The Fifth Kind: The Changelings · 1:12pm Jun 8th, 2014
Introduction
There were, classically, five major Pony Kinds crafted by the Eldren out of the Proto-Ponies. These were the Earth Ponies, Unicorns, Pegasi, Sea Ponies and Flutter Ponies. Of these five, the Flutter Ponies were the shyest and most reclusive: even before the Time of Extermination, 4500 years Before The Harmony, they dwelt in deep wilderness and had little to do with the other Kinds, living as gatherers and using their psychic powers to order the ecosystem for maximum diversity and production.
I. History
Around 3500 years Before The Harmony, the aggressive growth of Earth Pony civilization, spearheaded by the militant Church of The Megan, led to the other four Kinds retreating from the world and surviving in odd corners of the Earth and the Halfworld, living in secrecy.
Around 2500 years Before The Harmony, when the magic came back, two of the Kinds -- the Unicorns and Pegasi -- were rediscovered by the Earth Ponies. The period of peaceful intercourse after this rediscovery was short. In the year 2476 BTH, the Cataclysm wracked the Earth, wiping out 90% of the Earth Pony population by 2475 BTH and 99% by 2375 BTH -- a global population of 8 billion overwhelmingly Earth Ponies was reduced in one century to a mere 40 million. Many non-Pony races, long deemed mythical, emerged to attack and enslave the Pony survivors.
Two Kinds, the Unicorns and Pegasi, decided that the Cataclysm meant that the Earth Ponies could not be trusted with self-rulership. In the millennium after the Cataclysm, these three kinds -- the Unicorn, Pegasi and Earth Ponies -- competed in the far north of North Amareica, in what was then the most habitable part of the continent, the area around the (ice-free and temperate) Arctic Ocean) for domination. The Earth Ponies specialized in agricultural productivity and trade, the Unicorns in magic and craft, and the Pegasi in communications, weather and war.
The Fourth Kind, the Sea Ponies, dwelt in the immense wastes of the ocean, hiding or emerging at their own will. Their racial ability -- to channel magic through their songs -- proved useful for survival. They allied with and interbred with one of the pre-Pony races, the amphibious, semi-piscine semi-batrachian Deep Ones, became a new Kind and culturally drifted apart from the main Three Kinds. The new Kind, the Deep Ponies, secretly planted satellite colonies around the coastlands of the world to trade for land products, and for the most part lived in peace both with Ponykind and with the other species of the planet.
The Fifth Kind, the Flutter Ponies, retreated even more completely into the wilderness of the world. They interbred with the Buzzies, one of the surviving variants of the Eldren who had developed a eusocial society modeled on Bees, and their descendants became increasingly eusocial. They began to live in Hives, though they were not yet emotivoric or shapeshifting. The Flutter Ponies feared the other Kinds, and hid their Hives in deep woodlands or caves, where they might live unmolested. They engaged in a furtive trade with the other Kinds, but slowly developed a biologically-based technology to reduce their dependence upon such intercourse.
Much of the history of the Flutter Ponies is obscure and known only from their contacts with the other Kinds. They rarely kept written records, and lost many of those they had in the great climatic catastrophe of the 15th century Before The Harmony (starting around 1421 BTH), when the Wendigoes came to the Earth and suddenly pushed the planet back from its post-Cataclysmic Thermal Maximum toward Holocene conditions. The Arctic Ocean was once again choked with ice and the northern coasts of North Amareica became uninhabitable, The global civilizations that had painfully started to climb back up from the Cataclysm collapsed as nations were forced to migrate southward all through the Northern Hemisphere, with great loss of life and cultural continuity.
North Amareica was fortunate in that the Crystal Empire, founded in 2029 BTH and possessing written records salvaged from the Age of Wonders, was able to survive the climate changes, thanks to their possesion of the Crystal Heart and their alliance with some of the Pegasi. The records of the Crystal Empire plainly show that Flutter Ponies continued to survive and even flourish in North Amareica after the Coming of the Windigoes, taking advantage of the newly habitable lands which had previously been deserts.
