Everything comes at a cost. Somewhere along the lines of her impersonations and machinations, Queen Chrysalis forgot that, but it didn't take long for Fate to remind her. Canterlot is hers, and soon all of Equestria will fall under her rule, but deep beneath the ground on which her new throne sits is the one who paid the price for her perfect day.
Chrysalis owns Equestria, but Twilight Sparkle is as close to death as one can be: frozen in time, a fraction of a second before her soul would have vacated her mortal shell forever, and hidden in the Crystal Caves until Chrysalis can think of a way to save her.
But the new Queen of Equestria has more problems to deal with than one near-dead unicorn: elsewhere in the world, Princess Luna is gathering forces to drive her out, whilst wheels within wheels turn inside Chrysalis's own government and in the frozen north, an Empire and the tyrant who banished it grow closer to returning by the day.
Note For New Readers: Whilst this story is cancelled, I will be writing another with the same base premise in the near future. A blog post for this version will be posted to notify you when the redo is on site.
First it's feet, second it's hooves.
How did Twilight die? Did Chrysalis's silk not catch her in time or what? It's not very well explained, though I love how well you're describing her turmoil over killing. Everyone has a line they refuse to cross, after all.
And the invasion goes as planned, with a well played sucker-punch to Celestia. Emotion based magic is, in MLP, extremely powerful after all. It enslaves empires and disintegrates tyrants, it freezes the world and defeats chaos gods.
I see what you did there.
So Pinkie can control earth magic, and the battle lasted 8 minutes. Also really liking the subtle world-building with the changelings, like the award of 'duplicarious'.
Hooves, though I suppose technically they are feet...
You really captured Blueblood well, and doubly so with Starlit Scrolls. It seems Starlit's revealed that, to her allies or even to her assistants, Chrysalis is most generous.
Comma should be inside the quotations, not outside.
Very good story, and good spin-off of The Perfect Day. Eager to see how this goes down.
5244865
Thank you for the kind words, and doubly so for pointing out that horrific error of mine. How that slipped past me, I'll never know, but I'll fix it right away. With the hooves-not-feet thing, I think that I switched to using hooves exclusively in Chapter Two, so I'll go back and change that, too - I think the reason I kept using feet was that I'm so used to hearing the phrase that way and didn't think to change it to fit with MLP.
I'm glad you like the world-building: I plan to put out little codex chapters from time to time between main updates, to explain the parts of the AU canon which wouldn't get explained in much detail in the story chapters without a huge exposition dump, so I hope you'll enjoy those too.
As for how this all goes down, the second chapter should be up soon, I'm just waiting for it to go through now.
[edit]
Oh, and as for Twilight's death, I've been meaning to go back and redo that, along with some other parts of the chapter. I haven't had the time for that in the recent chaos, but I should be able to get to it soon.
Yay, more Starlit Scrolls!
The inter-chapter text could be a bit bigger, they're kinda small and hard to read here.
Right, the other nations. Well, the goods news is that it seems Chrysalis's military is extremely powerful, given how they roflstomped the Royal Guard. A repeat performance of that... yeah.
My little pony eh? Getting sentimental already, Chryssy?
Hmm, Luna could prove a little tricky, though I wonder why Chrysalis wants to keep her at bay instead of sucker-punching her like she did with Celestia.
When you feed off love, it's not a surprise your innate biology encourages you to promote love.
I think that Ms needs a period at the end. If not, then spell out the entire Miss.
This seems redundant, saying the same thing twice. 'She was pretty, but not ugly' sort of thing. I do have to wonder at why Chrysalis would keep them close to one another; even if one of the Elements is missing, that's a bad idea.
I also really like how you describe changelings as sensing emotions through their horns. And d'aww the changelings comforting their uncertain queen.
Luna's got a lot of bark, but I don't really see much way for her to bite. After all, unicorns used to move the sun and moon before the alicorns, didn't they? And Chrysalis could hypnotize them into doing it, or even mind control Luna into doing it and standing down. And Chrysalis has more magic than Celestia at the moment and... think about it. Changelings would need to be able to replicate all 3 types of pony magic, including earth pony strength. But it's not just strength, it's also durability. Applejack's legs have to be tougher than trees, otherwise no matter how strong she was they would snap the moment she bucked them. Same with Maud and the boulder. And with so much magical power, on top of her natural armor, Chrysalis... well, she's probably RPG-proof.
I'm really hoping that whatever Luna's got planned, it fails. I have a soft spot for villain protagonists.
See you in two weeks!
5244969
I just realised, going back to fix the errors in the first chapter, that I'd used a different size in the second one. I'll go and change that ASAP.
