In order to explore Nightmare Moon, we must first identify what she is.

Her story begins with young Luna evaluating her father's treatment of the mortal ponies. We won't be fully exploring that history here, but it is important to recognize that Hyperion viewed Luna as his prize daughter after Celestia took her mother's lead in placing value on mortal ponykind. Luna spent more time with her father than Celestia did. He taught her more ways to use the Aether than he did Celestia. He also taught her a variety of ways to kill. It was enough to guide Luna down a path which would eventually make her a better warrior than her sister. Ultimately, Luna concluded that her father's actions were unjust. She agreed with Celestia that the mortals were of value and that they deserved to be free of the cruelty and oppression they had endured.

Hyperion viewed this as a serious betrayal which he would not forget, even in death. When he was finally defeated in the battle with Periapsis, his horn was shattered into thousands of tiny fragments and spread through the region that would later be known as Everfree. His consciousness became dispersed like a cloud over the region, and his hatred for ponykind lingered, unfocused, over the nearly ten-thousand acres of land, searching for anything which he could grab hold of.

At first, his influence was hindered by the Tree of Harmony, which Luna had created to bind together the six alicorn horns she brought back from her quest. Everfree was initially a memorial to the sacrifice Periapsis made, but eventually, it became the capital of Equestria with the sisters ruling from their newly built castle. Some time later, when thieves nearly succeeded in stealing the Elements, the sisters decided to keep them safe within the castle. With the Elements removed, the reduced influence of the Tree allowed Hyperion's consciousness to stir. Over the next millennium, a malignant forest grew over the region and held a vague animosity against ponykind. One might say that it disliked ponies specifically - or even hated them. No one knew why. Even prior to Luna's banishment, she was aware that Everfree had become problematic. The sisters did not know that the source was their father's lingering consciousness.

The Nightmare:

During the Battle of Everfree, there was a moment when Hyperion realized he might lose this fight. He needed a failsafe—a living soul—to carry on specifically to fulfill his vendetta in the unlikely event he should be killed. Hyperion scanned the local Lifestream for signs of someone, anyone nearby who was still alive, who could be easily molded into a vessel of his wrath.

Soon, he found a mortal pony. She was weak—barely alive, in fact, buried in the rubble of a collapsed building close to the battle. A pregnant mare. Even while in battle, Hyperion reached out with his mind and plucked the life of the unborn foal from within her womb and brought it closer. This little one would become his angel of vengeance. The Nightmare.

In her, he poured all his malice and hatred for ponykind. Hyperion attached her life essence to his own horn, knowing she needed a physical anchor, lest she drift away in the Lifestream. Even if he was defeated, she would wait for the right moment when eventually, someone would fall into his trap and she would awaken.

A little over 4200 years later, the crystal merchant known as Sombra found several specks of Hyperion's horn embedded in the rocks beneath the forest. After collecting enough of these, he became corrupted by the Nightmare. She seeded Sombra's mind with ideas of conquest and power. Her purpose was singular -- find a way to destroy ponykind.

Sombra had few opportunities to actually harm ponykind, which had thrived in the last 4200 years under the protection and guidance of the royal sisters. He was, however, able to enslave a crystal mining colony of ponies who dwelled in the Frozen North.

The Nightmare gave Sombra access to some of Hyperion's magical skills, enabling him to maintain his grip of power over the Crystal Empire for fifteen years.

When royal sisters engaged Sombra in battle, the Nightmare saw the opportunity to spread to Luna. It would have known that Luna was a key figure, important to Hyperion, and that she had betrayed him. The plan, then, was to corrupt Luna in such a way that she herself would be responsible for the destruction of ponykind.

Importantly, the Nightmare had recognized Luna during the battle between Luna and Sombra. The Nightmare was responsible for having Sombra capture her momentarily in crystal so that he could give his speech about Luna's inferior role relative to Celestia.