Then, 1000 years BTH, Discord awoke and devastated the Earth, inflicting random changes everywhere. Sometime in the early 10th century BTH -- the time can be identified as such by clues in the Changeling Memory Waxes -- Discord came into conflict with the Flutter Ponies, who were desperately trying to defend Earth's ecosystems as they had done so for tens of millennia. Discord made captive the Flutter Pony racial leader, their immortal High Queen Rosedust, his prisoner, and through her he cast a terrible transformation that warped the entire Flutter Pony race, and was forever remembered by them as The Twisting.
He turned the entire species into, essentially, the modern Changelings.
II. Changeling Abilities and Limitations
The Twisting granted the former Flutter Ponies new powers, at the cost of a severe cosmetic change and an even more severe dependence. The former Flutter Ponies became black and hideous by Pony standards (and Discord, who had absorbed Pony aesthetic standards in his youth among the Ponies of Paradise Estate, did this very much on purpose). They gained chitinous armor and the ability to perform more direct magic through their new horns, including forms of telepathy, focused flight field ramming and direct coherent energy blasts. Their wing structure changed, robbing them of their former great racial ability, the Utter Flutter, and improving their agility at the expense of their endurance. Their loss of the Utter Flutter was very intentional, as it was the one Flutter Pony ability which Discord had considered potentially-threatening to himself.
Most significantly, they gained the ability to Shift form, which is the most important ability of the Changelings. Imposed upon them was a psychic need to absorb positive emotional affect -- various forms of love -- to fuel their powers. To make matters worse, only the love of non-Changelings was useful to them in this regard. To facilitate their feeding, they now had a limited form of empathy -- they could detect love. In most Changelings, this was a very limited set of abilities: they could change shapes but their disguises would not survive close contact with any who knew the originals, and their ability to feed was relatively obvious and useless as a form of attack.
One minor but occasionally important Changeling ability is that -- though each has a birth-sex -- they are capable through Shifting of true hermaphroditism, meaning that they can breed with either sex. They are also interfertile with the other Pony Kinds. During the Long Hiding, the Changelings -- who had only minimal inter-Hive contact -- would occasionally increase their genetic diversity through deliberate interbreeding with other Ponies. Since this was done in stealth and sometimes by rape, this made them even less popular with the rest of Ponykind than they already were -- when the Ponies even noticed what they were doing.
Their Royal Caste also developed their empathy into a special Changeling Power -- The Stare. This is essentially a form of mind control, mostly projected through eye contact, whose most usual application is to induce love (so that the Changeling can feed). It can also be used to intimidate or -- at high levels -- to implant specific psychic suggestions. The Stare can be combined with the emotivory to create a truly horrible (though inefficient) attack -- the Life Drain, in which a victim is commanded to love a Changeling so strongly that the Changeling can extract its entire life force in a single feeding. This not only kills the victim, but causes severe physical damage in the process due to paramagnetic ionization.
The Flutter Ponies, even before The Twisting, had been increasingly eusocial and with their biotechnology were developing a caste system, both through selective breeding and the teratogenic modification of Flutter Ponies after conception by means of specialized feeding. The Changelings were to take this further. They developed distinct Royal, Warrior and Worker castes, and one caste unique to their Kind -- the Infiltrators.
A. Workers
The most common Changeling caste, Workers are quick to mature (a few years to adulthood) easy to raise, submissive and not very intelligent. They differ in size, strength and endurance, depending on the jobs for which the subcaste was intended, but they are generally unimaginative and almost useless in combat situations as they tend to panic when threatened with physical violence. They can Shift but only into one or two memorized forms, and they are rarely able to do more than meep or whimper in Shifted form, hence are useless for any but the most rudimentary forms of infiltration. They cannot effectively feed on an even slightly-opposed mind, and hence are utterly dependent on the Love Pools for their psychic nutrition. They can, however, learn some craft skills, and are very hard working.