Since Chrysalis didn't beat Celestia in a fair fight like in the episode, she's assuming her victory was more due to the element of surprise than it was due to her power, and because she hasn't yet used her magic to any real degree since, she hasn't realised how powerful she really is. Luna's also been amassing an army of all the non-Canterlot Royal Guards she can recall, so she can counterattack when the opportunity arises; and since Chrysalis doesn't know her exact location she's wary of walking into an ambush - doubly so since Luna threatened to kill her.
With the 'Ms.', I've never had cause to use it before, which is why I forgot the full stops after it. I had the feeling I'd missed something, I'll go fix those too.
As for "well-built but not unattractive", I was trying to get across the fact that her heavy-set build does not detract from her looks, but I realise I could've phrased it better, or simply described her more originally in the first place. I'll rewrite that a little, since it is pretty weak.
Whilst they've heard vague tales of the Elements of Harmony and their bearers, the changelings don't understand quite how powerful they are - partly due to Equestria's government avoiding the mention of the Elements at all, and instead praising the Bearers. Chrysalis, whilst more clued in than most, doesn't think they'll pose much of a threat without Twilight, and doesn't like to think about them or Twilight's role within them, for obvious reasons.
As I previously mentioned, Chrysalis doesn't realise the extent of the power she has, thus not knowing that she could raise the sun and moon in the alicorns' stead. After nearly frying Shining Armour's brain, she's also reluctant to use mind control except when she really needs to - although this could be considered such a moment.
Additionally, as I would've mentioned in the codex chapter I was writing (and subsequently lost along with the first draft of this chapter when my computer crashed and they all corrupted), Changelings can use all three branches of pony magic, but they are nowhere as proficient with them as ponies can be. Compared to the usual pony, yes, they're an even match, but against a specialist they'd stand no chance (i.e. a drone could never outrun a Wonderbolt, no matter how fit they are). They also have the additional magical fields of shape-shifting and mental magic, which they spend a lot more of their time getting good at.
That said, Chrysalis is still pretty invulnerable to typical attacks if she knows someone's going to take a shot at her, but the passive attributes aren't going to help her anywhere near as much as anything she could cast, leaving her vulnerable to surprise attacks or assassinations.
Whilst Luna is in no real position to act, and she is capable of far less than Chrysalis fears she is (she's still unaware of her own power), she does still pose a threat. Additionally, Celestia was out of practice in combat magic, whereas Luna has just come from being Nightmare Moon and prepared to take over a country on her own, so she is more of an equal to Chrysalis than her sister would have been. We also have a thousand years of 'alicorns are omnipotent gods' propaganda being accepted as truth, which has had a small effect on Chrysalis, too.
Sorry for the text wall, and thanks once again for the kind words. I may see you sooner than two weeks, depending on how quickly I can rewrite the first codex chapter.
5245099 Hmm, good points,
as for the changelings not being 'as adapt' at pony magic... eh, I disagree since they'dhaveto be to make convincing disguises.Good point with the Chrysalis not knowing her own strength and overestimating Luna's. And I just realized the changeling army is essentially an army of shapeshifting, low-level alicorns. Here's hoping Chryssy learns just how strong she is soon.Also not sure about Luna having just returned from the moon. Yes, she was Nightmare Moon, but Nightmare Moon also didn't... do so much fighting, did she? Plus Nightmare Moon was absolutely criminally insane. And even if she did practice combat on the moon, that was in low gravity, and the adjustment to 6x more gravity, well... yeah.
Crossing my fingers that your computer doesn't fall to cinders.
I don't usually comment on the stories I read but since I've found the lack of views and positive comments disturbing, have one :P
Really enjoyed the read and the way thing goes. I'll be looking forward to the next update :)
5245141 Thanks for the comment. With as low a rating as the story has, every positive gesture means a lot to me, especially since I've put quite a lot of effort into it. I'm glad you've enjoyed it so far, and look forward to bringing you more.
5245309 One way to improve rating is to advertise the shit out of it. Don't wait for it to be added to a certain group you think it fits in. Find that group, join it, and add it yourself. That's what I did with mine: When I published Greene Fields I immediately added it to Game Crossovers, HiE, and Prototype fiction, then others as the plot progressed.
Add it yourself!
5245132
I should probably clarify that whilst typically changelings aren't as proficient as ponies in any of the three race magics, that is as much due to skill and focus as it is to magical power. A changeling maintaining an identity for extended periods could quite easily pass for the race they're pretending to be, but would contrariwise have lost a lot of their ability with the other two. Up until that point, unless they'd practiced a great deal beforehand, an observant pony who knows what to look for could tell a changeling apart from a true pony via their relative inability using what should be a from-birth talent.
