Jul
18th
2016
Questions about the Hyperverse · 4:45pm Jul 18th, 2016
So, especially including the archive of the questions Scourge asked, that last one got long. If you've got questions about the Hyperverse, even just including what people are doing or look like, as long as they aren't too spoilery, feel free to ask them here.
Edit: Semi-closing for the week; anything larger than a sentence or two will have to wait until next week so I get some actual writing done, rather than a thousandish words about what Sunset Shimmer looks like naked, and a thousand and a half about what the EqG 'verse is like, and only about 750 on Oranges. Someone ping me next Sunday instead of Monday and I'll have more time to answer.
Was there an apartheid of hyper and not so ponies? What happens if a hyper pony impregnate a normal pony and vice versa? Is pregnancy with hyper pony any different from pregnancy with a normal pony? What is the size difference between hyper and normal?
4099495 More mares vs. stallions. Hyper genetics are a cluster of different genes and environmental influences that don't always manifest in full; once the editing is done, you'll meet Aunt and Uncle Orange, who have hyper proportions but aren't hypers, even though Mosely (UO) is an Apple and all of his sisters, including AJ's parents, were hypers. Apples throw a lot of hypers, even more than earth ponies in general. The usual rule there is Earth Ponies% > Unicorn% > Pegasus%, with unicorns being about on the 25% dot.
Hypers aren't a distinct subspecies as a result. Two hyper parents are much more likely to have hyper kids, but not extraordinarily so, and they'll show up in normal families from time to time. Night Light and Twilight Velvet are both normals, and Shiny hit 7' while in boot camp, with a fireplug build more suited to an eight footer.
So, similarly, pregnancy and breeding with hypers is completely normal, other than the fact that it's generally easier to give birth once you've been exposed to the stretching magic of hyper anatomy a few times, or if you have it yourself. There's currently no reliable way to tell if a kid is going to grow up to be a hyper until second puberty hits around 18-22 anyway; think 1930s-1950s era genetics knowledge. Twilight's correspondence with Sunset may change that rapidly.
Alicorns are different; all alicorns are hypers.
On mares vs. stallions, that came and went; when the Harmony-based alicorns were plentiful, equality was pretty much the rule (crystal spires and togas sort of civilization). When the Fading Plague hit, some unfortunate things happened, and propagated. The gender ratio imbalance and odd social structure of the pre-agricultural herds that's a part of pony genetic heritage didn't have to hit a maretriarchy, but it did, and there were some truly ugly things that Celestia and Luna had to clean up. Nonetheless, stallions had only slightly better lives than women in our world did during medieval Europe by the time Luna was banished, which is where part of her difficulties with dealing with Hopper and males in general come from.
I note that said "during medieval Europe" is both better than most people expect and widely varied by territory, both in our history and Epona's. We have historical documentation of women not merely serving as castellans, stewards, defensive military coordinators, etc, but also widows/dowagers/spinsters with their own castles and tendencies to seize delectable youths for ... fun... rather than marriage, though that was the exception, rather than the rule. Similarly, widows could inherit and run their husbands' businesses. In many ways, it was the Renaissance obsession with Greco-Roman history that threw back a lot of womens' rights and set the stage for later excesses.
Celly squished the Equestrian equivalent very firmly. She prefers to rule by example, teaching, and subtle manipulation, but there's some shit she won't tolerate.
The only questions I have now are, now that they have been revealed to exist, what are the origins of Futa/Herm ponies-(Genetic, magical, or something else)? Is there a similar skew of the trait between Hypers/Normals, and Earth/Unicorn/Pegasus ponies? Can we get an in-universe explanation of why the lack of alicorns displaying the trait?
(Sorry for being fixated on this. It's just; stories that don't have it, I accept as not having it; but stories that seem to not have it, yet do, are rather odd and intriguing.)
4099660 The origins of the third sex are lost to time, and a local reality reboot, and that's fairly deliberate from an authorial standpoint.