Following the Reconciliation, a major source of support for the Hives has been the provision of contract labor to Equestrian industry: this usually takes the form of breeding, training and dispatching a force of Workers for the use of Equestrian industrialists. This is also a potential source of social conflict with other races, as Changeling Workers tend to be a lot cheaper and less demanding than are the workers of most other species. However, the Changeling workforce proved crucial to the Equestrian victory in the middle and later stages of the Shadow Wars.
B. Warriors
The next most common Changeling caste -- generally around ten percent of the numbers of any Hive -- Warriors are also quick-maturing (several years to adulthood) and easy to raise. They are submissive to their designated leaders, aggressive and brave to designated foes, but are neither intelligent nor imaginative. They make good troops due to their courage and determination. They tend to be bigger, stronger and faster than the Workers. They can be trained to assume one or two pre-set forms or to directly copy individuals. Warriors are a bit more capable of feeding against opposed minds, but not all that much better -- they generally need to capture prisoners or feed from volunteers, and are mostly dependent upon the Love Pools.
Changeling Warriors figured prominently on both sides of the Shadow Wars. Queen Chrysalis, especially following her Ascension to become Nightmare Hunger, bred and dispatched very large numbers of Warriors including horrific specialized subcastes, to attack Equestria. With the Reconciliation, the friendly Changeling Hives likewise provided large numbers of Warriors to the Equestrian war effort, and this proved crucial in winning the middle and later phases of the Shadow Wars. Changeling Warriors tend to be brave but unimaginative fighters by Equestrian standards. They are often thought of as mere killing machines, though they in fact do have distinct personalities and enjoy their existences.
C. Infiltrators
This is what everypony thinks of when they think of "Changelings," but they are actually a rare caste -- generally one percent or less of the population of any Hive. Infiltrators are relatively slow-maturing (a decade or so to adulthood) and require careful training. They are highly intelligent, imaginative, courageous and cunning. They hone their empathy to a high degree and can tell not only if they are loved, but in what manner; the most adept Infiltrators can deduce the rest of a target's emotional state by analyzing their love patterns. Infiltrators cannot only quickly copy individuals, but can also invent and maintain fictitious cover identities -- "Masks," they call them -- complete with consistent thoughts and personalities. While The Stare is not a normal Infiltrator ability, the smartest and strongest-willed Infiltrators manifest a limited form of this power, used primarily to captivate or intimidate. An Infiltrator also has precise control over its emotivory, and can vary it from a very gentle tap -- imperceptible to most victims -- al the way up to an exhausting drain that leaves the victim feeling ill (though Infiltrators cannot Life Drain).
Infiltrators have the ability to accumulate far more love than they can use themselves, and carry this love back to their Hives. There, they can be artificially induced to yield the surplus to the Love-Pools. This is the main source of (psychic) sustenance for the Workers and Warriors of the Hive. Note that the Workers and Warriors don't actually have much in the way of psychic powers, and hence can normally subsist off very tiny amounts of love.
Infiltrators are subject to two major occupational hazards -- Love-Locking and Split-Minding. The first occurs when an Infiltrator becomes addicted to the pattern of love from a particular target. It may or may not be accompanied by love or friendship in the more normal Pony sense of the word. The second occurs when an Infiltrator, subjected to severe emotional stress, loses control over its Masks, being unable to distinguish between its own thoughts and emotions and those of its sub-personalities. It is generally fair to say that -- especially by Changeling standards -- Infiltrators tend toward mental and emotional instability, though they are actually quite strong-willed -- they are simply subjected to extreme psychological stresses.
Infiltrators tend to be very highly skilled and trained. Almost all received some degree of Warrior training, and whatever Worker training is deemed useful to supporting their Masks. Each Infiltrator is a major investment on the part of its Hive -- the closest Pony analogue would be an elite professional such as a medical doctor or scientist. After the Reconciliation, the basic Infiltrator caste was used as the template to produce many intellectual subcastes, ranging from spies to scientists, engineers, therapists and entertainers. (Indeed, a better general term for the Infiltrator caste would be "Professional" or "Intellectual" -- the demands of the Long Hiding simply required most of them to be employed as "Infiltrator").
