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I really like to think about how fantasy worlds work; the mlp world is especially interesting, due to how most of the sapient creatures aren't humanoid. The combination of magical, non-magical, composite and "normal" creatures, all with varying degrees of sapience. Not to mention how the movie added the anthropomorphised animals; now there's normal cats and cats that can walk and talk.

It's fun to try and imagine and piece together how all of this could work, especially when trying to incorporate the real world counterparts to everything. So I decided to share some of my headcanons here, just for fun.

Beware though, this is longer than I thought I'd be.

"Brief" History:
A long time ago, the planet which Equestria is on (From now on, I'm just gonna call it Equus for simplicity's sake) was almost like our world; the same animals, pretty much the same land and the same oceans. The one difference was that Equus' dimension had magic. Not much, but it was enough to cause some pretty big changes; for one, almost all animals could access and control magic in some way or another. Not much, just to make some faster, stronger or give them extra senses, like telepathy. It also made most creatures more intelligent than in our world, by how humans measure intelligence.

Then, suddenly, the magic went from a weak universal constant, to virtually an explosion of power. The source being the creation of a certain spirit of chaos and disharmony. He didn't really have a name yet (or a gender for that matter, he decided on that later), being just barely more than a force of nature. Still, he went on his merry way doing his purpose, and spread chaos where he went.

This is the point where he accidentally made the Sun into a moon (orbiting the planet, instead of vise versa), and caused the creatues we see on Equus today. Sometimes, he decided to purposefully mix creatures together, creating beings such as the mintaurs, griffins, manticores and many more. Other times, the increased magic around him caused mutations and gave species more magical powers than they ever had before: for example, phoenixes used to be just normal birds of prey, until the chaos magic altered them into beings of flame and rebirth. Some creatures were affected less, like the various normal animals we see, or the cows and other sapient low-magical creatures. Other times, it changed them until their original species was almost impossible to guess at, such as dragons and changelings.

Eventually, Discord left the planet to explore the rest of the universe, but the increased magic remained. Such a long time passed that he was completely forgotten, including his contribution to the existance of several species. But he didn't forget his origin: when he "first" came and plunged the world into chaos, causing the Sisters to fight back, he was just coming back and picking up where he'd left off. Not realising that things had grown and changed in his absense.


The Original Horse:
Lived before Discord, but was able to access and control the limited amount of magic that existed; this made them stronger, caused them to live longer and gave them some control over plant life. They were sapient, though only had about the same technological advancements as us during the stone age. They were mostly farmers, but due to being somewhat obligate omnivores, some also hunted smaller animals. Most preferred not to though, and instead ate eggs and milk. This is when the chicken were domesticated, and how the tradition of cows trading milk to ponies started (as cows tended to produce more milk than their young needed, while ponies didn't). They're known about in the modern world due to archeologists finding tools, settlements, graves, and some caves filled with their artwork.

I based their design on various cave-paintings of horses, particularly the paintings in Lascaux.


Takhis
Some of the original horses lived far away from what would become Equestria, in pretty isolated wandering herds. As such, they were pretty unaffected by Discord. They became more used to the increased magic around them, but they didn't change much in terms of physical appearence or new abilities. Eventually, as they remained isolated from other horses, they diverged and became another species. They can still have children with ponies and horses, and the offspring is suprisingly often able to have children of their own.

They mostly appear in various shades of brown, with some red and yellow thrown in, with pangaré. Their mane is a darjer shade, short, straight and almost always appears along their neck; very rarely they will also grow a short mane over their head. There are no unicorn or pegasi takhis, aside from any which are part pony or part horse.

Some do live in Equestria, but most live in Manegolia, in Haysia. Technology wise, they are slightly behind their cousins, mainly due to having less magic power overall and less flexibility in what their magic can do. They do trade with other countries, and so a lot of new inventions gets imported, but it takes a while for them to become common fixtures compared to Equestria. Especially those that are powered by unicorn magic, since other energies will have to be converted to work. They do rely more on electricity because of this, and have developed more ways of creating it; this hasn't been adopted in Equestria due to their easy access to magic.

Based on Przewalski's horses, also known as Takhis, in case the name didn't make that obvious.


Ponies
Unlike takhis, these horses were pretty much in the middle of Discord's playground. As such, they were affected a lot by his magic; both by Discord giving some of them horns and wings which could control the magic around them more directly, and by the random mutations caused by amient chaos; these include their colorful coats, smaller and altered statue, and one of their most defining characteristics in their cutie marks. These marks were caused by the horses, now calling themselves ponies, being basically drenched in magic, until it became such a part of their bodies it appeared as an image describing what that individual's magic is, expressed via what they associate with it.

There used to be sub-groups of ponies, such as the fluffier mountain ponies, the sleek ponies of the plains, the sturdy, tall, forest ponies, etc, but as Equestria unified, these groups had children with each other until the ponies today carry genes from all groups.


Horses:
Horses and ponies are technically the same species; the only difference being size (which doesn't always hold true, there are teeny-tiny horses, and giant ponies), and the ponies' cutie marks. This is the main reason why they consider themselves different, along with how for most of history they lived apart from one another, developing different cultures.

The reason for their lack of cutie mark and larger statue is that their ancestors fled once they realized how much Discord and the chaos magic he spread could affect them, and decided not to risk it. This was after Discord had gifted some with wings and horns, and the magic caused their coats to appear in any color. Thus, unicorn horses and peasus horses do exist, but they are much rarer than their pony counterparts. (That's why they sometimes call themselves unicorn-pony and pegasus-pony in the show, it's to differentiate.) Their rarity is due to how mistrustful the other horses were of them; they were more affected by Discord (whom they greatly feared) than the others, after all. Thus, almost no unicorns or pegasi live in the various horse-founded nations, instead being nomads or citizens of other nations.

Similarly to ponies, there exist sub-groups of horses. Unlike ponies, which are mostly united in one nation, horses are the founders of several (Saddle Arabia, Norwneigh, Prance etc) and so these specific traits still persists somewhat to the modern day.

Since horses ran away from the problem ponies stayed and faced, there were some tension between the two for a long while. Eventually though, as people forgot what had happended, they began to interact a lot more. It is not entirely uncommon for ponies to have horses somehere in their family tree, and vise versa. This is why some few ponies don't get cutie marks; those specific genes came from a horse ancestor, usually a very recent one.

Upvotes at import: 17 | Stars at import: 8
Posted previously at: 2018-07-18T09:15:25 | Posted previously by: Mildgyth