art by MadHotaru, colors by Euphreana

"What are the lands of the zebras like in the world of Fallout: Equestria?"

In the past, I have usually answered this question in private messages -- in part because of the roleplaying campaign Fallout: Beyond Equestria that I'm running wherein which the characters journey to the post-apocalyptic zebra lands -- but after finishing "Origin Story", I feel this is a good time to answer the question in my blog.

I am going to be doing this write-up in multiple parts, much like I did with my posts detailing Froggy Bottom Bog.

First, I would like to reiterate my headcanon for the geography of the zebra lands in relation to Equestria. In the headcanon that I was working with, the frozen north is Equestria's equivalent of the arctic. (While not precisely true, it is fair to say that once you get to the Crystal Empire, everything is south.) Equestria and the zebra lands exist on separate continents. The only ways to travel between them are either across the ocean or by traveling over the top of the globe and down the other side — a bitterly cold and treacherous journey which requires traveling over Shattered Hoof Ridge on the Equestrian side of the arctic cap and across a narrow isthmus on the zebra's side.

This idea syncs well with Spike's journey in "Dragon Quest" if we assume the land of the dragons is in the continent of the zebra lands and the phase of his journey depicted below is his travel across the frozen north.

The zebra lands would not be restricted to a single biome. The geography within the continent itself would as varied as that of Equestria, with a predominance of jungles, thick forests and wild plains.

“Origin Story" further postulates that the Tenochtitlan Basin, setting of the Daring Do books, is a sunken jungle basin on the northern part of the continent, adjacent to the land of the dragons. In comparison to being part of Equestria, I believe being part of the zebra lands make it far easier to understand how the Basin could be largely unexplored by ponies and how the Mane Six could have no functional knowledge of the dangers there.

art by Rublegun

In my dream, I was Littlepip the zebra. I trotted about the zebra city… not Zebratown which attempted to blend zebra heritage with Equestrian aesthetics, but a real zebra city. A city formed in a hillside forest, the trees themselves molded into homes and buildings after their roots had been tended with the most ancient and sacred of magical brews. The homes were marked with masks of friendship and welcome. There were no fences. Just carvings blessing the home and warding off monsters. Gardens of vegetables and herbs stretched around each home, and flasks hung from the branches. I wasn’t sure how I knew this is what a proper zebra city looked like (Be Smart!), but I knew it all the same.

--Littlepip, Fallout: Equestria

Fallout: Equestria presents the zebras as having lived in a strongly bi-cultural nation. The native zebra culture that is represented in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic by Zecora coexisted and contrasted with a very Roman culture that appeared to be influenced by the same source that influenced the Greco-Roman architecture of the Equestrian pegasi.

Obviously, I chose introduce Roman elements to the zebra nation as a way of paying homage to Caesar’s Legion in the Fallout games while making something more interesting than just a direct Chinese correlation. During the writing of the story, I had to take it on faith that there could a precursor civilization or similar logical influence point that would allow part of the zebra nation to have developed in this fashion. Not wanting to risk conflicting with the world-building of episodes that would air before I could finish the story, I left it open as to how this influence had occurred (save for the conjecture of one particularly biased voice who insisted the zebras were trying to emulated Equestrians). Thankfully, the show itself stepped in and provided an answer.

As we know, ponies migrated to Equestria from another continent. On that continent, the preceding pegasi civilization had similar Greco-Roman styling and a warrior culture evocative of the Spartans. The original zebra civilization, as described in Fallout: Equestria, suffered from hundreds of years of tribal wars following the destruction of their central trade city and the immediate collapse of inter-tribal peace. Anyone can imagine the impact on the developing culture of one tribe who, fleeing deep into the center of the continent to avoid the fighting, discovers a marvelous and totally empty city of clouds floating in the heavens.

art by AssasinMonkey

In my headcanon, the capital city of the zebra empire and the center of the Imperial culture was Roam (thank you, Fallout: Equestria side story writers! ). The zebra empire consisted of the capital city and several other large cities in the core of the continent, with progressively more traditional (and often under-developed) agrarian territories radiating outwards, and the territories along the fringes of the continent maintaining a bucolic tribal culture. (Somewhat similar, now that I think of it, to the world of Firefly.) The dichotomy of “Imperialis” (Imperial) and “Jadi” (Traditional) cultures was largely between urban and rural areas. Rivers and major roads created commerce lanes, and major trade towns along them saw a peculiar blending and resulting multiculturalism.

To my shame, despite all my years adventuring in the Tenochtitlan Basin, I only learned a passing amount of the language spoken in the rural areas and the outlying villages. I schooled myself on the Imperial language – that spoken in the central cities, for it was the language of their government and military. And as I had a penchant for finding myself in trouble with them, the ability to smooth-talk my way out of that trouble saved my feathers on several occasions. Likewise, I grew very adept at translating the ancient glyphs that were often the key to understanding the ruins and artifacts that were the focus of my endeavors. The zebras put us to shame by being more willing to learn our tongue than we were to learn theirs. Within their trade centers, such as Bahari Soko, many zebras strove to learn Equestrian. The method of education involved nursery rhymes and a rhythmic learning structure which is so at odds with Equestrian schooling that I cannot imagine how it would make learning our language any easier. I would be hard pressed to consistently express myself in the form of poetry.

—Daring Do, “Origin Story”

In the post-apocalyptic zebra-lands, isolated pockets of civilization would certainly exist wherein the area’s dominant pre-war culture is the entire foundation of the current one.

However, the major cities would have taken the brunt of Equestria’s retaliatory megaspell assault. Many of the fringe territories would not have fared much better as they would have been host to decades of warfare. Because of the geography of the two continents, a large amount of the fighting (particularly for the first ten years) occurred in the form of sea battles and on the shores of the zebra lands. Therefore, the areas that would have had the greatest population of survivors would have been the far rural territories and the trade towns that were both too small to be megaspell targets and too far inland to be hit by direct fighting.

As such, the emerging zebra civilization in many areas would likely be built on a gestalt of the two previous cultures, including a blended creole language. Even a traveler from Equestria who knows one or both of the original zebra languages may find translation and communication challenging.

In the next blog, I’ll expound on the features and dangers one can expect to encounter in the zebra lands!