Infiltrators are capable of turning on their fertility, though this is normally not done. Hence, any Infiltrator is a potential (inferior) Royal, a fact which has sometimes been used by Hives which have lost all their Royals to survive such a catastrophe. A really-desperate Hive may assign some of its Infiltrators to breeding to rapidly make up losses, though this is an inefficient employment of their talents.
D. Royals
The leaders of Changeling Hives are the Royals. These are generally divided into Queens and Princesses (Royals are normally female), with Queens being the leaders of their Hives and Princesses their subordinates. These are the only castes which (normally) produce offspring, and only the Queens normally produce other Royals. Changeling Royals tend to be almost terrifyingly intelligent and strong-willed; they are naturally very dominant creatures who almost always get their way.
Normal Pony biology here has been greatly modified. Instead of producing a single egg per 21-day estrus and requiring 11-12 months to foal, a Changeling Royal who is breeding can produce multiple eggs a day and bear them within a week of fertilization. However, these are in this stage mere fertilized eggs, which are entirely dependent upon external nutrition and constant care by Nurses (a Worker subcaste); they then develop into larvae (a half-formed soft-skinned stage equivalent to Pony foals) and nymphs (immature Changelings, equivalent to Pony colts and fillies). A Changeling Royal (or Infiltrator) can also breed foals the normal Pony way, though development tends to be speeded by Pony standards, with birth usually taking place within 8-10 months after conception. For obvious reasons, it is usually only Infiltrators who ever breed in this slower fashion, though the slow method is necessary to produce a Hybrid. Also, a Queen may sometimes produce a Princess in this manner to give her extra nutrition and hence superior development.
The difference between a Queen and a Princess is a matter of pheromones. All Changelings emit pheromones which are sensed by other Changelings (their flehmen looks terrifying to Ponies who don't realize that they are opening their mouths to taste the air, rather than bite), and help coordinate activity within the Hive. Royals produce special dominance pheromones which identify them to other Changelings as being Royals. A Queen grows a special crown-like structure which enables her to produce especially numerous and strong dominance pheromones. Royals can tune their pheromones to affect other species, to a much more limited effect.
Queens can produce members of any Castes, including Royals. Queens suppress the ability of Princesses to produce Royals, but Princesses can and do produce members of the other Castes. A Changeling Queen produces a daughter Hive by activating a Princess' transformation into a Queen, then sending her forth with some supporting members of other Castes to found a new Hive. A Princess can rebel; if she can defeat the previous Queen in single combat, she can become the new Queen. Her odds of succeeding at this are generally poor, as Queens are normally stronger than Princesses.
The downside to being a Queen is that two Changeling Queens instinctively hate one another on first scent. This is a very strong emotion, difficult to override even with Changeling Royal intellect. This limitation was deliberately Twisted into the Flutter Ponies in order to prevent the Changelings from cooperating.
The exception to this is a High Queen. A High Queen is a very rare type of Changeling, which the Changelings do not know how to intentionally breed. A High Queen is dominant over all other Changeling Queens, and can bind their scents together to enable mutual tolerance. A High Queen basically has all the normal Changeling Royal abilities at very high levels.
Rosedust would have been a High Queen had Discord completed her transformation. He specifically modified the Changeling genetic code with the intent of making it impossible to produce High Queens. What he did not count on was that Changeling exogamy with the other Pony Kinds meant an introduction of unmodified material which had not been edited by his spell.
The fortuitous appearance of a High Queen at the crisis of the Changeling phase of the Shadow Wars, when Hunger's Changelings were attacking Equestria and the surviving Hives sheltering under Equestrian protection, turned the tide, as the High Queen was able to coordinate the efforts of the friendly Changelings against the hostile ones. It was the fact that the new Changeling High Queen was already a loyal Equestrian subject that facilitated and ensured the long-term stability of the Reconciliation, which finally ended the Long Hiding and brought the Changelings back as an accepted Kind.