As for the Luna/NMM thing, all of the villains are more powerful/capable than they appeared to be on the show. As I've already shown in the story, Chrysalis's mind magic runs serious risks of damaging the target's mind permanently, whereas the show never even considered the after-effects. Likewise, the in-AU Nightmare Moon was much more competent with magic than her show counterpart, although her considerable hubris left her just as vulnerable to attack. Luna is more grounded in rational behaviour than Nightmare was, and is therefore quite a force to be reckoned with since she isn't as arrogant as to think herself invincible, black night style.
Hope that clears things up about my reasoning behind changeling magic and Luna's power.
5245340 Thanks for the tip, I'll get around to doing that soon.
5244865
I'm pretty sure the author Gwen Stacey'd her. That is, the webbing didn't have enough give and stopped her fall too abruptly, so it was almost as bad as hitting the ground. It's not the ground that kills you, as they say. Even a short fall can be lethal if you're caught wrong by a rope, that's the principle behind hanging.
That was a particularly horrible way to kill off a superhero's girlfriend, to have him actually catch her before she finished falling and have it matter not one whit.
This is looking very good. I really like the way you are handling Chrysalis, Starlit Scrolls, and the story in general, although I cannot help but feel like the story might have been stronger if you let Twilight die to make her a painful lesson for Chrysalis rather than keep her around as a lingering long term objective which the readers can only assume will turn out for the best.
Also, when AJ described Twilight as "glue", my mind went to a much darker place given what happened to her.
5246748 Thanks for the kind words!
The main reason I haven't killed Twilight off is because this story is something of a response to another in which Chrysalis did kill her, irreversibly, and was overcome by guilt. I want to explore what would've happened in such a scenario had Twilight not died, and instead been very badly injured with a tiny possibility of survival, along with how far someone like Chrysalis would go to save her.
Of course, in the story this was inspired by, Chrysalis deliberately killed Twilight; whereas here Twilight died because Chrysalis simply couldn't stop her fall. I thought that Chrysalis's determination to save her would feel more realistic if she hadn't meant for her to die in the first place. Very little of this is actually based on that story, only the 'Twilight's dead, Chrysalis feels guilty' scenario is directly taken from it.
I hope that clears things up, and I'll try and make the lingering long term objective a little less predictable and/or irritating. It is a large portion of the plot, so I can't really remove it as such (not that I'd really want to) but I can make it so the entirety of the story isn't based around it, and hopefully make things more entertaining in the process.
Interesting, I see from this chapter that your changelings do not have a diet consisting solely of love, perhaps only using it to fuel their magic.
I need to say even if Chrysalis act OOC this is very good story.
Reader can nearly feel all that pressure, and that passive magic is one interesting thing but not completly uhh good? For example we can say gilda was completly jerk.
You can maybe make some more into it like Cadence presence work like this or something.
And yeah nothing about cadence?
5247021 Ok, that makes sense, although I cannot really see Chrysalis making the decision to kill her because that is extremely counterproductive.
Also, I am curious to see what you do with Celestia because she is far too important to be ignored forever and Twilight could ironically provide a bonding point for the two of them.
5247260 I would have to disagree on Chrysalis being OOC. Sure she was ruthless and fairly brutal in the invasion, but it was very clearly done for the benefit of her changelings, not her personal desires so she is clearly not the heartless bitch many authors portray her as. She also made a point of making sure to avoid lethal force even when it would have been easier to do so, and at the end of the day that restraint was what cost her victory because she could have easily killed both Twilight and Cadence but did not. Besides, changelings need ponies alive to get emotions from them so killing them is counterproductive even if it would make things easier in some cases.
As for the "passive magic", I highly doubt that exists. I get the distinct impression it is just Chrysalis's conscience kicking in and her trying to convince herself otherwise.
And yeah, I am kind of curious what is going on with Cadence as well. As far as I can tell, she is still in the caves with Twilight which is not exactly ideal for their health.
5247748
We can clearly see in idw comics that she like to inflict pain to others and don't have any problem with that
And sadly more authors portrait her as oh ah misundertood one :p
5247754 That's assuming the comics are considered canon by the author. Personally, I subscribe to the simple philosophy of 'if it's not in the show, it's not canon'. Keeps things simple.
5247864
Even without it we can clearly see she is sadist and is happy when inflict pain to others.
Taunting cadence, song, twilight encounter/inprisioning etc
5247895 And in here it's shown that she's trying to toughen up for an invasion. That's the great thing about fanfiction; everything can be explained in a thousand different ways, many plausible, to make a story work.