In terms of proportions, the three tribes are about equal, each roughly around a third of the population, with a slight lean towards earth ponies, since they tend to be healthier. The following numbers are way too neat to be the actual statistics, but they'll work as roughs:
Earth ponies: 30% hyper
Unicorns: 25% hyper
Pegasi: 20% hyper
Actual population overall hovers thus a little bit above 25% because, again, more earth ponies. Hypers will show up disproportionately in my work because it's my kink, much like earth ponies show up a lot in the show because that's the basic, recognizable form.
Similar rough, the actual is more wild percents of sexes (presuming gender dysphoria pushes those who seek magical means of correction in roughly concurrent numbers):
75% female
15% male
10% futa
This is also why no futa alicorn has shown up yet, though one will if certain things go as planned.
Of the twelve living alicorns, three are natural born (Celly, Luna, and Flurry). That's only about a roughly 42% chance of happening, but the probability at birth is still the same each time. This is also why the Fading Plague basically wiped out the alicorn population; in small numbers, you're going to see big skews.
Hopper doesn't count. He was literally made as much as born, and he wasn't even a physical being until between Seasons 3 and 4. The rest of his ancestry is even more complicated.
The Elements aren't chosen at random, though they are selected from the populace at large. I'm not going to speculate too much on how they were chosen, since that's in the show's hand. Similarly, Cadance was a unique soul. For the purposes of my statistics, I'm assuming that only Cadance could have just been any sex, and so the chance of her being female stands at 75%.
Edit: as per prior conversation, like Cadance, Sunset's life path is independent enough of prior concerns to have no relationship to the others, and the mental dice can therefore roll futa, and did.
Statistics get wonky with small sample sizes, and alicorns have always been small sample sizes.
4099660 Addendum, congratulations, you just got a futa alicorn made. I realized I'd forgotten somepony, a twelfth alicorn:
Sunset Shimmer. I have no reason not to make her a futa, so, there we go. Cyberpunk Baconhair is go.
Leeettt's go add that to the gdoc before you forget, me.
4099704
Hang on, one sec...
01. Celestia
02. Luna
03. Cadance
04. Twilight
05. Rarity
06. Fluttersy
07. Rainbow
08. Applejack
09. The Pink One
10. Hopper
11. Flurry
12. ???4099712...Wait, Sunset?!?!?
4099712
...I love you.
4099722 ... goddamnit I counted Barb as an Alicorn again. She's a sin-eater dragonness, me, get it right!
Continuing off of the last thing, so how big was the island that Twilight one punched? Are we talking tiny sand bar, small forest, the size of Everest, etc.? How much effort went into said punch?
Also, you mentioned that magic is more important than brawn, so what kind of things do they do in magic? Is it just raw power blasts like in the show or do they use some kind of magical hax(i.e. attacking the soul, forming portals, solar flares, etc.)?
4099750 Decent sized. Not Hawai'i Island itself, but one of the ones you could actually see on an old style map, and it was upper level exertion for her back then. I'm reluctant to be too precise here because I do want some room for flexibility, so I think I'm going to leave it at that.
Magic is pretty open-ended. It fits into Pathfinder/D&D style categories (mostly...) but with GURPS magic level of flexibility and little skills... if you study it. And a "wizard" doesn't fire-and-forget spells, so the spontaneous vs. practiced is even more fluid; a spell is a skill, like GURPS. The difference is mainly the source, and how magic flows. Again, I hesitate to use this because I'm not straitjacketing myself, but you have sort of two splits: active casters, and passive "normals." A "normal" is a unicorn who can empower their telekinesis and their special talent and little else; Rarity would be an example of a mistress of this, with massive multitasking agility.
A theoretical non-Alicorn Rarity, like in the show, could study to become a full on sorcerer like Twilight (though Twilight is probably closer to a wizard even before becoming an alicorn; again, these are concepts, not straitjackets), but it's not as easy for someone whose special talents lean that way, like Twi, Trixie, Sunset, or Starlight. Rainbow Dash is a passive pegasus; AJ, an earth pony. They both draw on some "active" abilities-- manual weather control and plant health-- in addition to passive things like flight/super-strength & stamina, but those are just inherencies.
