Daring Do and the Call of the Changelings: The Story that Almost Happened · 9:09pm Nov 23rd, 2015
Heyo, everybody,
So I'm a little enthusiastic today. You know that feeling you get when you're all panicked over a test and haven't studied and are prepared to fail, then when you take it, you get out going, "Well, that wasn't too bad."? Yeah, that's me right now. Randomly correctly guessing xe^(xy) + e^(y) for an answer for the win!
I've been meaning to do this for a while now, but with the impending test, I was too busy doing homework and stuff to get to it, but now that that stress is gone, I'm finally free to talk to you guys about the Daring Do story in the Bin (I don't think I've done so yet, anyhow). If the title of this post is any indication, I'm going to let you all in on what the story was going to be about. That said, if you haven't yet checked it out yet, it's the first entry in the Bin, and only a five or so minute read.
So the idea for the story began a long while ago before season 4, meaning that Daring Do hadn't been confirmed as an existing character in universe. The goal was to have this story be like an in universe Daring Do story, which would make us authors (Feather Book, Shutterguy, and myself) acting as if we were A. K. Yearling. We were going to have Daring be an Indiana Jones typeish character, being a professor in Canterlot primarily and bold adventurer on the side. This somewhat conflicts with canon now, but when the idea was developed, it didn't. However, with that mentioned, I should note that the story was going to take a lot of liberties with canon, and there's a good amount that doesn't agree with recently established canon.
But right, the plot. The prologue of the story was all that we wrote up and now currently lies in the Bin, in which the changeling's Invasion of Canterlot takes place, as told from the perspective of Daring Do. It wasn't meant to do much except for introduce the existence of changelings to Daring. Some time later, past season 3, Daring would get a visit from the recently crowned Princess Twilight, who's needing to distribute some of her research projects onto other now that she's got other, more pressing royal responsibilities. The particular project she wants Daring to pick up is, by chance but also not surprisingly, her research on changelings, on which there'd been not much of anything discovered. Daring, of course, would accept the task because how could one say no to a Princess. However, a shortage of leads would keep progress halted.
That is, until one day, a pair of 'students' come into Daring's office, claiming to have found artifacts that could help with her research, the particular artifact being scales from changeling wings and such. Of course, Daring is suspicious of the random appearance of such evidence, and thusly of the unfamiliar students, who then reveal themselves to be changelings. And this is where we would be taking some creative liberties. Unlike the changelings that invaded Canterlot, these changelings would have greyish silver eyes and untinted wings. The color difference is significant, and will be explained shortly.
The changelings ask Daring to come with them; that Equestria is in danger, and that her help may be necessary to prevent it. Suspecting a trap, Daring refuses, but lets the changelings leave without raising any alarms or anything (and the changelings resume disguises, of course). And, as you'd expect, Daring follows them. What she would not have anticipated, however was that they had a third partner watching to make sure that the other two weren't being tailed. Daring fails to go unnoticed, and the three changelings maneuver such that they're able to ambush here and knock her out.
Be warned, it get kind of cliché here.
When Daring wakes up, she finds herself in a changeling hive, where she gets introduced to Queen Chrysalis and one of the many OC changelings in the story, King Maurr. As a note, maurr translates to ant in some obscure language, so it fits in with the bug theme.
So I suppose I should get into some of the liberties we've taken with the idea. In this story, there exist 6 changeling hives, each led by one of 6 changeling royals, all of whom are siblings (and have their own color scheme; changelings belonging to a particular hive adopt colors semblant of the royal who leads it). Chryssy and Maurr are two of them.
We envisioned Maurr as being somewhat shorter than Chryssy, with his colors being mostly silver. For funsies, we agreed on his hair style being just like Daring's (and by transitivity, Dash's), except starting at a light shade of grey and going to almost white. He also isn't very physically capable thanks to some health conditions (we didn't decide on particular problems, but just imagine stuff like arthritis and osteoporosis and such simultaneously), and so his hive and Chryssy's have sort of merged.
Maurr would be the one to explain things to Daring. Equestria is in fact in danger. Another of the royals, Vespine (a translation of wasp), is intending to invade in retaliation for Chryssy's defeat. Maurr, however, is against the invasion. He wants to establish relations with ponykind, and knows that a second changeling invasion would render that nearly impossible. His plan is to unite the other royals against Vespine and stop her before things turn violent. For that, Chryssy and a pony matching particular criteria would go to the other hives and try to get the other royals to see their side (meaning that Chryssy is already on Maurr's side). They want the pony to come along to illustrate that pony/changeling relations weren't unfathomable.
As for the criteria for the pony to accompany Chryssy, Maurr wanted a pony of fame but also not of particularly high standing; someone who was someone and who's word could mean something but could also get away with disappearing for a while without causing too much of a stir. If some nopony came along, it would show that Maurr and Chryssy weren't very dedicated to their own cause. But, if they had someone like a Princess come along, either they'd tell the population that they're leaving due to changelings, or they don't and ponies speculate on their disappearance, with changelings being extremely likely for ponies to blame. In either case, they don't want the involvement of changelings to cause a panic, so they want to keep things down low until necessary.
And for those reasons, Daring is one of the most ideal choices. And whether she likes it or not, Daring is conscripted into going with Chryssy. Note that 'she' could refer to either Daring or Chryssy. Despite being on board with Maurr, Chryssy doesn't particularly like ponies; she just knows that a second invasion would cause more issues that it'd help.