Sombra's speech was designed to plant seeds of doubt in Luna's mind regarding her position. This is significant because it uses the truth about Celestia's status in the public eye to cause Luna to question her own role. Even though Luna did not aspire that role for herself (she had chosen her position freely, millennia prior) all it would take is this one brief moment of doubt to provide the Nightmare with a foothold in Luna's consciousness. As expected, Luna holds up very well and refuses the easy path to corruption.

She refuses Sombra's temptation and attacks, providing the Nightmare with an opportunity to jump into Luna. Sombra plays his ace card and hits Luna with magical force that could only have been designed by an alicorn. She is stunned, and when she gets her bearings, she finds that an entirely new consciousness has forced its way into her.

Within seconds of Luna's corruption, the Nightmare asserted itself on the unsuspecting alicorn as it became attached to her body alongside Luna's own consciousness. Luna would have been aware of this new consciousness within her, but she would have been confused as to what it was.

The Nightmare's first act was to kill Sombra and banish the Crystal Empire. But Sombra was already corrupted by the Nightmare. He wasn't completely destroyed with the death of his body. A lingering shred of his consciousness remained incorporeal, seeking to return to the physical world when the Crystal Empire's banishment had ended. When the city returned, Sombra returned with it, but since he had been killed, the remaining portion was an imbecile with no true free will and only a zombie-like focus on the things which mattered most to him—crystals and power.

He was easily defeated by the combined strength of the crystal ponies channeled through the Crystal Heart.

After the Nightmare killed Sombra and banished a large city, she was weakened from the effort. Luna reasserted herself and struggled to lock the consciousness away in the back of her mind. Apart from the embarrassing concern of what happened in the Frozen North, life resumed as normal for Luna. Soon after, however, she began to experience unusual temptations and desires.

Luna's role in Equestria was as judge and defender of ponykind. It had always been so. Her virtue, Righteousness, fit her role well. She maintained order and kept ponies safe from hostile outsiders with the help of her sister Celestia, who was the primary ruler of ponykind. And after more than four thousand years of experience, she was quite good at it.

Celestia's virtue, Benevolence, made her the ideal monarch. She was kind and fair, but firm and orderly. She ruled her subjects with love, and she was beloved in return. Meanwhile, Luna preferred her own role which existed outside all the busy diplomacy and protocol which the seat of monarchy required.

Luna's duties involved guarding ponies' fragile psychology which had suffered through eons of oppression and conflict. She acted as a dream warden, protecting them both from internal struggles and the occasional legitimate threat such as when the windigoes attempted to invade Equestria through the dreams of ponies.

Luna spent her free time painting the night sky with beauty and wonder using the skills her father had taught her. But it could only be seen when Celestia's sun had set. Luna did not mind this, as her creation was for her own pleasure. Sure, she would have preferred the mortals appreciate it as she did, but life was not perfect. She accepted their decisions to spend their waking hours in the sun where they could live their lives and be productive. It made sense to her. Occasionally, various mortals would stop to take a look at the wonders of Luna's artwork. This was enough to bring satisfaction to her heart.

But the Nightmare lingered inside her, looking for weaknesses. She saw Luna's slight discontent and decided to amplify those feelings, drawing undue focus to the attention Celestia was receiving from her subjects. She whispered suggestions to Luna that she was not being given her fair share of that attention, and that she should do something about it.

Luna resisted this for a while, and in the few conversations she had with her sister about it, she only walked away more frustrated. Celestia had no idea why Luna would suddenly desire things which she never had before. Luna was 4,263 years old, and she had never desired the limelight and adoration of others. It was simply not a part of her character. Or had Celestia somehow missed the signs and misunderstood her sister for that long?! Surely not.

The Nightmare needed to get Luna to submit of her own volition; she could not simply take her over. Luna still held authority over her own body despite the fact that the consciousness in the back of her mind kept toying with her emotions and tempting her.

Finally, she could resist no more. Once Luna submitted, the Nightmare would merge with her and transform her into Nightmare Moon. From that moment, the Nightmare provided solidarity with Luna to enforce cooperation, as Luna's will would no longer be able to reassert itself.

