Part 8 of the Palaververse: The Changelings · 9:08pm Nov 3rd, 2015
For some curious reason, people in last week's comments section thought that the alien and insectoid species of dark and definitely morally-dubious bug-horses with the ability to shapeshift, manipulate the minds of others, and devour emotions might be an interesting topic to cover by a fairly decisive majority. Let it not be said that I ever failed to deliver ... well, apart from that time I held off on Capra, or how I'm holding off on Antlertis for now, or ... anyway! This week, changelings feature.
Before the usual blithering on my part, find attached a picture of the wider Palaververse as also requested last week, or at least, those discovered sections of it. The caveats that applied to the previous map apply here as well (i.e, legibility has always come out as an optional extra in my cartography skills), and the scanner I used inconsiderately ate some letters here and there. Hopefully, it can still get the general gist across.
Apart from that, the usual blithering applies. Leave your nominations for next week's entry in the comments below, and I'll likely choose the one that seems to have the most support. Thanks go to themaskedferret for proofreading this and prodding me to elaborate on things that deserved elaboration.
Past the page break and Chrysalis smiling for the camera, read on for the changeling hives!
On the edges of civilisation and in the shadows cast by the great powers of Ungula and beyond, all manner of small, overlooked, or deliberately discreet sapient communities and species move and thrive, represented by no recognised nation. Some, like the sea serpents of the Cheval Sea and some inland rivers, live solitary existences and seldom gather in anything resembling a society, let alone a full-blown nation. Others, like the few remaining centaurs, are among the last surviving spawn created in the laboratories of Fallen Antlertis, and their numbers in the world today could be comfortably counted on the toes of one hoof where they haven’t been slain or imprisoned in Tartarus.
And yet others deliberately shun the limelight and court their reputation as mere myths, for fear of the consequences that would fall upon them were they revealed to the world at large. And if any species deserved to fall into this category, the changelings certainly do.
The changelings are just one of the many types of psychephages in the world, parasitic predators that gain nourishment from the emotions of other sapient species and the conduit to lifeforce said emotions grant. All psychephages tend to exhibit sapience as well, or least at least a high degree of natural cunning, allowing them to most effectively prey on the intelligent species. Some, like the windigos, naturally feed off anger and division and move in concert to exploit divided and fractured communities on the edge of civilisation. A rare few, like the Nightmare madness that attaches itself to alicorns in the moment of their ascension, stoke and thrive off any and all negative emotions in the hearts of their hosts.
For their part, the changelings feed on love in its various forms and most other positive connections that grow in the hearts of sapients. Changelings rarely have trouble finding sustenance as a result, and this, among other unique qualities has aided their survival as a species.
Their intensely social, co-operative and close-knit societies create colonies of changelings that are almost invariably devoted both to their leaders and to the greater good of their nests. Each changeling, even at the lowest ranks of the hive, is endowed with multiple magical gifts including flight, limited spellcasting, and an empathic rapport with fellow hive members that borders on a hive mind. Most of all, changelings can mould their own appearances and wear the images of members of other species, in order to best infiltrate communities — typically while posing as taciturn travellers — absorb any love available, and deliver that love back to the home hive for consumption.
All quadrupedal species are fair game for the magical disguises donned by changelings whether sapient or not, though only sapient forms are generally considered worth donning for the sake of infiltration and gathering love. The natural chitinous forms of a given hive will often subtly shift down the generations to more closely mimic their closest and most common sapient prey. The few hives that exist in the Equestrian Badlands have the same rough body structure and relative stockiness as ponies, for example, while the hives that dwell in the North beyond Capra tend to have taller figures and more pronounced horns, and so on for wherever else hives can be found in the wildernesses of Ungula. The hives that dwell in Dactylia and Ceratos are less well-known, though vague reports of changelings with the proportions of elephants have come from the Pachydermian hinterlands. The default sizes individual hives reach tend to inform the sizes of the disguises they can assume, and though their shapechanging magic can also allow for growing larger or smaller than their default size, only especially practised and powerful changelings can sustain extremes of size for long. Phenotypes and body shapes tend not to vary much within hives themselves, no matter the power or rank of the changeling, with the exception of the hive’s queen. Queens stand head and shoulders above other changelings in both stature and power, command their hives, oversee the love harvests and manage a hive’s stockpiles thereof, and alone in their hives are capable of reproduction and the creation and administration of royal jelly, both duties essential for changeling society and the perpetuation of the hives.