III. Biology
Apart from their caste system, certain aspects of Changeling biology need to be discussed.
A. Anatomy
Despite their insectoid appearance, Changelings are Ponies, not arthopods. They have a functional endoskeleton in addition to their exoskeletal armor, though their endoskeletons are cartilogeneous and relatively weak, with much of the strucutral support functions having been transferred to the exoskeletons. They all naturally have both horns and wings, and hence resemble small, black insectoid Alicorns. Their wings are insect-like rather than bird-like in strucutre. Unlike Pegasus wings, they cannot be used for manipulatory purposes; unlike those of their Flutter Pony ancestors, their flight fields cannot be used to generate an Utter Flutter.
B. Horns and Wings
Both horns and wings are functional. Changeling horns can channel magic into telekinesis, teleportation and energy projection. Changeling wings generate a flight-field that can be modified to ram. Changeling Workers are poor energy projectors and fliers, and Changeling Warriors poor telekinetics; only Changeling Infiltrators and Royals are really much good with teleportation. The Stare is optically-projected and only Royals have much capability in this regard. All Changelings can sense love and feed upon it.
C. Physical Nutrition
Changelings feed upon love for psychic energy, but they also need ordinary physical nutrition to build, maintain and power their bodies -- though a Changeling with enough love can use psychic regeneration to supplement or even replace this requirement. Changelings have a reduced digestive tract, so their most efficient means of obtaining physical nutrition is by drinking a rich mixture of proteins, starches, carbohydrates, vitamins and other nutrients, which is normally compounded and provided within the Hive in the form of a broth. They can also, in a pinch, drink blood from living creatures, though this is far from ideal; and they can digest small quantities of normal Pony foodstuffs.
D. Lifespans
Changeling lifespans depend upon castes. Warriors and Workers generally live only around 50 years. Infiltrators live around 75-125 years. Royals are potentially immortal. A Changeling with inadequate love has a halved lifespan; one with ample love doubled, roughly speaking. A Changeling with no love will sicken and die in a matter of months, as they need the psychic energy for certain essential metabolic processes. During the Long Hiding, Hives were utterly-dependent upon Infiltrators to secure love for simple survival. After the Reconciliation, they still needed them to mediate with non-Changelings.
E. Spittle
Changelings can spit a sort of quick-drying cement which can be used for various structural purposes. This cement is elastic and tough, though inferior to hard wood, stone or metal. Changelings can also spit a fluid which can dissolve this material. They use this ability to construct most of the interior fittings of their Hives, and they can mold the spittle into what they consider aesthetically-pleasing shapes, scents and colors. Most other Ponies find Changeling aesthetics alien and positively revolting in this regard. Changelings in time will "Changeling-form" any area in which they dwell, using this spittle. In an emergency, Changeling Spittle can be used as a non-lethal capture device, though a Changeling doesn't generally have enough to do this more than once or so a day, and most can't spit it reliably beyond point-blank range.
F. Encystment
Changelings can use their spittle make a sort of cocoon into which another entity can be placed and kept alive. This is used for a number of purposes, including creching their eggs and larvae, healing their injured, keeping captives and inducing conversions.
G. Conversion
One of the most terrifying Changeling abilities during the Long Hiding was their ability to Convert certain especially prized Captives into Changelings. This was done by a combination of retroviral biomancy and protracted conditioning by means of The Stare. The result was a Changeling, complete with the normal set of Changeling powers. The required time and effort meant that this was only done to Captives possessing especially-valuable traits, and the result was usually a member of some elite Caste.
H. Communication
Changelings have numerous communications channels, and among themselves use numerous ones simultaneously. These include vocal speech, wing buzzes, body language, dance, pheromones and empathy. Changeling Infiltrators and Royals tend to be excellent linguists and routinely master numerous languages of other creatures. Changeling communication ability is what makes possible the Hive Minds.