Unfortunately, that's about as far as the plot was developed. We kind of spent more time developing the changeling royals. Chryssy and Daring would go to other hives, some things would happen (we hadn't entirely decided on what those things were for each hive), and they'd move on to the next one until finally confronting Vespine.
There's one other big liberty we would have been taking with the story, though, and that's the introduction of new Elements. Fret not, though: they're unrelated to the elements of Harmony. These elements would be the Elements of Leadership, six elements pertaining to traits that make one a good leader.
Long ago, Celestia and Luna held each set of Elements, but the Elements of Leadership had to be sacrificed to defeat Discord. As part of his attempt to conquer Equestria, Discord created the changelings, mindless creatures that fed off of the love of ponies, turning them mad and filling them with hate. But the changelings had no order to them, and so the Princesses gave to them the Elements of Leadership. These Elements found a pair of bearers, and those two changelings led their kind on the path of civilization. They birthed 6 children who each came to bear one of the Elements when the parents passed away. The children were not united, however, and as they grew, the changelings divided amongst themselves, forming their own hives under the leadership of one bearers of the Elements.
We hadn't actually agreed on that as the story behind changelings, but this was being considered. Regardless of whether this was going to be part of the story or not, the six Elements of Leadership would still exist, and each of the changeling royals would be one of the bearers. The first Element is wisdom, held by Maurr. Wisdom should be pretty obvious as to what it entails. Chryssy's Element is intrigue. This one may not be so obvious as to what's meant by it. Think 'being deceptive' and 'being manipulative' without the negative connotations. She's proficient at figuring the intentions of others while hiding her own. It all sounds pretty evil, but look as it from the perspective of someone in a position of leadership. Acting without fully realizing the situation can lead one to being taken advantage of or simply making a decision that hurts everyone in the long run.
One of the stops on Daring and Chryssy's trip would be to the hive of Pupa, the Element of comradeship and element of cliché OC changeling names. Pupa's basically the Fluttershy of the changeling royals, with a strong sense of unity between other changelings. She wants to do what's best for all changelings, but she can't bring herself to directly confront Vespine where it could turn violent. If all the changelings killed each other off, that wouldn't be very comrade-like, would it? Basically, Daring and Chryssy would leave with Pupa's moral support.
Cocoon is uninspiredly named changeling royal #2, and the Element of gallantry. Bravery, basically. Things wouldn't go too well for Daring and Chryssy here, probably because Cocoon hates Chryssy. One day while they were kids, Chryssy and Cocoon were out and about when they encountered a cockatrice, which began turning Cocoon to stone. Chryssy fought it off, but also tried to go a step further and undo the petrification the cockatrice did to Cocoon. One botched spell later, Cocoon can move, but is rendered blind thanks to parts of her eyes remaining stoned, can't fly thanks to her wings being left mostly stone, and random patches of her are still stone. The damage had not been able to be undone, so when Chryssy comes to her now asking for help, Cocoon makes the obvious choice of telling her to f*ck off and siding with Vespine.
The last changeling royal to be introduced is Coxa (the name of a part of a bugs leg), the Element of charisma. That one should be pretty obvious as to what it entails as well. Coxa's hive resides in the Gryphon Kingdom (remember, this is before season 5 where we learn that gryphons live in a sh*thole), and his changelings have the special privilege of being regular citizens, with no need to disguise themselves or anything. They can thank Coxa for helping negotiate that out. Coxa's charisma is genuine; that is to say, he legitimately enjoys interacting with others. His charisma isn't the Loki or Prince Charming from Shrek kind. Unfortunately for Daring and Chryssy, Coxa has already aligned himself with Vespine.
The final Element is justice, borne by Vespine. Her beef with ponykind is that they learned that changelings feed off of love, then sent Chryssy and here changelings sailing off to who-knows-where, then left them all for dead, with no attempts at outreach or anything. To Vespine, that's unjust, and so she seeks retaliation on behalf of Chryssy.
Now that I've typed this out, I realize just how little story we actually got fleshed out. But, eh, whatever. Hopefully you guys found some of this interesting to hear. It still needed development, but I think it could have been a pretty awesome story. You guys can expect me to reuse Coxa, Vespine, and Maurr as names for some changelings in other stories of mine, and I guess now you guys'll know where they came from if I do. And Feather, Shutter: feel free to add to this if there's anything I missed or got wrong. I'm recalling almost all of this from memory, so I doubt it's all correct.
Anyway, that's all for now. I'll leave you guys with this question:
What are the most interesting/creative names for OC changelings you've seen?
Keep being awesome,
-Lego
Wow. So that's where that story was going. Or supposed to go, anyway. Sad that we had to miss out on that.
Can't say I've seen a lot of Changeling OCs, and none of them very memorable. Or if any were, it's been long enough that I've forgotten them anyway :/
Write on,
Legion
3564259, I'm sorry it never went anywhere, but he's the cover art for it!
i.imgur.com/nauq1AM.jpg
3564316 I was wondering where that went.
Wow, that sounds really cool! We can't have it all though. As for names... Uh.... I am in a similar predicament as Legion. Transmutation And Reflection from Dropbears fics are all I can come up with atm.