She had already submitted her authority. And once that was done, she could only follow along in horror. Luna was helpless as the Nightmare took her. With the Nightmare fully in charge, Nightmare Moon then streaked off into the night to set about the destruction of all ponykind.

Luna had always been the better fighter, so as Nightmare Moon, Celestia was no match for her. Nightmare Moon took Equestria for herself. She enforced unending night and terrorized ponies across the nation. She slaughtered everyone in the original, ancient village of Ponyville, a town of dissenters, for their loyalty to Celestia. Ponyville was completely razed and would not be rebuilt for over nine hundred years. Nightmare Moon personally killed thousands of ponies over a period of ten weeks to assert her dominance.

A major organized rebellion against Nightmare Moon was defeated on the 8th week of darkness. The zebras recognized Nightmare Moon from an ancient prophecy that an alicorn of darkness would destroy all mortal life with the help of the stars. Celestia was forced, with great sadness, to use Luna's own anti-alicorn weapon against her. She bore all six Elements of Harmony and banished Luna, with the Nightmare, to the moon for a thousand years.

Upon Nightmare Moon's return, she resumed her plan to rule Equestria and bring about eternal night. When the mane-six confronted her with the Elements of Harmony, Luna was forcibly separated from the Nightmare, who was banished into a null pocket dimension with access points connected to the physical shards of Nightmare Moon's armor. In addition, the Nightmare was also fractured, separating the consciousness, or person of the Nightmare from Hyperion's wrath and hatred which took on its own will and behaved like a virus, intending only to spread and to destroy ponykind. This magical virus lingered on the shards of Nightmare Moon's armor.

When Spell Nexus was given the armor shards to study, the magical virus infected him and became known as "The Blessing". From there, it formulated a new plan to destroy ponykind as it was programmed to do. This time, since the Nightmare was unavailable, it was not as simple as corrupting Luna again. The new plan would be to use the access points in the armor shards to tap into the null pocket dimension and recover the Nightmare herself. Spell Nexus being a powerful magic weilder, was capable of creating a physical body through a complex spell so the Nightmare would have a body of her own to enter when she was recovered. The Blessing gave him inspiration as well as the drive to perform this feat with the help of dozens of cohorts which the Blessing also infected.

When the time came to perform the spell, Celestia interrupted the final stages where the Blessing would have had a chance to reimprint its moral code and desires onto the Nightmare once she had taken on a physical body. The Nightmare was knocked out of the clearing and into a bush where no one was aware, and she remained morally neutral. Without the further guidance and magical energy from the cult members, the Nightmare could only advance as far as a ten-year-old filly rather than the mature mare she was supposed to become.

When Twilight Sparkle found the Nightmare, she showed kindness and protection, which imprinted onto her.
Twilight then named her Nyx.

Initially, Nyx could not remember anything from her time with Luna. Eventually, those memories were restored, in part from a visit to the old castle ruins, and then the rest, when the cult finished their spell to mature Nyx into an adult.

What the cult did not count on, however, was that Nyx had already imprinted on Twilight, thus making her immune to the influence of the Blessing. She did suffer temptations from it which, when combined with pressure from the cult, resulted in her trying to resume her role as Nightmare Moon. But ultimately, her moral grounding won over, and she abandoned the identity. Nyx destroyed the Blessing, suffering the pain of its connection with her as she fought it, The Blessing came to be known as the Curse, and Nyx submitted herself to Luna's judgement where she was restored to being a child and given to Twilight to raise. Her memories from prior to her resurrection were removed, thus drawing a distinct separation between Luna's and Nyx's identity and person.

In conclusion, Nightmare Moon, as she was, is no more. She was a union of Luna and the Nightmare, who was created as a tool of vengeance by Hyperion some 5300 years ago. Her purpose was to destroy ponykind by enhancing and amplifying Luna's own emotional weaknesses so that Luna herself would take over and create a situation that would annihilate the mortals. Eternal night would be a slow and painful destruction, but it would be a complete one. Hyperion would have had his revenge if not for the anti-alicorn weapon Luna herself created.

