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Dear Twilight Sparkle,
My faithful student, I hope that you and Luna are managing in Equestria alright! I know it was difficult to ask you, but after a thousand years, I really did need a change of pace.
Even if it is doing the same job for a bunch of hairless apes! But Commadore Bleakbane is right, they do desperately need our help. (He's come along to advise me and... liason with the humans.)
We started out in new Canterlot. We were quite far north, and out first band of intrepid scouts soon found the ice-cap not far from us. We were surrounded by forest, and so even when I organised the first bands of workers, they couldn't do much until I and Bleakbane had explained at great length concepts like "wheels" and "blades" and "not eating rocks." We used a carrot and stick method, in the end - I offered them carrots, and Bleakbane hit them with a big stick when they tried to eat the rocks instead. I feel a bit guilty that I don't feel at all sorry for them, but the poor ape dears are quite, quite stupid...
Our plans of early exploration and expansion were slowed when we found only one set of ancient ruins, but instead encampments of brutes, who attacked our band of warriors, who had to fight them off. Well, that's what Bleakbane says they attacked first, though I suspect that to be a lie, of sorts... In any case, he did a lot of screaming and raging when it took several attacks before we had finally scattered even the first group of barbarians.
Our southern expansion was hampered by two city states (Hanoi and Yereven) being rather close, and beyond that, the Songhai, who still don't want to be friends, despite numerous offers.
But I persevered, and soon brought about a golden age by the time of 1520BC of the local calendar (according the Bleakbane - the actual locals called it Many Cold Time After Talky Horse Came, until he educated them on numbers and time via use of a technique he calls percussion learning. He says it is an advanced form of educatiative science, developed over hundreds of years of careful by Aotrs study. I rather think it is just beating them over the head with a rock until they get it right, but whatever - it seems to be working...)
A few years later, we raised some pyramids, which looked really rather nice. I'ts not a patch on the real Canterlot, of course, but it's a start. (In fact, I considered it an achievement we managed to get something as simple geometry into their heads - you should have seen some of the things the architechs - and I use the term loosely, by dear student! - came up with to start with...! My favourite was the design that was exactly the shape of a...thingy. Bleakbane, however, didn't see the funny side.)
You will be pleased to know our next task was erecting a great library, which we filled with all the knowledge we lay our hands on, plus a great deal of editions of the Beano, because Bleakbane was running out of room in his sanctum and wasn't going to get rid of them. Oddly enough, they seem to have gone down quite well with the local populace, which just goes to show...
At more or less the same time, I decided that we should start gently encouraging our new subjects to be a bit more respectful towards me, whereas Bleakbane told them he'd pull their eyeballs out of their nostrils if they didn't start worshipping me, which I thought was a bit gruesome. But fair. So new Equestria started down the path of piety, albeit with a lot of prodding, shouted directions and occasional physical violence.
We had explored our small continent, and eventually sent our second batch of settlers to found Manehatten, some distance away. (Bleakbane screamed blue murder about how far apart our cities had to be, given the proximity of the city-states and the small size of the continent.)
By 900 BC, we encountered the Polynesians, lead by Kamehameha, which for some reason Bleakbane found both hilarious and disturbing. They wanted to set up an embassy, which we agreed to, and over the following years, they gradually became friends. (It was as well, as when I first mentioned my particular speciality as a ruler, Bleakbane had a bit of a screaming fit about efficiency, and yelled about how "that was no way to run a country!" and optimisation until he had to go and have a bit of a lie down.)
A mere century later (how the years just fly by!), I had firmly established myself as the Goddess of Love, on Bleakbane's grugding advice, muttering about "best in the dreadful circumstances."
We had our first real setback in 575BC when the Songhai built Stonehenge, just before Canterlot did. I thought that was rather clever of them, but Bleakbane had another long screaming fit, and then went away for a while. When he came back, his eyeglow was twitching a bit, and he was muttering about finding iron with which to make "special gifts with which to bequeath to Askia at velocity..."
He'd brought a map back, after sending out a lot of prospectors, and having finally got the hang of iron (which took a long time - it took abou twenty years before I could stop them trying to drink the molten metal or use it as a dipping sauce) we sent out a new set of colonists into the western promentary, which was all tundra forest, but had several sources of iron. The Polynesians founded a new town quie close to where we wanted to place ours, but Bleakbane had our scouts and warriors stand on the coast and shout abuse until they went a bit further down the coast. I noticed his eyeglow was twitching again. He really ought to get that seen too...
So, Cloudsdale was founded, and we entered another golden age. The Songhai built some lovely Hanging Gardens around 200 BC, but Bleakbane started muttering about how they would get theirs soon enough.
And just recently, by dear Twilight, we had finally achieved enough divine power that I was able to channel it properly again, asn we founded Celestianity. I wasn't too sure about the name, but Bleakbane said it was fine. (He seemed a bit distracted at the time, though, when I asked him what we should call it; he was pouring over maps of the Songhai lands and diagrams of what looked like catapults and cackling manically.)
I decided to use my new-found power to enrich all the plant life, to give us all nicer food, and to spread some more beauty into the world. I think making us the envy of the world, a land of artists and beauty is the best way to show these poor monkeys how they should behave, though Bleakbane appears to think it would be better to be slap people upside the head until they build faster or until they have scientific revelations, but he's agreed to go my way for the moment.
I hope to hear from you soon, my faithful student, and with luck I shall be able to write to you again myself!
Your loving mentor,
Princess Celestia.