"588- Griffon Interview"
The Following is a interview with HRM, Alicorn of Magic and Princess of Friendship Twilight Sparkle with a Griffon who escaped from the frontlines of what has come to be known as the Long March War.
>"Look Princess Dweeb, I didn't expect a fuckin' camera in my face."
>"Yeah I'm pissed about it! This was supposed to be ANONYMOUS, right?!
>"... Oh. That's what that's for? Ah, right."
>"Whatever, lets just get this over with."
>"... Look, I'm sorry, it's just... this goes against everything a Griff stands for you know? Against Flock."
>"Press-ganged into a war most of us didn't want and then treated to the hell of fighting ponies on their turf? You bet the stars on your flank I scarpered and begged for sanctuary."
>"I'm a Equestrian Citizen and Griff. I know my rights."
>"Ok ok. You'll edit that out? Good."
---- Interview skips to 1:30 minutes in -------
>"You want me to tell you about the night bombing runs? Are you fucking serious?"
>"... well shit, I guess if you're gonna put it that way, fine."
>"Good question I guess, or fair question. The pony thinking for 'witches' is all wrong anyway."
>"Look, in Griffonia and Griffonstone, the facts of life are a lot different. Flights look after their own, and only their own, you know?"
>"Family is all that matters, everything else is chaff or food."
>"Terrible, right? It's a old hold over from the years before Griffon civilization really kicked on and turned over to working properly."
>"We're predators. Birds of Prey. And we need a lot of meat to keep the engines running. More so when you've got a nest of fledglings to feed."
>"Anything on the ground or sits below us is food, that's the instinct. High perches to get the best views."
>"I don't need your pity princess. It's history, ain't gonna sugar coat it for anyone or anything."
>"How else you dweebs gonna learn?"
>"Jeeze, then maybe you need to look into your -own- history a bit more there, tell your oh-so-holy matriarch to stop cuddling you all."
>"Do you want to go to fuckin' loggerheads here or can I fucking talk?"
>"Fucking ponies... Yes, Baby Griffons and Baby Ponies and bunnies and sunshine and happiness were all -food-. Griffons had instincts, we couldn't speak your language, and most of the interaction was swooping down and crushing what you land on, and if that didn't kill it, breaking it's neck or ripping it's throat out so it was dead, and taking off with the carcass to feed yourself, your young, and your flight."
>"Pre-Discord was a nasty time, everygriff knows that. And some instincts are hard to kill out, specially when you're a born and bred meat eater."
>"Anyway, the point of that tale is that flights look after themselves, and are really leery about other flights. They're competition for food, and they'll go after your young, just as you'll go after theirs."
>"Das Sturzkampfflugzeug- Dive bombers, the term for the hunting Griffons for a flight, often could get injured during their dives. Clip a wing, hit the ground too hard, don't land on the prey right to cushion the impact, lots of ways to get hurt."
>"And of course flights could get injured the normal way- infighting, fighting other flights, attacks from other creatures, getting sick, whatever."
>"Die Hexen, Witches, or die Hexe for a single witch, were the healers of Griffon kind. Our magicks aren't as strong as pony magic, no duh, but one thing we learned to do was heal wounds."
>"As Griffs got more intelligent, we learned how to pick herbs, how they worked, how they could bolster healing- all of this was left to the Hexe, so the Divers could keep hunting."
>"Standard Flights back then were about 10-15 griffs to stay sustainable- three to four Lions and the rest Lionesses and their Fledglings."
>"If it got too much? The Lionesses would be kicked to the curb. Sick and Weakest first, on upwards. The Lions are guarded fiercely, cuz they're smaller than a Lionesses, and if they die out, a Flight would need to steal another Flight's Lions in order to survive."
>"Like I said, we're talking ancient history, don't ask if you don't want to know."
>"Fine, fine, look, der Hexendoktor is what happens when a Hexe split from their Flight, either because they were kicked out or because they decided they'd have better fortune elsewhere."
>"Flights might fight, but a Hexe was valuable for their knowledge. Even a fairly novice one could bolster their strength quite a bit."
>"But a incompetent one or one with ambition? Dangerous to the Lead Lioness."
>"So they'd get kicked out and another would be trained."
>"These Hexe would be known as Hexendoktor, Witch Doctors, due to what they did next- emigrate to Zebrican lands."
>"They learned Shamanism over there, and improved their skills, and one of the things they brought back with them was the Broom."
>"Brooms have always been associated with Hexendoktor, because they would use them to carry more of their supplies, and to clean away their camping spots on the ground or cover their tracks to hide from Divebombers."
>"Yeah, pretty smart stuff, but of course forklore got to cropping up when they started stealing Lion Fledglings."
>"Oh yeah. Middle of the night, they'd sneak out and go to young Flights or injured Flights with Fledglings, and steal the Lions if the Flight had any."
>"Mhmm, go aground with them- no Griff worth their feathers back then would look there, that's where the prey lives, after all."
>"And so der Hexendoktor would start their own Flight with their stolen Lions, and teach the Lions all they knew, to teach their new Flight, and so on."
>"Well, they grew up to be der Hexendoktor, didn't they?"