So while Luna and Nyx are both literally Nightmare Moon, each was an individual person in the conjoined personality of the evil mare. Luna bore the guilt from submitting to the Nightmare in the first place in a moment of weakness. She carried that guilt for some years before she realized that others did not hold any blame over her. Celestia had forgiven her, as did the mortal ponies. As for Nyx, she would one day find out what truly created her and what her purpose was. She would be distraught over this despite not bearing any actual guilt. Her supportive friends and family would help her remember that she holds no actual blame for what happened. As the lesson from Past Sins illustrates, a person can be created in an act of evil, but still be redeemed as someone good.

5194373
Was the Nightmares appearance in the lifestream a side-effect of the virus's appearance? A sort of shadow in the stream because the virus was life but not any kind of life that had ever existed before? If so then Celestias intervention during the resurrection could have severed the virus from its shadow, creating Nyx as a blank slate.

5195300
I probably should have explained the Lifestream a bit better by now.

The Lifestream contains everything that isn't physical. Because of this, things in the Lifestream don't have to obey the laws of physics. They have no mass, density, inertia, etc. Entities in the Lifestream can be anything from manifested love, to certain types of magical energy, to life itself. Sapient life is too complex and vast to exist in the physical world because mere particles of matter cannot arrange and rearrange themselves in a way that allows for sapient life and the consciousness / self-awareness that this implies.

This allows for things like changelings to be able to access the form of another without physically probing every particle of the target creature. Likewise, emotions which changelings feed on linger in the Lifestream and cannot be "blocked" by a physical barrier. It also means that a "person" exists in the Lifestream while their body exists in the physical world (though they are unaware of this). Since the Lifestream has dimensions that correlate 1:1 with the physical world, the person is attached to the same coordinates as the body, thus linking them. But physical damage does not damage the person itself other than what they experience through the sensory links. In this sense, you can think of the physical body as an avatar of the person. Killing the body severs the links, but the person may still live incorporeal in certain circumstances.

So to answer your question, the magical virus would require a physical body to attach to and spread. Magical energy is one of those things which may exist both in the physical world and the Lifestream because it does obey certain laws of physics, but it is also something that flows through the Lifestream. I suppose you could say that this is similar to how light is both a wave and a particle. So when the Elements were used against Nightmare Moon, they separated all three parts of her from one another. The virus would have been attached to the armor shreds. But since the shreds were not alive, the virus had no power until a sapient lifeform got close enough for it to physically jump over and attach to it.

5195428
Ah, I see. This has given me an idea to build upon the information you've given, one which relates to my previous question.

When the virus was created it subverted nature in the fact that it created life that was seperate from the Lifestream. It had no "soul" it was raw magical will made manifest with a simple objective: Destroy ponykind. However, such was its power that it exherted pressure upon the Lifestream, similar to gravity, it pulled nascent fragements of life from the stream and created its own self within the stream. The two were not yet connected however and both existed seperate from the other with only the virus being aware of the others existence.

This was not a random occurence, for Hyperion had fully intended this outcome and it was critical to the virus's function. Alone the virus appears as a magical signature, one that is able to latch onto objects but nothing outwardly threatening. It uses this signature to draw in a suitably magical host, anything with a connection to the stream. On infection the virus uses its hosts link to the stream to make contact with its other "self". It asserts its mind onto the nascent conciousness and uses it to empower itself, the two are joined and the "Nightmare" is born. It then operates as you describe, subverting the hosts will to gain control.

I might have misunderstood how things operate, but I was having a moment of inspiration I guess I'm working on the assumption that Hyperion planned on the Nightmares creation and it wasn't an unforseen consequence.

