>>104699White Orchid's speech has had a sort of... airy quality to it. Like Socrates in his Thinkery contemplating useless things, White Orchid speaks on facts about far away objects, detached from present experience. But now, White Orchid's speech is more...
ethereal, as he chooses now to speak of myths, fables, and legends. He tells tales of old myths that Silver heard whispers of when he was a colt, though in those days the myths were regarded more as history than as legends....
For all history, Ponykind was limited to the speed their own legs and wings could carry them, and even then they were confined to sources of water if they wanted long distance trade. Their cities and farms clung carefully to the large rivers and the coastline, as waterlines were to Pony society as blood vessels were to an individual pony, as these alone could serve as the essential conduits of commerce. The Equestrian Interior was without form, and void. A sprawling realm of chaos, a vast wilderness ceded by civilized society to the Manticore, the Buffalo, the Dragon, the hunter, the herder, and the bango-playing hill pony.
So it was, until the age of the Titans. It is said the Titans took the form of the mundane, of the lowest members of pony society - the poor farmer of Albion, the colt of a chimney sweep in Manehattan - at least as often an Earth Pony as a Unicorn. Indeed, perhaps they were once ponies. But they became something more, something with the power to rend fire from the deep earth, the power to move entire mountains, and the power to transform Earth into Fire and Metal, and water Into Lightning. Rock Melder, Cartnieghgy, Whinny Pferd, they and others held creative powers somewhere below that of gods. They were the living embodiment of the principles of the old sage Apple Smith, and Field Marshals in Pony's conquest of Nature, in the process displacing the old aristocracy and bringing suffering upon the poor.
One Titan in particular interests White Orchid, who appeared in the form of a white maned grey earth pony stallion who earned the name Robber Barron. A pony named Horse Power invented the Steam Locomotive, but Robber Baron made the Steam Locomotive into an Instrument of his mind, body and will. One year, he wished to traverse the distance from Canterlot to Stableside. So he traveled, and leaving behind a trail of steel. It is said that wherever his Iron hooves landed, a city grew. From the wilderness on the edges of the Everfree grew Ponyville. From the Desert grew Dodge junction and Hoof City. He sat down to rest in the prairie, and along came Hoofington. But Robber Baron found he was not done, as the tumbleweeds still rolled, and the Buffalo still roamed. There is land to be conquered, he thought. So he Cantered his Iron Hooves across the West, from Las Pegasus to the old Equestrian fort at Fort Mourn, and where he stepped, civilization grew out of the dust and sand. Along came Rockville, Appaloosa, and Pinto Creek. So it was that the West was broken and tamed. In due time the land of Buffalo and Tumbleweeds became as tame and civilized as the Equestrian East and Northwest Coast. The Steel bloodlines were to Applesoosa and Dodge Junction as the Celestial Sea was to Manehattan or Fillydelphia, or the Lunar Ocean to Pransciso and Vanhoover.
That was back when Titans roamed. So go the legends, anyways.
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