Nightmare Fuel / Equestria at War

• The entire mod. Sugar Apocalypse happens in spades as the happy-go-lucky world of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is home to a huge amount of brutal wars, genocides, black magic uprisings, and more. And, unlike in the show, The Power of Friendship isn't enough to stop any of them. Oh, and many of our world's historical and political figures are present as fantasy creatures, even ones accused of mass atrocities like Lavrentiy Beria as Lavender Berry, to have their way with this world.
• Lavender Berry's South-East State is an oppressive totalitarian dystopia, but it stands out even amongst other totalitarian states in EAW by how he deals with lunar and indigenous resistance; fire. Berry indiscriminately bombs the jungles with thousands of canisters of napalm, thermite, and other incendiaries, burning down massive portions of the jungle and killing untold numbers of civilians, thestrals, and natives. The army would then move in and clean out any resistance with flamethrowers, destroying hundreds of indigenous villages and burning their people alive. Considering that he's an alternate Lavrentiy Beria, who was subject to Even Evil Has Standards by the worst of the Soviet regime, it's no surprise.
• The Reformisten, a group of fanatic knights from Hellquill who seek to create more living space for griffons at the expense of the ponies, and the official in-universe equivalent of the Nazis. They ruthlessly eliminate the pony minority in Hellquill before preparing for a war with the River Coalition, and will use the ponies from conquered as test subjects and slave labour. Their grand entrance is marked by the release of the Purple Plague, a bioweapon intended to kill every pony community in the Riverlands, and by the time the River Coalition is ready for war, it's already killed many ponies.
• Longsword partisan and unhinged despot Golden Morning's utopian visions of eternal peace on Griffonia is sharply contrasted by the sheer horrific fanatical totalitarianism he unleashes upon his country in the name of this utopian vision. Multiple events mention how Golden Morning no longer sees the beings in his country as living breathing beings, but cells to be controlled and directed to his vision of the future. Every event where he improves the relations of ponies and griffons is undercut by threats of extreme reprisal should they reject him. It really says something that he is more fanatical to his ideals than Wingfried von Katerinburg is to his.
  • In his most overtly horrific event, "Necessary Sacrifice", Golden Morning leads a group of soldiers to clear out a border village so the region can be fortified. Golden Morning makes it clear that the village and the people in it needs to utterly dedicate to him and his vision, and if they do not remove themselves, he will kill them to remove them. An elderly pony farmer adamantly refuses to move, angry that Golden Morning's soldiers have burned down his family farm, accusing him of betraying his talks of freedom. Golden Morning reacts with both contempt but also a bit of pity. He tries negotiate with the farmer, telling him his contempt for freedom, and offering the farmer either freedom or future. When the farmer refuses to answer him and instead spits in his face, Golden Morning cracks, and calmly orders his soldiers to execute the farmer.
    "Only at the very last second did the farmer realize that he was no longer staring into a pony's eyes. Free will gave way to a clockwork drive towards a single goal, hesitation faded in the face of determination. Much like Morning sought to subsume the nation into one goal, that goal consumed him as well."
• The fate of Twilight Sparkle, if the Changelings successfully take over and occupy Equestria, is not pretty. Especially since the other Alicorns had been able to escape. She is starved and locked in an underground chamber for her brand of Alicorn love and the sadistic enjoyment of Changeling general and Queen's Guard head Dieter Heinrich, who is heavily implied to be an actual Waffen-SS officer who woke up in Equestria one day as a Changeling and resumed 'work.' Version 1.9.1.5 and beyond would have him replaced with a normal Changeling named Lacin Cardo, who is still practically just as bad but lacking the whole "transformed human in Equus" aspect.
• The visions the Canterlot Commissariat had upon taking the Seeds of truth potion. They reveal what the quartet would have been like if they never became friends.
  • Finicus is a Corrupt Corporate Executive that turns his factories into death camps, working the current batch of ponies until they drop dead as they would be replaced by the next batch soon enough.
  • Alcippe is Lacin's Number Two in the Queen's Guard who personally ordered a full-scale incendiary bombing of Canterlot until most of the population are bleached skeletons, only ordering the bombing to stop just so she can hear her screaming victims. She is planning on doing the same thing to Manehatten with evil relish.
  • Marsilio becomes this game's version of Josef Mengele, performing live experimentation on ponies for their love while keeping them in slaughterhouse conditions with their cages stacked on top of one another.
  • Jachs retires after the war and becomes a propaganda film maker instead of being made Canterlot's governor. He winds championing the worst aspects of Pax Chrysalia, ignorant of what is really happening at Equestria.
