the town itself into a brilliant city. The Storm Heart remained in Equestria for another five hundred years, until a request came from explorers in the west to have the Storm Heart transferred to the newly-discovered continent of Vaporia. It’s magic, shaped by Celestia’s will before it was allowed to go, gifted the pegasi some interesting effects – first making Vaporia’s land as stable and pliable as the clouds of Equestria, and secondly, by Celestia’s doing, allowing plants to grow upon the clouds.
The Effects of the Hearts
Manifestations of nature, the three hearts each possess a great power that passively affects the area around it. They have garnered many names over the years – ‘The key, lock and treasure’, or ‘Fire, Earth and Sky’ or simply enough, ‘The Three Hearts of Equestria’. Each heart acts differently, depending on how it was made, and each heart has been modified in some way to serve the purpose it was sent to do.
The Crystal Heart – The Fire Heart Location: Crystal Kingdom
The Crystal Heart possesses no energy of the world, created as a key to lock away the Wild and Storm hearts. It was created from the Elements of Harmony under the royal sisters’ control, attuned to harmony and friendship more than anything else. The Crystal Heart appears to be a manifestation of the fire of friendship from the Hearth’s Warming tale, giving off an aura of heat and energy. Interestingly, it did appear to take one thing from Equestria’s magic, namely the odd traits of gemstone production within Equestria’s borders. The Crystal Heart creates an aura in which crystalline stone spontaneously appears and grows highly magical stones with a great attunement to the disposition of those around it.
This effect is present in the crystal kingdom, where the gemstone growths have been shaped for infrastructure such as the castle and aesthetic architecture such as gates and statues. The ponies of the crystal kingdom – exposed to its energy for many decades – exhibit interesting properties as to their crystalline appearance. The Crystal Heart is constantly burning off energy, and as such the ponies of the Crystal Kingdom must charge it periodically – unknowingly on their part, as most of them only possess a meagre, surface knowledge of the effects the Crystal Heart exhibits.
The Wild Heart – The Earth Heart Location: Everfree Isle
The Wild Heart is by far considered the most dangerous of the three, due to the fact that it is not in Equestrian control. It is unknown where exactly it lies – though it is commonly believed to be rested upon Everfree Isle, due to the uncanny similarities between the flora and fauna on the far island and the Everfree Forest. In fact, both forests are so similar that a rare flower – known as golden heart, and famed for curing many common diseases – grows in both locations, and onlythose locations.
The last that the Wild Heart was seen, it matched the other two hearts in size, made of odd wood and supported by a dais of vines that grew under it despite orientation. However, it has not been located for more than a millennia, ever since the Nightmare Moon Incident, feared to be growing out of control since the Queen of the Night damaged it.
The Storm Heart – Sky Heart Location: Vaporia
The Storm Heart of Vaporia is well known as the only thing allowing pegasi to live on the vast land without resorting to the continents nearby. Commonly seen as the most volatile of the cores, the Storm Heart rests in the Storm Tower, a tornado contained by the magic of the heart that swirls from the Black to the Sky tiers. The Storm Heart is well known due to the obvious magical effects it creates upon the land.
First and foremost is the pulses that are released every day at the sun’s rise and set. Each is a wave of slightly rainbow-tinged energy that refreshes the magic present in Vaporia and solidifies its borders. This is , however, simply a refreshing of the actual magic present in the continent’s cloud mass - that being the effect that Celestia placed upon it long ago. A simple spell akin to cloudwalking - targetted, however, towards plants.
The pegasi cannot survive on prey as the other flying races are able. Therefore they were limited - Heliopolis controlled the lands to the north strictly, and the south was a glassed wasteland. So they remained few, limited to the harsh borders of the continent that shifted and changed. The addition of the Storm Heart allowed more - they could plant their crop in clouds, and survive wherever they wished. As is the current case on Vaporia, with masses around the capital of Brisk swept entirely flat and covered with row upon row of ghostly white and blue crops, paled by both magic and their ‘soil’.
The effects of the Storm Heart, however, are felt far across the globe, even as far as Terra Civilis. The energy of the Heart was never entirely contained, and the storms it creates are even fiercer given its surrounds. Now and again, large masses of cloud break free from the borders of Vaporia, which is why they are so shunned - the edges are massive lightning fields, of broken cloud big and small. Such storms can travel far across the sea, and Vaporia is the main source of major storm cells towards the Equestrian borders.
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Arpeggio
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Apr 17 2013, 08:10 PM
Post #2
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- Posts:
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Admins already talked about this; this is good.
*Seal of Arpproval*
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Nothing is ever as it seems...
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