Contrary to the complex hierarchy of the Celestian Royal Guard, Luna’s Night Guard follow a more horizontal approach. They are separated into six castes, each of them representing a certain duty, believe and philosophy and led by an elected Corporal. These Corporals are themselves led by a Commander, equivalent to the Royal Guard Captain, who rules over his siblings in Luna’s name.
Before proceeding it should be noted that the importance of the caste system is easily overestimated: it was implemented only during the Twilight War and served as a means to organize the Night Guard into specialized units better suited for combat. Now, in times of peace, its significance has dwindled dramatically. Every Guard partakes in each of their duties and their castes merely signify the one they favour. Joining one is optional and leaving not an issue, and most of the Night Guard tread theirs rather like a sports team, like something to brag about over a pint of Moonshine, not like an order within the order.
However, the castes still possess the plethora of perks that have always given them their unique characters: a creed, an iconic task, and a specific approach to the faith of the moon. The Night Guard are convinced that in their entirety, the six castes represent the spirit of the night in its true and entire nature; enacting that believe, each of them has taken one of the lunar phases as their heraldic symbol. Let us take a closer look at them.
Moon Smiths
Flying the banner of the waxing crescent, the Moon Smiths are weavers, crafters and builders. Their original duty was to provide their siblings with arms and amour for battle, and still today they forge the heavy plate mail worn by the guards protecting the silver princess. Since the war is over, however, their duties have changed dramatically. With weapons now in low demand, they are pursuing other ways of craftsmanship: they brew Moonshine, an infamous, highly intoxicating beverage distilled from fermented moon rays, and provide their siblings on Equestria with food, clothing and equipment. But most of all, they delight in the art of Whispering: breathing visions into the minds of dreamers, images to inspire artists, explorers and scholars alike.
Many groundbreaking ideas of Equestrian history were the result of such Whispers; a fact that the Moon Smiths take great pride in. Concerning their philosophy, their most distinguishing trait is most likely their optimism, their conviction that even in the depths of despair, a solution can and will always be found. Their current leader is Corporal Stardust. Their creed: The Light We Forge.
Dream Keepers
The Dream Keepers are the Night Guard caste most closely linked to the Element of Kindness, representing the waxing half moon in her role as mother and healer both. Their creed reads Her Guidance, and they preach the ideas of tolerance and understanding as the most important teachings of the night. All beings dream, and in dreams they all are Luna’s children. Even the most zealous of the Celestian Solari will eventually settle down, close their eyes and pay tribute to the silver princess. The Keepers’ iconic duty has stayed the same it always has been: cleansing dreamers from nightmares that they themselves created. Such nightmares are the result of a soul’s inner disharmony. They are fears and doubts made manifest, and dispelling them is an extremely delicate task that requires empathy, tact and care. So great is their importance that Princess Luna often sees to these issues herself, and the Dream Keepers are much revered for shouldering such a responsibility.
While not very numerous, their ranks include some of the oldest and most powerful Night Guard alive; their very first Corporal, Moon Petals, still leads them today. Yet they see themselves as mere messengers of Luna’s mercy. Like parents cradle their children, they will carry the grace and serenity of night, and with every soul that may rest in peace they will do their lady’s humble work.
Silver Guard
Strength, honour and perseverance are the words best suited to describe the stalwart Silver Guard caste. They gather beneath the full moon, when the night is at its brightest and the principles of twilight almost forgotten. The light is their element and they protect it with a stubbornness that has long become legend: above, they are the brightest stars of all, burning away the horrors of the outer spheres with their determination; below, they guard their beloved princess, pull her chariot or watch over her sleep during the day – often until dropping from exhaustion. No other caste is as uncompromising, no other caste suffers so many casualties on such a regular basis. In the last millennium, the Silver Guard has seen the passing of three dozen Corporals. Their current leader, Fervent Gleam, was elected less than a decade ago.
Their direct, honest mindset has earned them a reputation of being “Royal Guard in black” – truth is, their rivalry with Celestia’s chosen is much more than just a rumour. They agree to these slanders, too: from their own point of view, they are like Royal Guard, just darker, thus better, stronger and fiercer. Even their creed, Gold to Silver, is a direct provocation to their diurnal kin – and, according to them, a proper vision of things to come.
Dream Reapers
The Dream Reaper caste carries the sigil of the waning half moon and its members see themselves as the complimentary element of their cousins, the Dream Keepers. Their creed is Our Faith, and it represents their relationship perfectly: their work is essentially the same, but the other way around: action instead of patience, destruction instead of healing, judgement instead of tolerance. Following the commands of Corporal Evenfall, they too display a deep and honest love for the dreamers below, but in their opinion, a parent’s love is best displayed by destroying that which would harm their children.
