art by Ulyanovetz

"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.

And now, for a continuing look at Fallout: Equestria canon and my headcanon for the Zebra Lands.

art by Rublegun

The word “balefire” is a modernization of the “bǣlfȳr”, an Old English word meaning “funeral fire”. In a land were necromancy was known and feared, it makes sense for zebras to develop a tradition of funeral fires. In my headcanon, burial of the dead had not been practiced since the catacombs were created during the First Age of Roam. (The reasons why this was a very poor idea directly contributed to its ending and the rise of the Second Age of Roam.)

With the lands of the dragons nearby, zebras were knowledgeable of the different kinds of dragon fire, and tribes were able to establish pacts with individual dragons for participation in their funeral rites – consuming their dead in green dragon fire so that their spirits could be carried by the flames safely beyond the stars and to the resting place of their ancestors.

In Fallout: Beyond Equestria, I introduced Balefire Mountain, a mountain on the edge of dragon territory whose southwestern face was carved into a giant statue of a centurion zebra who was gazing upwards. During the war, Balefire Mountain was the honored site used for the mass funeral incinerations of fallen zebra soldiers.

As you can imagine, the zebra Caesar’s choice of using necromantically-laced balefire for the megaspells delivered against Equestria’s cities was deeply symbolic as well as devastatingly effective.

art by Kalemon

The Zebra Lands fell to the megaspell apocalypse just as Equestria did. Entire lands (peninsulas and small islands) were completely lost in the cataclysm, crumbling back into boiling oceans as the ponies turned the full power of the sun against the zebras. The devastation was as complete, but the nature and aftermath of it was as varied as the Equestrian megaspells.

As I revealed in by blog The Fate of Rainbow Dash and Crystal Empire Blues (Part 2), it is my headcanon that magical radiation is a byproduct of megaspells. Every megaspell causes it. Any pony (or zebra) who is caught in the radiation of a megaspell and survives could be transformed by it into a mutated creature – classically, a ghoul. However, as is shown by the differences between Equestria’s common ghouls and Canterlot ghouls, the mutations are dependent on the which megaspell was used. The blogs above go so far as to postulate that magical radiation from the Crystal Heart “proto-megaspell” is responsible for creating Crystal Ponies – with repeated exposure, the transformation temporarily experienced by the Mane Six becomes permanent and inheritable.

Celestia One is the only megaspell used against the zebra lands that was described in Fallout: Equestria, but there were clearly others (as was evidenced by the megaspell chambers in the Ministry of Arcane Sciences building on Ministry Walk). As such, the zebra lands would be home to numerous types of “ghoul”-like zebra mutations. However, while zebra megaspells were laced with necromancy, and thus the mutations from their radiation had a necromantic bent, the radiation from Equestria’s panoply of megaspells would have more varied and likely less predictable effects.

One can only guess at what manner of “ghoul” those caught on the radiation fringes of Celestia One might have become. Perhaps they were transformed into creatures of light? Perhaps those not turned to ash became burned husks of their former selves, or possibly still burn? If so, the “Burned Zebra” may be one such soul, the rare sort who has retained full mental faculties. Alternately, on the fringes of Celestia One’s fire, there are places where zebras were vaporized but their shadows remain, burned into walls and structures by the intense light. Maybe, on the edges of those places, some of those shadows move?

art by Rublegun

In the games Fallout: Stalliongrad and Fallout: Beyond Equestria, I have introduced two other megaspells unleashed upon the Zebra Lands. Where Celestia One was originally conceptualized as a missile defense megaspell, these two megaspells were representative of the pony’s predominant mindset regarding offensive megaspell design.

At the end of “The Return of Harmony”, the Mane Six use the Elements of Harmony to unleash a petrification spell that turns Discord to stone. This spell was at the heart of one of the first offensive megaspells developed by the ponies of the Ministry of Arcane Sciences.

The intention was to create a megaspell that could pacify an entire region non-lethally. An entire population would be petrified, leaving military equipment and civilian infrastructure completely intact. Equestrian forces could move in and secure the area at their leisure. Zebras could be freed from petrifaction one at a time in a controlled setting. Ponies could even catch their own ground forces in the area of effect with minimal risk.

Unfortunately, as Discord reveals in “Keep Calm and Flutter On”, a victim of this spell is still conscious and fully aware while petrified. As kind as the spell might have been if used to conquer, when used on that dreadful final day, the spell left countless zebra trapped in stone, unable to do anything but slowly go insane.

This was the fate that befell the Legion forces in the Tenochtitlan Basin. The town of Mwanzo Mpya, known to ponies as Final Stripe, was caught on the fringes of the megaspell. Many of the zebra there were not petrified outright but suffered from massive doses of the megaspell’s radiation. They became living stone, a type of “ghoul” similar to the gargoyles of Stalliongrad.

art by Yakovlev-vad

Side note:

In “Origin Story”, I introduced Mwanzo Mpya, a town on the very edge of the Zebra Lands, across the isthmus from the pony military encampment of Tragedy’s End and the pink-stained ruins of Luna’s Academy. Mwanzo Mpya and Tragedy’s End had struck their own personal peace, as attested to both by Daring Do and the Tragedy's End Records. The ponies of Tragedy’s End witnessed the megaspell strike upon the Tenochtitlan Basin and readily took in the few survivors trying to make their way across the minefield.

The other example of an Equestrian megaspell was one called Black Rose, the megaspell created specifically for use against Roam. Black Rose was a death spell. Not as zebras knew death magic, not necromancy, but rather the heart attack spell used by the alicorns in Fallout: Equestria writ large. The spell was designed to slay everything with a heartbeat in the entire city, instantly and hopefully painlessly. And again, the megaspell would leave the city itself and all the material resources within it intact.

After the megaspell, Roam itself remained, empty save for the rotting corpses. But the city was (and remains to this day) surrounded by the Anulus Mortis, a circular zone saturated with the radiation of the Black Rose. Entering that zone is as deadly as walking through pooled Pink Cloud. The only things that grow there are plants, particularly a species of strange (and, according to the some zebra, infectious) black creepers… one of the mystical plants of the zebra lands that has mutated beyond identification.

The Black Rose was so deadly that its radiation simply kills. At least, that is the only effect it has on ponies, zebras and other creatures with a heart. But those who have ventured near the Anulus Mortis have returned with tales of the ambling corpses of slain animals and monsters, riddled with black creepers.

In the next blog, random fun facts you will definitely want to know before planning your visit to the post-apocalyptic lands of the zebras!