>"The first really friendly interactions with Equestrians, yeah. They're the ones who live along the Southern Equestrian boarder."
>"The braver ones, yeah. They stuck around here and continued the tradition of stealing Fledglings, only now, Lionesses were fair game too."
>"The sound of rustling bristles was usually the only warning a Flight would have before their Fledgling vanished, if they were heard at all."
>"Yep, kinda like those weird traveling sacks you ponies use sometimes tied to a stick that you carry on your shoulder. They'd scoop the sleeping fledgling up and into a sack and vanish into the night in a diving glide."
>"The term for them became die Nachthexen- The Night Witches, the old belief being that they were Lionesses, but became -das- Nachthexen when one was caught, and revealed to be a Lion."
>"Oh yeah, major upheaval. He ratted out a few other flights trying to save his feathers and there was quite the dust up, but that's another story."
>"Another interview?! Look, find some other Griff, I ain't your storybook."
>"You ponies have a controlling hoof there, just find a library and raid it or something, by the Maker..."
>"Anyway, the trenches on the Germarey lines, that final week."
>"The march and flight up had already been hell. After die Kommissarin whats-her-feathers subjugated the Flights and the Diamond Dog population the mountain by ruffling feathers and getting the majority of Lion and important Lioness support, she ran rough-feather over everygriff that could fight and rounded us up to march on Equestria."
>"Germarey was not particularly hard to roll over, it bolstered everygriff's confidence that we had a fighting chance. I knew better."
>"Well, your Dorkness, I'm a South Equestrian Griff, how did you think I got accepted into a Pegasus Flight School?"
>"Yeah, Cloudsdale travels far, but not -that- far, it generally loops down south for a bit during the summers, right when Flight School picks up."
>"Ask -your- friend about it dweeb."
>"Ugh, right, back on topic, I was in Griffonstone visiting my Oma- she was one of the Flight leaders back in the day, big clan head."
>"Mhmm, my dad split off from his Flight when he was little and snuck into Germarey and fell in love with ponies and pony culture, and worked himself to the quick to earn enough bits to get a train further into Equestria."
>"It's a long story, look, can we wrap this shit up, do you want to know about why they're the Night Witches or not?"
>"The trenches out there in Germarey are ice cold and that was even when there were bodies in them trying to warm up. Winter is harsh and it's the last place you want to be that late in the year- on the ground and exposed."
>"But we couldn't get in the air- Pegasi are dangerous air fighters, and more importantly, faster than we are." 
>"They can buck clouds to pieces and knock us to the ground before we have a chance to react, and if some Griff is sleeping and gets tangled with another Griff while falling?"
>"Well, it'd make a very crunchy sound at the bottom, and a lethal one most likely."
>"So there you are, in the trench, and you hear the quietest whisper of the wind, something like bristles rustling in the air."
>"You turn your head up, and see a shape in the night, lancing overhead at top speed but completely silent on griffon-wings, but webbed."
>"Ponies are small. Griffon wings are a lot larger, and those biplane thingies of yours have wings that are about the same length."
>"The next thing you hear as you slowly wake up and try to get a better look is a much sharper whistling sound and then something hitting the ground hard, and suddenly, the world is lit up like Celestia dropped the sun in your face."
>"The sound was deafening, so you're already dazed and disoriented, and then the world around you burned."
>"Flasks of unyielding fire that would stick to whatever it landed on, explosions that would rip wings from your back if you had them spread or your head from your shoulders if you were close enough."
>"You didn't see. Nopony saw. The damned Nachthexen flew only at night- how could you see? And if you did see, how could you be sure that you really saw it?"
>"Exactly, just like in Griffon myth. We could only look on in horror as Flights were wiped away, burned to ashes by the liquid fire or ripped to pieces by the ordnance, as surely as the old Flights would have fallen apart without their Lions, either picked apart by another flight or by their own in-fighting."
>"Somegriff told me after she finally made it back home to the South that she swears she saw unicorn magic being cast from one, but it was so dark, and the moon was hidden, there was no way to know for sure."
>"The next night, die Kommissarin wanted everygriff ready and in an anti-pegasus formation, ready to put out a wall of bolts to stop the attack before it started." 
>"The Pony lines hadn't advanced into the area we had retreated from in our haste to escape the first raid, so she was confident it was your Pegasi doing it, and some Griffon just didn't see it right."
>"We waited silently, crossbows and even a few cannons at the ready, watching and waiting, hoping to catch even a hint of what was coming."
>"Then the wooshing sound, and the world turned to light, fire, and sound."
>"Those little wooden craft make very little sound, if any, and they're damn hard to spot."
>"Oh, that's what they did? That high up, really?"
>"Heh, should have called them Der Sturzkampfflugzeug instead, that's basically the old traditional hunting strike..."
>"So yeah, wooshing sound of them diving straight at our heads, no wonder you ponies are so protective of your stallions, they're insane and likely to kill themselves if they don't have a few mares to run herd on them."