IV. Culture
The period from c. 1000 BTH to c. YOH 1500 is called the "Long Hiding," because the traumatized former Flutter Ponies, now terrified both of Discord and the world in general, completely isolated themselves from Ponykind, save for that needed for feeding upon them. The very existence of their Kind was kept secret, if necessary by murdering anyone who learned it. The Changelings forgot even the fact that they were a Kind of Pony, and imagined themselves to be something entirely different -- usually seeing themselves either as cursed or blessed with a new parasitic or predatory nature.
The Changeling culture during the Long Hiding was necessarily very austere by Equestrian standards. Records were highly-functional and those not maintained in personal memories were mostly functional and stored in the Memory Cores. There were no books. There were dances and songs, but these were simple, dull and repetitive. Art was simple and decorative rather than representational. One reason why Infiltrators sometimes went insane was that they were highly intelligent, and generally found most of their emotional satisfaction in the cultures they infiltrated.
Changeling economics were simple. Each Hive was a command economy, controlled by its Queen. This communism was possible due to the simplicity of Changeling culture, the mechanism of the "Hive Mind" and the inherent Changeling eusociality. Some Equestrian radicals are impressed by the fact that this works for Changelings, though it wouldn't for most other Pony Kinds.
Changeling emotional life was very flat. Changelings have and had distinct personalities, and even the simplest-minded Workers had preferred comrades who might be termed "friends," though this usually lacked the intensity of Equestrian friendships. They did not have "love," save as a form of nutrition. Changelings had reproductive sex, and sometimes sexual play (usually between friends), but neither had much emotional significance to them. They felt a strong eusocial loyalty to their Hives, but not to individual family members (each Hive, of course, was essentially a vast Clan in Pony terms).
Since the Reconciliation, general Equestrian culture has been slowly but steadily seeping into the Hives. The more traditionalist Queens decry the trend, but can do little to fight it. It is often almost pathetic how highly the new generations of Changelings will treasure the simplest products of Equestrian art and civilization. There has also been a seepage outward. Changeling modes of dance and song have caught on among the younger postwar generations, and are equally decried by Equestrian traditionalists. Some of the Equestrian fast set want to adopt Changeling morals (or lack thereof, they generally only understand Changeling promiscuity and not the intense Loyalty to the Hive). Slowly but surely, the cultures are merging -- like it or not.
Captives
During the Long Hiding, Changeling Hives would sometimes take captive Ponies or other sapients to use as living stores of love. The captives would be Stared into subservient adoration, and then either allowed to run loose in the common areas of the Hive, physically confined in special compounds, or encysted for maximum security. Captives would generally suffer halved or even more severely reduced lifespans owing to indifferent treatment by the Changelings, and the psychic strain of over-feeding. Some favored Captives might be Converted into Changelings.
Guests
Taking Captives was strictly forbidden as a condition of the Reconciliation, and existing Captives had to be released. The Reconciled Changelings no longer keep Captives -- though a dismaying number of Ponies have willingly joined Changeling Hives as "Guests." These Guests are far better treated than were the Captives of old, and tend to live no less than half to three-quarters their normal lifespans, with the Changelings working on improving conditions to atract more Guests and keep them alive longer. The existence of this custom is controversial among both Changelings (who fear cultural contamination) and non-Changelings (who fear corruption) alike, but it is very useful to the Changelings and its banning would be hard to reconcile with Equestrian ideals of individual liberty, so it becomes increasingly more common.
The Hive Mind
Because of the multiplicity of Changeling communications channel (vocal, visual, pheromonal and psychic) and their eusocial nature, a Changeling Hive normally grows what might loosely be termed a "Hive Mind." This is an emergent property of a community of Changelings larger than a certain threshold size, rather than an actual entity. The Hive Mind helps smooth and coordinate routine Changeling activities. The Hive Mind is about as intelligent as a smart dog, and has a distinct personality that varies from hive to hive.
