It is the 2nd Millennium. For more than ten centuries the Princess has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Canterlot. She is the Mistress of ponykind by the will of the gods, and mistress of a thousand cities by the might of her inexhaustible armies. She is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Daytime. She is the Carrion Lady of the Principality for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that she may never truly die.
Yet even in her deathless state, the Princess continues her eternal vigilance. Mighty battleforces cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Everfree Forest, the only route between distant lands, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Princess' will. Vast armies give battle in her name on uncounted battlefields. Greatest amongst her soldiers are the Adeptus Equas, the Space Mares, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Principial Guard and countless city defence forces, the ever vigilant Equisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mequinicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from buffaloes, traitors, zebras - and worse.
To be a pony in such times is to be one amongst untold millions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace beneath the sky, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.