Active earth pony casters are extremely rare. Functionally, they're spontaneous caster to practiced caster druids, like sorcerer to wizard unicorns. Mac is... sort of that, sort of a ranger, sort of weird. There are very few of them left; Pinkie's father and probably mom are Confectionist druids with deep ties to the physical elements rather than the living Green and Red (thank you, DC); Uncle Orange, Mosely, is a fertility druid who can draw on 'sacrifices' of orgasmic fluids to do things like turn an orange-tree wood door into something harder than ironwood, for example. Most of them were slaughtered by the unicorn aristocracy prior to the first Windigo invasion.
The royal family didn't want the nobles getting too much power, and recognized that this was really shortsighted in terms of, y'know, food production, and helped a few major druidic lines to escape; the Apples are the biggest. Most of the others are small clans; the Confectionists are scattered, and the tie between, say, the Pies, who still have the old ways and magics, and the Cakes, who don't, is pretty thin. This is part of why the unicorns were still the major magical and political force at the time of the Invasion and Migration, despite pegasus military superiority and earth pony edge in hypers.
The aristocracy was assisted in this by the pegasus military junta, who rose up a few generations before the Druidic Purge and slaughtered their religious/magical caste, the oracles. They were so thorough and effective that no one even knows what the oracles could do, besides "weather stuff" and "tell the future, maybe?" I have BIG plans along those lines, so I'm not going to go into too much detail, but let's just say it's more complicated than that. The junta basically traded favors with the aristocracy to get it done.
One of the things the oracles did was keep the Windigo, demon children of Chrysalis the Mind-Eater, at bay.
Commander Hurricane, in turn, led an internal coup against the junta, but it was several generations past even the Druidic Purge. One of the reasons he never trusted the others was because he could imagine the earth ponies wanting revenge and understood the power imbalance of the sorcerous might of the unicorns. He was also a bit bitter that the royal family didn't slap the aristocracy down until his people were defanged on their most active magic.
Even Celly and Luna don't know how to use oracle magic, though like any alicorn, they can access it. They can use druid magic; Celly is extremely good at it. More importantly, Applejack is very good at it these days and she's been putting what she knows to work with Twilight; that, and some tricks from up north (as well as better gemstone supplies) are the basis of the crystal industrial revolution. Luna never really got into it.
As a caveat, an earth pony can learn to be a druid even if that isn't their talent, it's just hard. They can even learn to use arcane magic, it's just very, very, very hard. Ditto pegasi, unicorns, for druidery, sorcery, etc. Oraclisms are possible, but not likely; there haven't been any since before the slaughter; pegasi have always been the most insular of the tribes. They have something in common with the priests and shamanly types of other races and out-Equestrian ponies, but it's not exactly the same.
So yes, magical hax is very much in effect. If you look in the show, it's there, too, just rarer, and in a brawl, they tend to devolve into blasts. Think Twilight's "tricks" list.
4099891 The show is kind of weird with that. Yeah, there's plenty of hax, but everyone fights in a very blunt fashion that essentially comes down to "my power level is higher than yours".
Anyway, how does transfiguration affect a target that has a higher magic pool than the caster if the target in question doesn't have a counter spell? Does it work just fine, or can they ignore the transformation(an example of ignoring the transformation would be the frog Twilight turns into an orange back in Season 3, the frog can still act normally despite being made into an orange)
4099931 Depends on the caster, the spell, how successful, etc. It also depends on the target. S1 Twilight was caught when petrified; Hunting Season Twilight, even if you could petrify her, could break herself out. She's just too magical on a level down to her very soul.
4099891
So, Nassau/New Providence, then.
4099938 Possibly/probably. As a side note, please note that anything I put up in a blog is subject to change, especially if the story needs it. :)
4099942
Understood, TB!
What's the minimum each alicorn can lift over their head through physical brawn? I say minimum so that things don't get into spoilerish or set in stone territory, but if that's too precise a thing, then that's okay too.
4100201 I haven't thought about it. AJ and Rarity can destroy magically reinforced castles and if I remember the scale right, shatter mountains on their own. Dash and Flutters are the weakest of the adults-- Flutters all the more so. I mean, technically, Bulk Biceps is nearly as strong as she is and he's "just" a 9' tall hyper, but he's in the running for top ten mortals period, and I haven't put that into words much. I may go lower or I may go higher, but remember in the cartoon when Maud sent a boulder flying into the horizon? Flutters is stronger than that.