The royal jelly is an especial hallmark of the power of the queens. While queens experience all the joys of full sapience, forethought, personality, and suchlike things, individual changeling drones are comparatively stunted in terms of their personality and ability to conduct independent thought, and rely heavily on directions from further up in the hive hierarchy. The royal jelly that a queen produces can be fed to changeling infants in their cocoons and grown drones alike, triggering processes that permanently produce greater independence of thought and enhanced magical power. These uplifted drones, with one typically made for every ten other normal drones, are given authority over others in order to help direct the internal affairs of a hive and to lead foraging missions outwith it. The more royal jelly a changeling receives, the more autonomous and powerful they become, with new queens emerging once they’ve been fed enough of the substance. These new queens are typically only created when the old queen nears death at the end of their century or so of life, or when the growth of a hive necessitates a split, though a prematurely-made queen will often challenge the existing queen for control over a hive.
A queen secured in her position will typically reach out to another queen, bartering in exchange for an uplifted and reproduction-capable drone of another hive with whom to mate. Once mated, the number of young produced by the queen in each yearly brood range between three to over a dozen, depending on the amount of love she’s able to consume from the hive’s stockpiles. Changeling young spend their first few years growing protected in cocoons, and after they emerge, are raised and fed by both the queen and other changelings. Duties rotate between members of a hive, with just under a third of the hive’s changelings typically out foraging at any one time while the others guard and maintain the hive, protect the young, and attend their queen.
Hives are rarely large, with a population of several dozen the norm, with their size limited by both the quantity of love they can discreetly access from nearby communities and their ability to evade the attention by those same communities. Fractious crossroads and frontiers with little oversight, such as the Equestrian Badlands and the Gazellen highways, tend to give rise to the largest hives, hundreds strong, who can send out multiple foraging parties at a time or even kidnap lone travellers in order to thoroughly drain them of their love and lifeforce. For the most part, though, hives can and have peacefully and secretly existed in the shadows of the other species for centuries, foraging enough love to sustain themselves while inflicting little noticeable harm on those they feed from. Such secrecy is essential. Other species tend to resent being preyed upon, and even the larger hives are rarely able to withstand full-blown assaults from the forces of other races. Even the shapeshifting of the changelings can’t guarantee their non-detection in the face of determined scrutiny and simple magical probing. Such instances of discovery and ousting have been rare throughout the ages, to the point where changelings have largely faded into the realms of half-understood myth. In a world of overt arcane terrors, the subtle ones tend not to attract much attention.
This may have not always been the case. Stories are told in the depths of the changeling hives and are passed on from queen to queen as millennia-old oral accounts, about days in ages long past when changelings walked the continents freely. In the dark centuries between the Fall of Antlertis and the rise of the other sapient species into developed civilisations - and possibly back in unsounded aeons, before Antlertis even had a presence in the known continents - the great Changeling Queendoms covered all lands, and fed on all species and all tribes. The queens saw their children feast upon the love of the early ponies, caprids, corvids, and everything capable of love that walked or flew upon the earth. They swarmed dragons in flight and tore open their hearts to take the scraps of love there as delicacies; they flew down into the deep places of the earth to winkle out Diamond Dogs, and they bore every prize back to the towering hives of the great queens, built so high and black as to blot out the sun.
Mere stories, perhaps, made to contain the morality tale of the fall of the Queendoms. The changelings fed so greatly and fiercely, so the tales go, that their prey in the other species grew scarce and soon the different hives had to fight each other for the scraps that were left. Changeling devoured changeling and the great hive towers burned, one by one. The whole species brought itself to the edge of annihilation, and by the time the remaining queens could hope to re-assemble the remains of their hives, the chattel species had grown strong upon their release and had discovered the art of civilisation with which to fend off the changelings. Thus did greed lead to their downfall, the queens learn and solemnly relate, and thus they must keep themselves and their hives hidden from those who could destroy them.