I am still a little unclear as to what Hyperion's goal here was with the creation of the " nightmare" as a separate entity from the curse itself.

was it :

1. To act as an enforcer to further pressure luna.

2. As a " fail safe" redundancy measure that is if luna failed to become corrupt enough to destroy the ponies then Nightmare could finish the job (perhaps by forcibly merging herself with luna?)

3. As a "battle body" exo suit. That is Hyperion wanted to create an entity that would be next to impossible to destroy so that Luna could step " into her" and defeat anyone in battle once corrupted, hence the physical transformation that luna goes from her own body to the Nightmare's body when she is corrupted ( not that this has anything to do with your story and it's own universe which is why i have spoiler tagged it. but this has always been how I have explained NM's different physical appearance, Luna basically altered her body in order to become more lethal once she went crazy and fell to the corruption )

5197825
I just noticed this post. Notification tags always get my attention.

As for your question, all three sound good. I never thought of NMM's physical appearance serving any sort of purpose, but it does make sense that if she were somehow stronger in that form, it could have been a deliberate thing. That or perhaps she looked that way to be more intimidating. Or her physical appearance simply mirrored the malice Hyperion had toward ponies.

To clarify the purpose in creating the Nightmare initially, I think that would have been something Hyperion would have provided the virus as an option. The idea here being that Hyperion's intellect and power is incredibly vast. The purpose of the virus was to find a way to destroy ponykind using the tools available to it. With Luna suddenly being available to corrupt, the virus would do its worst and invent the plan that had the highest chance of success while making Luna herself suffer for it.

But the virus itself would not be enough to do to Luna what needed to be done. Luna would not submit to a virus. She needed an alter ego to submit to. A dark reflection of herself which held all the distorted emotions like her envy and rage. If the virus had tried to simply influence Luna in this regard without the Nightmare present, she would have overcome it. Luna is very intelligent and would be able to defeat any AI over the battle of her identity. But the Nightmare is also an intelligent and independent person with a free will and the capability to counteract Luna's resistance. She was pushed to the back of Luna's mind but then worked to tease out that subtle resentment Luna had been feeling and boil it over into the extreme feelings which would drive Luna to voluntarily submit her identity and self-authority to the Nightmare.

Interesting bit of trivia: Hyperion himself never knew of Nightmare Moon fully. His consciousness was locked up in the tip shard of his horn near the Tree of Harmony. Ziph would discover it later and become possessed. At that point, Hyperion would look up at the moon and notice with surprise, his daughter imprisoned there.

One thing is worth bringing up: I'd dispense with the virus idea entirely, but I'm trying to maintain compatibility with Past Sins. I think it would actually be a bit better story to just have the Nightmare created directly by Hyperion, picked up by Sombra and then transferred to Luna. It's cleaner. But Past Sins has that complication with the "third entity" of the Blessing, which Nyx later destroys. I'm not sure what to do with that other than to make it into a virus.

5201675
A part of me thinks that Luna herself should have a greater role in the creation of the "Nightmare". Since it builds on Nyxs connection to Luna and Hyperion attempts to destroy ponykind.

Here's my thoughts:
So we have the virus infect Luna and begin its dark whisperings in the shadows of her mind. Could her own mind create a body for it to inhabit?

The first cracks appear in the psyche when you recognise that this other voice exists and this gives it power. It's a psychological pitfall that Luna might not have foreseen, since her philosophy has always been to confront that which threatens you. By confronting it she only strengthens its grip.

This way Luna creates a vessal as the final act of submission which then assumes control of her body.

Phew, deep stuff. Probs way off, take from it what you can

5202329

The Nightmare's origins and means to come into being are somewhat flexible. We can tweak it to whatever makes the most sense and provides the best drama narratively, but I'd like to maintain certain principles. One of those being that someone like Luna isn't capable of creating new life. Since the Nightmare is an actual new person, the level of ability required to create her would need to be given to someone as powerful as a wild alicorn. If we can massage the details within that parameter, then we can explore alternate possibilities.