Let's say a hundred tons to start. These are gods, and not Marvelverse gods, either, more like restrained fantasy pantheons (and there are things that remove their limits if need be); Fluttershy may not work out or do combat practice much, but she is the incarnation of life, kindness, and necromancy evolving to death. Her flesh is not like mortal flesh.
4100201 Oh, the minimum for each, not the weakest alicorn? There really isn't a minimum. Microcontrol is a wonderful thing. They can be as gentle as a feather falling free if they want to.
4100216 Are you saying they're stronger or weaker than the Marvelverse gods? Or simply different incomparable due to different approaches to things?
In any case, if I'm understanding your point correctly, even if Fluttershy is a light weight physically speaking, her embodiment of life, kindness, and all that jazz makes her hit far above her weight class? Speaking of which, sorry if this is spoilerish to ask, but it's mentioned that she can heal and give life. Can she do the reverse and drain life as well?
4100226 The alicorns are much stronger. Even pre-MCU, marvelverse gods were really mostly just "strong aliens" with the exception of pantheon leaders and cosmic entities. And basically, spiritual heftiness increases things like how efficient the preternatural/metanatural hyper-efficiency of your muscles (and the leverage weirdness, I call it an Archimedes Void) is. So since Flutters is pretty potent, like all of the elementals, she's stronger than her gymnast-under-super-hourglass build would suggest.
And yes. Flutters can give life and she can take it away in massive amounts. She can bring every soul on a battlefield that hasn't completely ejected from its spirit core back to life who is willing to come, and unless you have very strong magical defenses, she could probably wipe everyone out. It's just sort of indiscriminate and risky doing either. That's why even if the only two around are Hopper and Flutters, Hopper's job is "protect Fluttershy," not "take charge."
4100296 Oh, you mean the "regular" Marvelverse gods, okay. For a second, I thought you meant people like Thor and Odin who blow up planets and galaxies(respectively) as accidents in a fight. I won't lecture on how to write your characters, but it was just confusing to me that alicorns who seem to be around continent level would be stronger than them. But yeah, no doubt they're stronger than the guys that Venom was eating for lunch(literally).
And yeah, I can imagine why Hopper's job is protection in this case. Soul hax is broken as Hell. On a side note, I now have a strong desire to see Fluttershy in Shao Kahn's attire for her soul magic, lol.
4100454 Enh. A lot of that stuff is pretty new, and I gave up on most mainstream comics back in the turn of the millennium. I still think of them mostly in the sense of the silver age through 80s. But yes, Hopper is meat shield, Flutters is squishy wizard. :) On a divine scale.
4100495 So if Flutters is all about souls and life and Twilight is good at everything, what can the other alicorns do in terms of specializations?
It's more complicated than that. Each major alicorn represents three concepts. They don't know what Flurry's are because she doesn't have her cutie mark; they don't know what Hopper's are because his parents just smile and make cryptic statements.
In addition to the following, you'll notice that Cadance and the five non-Twi Elements have a concept in parens; that's what the concept it's near turns into. Magic is a lot to put on one person's shoulders, and Twi needed help; as well, the elements flow from the interlocking bases of magic.. The next cohort of alicorns will mostly be single-concept alicorn deities (with the exception of all of Celly's children, most of Luna's, and some of Twilight's) and then most of the first-generation children will be archangel-equivalents, with angelic-equivalent children, but that's neither here nor there. Among the children of each marked 'evolved' will be someone who takes over from their parent, who will then blossom into some superior aspect. One of Fluttershy's children, for example, will inherit Necromancy, and mom will have Death proper.
The name after the dash is their archmage. Note that neither Luna nor Celestia are giving up their favored forms of primary magic, thanks.
Everything - Twilight Sparkle - Starlight Glimmer
Magic, Stars, and Friendship
Twi will not lose magic, but one of her children will be the archmage specifically looking after generalist mages for her.