The lesson is learned by most queens, who have kept their hives hidden from the scrutiny of the prey species down the centuries for the most part, even as the nations around have broiled and teemed with conflict and exploration and discovery. Contact with the outside world beyond each hive is minimal, limited only to foraging missions, the exchange of fertile drones, and nearby queens maintaining tactful contact with one another so as to solve any potential territory disputes before they even arise. Territory disputes that fail to be solved peacefully tend to be solved quickly and viciously, with whole hives gutted when one gets the drop on another. Each hive is expected to be a self-sufficient island and each queen expected to rule by her own wit and strength, with reliance on other hives for resources and information regarded as a conflict-inviting weakness.
‘For the most part’ raises its head here, though, and scattershot accounts of association between the civilised species and changelings exist down the ages, half of them something approaching something resembling reputable. Legends abound of early tribes forced to give their youngest and fairest regularly to hives of carnivorous monsters, until one brave hero inevitably stops the practise. The Capric Imperators are whispered to have had a terrifying and nigh-omnipresent secret police, who were given the souls of dissidents in exchange for their service. The accounts of Burro Delver, present Arch-Minister of the Asinial Republic, where he goes into his early life as a privateer, contain a mention of adventuring alongside a shapechanging princess. Not all accounts need have the same tone, and not all are treated equally seriously. Burro’s own tends to be used as toilet paper in academic circles, though at least it makes for rollicking fiction.
These accounts of direct association may find themselves added to as the years ago by. Nothing ever lasts forever, and the hidden state of the changelings may well be imperilled as the light of civilisation continues to burn away the darkness of the wildernesses. More and more of the Equestrian Badlands are made safe and settled with every passing decade, and inroads have even been made on the Ungulan North and Dactylian Interior. For all that the hives may relocate, eventually they will court discovery, and with discovery, they will face the potential of annihilation.
Some queens are aware of this inevitable progress and are certain of its final bloody outcome, though it may well not happen even in the lifetimes of their daughters’ daughters. Some shrink from the shifting world. And others still have chosen to defy it.
One particularly cruel and ambitious queen in the Equestrian Badlands, Chrysalis, is among the latter. Her dreams dwell on the Equestrian threat, and the resources and love that might yet be ripe for the plucking from an Equestria laid low. But though her tribe is among the largest in Ungula at over three hundred strong, it can’t hold a candle to the might at Equestria and Princess Celestia’s disposal. But queens never lacked for cunning in the face of impossible odds, and Chrysalis has sent her drones far and wide in the hope of finding an overlooked inroad.
With luck, deception, skill and even allies in unexpected quarters, she may yet succeed. If the world will insist on changing, then the changelings will not be found powerless to change it in return. No Queendom that was ever worth mentioning was ever made without great effort, after all, and if Chrysalis has to devour everything that makes Equestria Equestria from the inside-out … then that’s a task she shall relish.
In any case, a fascinating look at changelings in this setting. There are a lot of knobs to adjust with them, and I quite like the settings you've chosen. The only other person I've seen who's thought of changelings shifting their default forms to resemble those of the most predominant local prey is... well, me.
My vote for next time is still Saddle Arabia.
3518323
Yes, there's a curious question - is that one that now lays latent within all Alicorns, or only the one we know of? Or 'Wait and see....'? which is what I expect!
An excellent read as ever.
The changelings have much potential; that's one of the things that makes them popular. Your own effort here recalls the excellent and underrated Manehatten Madness by Ardashir: "in secrecy, lies safety." I recommend it thoroughly.
My vote for next week goes to Saddle Arabia.
Great chapter, though perhaps not my favorite interpretation of changelings.
As for my next vote... oh, I don't know... what about the pony subspecies, if they count. Could I nominate thestrals(bat ponies), crystal ponies, or perhaps the breezies? Final choice will be made pending your answer.
An excellent take on changelings. It doesn't condemn the entire species as evil, but makes no excuse for what Chrysalis has done.
The hemisphere map is also very greatly appreciated. Would I be correct to assume that chimeras and Scorpan's species are similarly the product of Antlertis?
I'll stick with the Diamond Dogs for my vote.
[x] Saddle Arabia
Also, I just realized. The PalaverVerse is currently somewhere mid-season 2. If it continues to stick near canon, and what with how the threat and efforts of one plentypotent sun goddess seems to be most of what's keeping the peace...
... the events of Canterlot Wedding are going to throw one hell of a lit flare into the oilwell
3518323
Nomination for Saddle Arabia noted! It seemed like a sensible extrapolation of the nature of changelings in their local environments. Glad I'm apparently not the only one who thought it sensible.