One thing that might work is if Hyperion created the Nightmare but part of her was split off when the mane-six did their rainbow thing. That would probably account for Past Sins. So maybe rather than it being a virus, it was a person who also carried a portion of Hyperion's intent and malice along with her. The only problem with this is that it makes the magical infection personified going from Sombra to Luna. It means that Sombra himself would have carried the Nightmare as a person prior to Luna's infection. I'm not sure I am comfortable with that idea.

Another alternate is that once the virus infected Luna, it peeled away a part of her consciousness and created a new person from it. I dunno... it's worth a brainstorming session. I'd like to get Questionable in here as well... *poke poke*

5203108
Ah, cool.

I agree that keeping the Nightmare as a simple, focused intent prior to Lunas infection is best. Means that every host infected will exhibit different results as it adapts to their psyche, which accounts for Sombra enslaving the Empire.

5203108
Questionable's Requested Input Follows.
This seems internally consistent, although there are some conflicts with Past Sins canon. The most significant that I can see would be the fact that the NMM fragment is, in Past Sins, identical in origin to Nyx herself. The only difference was that it was the part of NMM's shattered magic that retained enough emotional resonance to infect Spell Nexus - it's a fairly significant theme that the 'Blessing' is Nyx, in the sense of being a missing part of her. A 'road not taken', as it were; one defined by Luna's mistake. Them being separate entities from the start kind of undermines that.
One thing I can't see an immediate answer for is where the new alicorn horn comes from. You say that Hyperion created 'life', while it was Spell Nexus who made or reconstituted Nyx's body. This continuity places much significance on an alicorn's horn, and I doubt that even Hyperion can just create new ones willy-nilly, even if he was properly 'alive' and in possession of his full strength. That might end up as needing to be handwaved as some quirk of how the Elements separated Luna and the Nightmare/Virus. Then again, he was able to make two more with some help from Periapsis...
In the last thread, you were very quick to dismiss the canonical functioning behind Nyx's creation, with some rather...dubious reasoning. I decided after some deliberation that it wasn't worth arguing over, but if you want my full opinion on this topic then I'd like to have a more substantial verdict on the canon of the matter beyond 'doesn't make sense, technobabble, lol'. I know that Pen doesn't seem to have a particularly in-depth understanding of his own universe, but I need to know what you think the actual problems are. What's wrong with it, beyond being shallow? What are the internal inconsistencies, etc. I have my own set of objections, of course, but I need to know what yours are before I can make a fully informed recommendation on whether adding this level of additional complexity while ignoring/contradicting canon is actually worth it, in a narrative sense.

5205757

it's a fairly significant theme that the 'Blessing' is Nyx, in the sense of being a missing part of her.

Say what? I thought it was pretty clear that the smoke monster thingy was something entirely different from the black filly who Twilight raised.

That depends on whether the "Blessing" is an actual person or if it's just a force of some kind.

A 'road not taken', as it were; one defined by Luna's mistake. Them being separate entities kind of undermines that.

But Nyx killed it. She fought with it. Physically, after removing it from Nexus. It wasn't her, clearly. Past Sins seems to suggest that all of NMM's malice and evil was concentrated in this thing. Whether that was blended into Nyx and Luna prior to the rainbow smashing event, or not, is another question. But clearly, it was a separate entity in Past Sins itself. And it behaved like a virus, infecting and spreading.

One thing I can't see an immediate answer for is where the new alicorn horn comes from. You say that Hyperion created 'life', while it was Spell Nexus who made or reconstituted Nyx's body. This continuity places much significance on an alicorn's horn, and I doubt that even Hyperion can just create new ones willy-nilly, even if he was properly 'alive' and in possession of his full strength. That might end up as needing to be handwaved as some quirk of how the Elements separated Luna and the Nightmare/Virus.

You continue to impress me with your analytical skills. I was thinking no one would notice that little detail, so I hadn't mentioned it. But yes, that's an inconsistency which I don't currently have an answer for, and I was more or less hoping no one would notice. You described the problem well. Nyx's horn, having the potential of being a wild alicorn horn of pure unmitigated power, is Hyperion's prize ambition to acquire.