Abjuration - Applejack - Shining Armor
Abjuration (Protection), Honesty and the Earth
Conjuration - Pinkie - Cheese Sandwich
Laughter, Conjuration (Luck), and Celebration
Divination - Rarity - Minuette
Generosity, Divination (Foresight), and Nobility
Enchantment - Cadence - Reserve for a Crystal Pony (haven't figured this out yet, working on it and reserving time for show stuff)
Love, Lust, Enchantment (Communication)
Evocation - Rainbow Dash - Moon Dancer
Loyalty, Evocation (Still working on this. Something that suggests hermes-likeness but not just speed), Storms
Illusion - Luna - Trixie
Moon, Illusions, and Dreams
Necromancy - Fluttershy - Derpy Hooves
Kindness, Life, and Necromancy (Death)
Transmutation - Celestia - Super spoilers, I know who but I'm not saying.
Sun, Perfection, and Transmutation
In other situations than magical alone, Celestia is the High Princess; there is none who equals her and the weight she has carried. Luna is the Warmistress of Equestria and second senior-most princess; her word is law over the others is Celestia's absence. Cadance is the ruler of the Crystal Empire in fief to Celestia and Luna. The others fill in certain matters of executive function from time to time; Rarity, for example, is often called to take over Day or Night court if one of the others is absent.
In terms of other roles, Twilight is Celestia and Luna's personal deputy, diplomat, and when called for, hatchetmare. She leads the Elements in battle and is generally considered to be in charge wherever she is if Celestia or Luna don't directly overrule her, or Cadance within the grounds of the Empire.
Rarity is primarily Twilight's second in matters civil and military. She's a personal fighter, capable of leadership on a large scale but better at using her divinatory talents and multitasking abilities to unify and "weave" together disparate elements into a larger whole. If Twilight or Starlight aren't leading any active casters around, Rarity generally tends to, and is third best at using pegasus weather control (after Rainbow Dash, then Twilight) and Earth Pony druidic magic (after Applejack, then Twilight). Nonetheless, she's considered to be the unofficial representative of the unicorn kind at court, something she primarily finds annoying; she sees the nobility and goodness in all tribes. And is tired of explaining that she represents nobility of soul and mind, not inherited power.
Fluttershy is generally a medic on the battlefield. Most ponies know her as a spokeswoman for the nonsapient creatures of Epona, and a gentle hand with disaster relief. Most ponies keep forgetting she's the goddess of necromancy. Pretty much everyone knows that healers work with her or with Pinkie, and she's easier to understand. Her primary public servants are the Caretakers, of whom Tree Hugger is senior. Modernish druidish, not quite druids, not quite not. She's also served by white necromancers, undead hunters, and beings of that nature. Most people honestly assume Tree Hugger is her archmage, rather than the real holder of the title. She primarily works to make sure that neither side dies, or that only the other guys do if they can't be knocked out effectively or the worst of the worst shows up.
Pinkie is the Pink One. Don't ask, just run.
Applejack is the head of the land-based forces that aren't mages, subordinate to Luna. This includes not just earth ponies and flightless nonponies, but also TK-and-special talents only unicorns. Technically, Twilight is in charge of druids on the org charts, but Twi isn't stupid enough to dispute Applejack there for a matter of pride. Applejack is the unofficial representative of earth ponies at court, and the very official representative of the druids. She is less annoyed than Rarity, among other reasons because she has less aristocratic equivalents to deal with. She does have a larger percentage of traditionalists and neotraditionalists to yell at, and as the Maretriarch of the Apples is sometimes split between her family and her duty. She can take it; she is Honesty.
Rainbow Dash is the head of air-based forces, subordinate to Luna, which mostly means pegasi and some flying non-pony citizens. She's also in charge of weather planning for Equestria, and close enough allies who request it. She also does emergency relief when she can. Technically she's the Pegasus unofficial representative at court, but that mostly involves a lot of yelling at old pegasus military families, so no one is concerned about it.
4100567
Alacrity, perhaps?
4100811 I've been considering that and celerity, but none of them quite _fit_. Thankfully, Dashie's first pregnancy is further off than two others I could name.
4101132
What, exactly, do you mean?
4101145 Something of the messenger, something of the trickster. In the far-flung future, when Celestia has bowed to her nature and lead both the deity-class alicorns and the racial deities from other species (who only get one each) to recede to the spiritual realms saving emergencies, one (and a half, it's complicated) will remain. Rainbow Dash will never leave the skies of Epona, and the rainbows will always remind mortals of harmony. Hers are the messengers. Buuuut she's still going to be Rainbow, which means pranks. :)
4101153
...Covenant, then, probably. Maybe, perhaps not. I don't feel too confident here.
