Supplemental Info: Summary of Changeling History by Simulacris and Belladonna · 11:00pm Nov 27th, 2015
More supplemental information for Princess Celestia: The Changeling Queen and Equestria's Changeling Queen and the Abyssal Empress. Enjoy!
Sister, I and Belladonna have put together a summary on the history of our kind for your reference. As you well know, traditions play a key role in our society, and your knowledge of our kind’s history is understandably out of date, and I think you will find this a very welcome refresher.
The origin of the changeling race is shrouded in mystery. What we do know is that we were created by one being or entity and that the being was female. The Great Creator, we call her. She gave birth (according to some accounts) or created the first changelings, who were also female, as well as the other changelings.
She vanished soon afterward however, and left the mantle of leadership to the first changelings she created, who became known as The Great Hive Mothers, the first changeling queens.
There were seven of these great queens, seven sisters. From oldest to youngest, they were Zagara, Borte I, Araneae, Theraphosia, Latrodexa, Atracina, and Matari.
Together they led the first hives, and most of them still exist today. Traditionally, one can tell the names of these hives by the fact they only use one word for their name. The fewer words used in the name of a hive, the more impressive.
Currently, Queen Sarar, leads “the Blades” which was the Great Hive Mother Araneae’s hive. Queen Shebar leads what used to be the Great Hive Mother Theraphosia’s “The Doomhorn.” Queen Borte the Fourth, leads “The Horde.” Chrysalis leads what used to be our mother, Chamelia’s hive, “The Evergreens.”
It is here I must make a bit of a divergence. I found this only after I ascended and when mother first gave me the Queens Council Crystal, but it turns out that our mother was the youngest daughter of the eldest of the Great Hive Mothers, Zagara. I also found out during my first Queens Council that Chamelia was the only daughter of the Great Hive Mothers left. If that is the case, our mother must have been… ancient… a queen of immense power and age. She was certainly a force to be reckoned with on the council, and her name is still invoked by some of the older queens, Sarar and Kagura.
But back to the topic. The years where the Great Hive Mothers lived were dangerous. Windigoes roamed the land, spreading discord to all, and depriving changelings of love. Monsters roamed not only in the Everfree Forest, but everywhere else.
Legend says that the Great Hive Mothers had colossal power though, and because they were all sisters, when they acted as one, they could easily defend their hives and deal with any threat. It is said that even Discord, the Lord of Chaos, wouldn’t attempt to antagonize the changelings if he had a choice.
Children however, complicated things. While the Great Hive Mothers remained loyal to each other despite the distances that often separated their hives, their children, though loyal to their mothers, were never very friendly with each other. They competed and fought, dragging their mothers into their conflicts, causing friction between the seven sisters. The incidents between the children of the Great Hive Mothers became so frequent, and so divisive, that the once close bonds the seven Great Hive Mothers had, were shattered.
Mother told me, and probably Belladonna, this before we left, but this led to the reason the Queens Council formed. A massive changeling war that broke out not too long before the arrival of the three Tribes that would form Equestria.
She called it, The Unspeakable Time.
And it was unspeakable. It all came to a head when a queen daughter of Queen Araneae of “The Blades,” defeated and killed one of the queen daughters of Queen Latrodexa of “The Venomous” and destroyed that hive in a dispute. Queen Latrodexa demanded Aranaea to give her daughter up, but Araneae refused. She loved her daughter too much. In retaliation, Queen Latrodexa and her daughters besieged Queen Araneae’s hive. Queen Araneae called in her daughters and asked Queen Borte I to help her.
Queen Borte I arrived with her “Horde” along with Araneae daughters and they engaged Queen Latrodexa and her spawn. Latrodexa and her daughters were defeated in a three day battle, and they fled to her sister Queen Theraphosia of “The Doomhorn”. Together, they engaged in a guerilla war against Queen Araneae and Queen Borte I.
The violence of this guerilla war could not be understated. It is said by legends it helped bring the Windigoes to the land that would become, while other tales point to how the war nearly revealed the hives to the native ponies.
This was when Queen Zagara, the eldest of the sisters, our grandmother, attempted to put a halt to the violence. She and her brood, which included our mother, was the largest of the Great Hive Mothers. The youngest of the Great Hive Mothers Queen Matari of “The Watchers” sided with Zagara. Together, they approached Queen Atracina of “The Deathspinners” in order to form a confederation that could put an end to the war and halt any fighting.
Queen Atracina accepted and the three sisters toasted that evening and separated to their own accommodations.
Belladonna and I both remember that when our mother, then Zagara’s heir, told us what happened next, she… she had a haunted look to her eyes Alternia. It was something she had never shown us and I am glad you never saw.