Conclusion: The Reconciliation
When Queen Chrysalis attempted to unite the Hives by conquest, she created an existential threat to all Changeling Royalty outside HIve Chrysalis. Reborn as Nightmare Hunger, with terrible new capabilities granted her by the Night Shadows, she was strong enough to destroy and absorb the other Hives -- unless they sought shelter with strong allies.
Princess Celestia offered Reconciliation to any Changeling Hives willing to accept certain basic laws in their dealings with members of other species. Many Hives did, and symbiosis with Equestria proved so much more productive than did their previous parasitism that for the Reconciliation endured. The Fifth Kind, lost to the rest of Ponykind for almost 2500 years, rejoined their ancient kin to participate in the future made possible by the final defeat of the Night Shadows.
The Changeling traits of eusociality, asceticism and specialization have proved very useful both in the economy of Earth and in the colonization of the new worlds. Though some prejudices on both sides still remain, it now seems as if the Changelings will succeed beyond their most daring previous hopes, and not merely survive but flourish in the future.
Gee, I wonder who that could've been.
A fascinating look at the Changelings, though rather spoiling should you ever write the Shadow Wars (which I hope you do.) The Season 2 finale gave just enough information on them to allow for incredibly diverse headcanon, and I love seeing different interpretations of that base material. Thank you for this.
Yes, I think you know of whom I'm thinking -- who I've defined as a half-Changeling, who is descended from Queen Chrysalis and who has already manifested extraordinary powers. Though she won't be happy with the publicity.
I know it's full of spoilers. I don't know how many people read this blog anyway. I did want to get it all written down in one place though for easy reference. Glad you liked it.
Slow growth gives:
* More time for the brain to mature.
* More time to learn.
I imagine that fast growing workers are dumb and ignorant.
Humans go through puberty at about 12 and stop growing at about 20. For the Queens, if you flip the 2s and double the the resultant 15, you can have the Queens go through puberty at 30 and stop growing at 50. By the age of 50, the queens can have IQs of 200 and the equivalent of multiple Ph.Ds. ¡If you increase their total lifespan to 200 year, you can have a super intelligent queen, with the education of the equivalent of multiple Ph.D.s and over a century of experience running the hive, in the prime of her life! ¡She would make a powerful ally or a terrible enemy!
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Indeed, and exactly. The Changelings have a society rather like that of Brave New World, in that their Castes essentially different levels (and kinds) of intelligence.
I like your idea of having the Royalty be slower-maturing. Though I will point out that there is an upper limit to this process -- you aren't going to get Changelings smarter than Chrysalis or Ceymi, no matter how slowly they mature. There are limits to the architecture of the Pony brain, after all.
The way you described the shorten life span of Captive, reminds me of real life how children caught in the human trafficking last only about two years before dying. (trying to keep this PG).
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It's a combination of overdraining, despair, lack of exercise, lack of understanding of needs, and lack of personal attention. Ceymi might have been able to keep Thermal Soar alive for pretty much the rest of his natural life -- and ensured that his memories were kept more or less consistent thus keeping his sanity, had she made him her personal captive -- because she was motivated. (Of course, in the long run she might have been "motivated" to free him and defect with him, which is the actual non-sadistic reason Chrysalis took him).
After the Reconciliation, the Changeling Hives that seek Guests are pretty much running mind control fantasy holodeck spas for Ponies, and they are very careful with the health of their clients. This is about as far from the abuse that you described of the Captives under Cocoon as one could imagine. But then, now it's very much in their interests to be honest, and the game they're playing is "symbiosis."
Actually, I've been thinking about the question of how the symbiosis works in general after the reconciliation. I can see four general service exports possible from the Changeling Hives -- roughly divisible into factory workers, mercenaries, entertainers and therapists. I can also see one big class of product -- biotechnology. Required imports would be psychic energy (love and friendship), some material food (but Changeling broth is dirt cheap, think "chicken soup with vitamins"), and possibly some hard machinery.