However, Alacrity still seems much more apropos, as it is as much about the promise-(both of speed, and nonchalant willingness to serve) as it is an actual description of quickness.
4101180 I have at least 200Kish words before it's really next important so. >.>
What is the ratio of hypers in Equestria to normal ponies?
4118396 Hypers make up about a quarter of the population as a whole. Being a hyper, really going all the way is actually a cluster of genetic traits that don't show up all the time. Some of them will show up in part, especially if they have something that brings in the right type of mystic 'fuel' to the body; partial hypers like the Oranges are more common among earth ponies, for example. It is possible, for example, to have a 7' 'normal' pony show up who unfortunately gets mistaken for a hyper at the wrong time. It's not very likely, though; think an even smaller proportion of 6'6" to 7'4" types that you see in the NBA and whatnot because most of them will have sufficient genetic load to go hyper anyway. There are also fireplug hypers-- the 6'6" to just <7' types-- who tend to be more broadly built because the "build muscle" gains and "broad skeletal frame" effects (note that this is WAY oversimplified-- genes aren't blueprints and all that) are still in effect. There are even hypers with relatively normal genitalia relative to their size! And there are flat-out shrimp hypers like Blueblood who have other issues... honestly, his is probably poor health as a kid. We'll be seeing him soon, though.
Incidentally, there's also a very low incidence of actual suffering-the-syndrome gigantism phenotypical ponies. I use StS there, because RL, people from gigantism often have some very tragic health issues. Not only would a normal earth pony or any hyper with the syndrome have alternate means of enhanced health, because medical/magical professionals have an example of "how to make this work," even prior to the current industrial and scientific revolution, it was usually easily treatable. I don't know that they'd even recognize gigantism as a disorder by that name; probably something more like nutritional-deficiency or mana-deficiency etc. hyper and treat accordingly.
Dwarfism is roughly as common among normal ponies as it is RL for humans; for the reasons above, it doesn't tend to show up in hypers, or if it does, it's usually not connected to the same genetic incidents.
IE, tl; dr here, genetics are complicated and I'm using very round numbers for pure convenience factor.
What are beast-people like as a race here? By beast-people, I mean Tirek and Scorpan's people. Unless he and Scorpan would just be considered demons and as such, are just kind of a random look with no official species.
4135866 Enh. Haven't decided yet. In the comics, of course, they're flat out a race that is both centaurs (Tirek) and gargoyles (Scorpan). Which... doesn't honestly make a lot of sense to me. At the moment, my plan for Tirek personally is to be one of Maze's more powerful corrupted from before hir mutilation and being body-locked, who broke free to try to establish his own domain when Maze thus succumbed. Whether that means he was some separate race before being mutated or not, I'm not sure, and I'm playing close to the vest on him to see if the comics eventually get less-ludicrous there, or get contradicted in official canon.
Other bestial races exist, of course, like Diamond Dogs, and I merged the talking cows with the Minotaurs. The deer from the comics are there too, as are donkeys, of course. More might show up as I need them or get inspired.
4135888 What of the sirens? Did they look the same or were their giant sea serpent forms anthro?
4135892 The sirens are flat out demonic entities, the creations of Chrysalis in an earlier age, like the Windigo. Maze devoured most of them; the three in EqG may have been the last three in existence. As for forms, I suspect they had normal sized anthro forms that turned into the monstrous non-anthro ones we see in their projections, and size overall is dependent on power, experience, and shenanigans I come up with for plot.
What do baby hypers look like? At what point does the "hyperness" start showing? More specifically, what's Flurry like?
4135908 You can't tell if someone's going to be hyper or not until second puberty around 18 to 22 for most, though there are late and early bloomers. Flurry's still a child-- in the Crystal Empire Magic Kindergarten and being tutored by Sunburst (and his wife, Starlight, when she has time on visits), so even though she's a natural hyper, just like Hopper, she has two growth spurts to go, and she's normalish for her age at the moment.