5247903
Changing completly character is another great thing of fanfiction :p
5247918 Changing them, or giving them more depth? This is the latter, if you read between the lines.
5247934
Right now there is nothing between lines its just completly changed. Between lines would be simple acts outside of her normal actions example is if she would find Scrolls sleeping somewhere and she will cover her with blanket or something. This is between lines
5247754
I haven't read the comics, so I've based my Chrysalis entirely on what I could see of her in the show. I do not consider show Chrysalis to be at all sadistic, so this is perhaps why my version of her seems a little out of character to you.
As for Cadance, she should make an appearance in the next chapter. I can only fit so much in a chapter, after all, so I've had to spread things out a little bit more than I would have liked. Rest assured she'll be here soon.
I don't think Chrysalis's character is "completely changed" as you said to Europa. I won't deny that I have taken some artistic license with her character, but I think her actions so far are pretty believable if you pay attention to the back story. She isn't a bad person at heart, despite what she's done; and you have to remember how mixed up she is emotionally at the moment.
5248400
What I mean as completly changed you made her overall nice comparable how she was completly jerk at show.
She is under high pressuee but there is lack of sudden outburst of aggresion. Try to talk to somebody under high pressure and you gonna get aggressive response for sure :p ppl even in depression can be very aggresive
You made her like she did necessary evil but her action and song show that it wasnt that necessary.
Make her lest mary stu show more of how that presure work on her and her attidute because right now its looks the more she is depressed and under presure the more she is nice.
Don't take it as some bashing yourr story and misspeling-blame writing on phone :p
5247748
Thanks for trying to explain things to Perteks.
Cadance will (hopefully) be dealt with in the next chapter, but in case it doesn't make it in there I'll clarify some of the background stuff involving her now. She's still sealed off from the rest of the cave system, and doesn't know that Twilight's cryo-frozen and practically dead at the moment and the hypnotised bridesmaids have been bringing her food and water, which is why she hasn't starved or died of thirst after two full days of Chrysalis not visiting her.
Celestia, similarly, is planned to be dealt with in the next chapter. She's going to be quite important in the next few days for Chrysalis, although I'm not sure whether I'm going to have Chrysalis tell her about Twilight directly. I hadn't planned to, but you've made me realise that there is a potential angle for Celestia/Chrysalis bonding over Twilight, so I'm going to give it some serious consideration.
5248456 I am happy I was able to help, and I fully understand where you are coming from on the time constraints. In all honesty, we probably would have been asking where the Elements were if you had shown Cadence or Celestia first because there are a lot of important things that need to get done and you can only do one at a time. I am definitely looking forwards to seeing what you do with Celestia next chapter because that is bound to be interesting one way or another, and Cadence should be fun as well.
Also, while I am thinking of it, you might want to read this comment I left on another story a while back about Chrysalis. It sounds like it is mostly stuff you have already realized on your own, but the point about what the chain of events leading up to the invasion must have looked like might interest you because the conversation with Celestia would be a good place to lay out exactly what happened to get to where we are now.
5248452
Now I can see where you're coming from. I don't agree with you 100%, but you do raise some valid points, so I'll try and work those into the next chapter.
5248526
Thanks once again! That comment lays out a lot of what I'll be needing to get across next chapter, so that's going to be a great help when I write it. Your point about the hive-mind in that comment is also something I hadn't thought of, so I'm doubly glad I didn't choose the cliche telepathic hive-mind everyone else likes to use.
They do have a hive-mind of sorts, but it isn't an open telepathic stream: what they have to that end is formed of two distinct parts:
1. - Changelings can detect emotion through their horn's buzzing, and are able to use this feature to enable a very simplistic telepathy. With practice, a changeling can control how noticeable their emotions are, allowing them to transmit specific feelings more powerfully than others. For example, the changeling guarding the Bearers of Harmony used this to show Chrysalis he was satisfied with her answer.
2. - They also use a spell (which unicorns would also be able to cast) for more traditional telepathy, this is probably best explained through an analogy:
Each participant has a mental 'window', through which the others can see a small section of their mind; and into which they are able to place thoughts, memories and emotions for the others to see. This allows them to share thoughts without risking someone messing with the rest of their mind; although someone with significantly greater skill at mental magic, such as Chrysalis, could 'break' the window and forcibly alter their thoughts. This, naturally, is a very serious crime in changeling society, being the mental equivalent to GBH and rape.
5246286
5244865
To clear things up, Twilight's death was a combination of Chrysalis not being able to catch her in time and, as ForSpite puts it, Chrysalis's silk 'Gwen Stacey-ing' her.
Since Chrysalis missed Twilight with her throw of the silk, she had to fling it downwards in the hope that it would catch her. The silk caught one side of her more than the other, meaning that her legs on Side 1 took a lot more of the force from her sudden deceleration than those on Side 2, dislocating them in places.