And it's not good enough to say that Spell Nexus created it because if he can just do that, then he can do it again and again. Pretty soon you have Fo:E's IMP experiment. In fact, I was gonna just go ahead and say that Twilight's inspiration for the IMP project at the end of the war was because of what happened with Nyx. Knowing that Nyx had the potential to win the war for the ponies, and then they lost her, would surely give her the ambition to try and create artificial alicorns.

So what to do with the puzzle of Nyx's horn? I think the answer lies in Nyx herself. As a true alicorn, she provides the key ingredient to make that physical horn what it needs to be. An alicorn horn becomes that indestructible omnipotent thing only after the alicorn who owns it goes through the transformation. So the key ingredient, which cannot be artificially duplicated, is the very fact that a live natural alicorn needs to own that horn and at least partially go through the change. This can be tweaked as necessary, but I think that this idea will serve the purpose.

In the last thread, you were very quick to dismiss the canonical functioning behind Nyx's creation, with some rather...dubious reasoning.

Dubious? <clutches chest and feigns being shot>
You wound me, sir. The main thrust of the argument being that life cannot be created in such a way. A new person coming into existence requires more than some unicorn's magic spell. And again, Past Sins / Winter Bells literally confirm that Nexus "did not create life". So where did she originate, truly? It doesn't say, which means I can take it and run with it.

I know that Pen doesn't seem to have a particularly in-depth understanding of his own universe, but I need to know what you think the actual problems are. What's wrong with it, beyond being shallow? What are the internal inconsistencies, etc. I have my own set of objections, of course, but I need to know what yours are before I can make a fully informed recommendation on whether adding this level of additional complexity while ignoring/contradicting canon is actually worth it, in a narrative sense.

I can provide my thoughts, sure. I agree that Pen did not think the metaphysics through much at all. I only said it was technobabble because it is. It's what people do when they can't be bothered to invent the mechanics behind the story element. Everyone's mechanics stop at some point and give way to author decree. The question is simply how deep the author goes before stopping and saying "that's just how it is". With Pen, it's not very deep at all. The fact that he had the royal sisters arguing over his metaphysics is a little surprising. He could have just let it go unexplained and be no worse off for it. Credit for trying, I suppose. But it comes across a little flat when his characters have to hang a lampshade over it.

Alright, so what are the problems? The biggest is the idea of Nyx being a person and when that began. Past Sins does not explain it at all. But a person does not just accidentally come into being. People are too complex.

Next, I totally don't buy the whole "Luna's emotions created her". I'm sorry, but when people get envious, they don't manifest a second person inside them. They also don't transform into some kind of megalomaniac. Not over something as petty as "they didn't appreciate my night sky" Puh-leeze. I know it's MLP canon, but that's one of those super-weak areas I'd rather fix myself.

So literally the problem with the Past Sins model is that there isn't one. Past Sins does not explain Nyx's origins as a person. It admits that Nexus did not create life. And Nyx is life. Ergo, Nyx was created prior to Past Sins and left unexplained. Canon MLP is no help either because it simply offers the ultra-weak "Luna got pouty and that made her transform into a literal monster" model.

And what of my motives? Well, as I said in the top post here, it fits Hyperon's M.O. very well to try and engineer ponykind's destruction at the hooves of Luna herself. It fits his story arc incredibly well. I already had Hyperion's arc take him from his defeat at Everfree through the incorporeal semi-consciousness of the evil forest itself, to Ziph finding the tip shard of his horn, to the Black Book, to finding his way to Storm Shadow and then becoming Starfire and trying to take Nyx and reclaim his omnipotent alicorn form.