In war, they crept into the minds of their enemies, planting visions of terror and despair where strength was most direly needed. Now that the common folk of Equestria have become their protégés as well, they have taken to another foe: just like the Dream Keepers, they specialise in fighting nightmares. In contrary to the Keepers however, they hunt for actual Nightmares, nocturnal demons spawned from the sleeping mind of Chaos. This task is vital to any Night Guard, as they feed off those demons, but the Dream Reapers have vowed to bring their art to perfection. While treating their own people with love and kindness, they are cold, determined predators on the hunt, teeth bared, hearts empty, eyes ever open.
Moonlight Shadows
Dark, cold and grim, the Moonlight Shadows are the most martial of the Night Guard castes and the most frightening by far. Their symbol is the waning crescent, the harbinger of darkness, and they have adopted the most sinister aspects of the night with a totality that is unsettling to even their own siblings. Theirs is a hopeless, bleak philosophy: nothing was truly meant to be, they say, and all things will find peace only through their eradication. They represent a part of the silver princess that is dangerously close to Nightmare Moon, the night’s forbidden wish to wrap all of Equestria in a blanket of soft and cradling shadow – fast asleep for all eternity. They have lesser numbers than any other caste, which is partially the fault of their utter inability to adapt to a world without conflict. They refuse to assume a peaceful duty, instead clinging to their ancient rites and practices but lacking an enemy to use them against.
Once, during the Twilight War, they were the feared and famous shock troops under Luna’s command. Consisting almost exclusively of bat-winged pegasi, their lightning assaults and ambushes soon became the nightmares of the Royal Guard far and wide. The Shadows would appear from the darkness, strike and vanish before there was a chance to react. It is said that the speed of their attacks was only rivalled by the grace of their movements; it is said that they could to cut through an entire patrol with contemptuous ease, leaving a trail of corpses in their wake. Still today, the children of Celestia whisper of things lurking in the darkness, and with time the air of mystery surrounding the Shadows has grown exponentially. Yet all the while, they continue in their practice under the watchful eye of Corporal Silent Sigh without aim or purpose. It is unlikely that their caste will survive much longer, not without a new war to fight, and it might be that very soon, only their legend will remain – and eventually be forgotten too, in accordance with their creed: All Shall Fade.
Black Priests
As the Dream Keepers correspondent to their Reaper counterparts, so do the Black Priests to the Silver Guard. The new moon is their sigil and Blue To Black their creed. They are creatures of utter darkness and thus often confused with the Moonlight Shadows though theirs is, in fact, a completely different part of it. Their Corporal is the newly appointed Nightshade, and her qualities represent the caste exemplarily: secretive, reserved and ponderous, the Priests have an extraordinarily relative way of thinking. In the blackness of their minds, the outlines of things blur: good and evil, true and false, right and wrong are just words, concepts without any meaning once the blanket of night has levelled them down. They function as keepers of the faith, though a theological discussion with them is unnerving at best, as they tend to never give a direct answer, usually agree to everything their opposite might say and see no problem in having multiple opinions at the same time – or, more often, no opinion at all.
Their duty remains the same as ever, recruiting aspirants to join the Guard. Their boundlessly tolerant, unbiased way to question everything has often caused them to vouch for favourites that everyone else would have called absurd; just as often, those absurd choices would eventually turn into some of the greatest Night Guard who ever lived. The Dream Reaper Corporal Evenfall, once an aspiring Solari, is just one of many examples for this. Much respected by their kin, the Black Priests remain the voice of temperance in the Guard, a constant reminder that every act should be reconsidered thrice before acting it out, and that nothing ever is as it seems.
---
These six castes form the official body of the Night Guard order. Their sum is its entirety as an organization – but not as a species. There are two other groups of lunar descent, both originating from the times of the Twilight War and (though it displeases their siblings) still existent today. Although detached from their brothers and sisters they still belong to Luna’s people, and ignoring them would be not be right.
Hollow Shades
When the Elements of Harmony banished Nightmare Moon from the world, they simultaneously struck a tremendous blow against the Night Guard. Countless had died battling the people of Equestria, and now the survivors found themselves stranded on the world they had failed to conquer. With the exception of only a few particularly powerful Silver Guard, they lacked the strength to return to the stars without Luna’s aid and with the princess now gone, they were trapped inside their mortal bodies.
Still, they were determined to carry on fighting. Knowing they had been defeated for the moment, they fled from the battlefield to bide their time. Scattered and disorganized at first, they soon rallied under the command of a former Moonlight Shadow, Midnight. She taught them a new lifestyle that focused on wilderness survival instead of warfare and let them to the northeast, away from civilization. Passing Foal Mountain in a journey that is said to have lasted years, they eventually settled down in the dense and gloomy Phantom’s Haunt forest.