Shortly after this the silk on the Side 2 snapped, being too weak and poorly attached to hold her. Now unsupported, Side 2 swung with quite a lot of force towards the ground, flinging her head - and with it her neck - violently sideways as well as down. It was this motion which broke her neck, rather than her landing, which did much more damage to her legs and ribs.
She'd still have been badly injured and would likely have broken/dislocated all four legs instead of two had the silk not snapped: however, it is likely that her spine would have been saved from much of its violent treatment since there wouldn't have been the sudden change of direction to snap it, and having both strands slowing the entirety of her descent would have made her landing softer for all of her.
I hope this helps, though if you're still confused I'll be significantly rewriting the scene in the near future, which will do a much better job explaining things than I've done here. That said, I'm still perfectly happy to answer any questions you have myself, so fire away.
5248695 I am happy to help, and that was exactly the impression I got about their communication. It is really just making use of an extra sense to add another layer to their communication like body language and facial expressions. After all, we can convey plenty of meaning through gestures and the like which function exactly like what we have seen here, it is really just a slightly different variation on the same theme that makes use of the extra senses changelings have.
5248836 That makes sense. I was definitely a little vague on the exact details of the injury, although I wrote it off as Chrysalis not paying attention to the mechanics at the time and figured it would be filled in later. Heck, the conversation with Celestia next chapter might actually be the ideal place to do it depending on how you decide to handle that because she would need to know exactly what happened in order to fix it and you could have some fun with them trying to drag every little detail out of Chrysalis's memory around the trauma.
5247260
Ah, see, I was thinking she probably is normally crueler but her guilt about killing Twilight Sparkle (because being mean to people is different from killing them) is causing her to overcompensate by being extra nice to the ponies she runs into as if that will somehow make up for it.
5251096
That is a large part of it, yes. Nicely spotted; I wasn't expecting anyone to cotton onto that until I addressed the subject more directly.
5248526
Interesting post you linked to, though I think you're making a lot of unwarranted assumptions. For example, that war is 'always a last resort'. War always should be a last resort but that doesn't mean rulers always treat it that way. Similarly, the assumption that Chrysalis had a well thought out plan is unsupportable because we don't actually know what her plan was. The whole thing got derailed by Twilight Sparkle. We know she was impersonating Cadence and then... something. That's all we know. Now, I'm not saying you're automatically wrong, but you're treating assumptions as facts when things are a lot more up in the air than that, because like you yourself pointed out the show doesn't go into detail.
On the other hand, you did a good job of making a clear case against a hive mind and I agree with your logic there, that Changelings must not be in constant communication or the Elements would not have been able to confuse them (as an aside, while I don't consider them true canon, the Changelings that appear in the comics also clearly have no hivemind and have to report things to their queen verbally).
5257442 Well, it is good to see you are with me on the hive mind, and while I do see where you are coming from on the plan, it kind of feels like you are grasping for a way to discredit it which I admit was probably not your intention, although I do still feel the need to respond to it.
Now, while we obviously cannot say anything for sure about her end goals and the plan as a whole due to limited information, we can still take a good look at the parts of her plan that did go off and the contingencies she had in place/was able to improvise to get a feel for how well thought out it was overall. She got into Canterlot, replaced Cadence, and mind raped Shining Armor without being detected so that part of her plan was clearly solid in light of her abilities, and when Twilight saw through her disguise she was able to use that mind control and trust to turn the others on her which isolated Twilight from them and allowed Chrysalis to get rid of her quietly as well. She also very clearly either set up some kind of rapid command relay with her troops which allowed her to order them to break in at exactly the right time or had a ridiculously good timetable, so that aspect of things was well planned out as well. She also knew exactly what the biggest threat was after Celestia went down (the Elements) and was able to coordinate an effective response to lock that down hard even after things went off the rails which is a major feat in an operation like that. As such, while the plan obviously did not go off as intended because no plan survives contact with the enemy, it was clearly well thought out with contingencies in place for a number of eventualities which is why she was able to hold things together so well even after Twilight happened.
That said, the part of your comment that really bothers me is your shot at my discussion about war being a last resort because I very explicitly discussed why that was the case here in that post because I know some leaders are not rational. My exact words were "assuming you have leaders who are even remotely rational which we know Chrysalis and Celestia are", and the justification for Chrysalis being rational is tied back into the substantial planning and coordination which I also went into depth on there.
5258190
Yes, I know you tied it back, I find that argument unsustainable.