>"A Lioness was screaming in terror, curled up and crying about 'Das Nachthexen, das Nachthexen!' "
>"Supposedly the legend grew over the years and changed so that the witch doctors would use zebrican magic and unicorn spells to steal away the Fledglings, and this poor Lioness had heard one too many stories growing up."
>"No, my Oma knew better, she explained the whole thing to me when I was a Fledgling myself one of the rare times she visited Pops."
>"So, die Kommissarin picked up on it and started calling them that as well, screaming that she wanted das Nachthexen heads on her pike, and she'd give noble status to anygriff that successfully killed one."
>"We didn't succeed, every bolt fired just seemed to do -nothing-, which just solidified the belief in many of the more superstitious Lionesses that these Night Witches were really here to kill them all and snatch away their souls for Nightmare Moon or some such."
>"Yeah, not even going to get into that bag of ferrets, let someone else deal with that shit. I'm not going a hundred talons near Griffonstone ever again if I can help it, especially if we got loons worried about Ninnymare Moona instead of real threats..."
>"Whu... h-hey, back off Dweeb! You don't need to worry about my Oma!"
>"I... wh... n-no... sh-"
>"... really?"
>"... maybe you ponies ain't so bad... I..."
>"Look, get my Oma to the South and safe and we'll talk. My Dad will flip if she can get there safely."
>"Back on to topic... the third night they wiped out a majority of the upper chain of command."
>"They flew a lot earlier in the night, almost right after twilight, heh, and a bombshell made it right through the command tent and landed dead-center in the fancy map table that das Kommissarin was holding her meeting at."
>"Her reflexes are just that good. Threw herself down the moment it hit the tent. She hit the deck just as it was going off, only took a few feathers off her wings. Most of her upper staff wasn't so lucky, caught the entirety of the blast and shrapnel to the head and neck."
>"Shit got really wild then, die Kommissarin went -crazy-, got every single griff, even the injured, out of bed, got us into combat formation, that night, even after the bombing stopped, and got weapons ready."
>"The fourth night was when the mutiny occurred. Never would have expected it out of her, but a little Lioness just out of her Fledgling years had the audacity to pull it off."
>"You have to remember, we were all tired, hungry, in pain, the Diamond Dogs had fled by this point because their tunnels were being collapsed and many of them died, and they were more scared of das Nachthexen then they were of die Kommissarin."
>"So this little Lioness just stands up from her Anti-Pegasus position as die Kommissarin is walking by her, turns calmly, and puts a bolt right through the back of her head."
>"Reflexes or not, you don't expect an attack like that, especially as jumped-up on coffee, adrenaline, fear, and lack of sleep as we all were. Die Kommissarin, may her meat rot on the ground, was jittery after the bomb hit."
>"Huh, yeah, that's a good term for it. 'Shell Shocked.'"
>"Right, so little Lioness pulls the trigger, die Kommissarin's head is gore, and everygriff is in shock. Jaws are dropped everywhere as this little fluff of feathers, shaking in fear, wobbly from exhaustion and hunger, puffs out her chest, fluffs up her wings, then spreads them and takes the cap from the the dead girl's head and puts it on her own, and somehow in the calmest, most dead even voice I've heard from a girl who's scared stiff, tells us that she's die Kommissarin now, and her orders were as follows- stand down, get to the air, and don't die, return to this position after das Nachthexen did their run."
>"No more attacking, no more fighting, surrender calmly if approached."
>"Suffice to say not a single griff put up a fight and complied with her orders. We watched as the gliders swooped in and destroyed the rest of the encampment, lit up the command tend and destroyed the chuck wagon, and vanished into the sky."
>"You know the rest. Kommissarin Gabriella tendered surrender to the Equestrian Armed forces on the Fifth day, and your stallions and their wooden planes flew their way into history."
>"Heh, yeah, it is a little funny- birds of prey getting dive bombed by ponies."
>"Dweeb, even -I- know that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Like that featherbrain Kommissarin who forgot the first lesson every Fledgling is taught- never stay on the ground without looking up."
---The interview ended thirty minutes later after an agreement for further interviews and a possible meeting with one of the Flight Leaders of the Southern Griffon community to negotiate further trades and possibly a communal historical library were discussed, before HRM Princess Twilight Sparkle ended the interview. This record has been unedited and is kept so that all can learn the lessons taught from this time of strife: If one fails to learn their history, one is doomed to repeat it.---
 
 
Side notes and clarifications:
1. Griffons did have air-based scouts and defenses, but most of them were either avoided by the higher-flying divebombing aircraft of the 588th and the Anon who lead them, or shot down by Unicorns.
 
And by 'shot down' I mean had their wings clipped. Not a pretty way to die.
2. Crossbows fired in mass at a flock of pegasi is a pretty good way to kill 'em. Too fast and too thin to be upset by windgusts without preptime, and too many of 'em for the whole flock to dodge. A single scout would be in serious trouble as well.
3. There was many holes in the 588th's aircraft by the end of their missions from the bolts- most of them got stuck in the wood, but others passed right through, nicking or barely missing the stallions inside, or being blocked by shield spells.
 
Anon did have a few bolts slip past uncomfortable places and one even took his hat off his head. He still has it at home, with the bolt still in it.