On Seaponies (sealponies) · 9:11pm Dec 22nd, 2018
As I'm writing, I'd like to share some thoughts on seaponies. Not the hippogryph/seapony magical hybrids, but the original seaponies that lived in the sea long before Equestria was Equestria. All headcanon ahead, so brace for impact.
Seapony diversity
One of the things I've been working on involves the cold northern ocean, and not the northern ocean in the show map, there's no rail bridge connecting the two continents in this headcanon world, and too much storm-torn and ice-flow strewn water to make a safe crossing by ship, either.
And that kind of ocean clime, where temperatures reach below zero and are only kept from freezing because of the saltiness of the water, requires, I think, a different kind of seapony. Enter hybrids of other creatures. Such as:
The sealponies
I didn't want to abandon the idea that they can breathe underwater, so that's just a part of all seaponies magical nature, including sealponies. They still have their magical means of underwater breathing, but instead of a pony coat and fish scales, they have a seal's thick pelt all over, and instead of a fishtail or a seahorse tail, seal flippers. They still have forelegs with hooves, equine ears, mane, and an equine body fore of the hindquarters, but their back quarter is mammalian instead of piscean (fishy) in nature.
The thick pelt helps them to survive in the ravaging cold of the northern waters, and thrive where few other sea creatures that could be a threat to them can survive. They can defend themselves against predators with weapons of coral and stone, and rarely of metal - it rusts quickly. They also possess, as do all seapony variants, a magical voice that lets them exert control over their environs in different ways through song and, more rarely, spoken spells.
All seaponies can breathe above water for short periods of time, upwards of half an hour, I tend to think, but sealponies can take that to a new extreme, and are able to survive above water indefinitely, but absolutely prefer below water due to their inability to move at all gracefully on land and their inability to use their song to affect things not in water. Seapony song requires the magic inherent to the sea to work, the modulation of magic and sound together to create a harmonic magical frequency amplified by the sea.
And, to address the sea-elephant in the room:
Hippogryphs / Seaponies
Hippogryph seaponies are not natural seaponies. True, they've acclimated, but their nature means they can be above or below water at will (and with magical assistance), even if they started above water as hippogryphs. The headcanon idea I have is that when the Storm King threatened them, they fled to the shore, and a clan of seaponies encouraged them to change shape and escape with them, lending their own tropical seapony forms to the task.
sounds like you put in a good bit of work on this
4984743
Been thinking about seaponies for a few years. On and off. Just borrowed a few ideas from a few older ideas and put them in a blender with a bit of magicy goodness.
4984754
came out a nice end product