You're assuming her rationality based on plans we don't see, because we don't know what they were. And as far as contingencies go: We only really know one contingency, "call in the army" which isn't exactly subtle or clever, if effective. Now, we do know Chrysalis is good at infiltration and disguise, that's true. But whether that's from great skill or Equestrian vulnerability is harder to suss out and skill at those things doesn't necessarily generalize, anyway. The only reason she was able to turn things around on Twilight so easily is because Twilight was acting like a psycho, storming into a public gathering and making vague accusations with no evidence ("She doesn't eat apples! She's less demanding about her dress than my friends and I were about ours for the gala! I saw her cast a spell on Shining Armor, which I didn't take the time to identify and could have been harmless!") in the worst possible fashion. Not being able to wriggle out of that would have unforgivably stupid. "Cry and act hurt when accused of things" is the most basic of ploys and not one that would be at all beyond Chrysalis were she harboring some irrational hatred for ponies or desire for conquest and you should know that.
Indeed, even could we prove that Chrysalis is intelligent and that her plans to attack (or infiltrate or whatever she was doing) were well thought out, which they might have been-- we don't know, that would still not prove her rational. Plenty of people have put lots of excellent planning into unjust wars over the years. People have put intelligent plans of attack into wars designed to force countries to bow to the whims of fruit and sugar companies.
Am I saying she's definitely evil? No, I'm saying there's wriggle room for interpretation.
5259531 First, the army was almost certainly part of plan A. He objective was to secure a large food source for her subjects which requires an army to seize and hold the city. On that point at least, it is almost certain that her original plan was to use Shining Armor to render the guards ineffective (either through dispersal into small groups which can be easily overwhelmed or by gathering them for a knockout spell) and drop the shield so the changelings could overwhelm the city before an effective response could be organized. This is really not all that far off what actually happened after the disruptions so it is probably safe to say that part of things would have been fairly similar either way. There is a tiny chance that she was planning to quietly subdue the other princesses (and possibly the Elements) and make a public announcement saying she was taking power, but that is fairly risky because the guard is relatively free to act against her, her troops are not immediately on hand, and subduing the princesses is not a trivial task for her so I think that is highly unlikely unless we make some really wild assumptions like saying Luna did not show up in the episode because she was collaborating with the changelings.
Now, you do make a fair point about Twilight because she did most definitely horribly mishandle that situation, although I think Chrysalis had at least a little to do with that thanks to her hold over Shining Armor giving her an extra voice so it is not entirely Twilight's incompetence. Of course, Chrysalis did have a way to lock Twilight up ready to go so there was definitely some forethought given to how she would get rid of a problem even if Twilight basically set herself up for it.
For the last point, it is rarely that clear cut. In most cases that look like an unjust war there is a real driving reason for why it was inevitable (you should look into the Treaty of Versailles if you are not familiar with it because it basically caused the second World War) and the people and actions are really just a product of the times. Also, some of those cases are essentially one party manipulating others to fight while they watch in such a way that it will give them an advantage which is just cutthroat politics, not a desire to go to war themselves.
As for the last bit, evil is really a uselessly vague word in the real world because no one is evil for the sake of being evil so I prefer to avoid it and instead focus on motives, objectives, and circumstances to build a much more meaningful picture of the individual and how they interact with the situation they exist in. Really the only thing I will ever use the word "evil" to describe is generic, poorly thought out villains from lazy writers who do not want to build characters with real motivations and personalities beyond whatever their evil gimmick is and also do not make any effort to imply that there is more to them than just being a punching bag for the good guys who are usually just as bland and generic.
5262918
None of which counters my point that intelligent planning does not equal rational goals.
5263851 Right, because her stated goal was clearly irrational. I mean really, what kind of ruler worries about weather or not their subjects have food to eat?
Honestly, I think her having rational goals should really go without saying because she very clearly stated that her primary goal was to feed her people which is about as fundamental and necessary as it gets. No matter how you look at the purpose of government or leaders and what their objectives should be, keeping their subjects from starving to death is absolutely necessary so Chrysalis had what is arguably the most rational goal possible.
5267689
Eh, I remember her end goal was stated as feeding, with no elaboration on whether that was a 'because we're starving' or 'because we're greedy for more magical power' kind of thing, so no, you can't take it as a sign of rationality, either. Or rather you can, but you must be aware it needn't necessarily be.
That lack of elaboration means you could certainly portray her as someone who made the decision because she was backed into a corner, but you could also portray her otherwise-- it's hard if not impossible to say how much desperation, hunger, jealously, or greed paid a role in the ultimate decision in canon.