• April Fools 2022 brings us the Canterlonian Regency which would become the Holy Equestrian Principality after winning the civil war. That faction is based on TNO's Holy Russian Empire and judging by the events and focuses, it shows. Life under the Regency is a nightmarish dystopia that twists the very values of Equestria. Below is just a short list of what happens under Regent Twilight.
  • Silver Shill sold an apple to a foal at a lower price than stated out of pity. He was promptly sent to prison for not being honest.
  • Vapor Trail and Sky Stinger had a conversation over the Regency's rule. Soon after, one of them ratted out the other for "subversive activity" to the local commander under the grounds of not being loyal enough.
  • Cranky Doodle and Matilda were quickly arrested and never seen again for not laughing at the horrible jokes the local officers were putting out.
  • Dr. Fauna was threatened into silence when she begged for medical aid for the various sick animals under her care, stating that it was supposed to be kind to give to the state.
  • Pistachio's home was completely torn down to make way for other infrastructure, saying that it was due to their generosity despite it clearly being not the case.
  • Cozy Glow escaped prison due to the local upheaval and was attending school with plans to coup Regent Twilight, only to be late for class. Just being a minute late for class is enough to warrant her being sent to the rock farms. Granted, this is Cozy Glow we are talking about here but Eviler than Thou doesn't even begin to describe the situation.
    • A later focus shows her working and promptly drinking finish the water that was supposed to be for the entire farm crew. One of the older prisoners gave up on living and hoped that her actions would put them out of their misery.
  • The school curriculum radically changed to promote absolutely loyalty to the Regent and the Princesses, erasing Equestria's identity.
  • The Mane Six all meet very sticky ends. Applejack died offscreen with Twilight not even giving notice. Fluttershy became the newest tree in Canterlot Garden. Pinkie Pie jumped into a volcano, probably aware that all this was happening because it is April Fools' Day. Rarity is the true identity of Gutrosia, the Unicornian Sisterhood's leader who would die in the civil war. Rainbow Dash was shot by a firing squad while trying to save Daring Do. Twilight breaks her neck at the end of the event.
  • The focus icons are filled with abounding images of mutilated bodies, faces with empty eye sockets, and bloodied knives.
  • Twilight herself has plans to spread beyond the continent for global domination and would've went through with it if it wasn't for her breaking her neck. Twilight in question post-Sanity Slippage becomes a crazed madmare that sets standards that are impossible to follow and kills anyone who opposes her.
  • How did the entire event start? The Royal Sisters went on vacation in Zebrica and their note to Twilight was lost. Millions of lives underwent hell because of this miscommunication.
• The Barrad Magocracy is Mordor in EAW, a hellish realm where evil wizards rule over a scorched landscape and an utterly terrified population enslaved as test subjects, with their treatment amounting to magical torture. But more horrifying than any of the existing paths is its secret path. The deer sorceress Viira can merge her body and soul with the entity inside the magical nuclear reactor in a deal that results in her becoming nothing short of a Goddess of Fire, with her sole desires to see the world burn and to create an endless cycle of killing. Her favorite tactics are to mind control the entire population into becoming her army, and to cause nuclear explosions just by thinking. To hear a Reddit user put it:
  Is no one going to acknowledge that Viira turns the world population into her unwilling mindslaves? It was not enough that her army of slavering fanatics throw themselves at the unbelievers. She will make the land she conquers into an inhospitable hellscape of erratic weather, gravitational anomalies, and mind breaking carnage. Atomic fire, outbreaks of disease, psionic assaults, ravaging earthquakes and rising volcanoes.

  Those obedient servants who don't die to make this all reality exist only for her pleasure. She can decide at any moment that you must fight in a bloody spectacle for nothing more than her entertainment. Civilization would collapse as the world inhabitants have nothing to strive for other than Viira's approval. An intangible, omnipresent goddess who in her curiosity pushes the boundaries of all sanity and reason, and whose boredom is only abated with orgies of blood, the needless destruction of sentient life, and the rape of the innocent.
• With Posada's cryptic nightmares, Crack Lightning's chillingly effective fascism, and Razorbeak's unhinged ultranationalism, Hippogriffia is no stranger to darkness, but the darkest of all paths lies in the deep sea. It begins with an innocuous report of exploring the Mareiana Trench, with scientists reporting strange amnesiac occurrences. But slowly, the events get stranger and stranger. Until out of nowhere, a mysterious cult worshipping the Trench appears, and begins plotting a takeover of Hippogriffia that escalates into civil war. If they win, all is revealed: the Sirens lurk in the depths, and have turned their gaze to world conquest...
  • And if you want to know how bad it gets, they scare Grogar.
• With all this horror, the darkest and bloodiest path in the mod is perhaps its best-hidden. It's Grogar, the Father of Monsters, and his return in seemingly irrelevant Azir.