Atracina had intended to betray Matari and Zagara. She had wanted more power and saw the war as an opportunity to destroy her sisters, and become the unquestionable God Queen of the Changeling Race.
So she personally murdered Matari in her sleep and had her daughters attempt to assassinate our grandmother and her escort. Our mother found out and led a rescue party that just managed to extricate a half-dead Zagara. The Great Hive Mother had lost a leg, though according to mother, it was Matari’s murder that hurt our grandmother the most.
Zagara’s daughters, including our mother, declared treachery. As their mother lay in recovery, they, along with Matari’s daughters, turned their weapons on Atracina and her daughters. Enraged, they killed Atracina’s daughters and drove Atracina herself out of her own hive.
Queen Atracina fled to Latrodexa and Theraphosia’s camp. Our mother does not know how that kinslayer Atracina managed to forge an alliance but she did. The three hive mothers then launched a counter-offensive on Araneae and Borte’s hives. Driven from their hives, the two sisters, their few remaining daughters, and their decimated changeling forces, managed to find the daughters of Zagara, and were stunned at the tale of Atracina’s treachery.
Unsurprisingly, Atracina then betrayed her sisters again. She poisoned Latrodexa, Theraphosia and their daughters at the victory celebration. Theraphosia, known to be incredibly tough, managed to survive, as did her youngest daughter, who had not been of age to drink the beverage. They managed to escape the assassination, but Atracina forcibly conscripted Latrodexa’s changelings as well as Theraphosia’s.
The combined might of Zagara, who had finally recovered, her daughters, the daughters of Queen Matari, Queen Araneae and her spawn, and the horde of Queen Borte I, marched against Atracina after a month of recovery. There they found a crippled Theraphosia, her youngest daughter, and their few loyal chevaliers, who told them of what happened and joined the coalition. In a devastating campaign, the Four Great Hive Mothers battled the forces of Atracina, who had enlisted the wild monsters of the Everfree using hypnosis magic.
Finally, they confronted their last sister, executed her daughters, and smote Queen Atracina, dumping her body into the Ghastly Gorge for the animals. Only Thera, only a foal and not even a queen yet, the youngest daughter of Atracina, who had warned Zagara of her mother’s treachery, and thus saved our grandmother’s life, was spared and taken in by Queen Theraphosia.
However, the hive name of “The Deathspinners” was wiped from the list of the Great Hives, and Atracina became known by one title:
“The Traitorous One.”
To prevent such a thing from happening again, Queen Zagara, Queen Theraphosia, Queen Araneae and Queen Borte I created the Queens Council. They invented the Queen Stones, ways for all the queens to communicate with each other and so that they could assemble. They also established rules, such as the one forbidding hypnotism on beings unless in extreme circumstances.
Some of the Great Hive Mothers never fully recovered from The Unspeakable Times however, their strength exhausted, their hearts broken by the death of so many of their sisters and the betrayal of Atracina “Traitorous One.” Our grandmother was apparently one of them, and our mother told us that she had to spend many nights comforting Zagara.
It is in this moment of history that the kelpies became involved. Initially it was lone infiltrators disappearing, likely taken out by lone kelpies. This was worrying, but not difficult to counter as the hives adapted their strategies to have changelings travel in larger groups.
However, the attacks suddenly escalated. Groups of travelling changelings began to fall under attack, no matter how large. The Queens Council was convened, and it was then that they discovered that one of Queen Matari’s daughters did not show.
Queen Araneae volunteered to investigate. Leading a large company of changelings, Araneae found the hive empty, its inhabitants gone, likely devoured by the remnants of wings and horns. Tracking the kelpies, Queen Araneae was led to the sea, below a rocky cliff.
Where she fell right into a trap set by the kelpies and their queen. A horde of kelpies sprang upon the changelings and the Great Hive Mother, pinning them against the cliffs. Although Araneae fought valiantly, she was eventually overwhelmed, killed and devoured.
The three remaining Great Hive Mothers, upon hearing the news from the lone survivor of the attacks, were enraged. Led by Zagara and her lieutenant, our mother, the changelings set out on a punitive expedition to show the kelpies they would no longer be harassed.
Several long battles were fought by the changelings against the kelpies and their queen and casualties were high. The changelings however, led by the Great Hive Mothers, succeeded in driving the kelpies to the sea where they escaped. However, kelpies rarely resurfaced
According to Queen Sarar, our mother had told her that Queen Zagara made a deal with the Empress Samudra of Aquestria. The kelpies would be contained at sea by Empress Samudra. The Queens Council would make sure the kelpies were contained on land. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. Isolated kelpie attacks still continued, but they were rare and without the same frequency as before.