5268805
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It's cool that you two are so interested in the subject of Chrysalis's motivations, and nice that it's stayed civil, but this has gotten a little out of hand. I'd have expected you to move this conversation to PMs by this point, but that hasn't happened, so I'm going to have to draw the line here. If you're nearly done with this, I don't mind a few more comment replies, but otherwise I think PMs are the place for such a drawn-out conversation. I don't mean to rain on your parade, but I think this needed to be said.
I'm going to cover Chrysalis's reasons in quite some detail next chapter, but there were some parts of this chapter which gave hints as to why she invaded. The prison scene was the main place where I dealt with this; in the paragraphs where Chrysalis compared the dungeons to her homeland.
I hope this is explanation enough for you until the next chapter.
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Yeah, that did go a little long. My apologies for cluttering up your comments section.
5269677 Yeah, sorry about that, I was not paying attention to how long the discussion got so I will go ahead and drop it as well.
That was good even if you did go a bit overboard on the council meeting. I feel like you probably could have trimmed a body or two off the council if you wanted to by combining rolls which would have shortened that part a bit, although it does work well as is and should continue to work if you do not go through too many more full meetings in the future. That said, I get the feeling the conversation with Cadence will not be trivial either so you probably could not have fit it into this chapter even with a shortened meeting so it is not a big deal either way.
The one big hanging question I had from this chapter was what you are doing with the castes and what the term "drone" means in the context of this story. The way this chapter is written it could easily be anything from historical human caste systems where the castes were a culturally enforced economic system, sometimes with room for mobility between castes, to the stupid hive mind bullshit which you already said you are not using so I was hoping you would be willing to provide some clarification on what you are doing with changeling society in this story.
Better get started on that dream warding magic then.
Wonder what's happened with Cadance. Hope to see some more of her next chapter.
Well think about it. Conquer the ponies and rule them. They may not feel much love for changelings, but they'll certainly draw closer to each other...
Why do I have a bad, bad feeling about Starlit? She can't be planning anything, Chrysalis's emotion sensors would pick up the emotions. Anyling's emotion sensors would, but I still can't shake that feeling.
Isn't it a part of her? Meh, I suppose it comes down to a matter of headcanon.
It's canon that the changelings feed off love though.
Chryssy's daughter or just another member of the Royal Caste I wonder?
Yeah, Luna has a history of being less than stable. She felt unloved and unwanted, so in return she tried to destroy all life on the planet.
The Code? Color me intrigued. Also, technically it would be sapient. I argue that you can't have one without the other, but this is a largely unpopular opinion.
Chrysalis, at least, has shown herself to be a master of mind magic. Even not using that itself, those insights into consciousness combined with her natural changeling abilities would make her an expert at convincing people to do what she wants them.
He can feel that you mean it, Starlit. SMILIE
IKR?!
Excellent chapter, awaiting the next one three weeks from now.
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That does not mean they do not need solid food as well. After all, we need to take in a lot of different things in order to survive so it is reasonable to assume that changelings do as well.
Also, the source of that statement is Cadence who is probably not an expert on changelings so it is entirely possible that she is misinformed in some way, either through simplification of a complex subject or outright lies (although I really hate using this explanation in anything serious if I can possibly avoid it). I personally think that what they actually require is raw magic because they cannot acquire/produce it naturally for some reason sort of like how we (and many other predators) cannot produce all the proteins our bodies require. The way they get around this is by using love to lower a pony's natural barriers to let them steal the magic their bodies need to function (it seems likely that magic is involved in the fundamental biology of most life in MLP given its prevalence) in addition to more active uses like flight and magic. This can be easily simplified down to what Cadence said because they are still using love to acquire energy to operate critical biological functions in their own bodies which is essentially what eating is so there is no contradiction there, but the nuts and bolts work better with the rest of the universe given that every other application of love seems to be an cooperative/amplified version of normal magic which fits with love lowering barriers to better share magic or increase flow.
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I always chalked that up to there being different kinds of love. Adoration, hero worship, romantic love, etc. But yeah, makes sense for the rest of that.
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Yeah, I agree that I could probably have trimmed off a little of the council meeting, but I wasn't sure of the best way to go about that, so I left it as it was for fear of messing things up. With a scene that big, taking things out can have a pretty big effect on the rest of it, and that really wasn't something I wanted to risk doing, what with the possible confusion which would follow if I didn't edit it well enough.
Full meetings will be happening in future, but they should never get this long again without good reason. Chrysalis has some very big problems right now, but there aren't that many of them overall, so I don't see us having this sort of thing happen every time since most of their meetings would just be progress reports rather than full-scale debates.
I actually wrote the scene with Cadance as the fourth part of the chapter, but took it out prior to upload. It was about 500 words long, lacked far too much detail and didn't cover half the points I realised that it probably should, so I removed it in order to begin next chapter with Cadance, followed by our other cave-dwelling friend.