There're also a serious issues of moral hazard that cut both ways. In fact the moral hazard involved in dealing with the Changelings, both in terms of Changelings exploiting other Kinds and other Kinds exploiting Changelings, is so gigantic that I don't think that our culture could handle it if we were in the place of the Ponies. I think it's just barely within the capability of Equestrian civilization to absorb the shock without being utterly corrupted by it.
The Changelings are simultaneously, by Pony standards, terribly amoral (individual morality means little to them, loyalty to the Hive is everything) and terribly naive (they come from a eusocial culture and once they think of somepony as being trustworthy they have practically nada ability to critically examine their behavior for signs of betrayal). I shudder to think of what would happen if, say, the Flim-Flam Brothers (or someponies far worse) teamed up with an unscrupulous (but not bats**t-crazy megalomaniacal) Hive Queen, or even Princess, for instance.
Another puzzle is if the infiltrators really go nuts that often, or if they're really that expensive to raise. After all, if they're their primary source of love, then they have to get a return SOMEHOW rather than them being a sunk cost fallacy.
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The Infiltrators don't go nuts that often. It's just that writers (including me) like to write about Infiltrators going nuts.
Note that from Chrysalis' POV in Collateral Damage everything goes swimmingly. The danger of Ceymi becoming too loyal to her Pony friends is squelched, and she serves Hive Chrysalis loyally until the day of her death (in the story from which she came from, Phoenix_Dragon's Without A Hive). The fact that Ceymi suffers horrible emotional torment means nothing to Chrysalis -- in fact "it kind of works" for her "that way." Because Chrysalis is not a very nice ling, really.
Most of the time, the Infiltrators are given sane missions of limited duration, carry them out, and return to the Hive bearing lots of yummy love, they rest a bit, then they go out on another reasonable mission. They may get stressed a bit by the emotional burden of having to maintain their Masks and the intellectual awareness of the many points of superiority of the society of their hosts, but they are generally well-treated by their fellow lings because they are valuable. The problem with Hive Chrysalis is Chrysalis.
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The irony in the Pony POV Verse is of course is that she's STILL an improvement over Cocoon.
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(*nods*) From the Changeling point of view. From a Pony and Zebra point of view, Cocoon had the advantage of being "Queen Log." She mostly just hid in her caverns. Though she was needlessly cruel to her captives -- worse than Chrysalis. Mostly because, I suspect, she just didn't care about anything other than clinging desperately to power.
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Which is why Chysalis hated her guts, for BEING a do nothing waste of space.
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The sad thing is that the Changelings generally treat their Captives better than Humans treat theirs.
You know how I was all like "what" and "crazy awesome" last time?
What.
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Um, ok -- is this particularly incomprehensible, and how so?
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Oh no, I followed all of it. Good what.
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Oh, ok, thanks.
2188904 The Changelings are simultaneously, by Pony standards, terribly amoral (individual morality means little to them, loyalty to the Hive is everything) and terribly naive (they come from a eusocial culture and once they think of somepony as being trustworthy they have practically nada ability to critically examine their behavior for signs of betrayal). I shudder to think of what would happen if, say, the Flim-Flam Brothers (or someponies far worse) teamed up with an unscrupulous (but not bats**t-crazy megalomaniacal) Hive Queen, or even Princess, for instance.
Odd to read this, as it reminds me of a weird idea I toyed with about Flim and Flam in *my* Equestria running a 'love bunco' with some deceived Changelings helping them. That is, you zero in on a lonely and emotionally vulnerable person and 'just happen' to tell them about some lovely and wonderful person who is so lonely (typically they have major heath issues, the Wicked Lawyer is keeping control of the family money, etc.) and would just love to have someone they could communicate with. All through the 'friend' of course.
After a while the 'beloved' starts to ask for gifts of money, jewelry, and whatever which the mark happily gives them. Some of these scams have gone on for decades before the truth got out. The marks usually are left feeling like they weren't just fools, but they lost a spouse.
The big problem with this is that the mark never gets to actually see the beloved in person, only via pictures, if that much. But if you had someone around who could shapeshift and fed on love, now...