Unfortunately, the Great Hive Mothers had been so occupied by the battles during the Unspeakable Times and the campaign against the kelpies that they were blindsided by the arrival of the Three Tribes.
While there had always been ponies in the land that that would become Equestria, they were never so organized, and hence it was always quite easy to harvest love from them. The ponies of the Three Tribes were organized, and they also brought with them the strife and hate that had forced them from their original northern homes, and the Windigoes following them.
And so the Great Hive Mothers left one battlefield to fall into another. As Windigoes poured in and the land grew cold, they fought desperately to defend their own hives.
It is said that during this time, our mother decided to address the root cause of the Windigoes instead of just fighting them. Of her own initiative, she visited Clover the Clever, disguised as Starswirl the Bearded, to inform her of what the Windigoes were, hoping that she might piece together what was transpiring. The now Queen Thera, helped out by sowing misinformation in all three tribes so that their leaders and their subordinates ended up meeting in the same place.
And so the Windigoes were driven back by Clover the Clever’s Hearths Warming Heart, and the changeling survived to harvest the love from the new inhabitants of Equestria. But the time of the Great Hive Mothers was drawing to a close. Too many wars they had fought, and they were greatly fatigued. They were far wiser than they originally were, but even they could not stave off the inevitable march of time.
Queen Theraphosia, who had never quite recovered from being poisoned, died first, peacefully in bed. Queen Zagara, the eldest of the Great hive Mothers, followed not too long after, letting her titles and changelings fall to our mother. Ten years later, Queen Borte I also passed on. Unfortunately, she the misfortune of surviving just long enough to witness the beginning of Discord’s strife. She died, worried, though expressing confidence that our race would survive as they always would.
When Discord had begun to wreak havoc on Equestria’s inhabitants, the changelings had decided to lay low. His power was too great and the Queens could see no reason other than to stay hidden from his gaze.
Our mother Chamelia, then one of the most respected veterans of the Unspeakable Times, was not so sure. Few know this, but she had spent a lot of time infiltrating the new unified Equestria and quite admired the values they had been founded upon. She also realized Discord would turn their attention to the changelings in time.
Her prediction was right. Discord did and the changelings had to flee as their hives transformed into madhouses. Our mother and the members of the Queens Council fought Discord, delaying his approach so that their changelings could retreat and run to the four corners of the globe. This is why we have hives in Gryphonia, Saddle Arabia and Zebrica. The Queens succeeded, but they were eventually forced to withdraw.
It was quite lucky for them that Celestia and Luna sealed Discord with the Elements of Harmony and ushered in the longest period of peace that the changelings had seen. Our mother, ruled during this three hundred year period of peacetime, turning the Evergreen Hive into the largest and most powerful hive in the world.
Our mother ends her tale then, but the story as you know continues.
With our mother’s death and your disappearance during the events of Nightmare Moon’s rise, the situation changed. Equestria, as I’m sure you know underwent a period of instability as you started to rule. Moreover, as Chamelia, last of the daughters of the Great Hive Mothers had passed on the changelings lost some of their unity as there were no more major power brokers on the council.
It certainly explained why Belladonna hid her existence from Chrysalis. We had few allies and our hives were still rather small. In time however, our hives grew and Chrysalis and myself became major power brokers on the council.
A hundred years into your reign (though we didn’t know it back then) there was a major event that severely strained relations between the hives, and it was all Belladonna’s fault.
HEY!
Well it was. You know what happened to the Griffon viking “Blackwing the Terror” and the Zebrican Tale of Pundamilia and the Kivuli Usiki? Do you also know the Griffon shieldmaiden Warbeak and her defeat? Well Belladonna was all responsible for that.
Fine, I will explain.
It all started when Blackwing led his massive raiding party toward Equestria. He had been pillaging the lands south of the desert and intended to go north to continue his rampage. My hive at the time lay directly in its path and to my horror, Blackwing’s scouts discovered it by accident, though they didn’t see the changelings in it. Now under certain circumstances, it wouldn’t be too difficult for the entire hive to leave and get away, but there was a problem.
I was pregnant. So heavily pregnant that I had difficulty moving and I was told by my doctor that the birth itself would be difficult as it appeared I was going to have twins. In fact, my hive had experienced a record number of births and there were many larvae in the incubation chambers that simply could not be moved.
Hence, I made the decision to fight.
The Saga of Blackwing the Terror is accurate enough in respect of the battle. My changelings infiltrated his army, attacked from within while others came from the sky.
My secret allies in the council later told me that holding my ground had severe repercussions on the changelings in Gryphonia. Suddenly, they were all looking for the black demons Blackwing’s surviving Gryphons had described. Love gathering became very difficult and because nobody knew who had confronted Blackwing, the various queens in the council started to bicker.
