Princess Cadence, current ruler of the Crystal Empire, rifled through an endless stack of paperwork at her desk. The term ‘empire’ may be a bit of a misnomer for the puny vassal state of neighboring Equestria because, while it may have been a vast and expansionist realm under King Sombra’s tyrannical reign, nowadays days it consisted of one rather small city in the icy north. The citizens of the empire had been in stasis for an entire millennium before Cadence took office, and it had been a herculean effort on her part to bring the nation up to modern standards. Just about every sector needed to be reworked from the ground up; the ponies’ thousand-year absence required mass reeducation, agriculture still wasn’t up to snuff, and their economy would tank if it weren’t for Celestia’s assistance. Worse, none of her advisers had a solid grasp of modernity, let alone today’s international relations, so she couldn’t even foist some of her workload off on them.