In Secreto, Salutis · 9:46pm Oct 25th, 2014
Or, to translate from the Old Amareican to Modern Equestrian, "In Secrecy, Safety."
This happens to be true on the battlefield.
This is true for all levels of technology and most reasonable force matchups. It is not true against absurdly disproportionate levels of force -- even if an attacker doesn't know which room of a house you're hiding in, he can still obliterate the whole house with an eight-inch howitzer shell and you're still toast -- the principle with which Monty Python had fun in "How Not To Be Seen" (a skit which the descendants of the Flutter-Ponies would not find amusing). Most of the time, if there's actually a "war" (rather than just mopping-up the last survivors of a defeated nation whose leadership is simply too stubborn to admit they've lost), nopony has enough firepower to saturate every corner of the battlefield in death.
One has to choose one's targets, and if one can't see a foe, or can get only a very hazy idea of his position, one cannot fight him effectively. That is the principle of the submarine, of the sniper, and of the Stealth bomber. None of these combatants were ever perfectly invisible -- a World Wars submarine provides a bearing right back to itself the moment anyone sees one of its torpedoes, a modern submarine makes enough noise that a sonar-equipped enemy can generally get at least a rough passive bearing on it; there are only so many places a sniper can hide; and a Stealth bomber returns radar signals from some angles, and instantly reveals its position should it turn on active electromagnetic emitters (which is why some Stealth designs don't even have such emitters -- they use purely passive EM as much as possible).
But stealth doesn't have to be perfect in order to work. It just has to be good enough that the enemy isn't sure where an attack is coming from until it's too late for them to nail the attacker (think Stealth bombers unplugging an enemy's air defense network with air-to-surface missiles), or that the attacker can escape the engagement while the counter-attackers waste their time looking in the wrong place for him (think a submarine creeping away from a burning convoy while the destroyers thrash the empty sea with their depth-charges). Stealth can even work if the foe has a counter to it -- for instance, Equestria came up with Changeling-revealing lanterns right after the Battle of Canterlot, but the lanterns can't be everywhere, nor did the earliest models make the bearing to the Infiltrator immediately apparent, nor force shift reversion.
The Changelings, are of course, the ultimate expression of secrecy and stealth in Pony form. They prefer to live underground. Their military castes can take the form of whomever they wish when they venture outside (technically, so can their Workers -- it's just that most of their Workers aren't very good at it). They have rudimentary empathy, and their higher castes develop this toward mind-reading.
Even after the Reconciliation, they still prefer secrecy and stealth, which is why so many Ponies of other Kinds still find them creepy even as allies. They are weird by Pony standards even in their affections: they have intense loyalty to their Hives, very little sense of personal space or privacy, and when they actually personally like you, are apt to be all over you. They will literally crawl up your side, and see nothing wrong with this as long as they are not putting too much weight on you. They sleep together in huddles and find this comforting.
Landscape Carrot, who lived a decade amongst them, almost as one of them, understands them as well as any sane Earth Pony can (and Applejack might snort at the adjective "sane," applied to him either before or after his ordeal). Some other former Captives grasp their culture. Some other Ponies think they understand the Changelings because they love or are friends with individual lings, but Changelings living individually among other Kinds behave very differently (and are mostly very smart and self-motivated lings who have internalized a lot of Equestrian culture: Nictis would be a good example of such a Changeling) than do Changelings in their Hives.
The Equestrian way of war did not incorporate much stealth. Yes, there was a tradition of heroes embarking upon quests, and often this involved sneaking into enemy fortresses and the like. But this was never systematized into doctrine, and most Equestrian wars were more or less stand-up fights, either organized skirmishes or pitched battles. The concepts of "camoflague" and "ambush" of course existed. By Changeling standards, though, the Equestrians were amateurs -- even taking into account that only Alicorns and powerful unicorn mages can Shift.
The Great Changeling War (YOH 1513-15) was a terrible equine tragedy for both Equestria and the Changelings. But one of its silver linings was that it taught Equestria all about stealth. Both how to fight stealthy foes, and how to be stealthy themselves. The Warriors of the Friendly Hives, of course, fought on Equestria's side largely as scouts and security forces, and in this role their talents shone. Equestrians cross-trained with and sometimes accompanied these Friendly Warriors on missions, and learned the Changeling way of war. And after 1515, of course, the survivors of what had been the Hives of Hunger took part in the Reconciliation and were integrated into Equestrian culture.
Here, as Wisedreamer would have put it, was demonstrated that "oft evil will doth evil mar." For the ultimate consequence of the Great Changeling War was the wholesale Reconciliation of the Changelings with the other Three land-dwelling Kinds. And what this meant was that, as Equestria turned to face new challenges from the lands which the pawns of the Night Shadows now dominated, it faced them with Changeling allies, Changeling bio-technology, and Changeling instructors who taught Equestrian forces Changeling Infiltration doctrine.
On a hundred future battlefields, the forces of the Shadows would come to rue the day that Friendship reunited the Lost Kind with their kin, and Equestria would strike from the darkness to spoil many an enemy plan.
In Secreto, Salutis -- indeed.
Epic.
Very cool stuff, I love the phrase.
2557121
Thank you. It's actually a translation into Latin of Phoenix_Dragon's Changeling watchword.