As for the castes, I have been writing a codex chapter about changeling society, but I had to put it on the back burner back when chapter two got corrupted. I'll give you a quick explanation now, though the codex version is bound to be more detailed by merit of being written as if it were an excerpt from a book on changelings.
The castes are both biological (mostly) and cultural (partly): the actual birth of changelings into individual castes is down to genetics, but the differences between the castes wouldn't be so noticeable if the upper castes weren't so against interbreeding with the lower.
There are four main castes: Drones, Shifters, Elites and Royals; with drones being the most common and royals being least common. Each successive caste is generally more intelligent, more magically capable (especially with mind magic) and physically stronger, but other than that there isn't much real difference (they all look the same, for one).
Drones are slightly less intelligent than the typical pony, having roughly equivalent brainpower, magical aptitude and strength to teenage pony. They aren't dumb, but they aren't quite as mentally developed as a pony would be. To make up for their individual low intelligence, they have strong tendencies to work in groups (i.e. their Drone Unions). They can only transform into what they see, and can't alter anything about their appearance past that.
Shifters are about pony-equivalent and live fairly similarly to ponies, excluding their obvious lack of a cutie-mark-based education system.The section of their brain which deals with mental magic, emotion sensing and shapeshifting isn't large enough to deal with all three, so their minds are specialised to make them great at transforming, at the cost of most of their ability with mental magic.
Elites are equivalent to ponies on all fronts besides changeling abilities, which they are adept at in the same way that unicorns are with magic or pegasi at flight. All of the representatives are of the Elite Caste in order to avoid any one caste having the upper hand when it comes to be represented. Most of them are part of houses, like Lady D'Otho, although some, like Lady Slate, live outside of that world of backstabbing and power play.
Royals are essentially the changeling equivalent of alicorns, without the immortality but with very advanced capabilities in all changeling abilities.
I hope that answers some of your questions, and hopefully I'll have the actual codex chapter on changeling society out soon. Sorry for the text dump.
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Cadance was going to be in this chapter, but I didn't leave enough room for her scene and it ended up being 500 words long and terrible, so I cut it out and decided to write a much longer scene as the start of next chapter. I really wanted to have Cadance show up by now (heck, I wanted her in the last chapter, too) but it would have been awful if I'd forced it in this one.
Why do you have a bad feeling about Starlit? I'm honestly curious, because I can't think of much so far which would arouse suspicion. Maybe she's just too nice to be believable, in which case I should probably deal with that before she starts becoming the personality-Mary-Sue of the story.
Yeah, in my headcanon it is a crown, rather than a part of her, although it is made of biological material. The idea being that the previous queen grows the crown as an easily-detachable extra appendage, which is then cut off and given to the successor. The crown is made of nothing but hardened chitin, though, which is why it doesn't really rot and how the creator can just cut it off without feeling any pain. Weird, I know.
In the canon of this story, changelings need love (or, more precisely, any positive emotion, although love is usually the strongest) but not as food. Their cell growth is entirely powered by magic, which is how they're able to transform into other beings so quickly, but it has the downside that without a supply of positive emotion they can't replace the cells which naturally die. A love-starved changeling will literally decompose alive. Love doesn't provide nutrients, though, so food is still required for normal bodily functions, just as with any other being.
Maxilla is unrelated to Chrysalis, and was the queen of a smaller hive before they all unified under Chrysalis. Whilst her title is now Princess and not Queen, she's in control of a lot more than she used to be. To explain the "D'Aelius-Alveare" part of her name, 'Aelius' was a Roman family name, derived from the Greek 'Helios', meaning sun. Her name is essentially 'of the Hive of the Sun', albeit massively simplified; Chrysalis's means 'of the Hive of the Wasps (or hornets)' in case you were wondering.
The Code is a pretty big part of changeling culture, which I'm going to expand on later either through a main chapter or a codex entry. Essentially, it's a set of rules meant to govern what is right and wrong when it comes to changelings using their powerful mind magic. Lady Slate was angry because Labium, like a lot of higher-caste changelings, does not take the code as seriously when he applies it to non-changelings, using it more as a general guideline to be departed from when he feels like it, whereas she is something of a zealot about The Code. Basically, to a changeling, what he's suggested is the mental equivalent of GBH and rape, which is why she's so outraged that no one called him out on it.
Anyhow, I really hope I can find the time to get some of this codex stuff out soon, since there isn't any way to discuss it in detail in main chapters without a big, ugly exposition dump and some of it is quite important to the understanding of this particular changeling headcanon.
See you in three weeks!