And indeed. I'd go so far as fourteen shades of not good.
3518346
Only one's made itself known in one alicorn ... so far. No telling what waits and watches in the hearts of the others, I'm afraid. Suffice to say that you don't make it more than a thousand years apparently uncorrupted without developing some good coping mechanisms or a willpower forged of cold steel.
3518372
Nomination for Saddle Arabia noted, as is the fic recommendation! Safety through secrecy seemed like the logical approach for an inherently parasitical species, who'd necessarily exist in fewer numbers than the prey they feed upon.
3518405
Ooh, tricky. Crystal ponies would probably fall under the purview of the Crystal Empire, I'd personally call all show instances of thestrals just pegasi wearing illusions for aesthetic purposes and would probably just fall under Equestria's entry, and breezies I've yet to develop much of an interesting headcanon for. Nominate whichever floats your boat, with those caveats.
3518439
Nomination for the Diamond Dogs noted! Glad the map and take on the changeling's moral character are both appreciated. Scorpan's another product of Antlertis and its Fall, whilst I imagine chimeras would be one of the natural predators of the world ... inasmuch anything evolving in a high-magic environment can come out 'natural'.
3518466
Nomination for Saddle Arabia noted! And good realization there. No telling what the sight of Celestia (briefly) cast down will have on the other sovereigns.
3518517
Considering just how precarious the situation seemed when we last left off?
...well, I hear bunkers are in this year.
I vote Diamond Dogs.
Interesting that Chrysalis has probably the largest hive in the world, and only 300 drones. It actually makes a ton of sense, that parasites relying on non-detection would function best with minimal numbers. I guess Chryssy must have made a deal with many other queens to borrow all those other drones for the attack.
3518466 Once the crown hears how Chrysalis beat Celestia, he's going to start searching the dark corners of the world for every changling queen he can get his hoofs on, or a grub and a sack full of royal jelly. That and the terrifying might of the Capric Imperial Matchmakers to arrange a couple truly and deeply in love...
Dammit, you're just dangling more fruit at us so you can wait on getting to the big guns! D: Let's go with Zebrica I guess. Saddle Arabia's fine, too.
I wanna see the queen of the elephant changelings. <.<
3518584
Consider what happens when the crown is worn by someone.
Now consider Chrysalis.
Now consider investing in a survival bunker (33% if you order now. Installation charged separately. No refunds)
3518517
Crystal empire then.
Let's follow up with another underground species, the diamond dogs!
3518517
If you plan to give the Crystal Empire its own post, I'd suggest doing Crystal Empire -> Equestria to finish off Ungula -> Saddle Arabia -> Dactylian nations. Shared history, nice and CDOrderly, all that sort of stuff.
Yay, map! I can't wait for the fallout of Chrysalis' actions on the Palaververse... or Discord's reformation... or the return of the Crystal Empire... or Twilight's ascension... or Tirek's rampage... or whatever happens this season with Starlight Glimmer...
Diamond dogs next, please.
3518614 I hadn't thought about the Crown actually placing itself on a changling queen, but that would be a terrifying prospect indeed.
Ah, thanks for the map.
"All psychephages tend to exhibit sapience as well, or least at least a high degree of natural cunning, allowing them to most effectively prey on the intelligent species."
Random-ish question: have you read any Peter Watts, perchance?
"the Nightmare madness that attaches itself to alicorns in the moment of their ascension"
...Interesting. Implying, even with them (it?) being rare, that either a single alicorn can provide enough energy to carry Nightmares through the drought between ascensions... or that alicorn ascensions are more common than we thought, just not commonly completed?
edit after reading comments: Oh, or a possibility I'd not thought of but that others have: that Nightmares are capable of lurking in all alicorns without being noticed. And with alicorns being ageless (presumably?), they'd never have to leave. If this is the case, then Luna might be the only alicorn not infected...
And that was indeed quite interesting. :)
3518584
"Once the crown hears how Chrysalis beat Celestia, he's going to start searching the dark corners of the world for every changling queen he can get his hoofs on, or a grub and a sack full of royal jelly. That and the terrifying might of the Capric Imperial Matchmakers to arrange a couple truly and deeply in love..."
And, of course "The Capric Imperators are whispered to have had a terrifying and nigh-omnipresent secret police, who were given the souls of dissidents in exchange for their service." I mean, if the Crown is using changelings anyway...