A place with an ill reputation and shunned by the Equestrian people, the grove was a perfect hideout. Particularly interesting for the Night Guard were a number of vast, near bottomless chasms cutting through the ground at the centre of the forest, like giant claw marks scarring the earth. Those fissures, known as the Hollow Shades, were where they erected their new homesteads. Caves were carved into the stone, and huts built hugging the crevices’ walls like sparrow’s nests. The exiles named their settlement after the place that had given them shelter when nothing else would, and in time took that name for themselves as well. With their homes built and their future clear, they prepared for a long time in hiding.
And for a long time, they stayed.
A millennium later, Midnight – the same woman that had once let her siblings to the Hollow Shades – casually marched into the office of Commander Sirius and reported back for duty. With Nightmare Moon gone and Luna returned to them, she and her siblings had finally resurfaced and were more than willing to serve the Night Guard once again. The unexpected return of more than a hundred of their kin was, of course, a cause for great celebration amongst the Guard – or so it seemed at first.
It would soon become obvious that in their long, lonely exile, the Hollow Shades had changed. Their way of speaking had turned rough and bawdy, rather like the one of bandits and marauders. Their faith in Luna was less than devout, and often they’d jape about their ‘prudent cousins’. Worse, they ate meat and drank blood, and embarked in the pleasures of the flesh. They had spent too much time on Equestria, their siblings decided, too much time away from Luna’s light. They had turned into savages, a blot on the Night Guard’s reputation. Nowadays, there is little love between them and the rest of the Guard, only spite and distain. While officially reunited, there is in truth a gap between them that is not likely to be ever crossed. It is rumoured that Commander Sirius is just one further slight away from sending them all back into exile – and a slight is the only thing they are certain to provide.
Nightmare Guard
One thousand years ago, after centuries upon centuries of solitude and neglect, the mind of Princess Luna fell into darkness, turning away from her silver light and her nature as warden of dreams. Instead, it gave birth to a creature that was anathema to the kind protector she had always sought to be: Nightmare Moon, greatest of the nocturnal horrors. While most Night Guard followed their new princess only reluctantly, some showed no such doubts. Some recognized the Nightmare as their rightful leader, believing that Luna’s true nature had not been swallowed by the darkness but had only now revealed itself. This small group consisted of the youngest of their order – for a reason.
When raising a mortal aspirant to the stars, Luna gifts them with a tiny splinter of her own divinity, turning them into lesser images of herself. The aspirant is blessed with light and immortality, but also receives her spirit, her mind. However, the latest generation had been touched by Nightmare Moon instead, and it was her spirit that had shaped them. Driven by hunger, spite and bitterness, they were all too eager to do her evil work. Pillaging, torturing and murdering they swept though the land, butchering hundreds upon hundreds of innocent people.
The integrity of the Night Guard suffered greatly under their actions and Commander Sirius – well aware of this – accepted these new recruits only grudgingly. Nightmare Moon favoured them however, and there was very little he could do about it. Instead, their favour grew as did their cruelty. Soon they were preparing on forming an independent caste, the Nightmare Guard, with their own banner, creed and corporal.
Those plans were put to a sudden halt when Celestia banished her sister to the moon.
Sirius acted quickly, but the Nightmare Guard acted quicker. Knowing that they had overstayed their welcome and with their dreamborn kin still in shock, they seized the opportunity and fled from the judgement that was certain to come – after all, their crimes had been a major reason for Luna’s banishment. Finally they got the caste status they had been demanding, but instead of champions they now were outlaws, criminals, enemies. Scattered across earth and night sky both they fled to every corner of the world. In every shadow they hid, nursing their bitterness, feeding the darkness in their souls the black poison of their solitude.
But the night does not forget. While all Night Guard hate and fear their wicked kin, Corporal Silent Sigh and her Moonlight Shadows are their most merciless hunters today. Over the past millennium, they tracked them down and snuffed them out, one by one. Nowadays, only a handful of Nightmare Guard remain.
Yet still they pose a threat. For the longest time, fighting the Nightmare’s children has been a matter of vengeance and justice for crimes long past. But with Luna’s recent reappearance, they are no longer content with terrorizing villagers and poisoning the dreams of little children. With dark rituals and acts of evil, they now hope to return the silver princess to her ‘true nature’ and plunge Equestria into eternal nightmare. Should the Moonlight Shadows fail to stop them, no one can predict what they might do.
Their banner displays a total eclipse, the moon devouring Celestia’s light. Their creed: The Night Will Last Forever.