And what was worse was that my changelings were practically decimated, and the hive itself was burnt to the ground.
I had since given birth to two beautiful daughters, both queens. Their names were Scea and Grennel, and so I fled to Zebrica where I met Pundamilia.
If you have read the Zebrican Legend of Pundamilia, then you might be familiar with the story. Anyhow Pundamilia was a Zebrican shamanness, a very young one, barely a teenager. I had originally kidnapped her to have her treat my changelings. Instead, she helped out of her own free will and eventually, we became friends.
Later I saved her life after she returned to her village from a group of marauders, and much to my surprise, her fellow zebras welcomed my hive to stay among them. And so we did for several long years. During that time I learnt all I know about herbs, Zebrican potion making, and their shaman arts.
Finally, I saw fit to establish a new hive separately in Zebrica and bid Pundamilia goodbye. What I didn’t know was that it was for the last time.
For when I returned two years later to Pundamilia’s village only to find it had been raided by Gryphon Vikings. My friend had been killed, and her zebra kin slaughtered, there were no survivors.
Furious, I moved my hive to Gryphonia, tracking the viking band that had killed my friend to a Gryphonian Viking Hall. For weeks, I and my twin daughters, who had grown to love Pundamilia as an aunt, terrorized that Viking Hall, killing the murderers one by one in their sleep, one every night.
That was when Warbeak arrived. Lying in wait, she bided her time until my daughter Scea was there and attacked. In the ensuing duel, Warbeak ripped Scea’s left foreleg off and killed her.
Grief took me, and I fled. I had seen what cost my rash vengeance had took me. I knew from my informants that the Queens Council was in an uproar about what was going on in Gryphonia, though they had no idea that I was responsible.
I was not quite willing to let my anger go however. So I laid low, I waited for years after Grennel left my hive (she is still alive, but she was snowed in at Yakyakhistan, which is why she couldn’t make it to the council), until Warbeak was older, slower, but she was also far wiser.
If you know the Legends of Warbeak well, you know that she died, facing honorable combat against a dragon that had encroached on her lands. I was that dragon, for I had briefly used that transformation to lure Warbeak in and to scare Warbeak’s companions away and therefore isolate her so I could fight her without the suspicion of the Queens Council.
It worked, and Warbeak was quite shocked I transformed back into my changeling form. Honorable as she was, she welcomed the duel though and we fought. After a long duel I landed a mortal blow and then disappeared as Warbeak’s companions finally returned.
This time, the Queens Council did not suspect a thing, but my earlier actions had already had a consequence. The Queens were now far more scrutinizing of the movements of Queens, so I hid my hive and simply bided my time, avoiding all contact. You know what happened next.
And that is a brief history of the changeling queens. If you got any more questions, Alternia, feel free to ask.
Particularly if those questions are those related to changeling intimacy. The “Mating Flight” in particular.
As Alternia put the pages of the summary down, she groaned. “Oh not again…”
Reference info for Great hive Mothers.
Zagara (Starcraft 2), Borte I (Wife of Ghenghis Khan), Araneae (latin for spider), Theraphosia (derived from latin of tarantula), Latrodexa (derived from latin for widow family of spider), Atracina (derived from latin for funnel spider family), and Matari (derived from Mata Hari, famous spy in World War I).
So, did you all like that? I had great fun writing it.
Indeed
Impressive!
Now write the one making Alternia groan in embarrassment!
Quite interesting.
You put Zebrica twice. Was this on purpose?
I like it!
Especially how it fits in with the tidbits of info we've been getting throughout the story and its prequel.
this should be a side story about the history
Whoa, that's a lot to take in. Worth it, though.
I liked this, but there's one thing I don't understand: why is this a post and not a side story?
3573465 3573031
I didn't think people would be interested enough... maybe a side story is in order...
That's a lot of Latin names for spiders, do you do Entemology for a hobby or something?
3576708 Nope :P
a good read helps to know more backstory and i vote yes on that sidestory :)
Aand there is a lot of the information I had been wondering about in terms of Chamelia and her mother/Aunts. You'd alluded to the 'Great Betrayer' quite a few times, but I had never found her in one of your stories.
Honestly, I'd love to see a short story from Chamelia or even her mother's point of view. It sounds like it would be a good read. :D
4256490 She was in another of my supplementary INfo blogs... see here:
http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/567828/supplemental-info-summary-of-changeling-history-by-simulacris-and-belladonna
4257724 ooh! Thank you!
4257747 Woops. Just realized that The Great Betrayer is something that has never occurred to in the stories and that I only alluded to her in my stories based on this blog post.
4258026
Heh, it's all good. Figured that oUT for myself pretty quickly.