3518584
Nomination for the Diamond Dogs noted! Guesses as to the numbers involved and potential hive involvement probably depend on people's own individual estimations. Once I get round to covering the wedding in a story, the Palaververse's take on what went down should hopefully be all clear.
3518588
Nominations for Zebrica/Saddle Arabia noted! For the queen of the elephant changelings ... think huge. Think really huge.
3518627
Nomination for the Crystal Empire noted!
3518661
Nomination for the Diamond Dogs noted! Saddle Arabia could probably come in at any point. It blurs the line between being an Ungulan or Dactylian nation, and is technically a dominion of Equestria's.
3518708
Nomination for the Diamond Dogs noted! So much fallout!
3518614 3518725
3518728
Not read any Peter Watts, alas. His stuff sounds interesting, going by his wiki article. As for the Nightmare speculation ...
This here. Shame for the alicorn. At least it's good for ... well, absolutely no-one barring the Nightmares themselves.
3518807
Exactly! It's the perfect way to bridge from Ungula to Dactylia!
3518807
Ah, thanks.
3518517
Obviously not cast down, but rather testing her disaster preparedness drill of 'How does Twilight handle a scenario I have seemingly lost'.
Luna, after all, was conspicuously absent during the whole affair. Say, sitting there munching on chips seeing if it would be necessary to step in while Celestia melted herself out of the cocoon.
I'm going to be contrary and nominate the Everfree Forest. I'm interested to see if it's just yet another wilderness place, or something special.
3518960
That'd be one possible way to take events - or one possible Equestrian cover story after the fact, no question.
3519100
Nomination for the Everfree noted! I've got some details for it in mind, so it's perfectly fine as a contrary suggestion.
The Dragons were really enjoyable, this one was delicious ;)
Now I'm latching on to the Nightmare idea as well, just as it does to ascending alicorns. How did that species come to be? How did it evolve with presumably no alicorns around before Celestia and Luna. Come to think of it, how was Antlertis destroyed... Does Celestia know she carries it and therefore is all calm and serene all the time as to not feed it? Did she not roast Chrysalis out of fear that that act of furious violence and bloodshed might release it and make all of Equestria history? How far do you have to push her? How close did she come in 'The White Mare'?
Ah, questions.
Anyway, this was about changelings, not that one little sentence ;)
I like the idea of a multitude of small to very small hives that thrive in secrecy and of the queens staying in loose contact with each other. I guess that once Chrysalis is taken care of, all the other Queens in Equestria will breath a sigh of relief. For one the threat of a megalomaniac bent on conquest is off their back, for the other the ponies will think themselves rid of the changelings for good and won't search for them.
Who knows? One daring/enterprising/desperate queen may some day approach the alicorn of friendship with an offer of a mutually beneficial relationship. Will take any job for food. Let's see if Twilight would slit somebug's throat on the spot. Celestia can then go and be smug in her private study once again.
The changelings are the perfect wildcard to tip the scales of power every now and then (or just give them the slightest of pushes). Are there corvid changelings? The Crown's secret police sounds like a dark version of what a changeling symbiosis in Equestria might look like. Here comes the secret war. Name's Bug. James Bug.
And I still throw my vote to the dogs.
3519764
Heh... the 'official' account probably has so many lose ends and as many holes as an army of changelings that you'd have to be a typical gullible pony to just swallow that ;)
Nice take on the changelings. I'm going to enjoy watching this particular powder keg go off.
pm1.narvii.com/5868/27f457cf8dfda5779301f1b7bb10bd9aae5b1fdd_hq.jpg
And I vote for Diamond Dogs.
3519792
Nomination for the Diamond Dogs noted! The Nightmares, as well as how Antlertis exactly Fell, are stuff I'm keeping somewhat opaque for now. Suffice to say that Celestia does indeed have a Nightmare of her own. She's vied with it all her life. So far, seeing as how the world's still intact, she seems to have been winning. How close she's come to falling on past occasions, though ... that, Celestia intends to keep very much to herself.
Corvid changelings aren't a thing, alas, due to the difference in body shapes. A changeling could try and wear a corvid form fleetingly, before its forelimbs grumpily re-asserted themselves and scuppered the whole disguise. This would probably just provoke confusion, hilarity, and/or murder from nearby corvids. In that order.
3519812
Nomination for the Diamond Dogs noted! It should be a fun powder keg to witness going off, whenever it does so.
3519905
Nominating the Nightmares as the next one!
3520167
Nomination for the Nightmare noted!
I'm going to put my vote in for the Diamond Dogs as well, though I wouldn't mind the Nightmares.
Interesting! I am curious how close to reality the mythic Changeling history of "we used to rule this place" is.
Vote for the Diamond Dogs!
3520216
Nomination for the Diamond Dogs noted! I imagine Nightmare stuff will get its day in the sun at some point - whether in these posts or in a story.
3520489
Nomination for the Diamond Dogs noted! It's likely to be distorted by the passage of centuries, if it hasn't been made up entirely, but there's likely to be some kernel of truth in it, even if it's a relatively small one like 'We did a lot better before they came up with this civilisation business, let me tell you.'
A few hundred for Chrysalis's hive? That doesn't really fit with the Canterlot takeover; you couldn't control a city with that few in any useful sense, I'd think.
Vote for diamond dogs (but only because the ponies aren't winning this round)
3521395
Nomination for the Diamond Dogs noted! Depends on whether you interpret it as a full-blown takeover with the intent of controlling Canterlot afterwards, or as a raid intended to subdue and steal as many prisoners as possible. I tend to go with the latter.
An absolute joy to read, as always. I love the idea of a young Chrysalis growing up with stories of the ancient changeling dominion and dreaming of rebuilding it...
Anyways, I would like to vote for the Diamond Dogs (Rex is one of my favourite characters).
3529250
Nomination for the Diamond Dogs noted! And I'm glad you liked the entry.
3519905
Why does this bring to mind the words, "Peace at the end of a lance and Harmony ever after"?
3530782
Curious phrase to bring to mind indeed. I'm sure it can't possibly be relevant.
Whoops! Why did I miss this one?
Again with the wonderful worldbuilding! The changelings are one of the neatest additions to the show canon. They have such potential for a variety of stories, from paranoid thrillers to psychological and body horror to high-fantasy shenanigans with shapeshifter villains - or heroes! After all, for an adventuresome and ambitious young changeling queen, the role of a wandering hero solving problems and basking in the love and adoration of the townspeople she's saved would be just perfect...
3552732
Glad you like it! And they are a wonderfully rich vein of story potential, no arguing there. That 'changeling queen as wandering hero' idea is excellent.
3552732 Ambitious certainly described Chrysalis... competent, however...
I mean, really? A whole army of shapeshifters who can control minds... and her plan was to sneak ALONE into Canterlot and do a lousy acting job while marrying a Guard Captain... and then have her subjects invade openly during the wedding, when most nations would have extra security at the ready for such events in anticipation of, at the very least, a separatist or lone-gunman attack?
That her plan got as far as it did owes solely to plot convenience. Seriously, she didn't even expect to survive an attack by Celestia. She was SHOCKED she'd won head-to-head!
You don't go invading a nation by yourself against a foe you're fairly certain could turn you to ash unless you are REALLY stupid and expect the Divine Writers to bail you out when things inevitably go pear-shaped.
3521893
You know, I just noticed the date this was posted. By the end of the month, that question was (seemingly) answered: she was aiming to take control of Canterlot.
Makes me wonder: if this had been posted after the season 5 finale, would it be different?
4125463
The Cutie Re-mark did make it clear that total control was the name of her game, yep. I can still work with that, and hopefully the next chapters of Wedding March can account for how she could have pulled it off.
Interesting take. I've seen a couple of these ideas bounced around in other stories on the site, but some of them are completely new to me. With this race being one of the more widely discussed ones outside the Palaververse, how much inspiration did you take from other writers when developing their lore?
I have mixed opinions on Chrysalis's hive being only three hundred strong. At that point it seems laughable that they would even attempt something like the invasion of Canterlot (though it makes the silent coup of the S6 finale more interesting and plausible), especially given how easily the Mane 6 could deal with them when outnumbered. The number simply seems far too small: 300 is like the population of canon!Ponyville, there were probably three times as many guards defending Canterlot during the Wedding.
I guess I'll just have to read Wedding March and decide for myself.
4430824
I'd definitely internalised a lot of the fanon that equated their structure to bee hives and suchlike, though I'm not sure if any particular story was a deciding influence there. I don't recall anything else where royal jelly had been used as a rearing substance for new Queens, so I did run with that from real-world influences. Was that one of the new ideas you were referring to?
Hope Wedding March can help make that number a wee bit more sensible in your eyes. The next chapter should have a wee bit of detail there. I was trying to pick something that could be a substantial threat to the Royal Guard presence in Canterlot (which I wouldn't peg as being especially large, even on high-security occasions) and something that could have plausibly flown under Equestria's radar.
4430895
I've seen royal jelly used in Law Abiding Pony's Of the Hive series, but I understand there is a real world parallel. I suppose the most unique idea I saw was that of their populations.
I'm definitely interested in seeing how it works out in Wedding March, but I'll probably wait until the story is tagged "Complete." Very curious as to how you'll pull that off though.
Day 8: The Changelings
- Can a changeling assume the form of an ape or any other creature of lesser intelligence?
- Do changelings receive the magical powers of the forms they wear or do changelings only have the powers given to them by being changelings?
- Could there be a changeling king? If so, how does he differ from the queen?
- With such small numbers Chrysalis is a fool if she believes she can hold onto Canterlot and conquer Equestria. Eventually her rule will come to an end one way or another even if she can keep Equestria under her control.
- What form did the shape shifting princess wore? It can't be a pony because their are no princesses that are not alicorns. The only race it could wear is that of a bovine, zebra, or elephant because those are the only races left with a monarchy with mortal princesses.
- If the changelings actually won they would cause so much distrust amongst the ponies that love would become scarce and the changelings would eventually die out from starvation. Though we know that will not happen because of Thorax.
4431553
- It would be a bit of a strain for their quadrupedalism, but theoretically, yes. Why, though? What could these apes ever amount to in terms of anything useful?
- Only their latent changeling magic persists. This allows them to magic-channel akin to unicorns if that's their disguise, but if they're wearing a pegasus form and called on to weathercraft, then things get awkward.
- Thorax has you covered there. vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/c/c1/Thorax_new_form_ID_S6E26.png/revision/latest?cb=20161024191324
- It's not the size of your army, it's what you do with it, or some variant of that phrase, at least. Besides, Chrysalis has schemes that run beyond just using her existing hive to maintain control. Food-rich environments tend to produce population booms, after all, and all need for circumspection's gone clean out the window as of A Canterlot Wedding.
- Bear in mind the storyteller of that particular account. Burro may have various good qualities, but being above a little dramatic embellishment of his early ventures ain't one of them.
- There's a bit of a vicious cycle effect potentially in play there, yep. Just as well Thorax provided a work-around.
4431607
I saw that episode and even I forget about that. What are your feelings on the reformed changelings? I have mixed feelings about them. They are kind of cool, but at the same time we have more villains being reformed. I know its a kid's show at its heart, but MLP should also teach the lesson that not everything can be resloved with both parties agreeing to come together. I know that there have been villains that were not reformed, but now it feels like there are too many characters being reformed.
Also, I feel that there will be an increase of Discord and Fluttershy shipping after the episode. If it hasn't already.
Though Thorax being a new world leader would be interesting to see in your verse. Perhaps Celestia will become a sort of a mentor to help Thorax learn how to rule and deal with diplomatic relations? The only problem is you now have to update your blogs when we reach that point. I will shake my fist in anger while shouting Hasbro at the skies for you, so you are not distracted from updating your blogs.
4431698
Hmm. I'm reserving most of my judgement until we see them in action in the next season and see what they're really capable of. There's good and bad routes alike to go with them, and I'll see where the writing team goes. Redemption-wise, the episode was a mixed bag. You had the bulk of the changelings getting their moral compasses kicked into better alignment, aye, but then again, Chrysalis herself remained obstinately outwith the very possibility of reformation. She'd be fun to see reappear.
Alas, I've already resigned myself to some throwaway line or wholesale plot element of the show being bound to jettison the Palaververse sooner or later, and updating everything at that point would be a bit of a mug's game.
As for the those heathen Fluttercord shippers, have they not yet heard of the greatest OTP?
So there could very well be a changeling queen that's literally bigger than an elephant?
I doubt there'd be much opportunity for dragon-love-eating changelings, but a dragon changeling-queen would be quite the sight to see.