To weave this in with Nyx's origin and purpose brings much more punch to the story. To wait for thousands of years for somepony to come along and collect enough specks of his horn to infect, and then for that infection to make its way to Luna, manipulating her emotions to cause her to voluntarily become Nightmare Moon, and then having him face off with Nyx at the end of the story all ties everything into one neat, cohesive causation chain. Tying Nyx's origin into the story all the way back to Luna's infection has a lot fewer loose ends than before.

But there is something which may make this simpler. As I said above, it may be much cleaner for my story to avoid the whole virus thing. I mostly did it to maintain Past Sins compatibility. But it sounds like you're saying that Past Sins may not even require that.

Here's some new thoughts:

The best solution may be to have Nyx (the person) created by Hyperion as a failsafe at the Battle of Everfree. Her name would be The Nightmare at that point, and she would be incorporeal. When it became clear that Hyperion would lose the battle, he created the person and she existed as a person encoded into his horn just prior to Hyperion's death.

So he was killed, and his horn was dispersed for miles in every direction. This spread both the consciousness of Hyperion and the person of the Nightmare over the region. Importantly, the Nightmare would actually exist in the Lifestream at this stage, but be bound to the location of Everfree. Then when Sombra collected the specks and began removing them from Everfree, the Nightmare was able to escape. It then infected him and gave him his megalomaniacal ideas. But he was a regular unicorn. It could not truly use him like it could use Luna. Only when Luna was infected did the Nightmare transfer over and gain true power. And we can see that being played out quite plainly in the Fall of the Crystal Empire video.

So rather than there being a virus at all, we could just have it be the Nightmare all along. And then to maintain compatibility with Past Sins, we can have the malice and hatred of Hyperion that was a part of the Nightmare separated by the Elements just like the story says.

Thoughts?

5205875

Say what? I thought it was pretty clear that the smoke monster thingy was something entirely different from the black filly who Twilight raised.

It was just as Nightmare Moon had feared. Rifling through her memories, she thought back to the conversations she had shared with Spell Nexus, remembering details he had offered. He had been chosen by Celestia to study the shreds that were left behind when she, or rather she and Luna, were defeated by the Elements of Harmony.
Nexus said it was while he was working with those shreds that he received the very first blessing, that his eyes were opened to her wisdom and glory. But, if anything, he had been blinded. He had been twisted and turned into a tool by a will that wasn’t his own, much like how Nexus had used the poisonous magic to turn Twilight against her.
Spell Nexus was the mastermind behind the Children of Nightmare, but it was not his will that drove him forward. He was just another victim, the first victim, and the true evil behind the Children of Nightmare, behind all that had happened in Equestria…
It was none other than Nightmare Moon herself.
The black cloud… Nightmare Moon could only guess that it was once a shred left behind by the Elements of Harmony. It was part of her, arguably the worst part: her unmatched loathing of the Royal Sisters, her arrogant sense of superiority, and her thirst for vengeance. The echoes of her most powerful emotions, the emotions that had once made Nightmare Moon seek the eternal night, had attacked, entered, and corrupted Spell Nexus.
It was those emotions that drove Nexus to turn against Celestia, to form the Children of Nightmare, and to attempt the resurrection spell. If that was the case, why hadn’t that poisoned magic tried to rejoin with the rest of the shreds when the spell was being cast? Why hadn’t it left Nexus and merged with her?
That was when Nightmare Moon realized the purpose of the white geometric designs that crisscrossed Nexus’s body. It was a binding spell, meant to hold a majority of the tainted magic.
Nexus was the headmaster of Celestia’s school and a previous student of the princess. He wasn’t an idiot, and he must have known that dealing with the shreds would be dangerous. Nightmare Moon could only guess that he prepared a binding spell either before he began working with the shreds or after he realized he had been attacked.
Nexus, the real Spell Nexus, had turned his body into a living prison, even if it meant that the corrupting magic was free to twist his mind. Yet, the binding spell was not perfect. He was able to spread his “blessing” by releasing small pieces of the corruption inside him.
It was a bitter truth, and Nightmare Moon still wished to punish the pony who had almost killed Twilight. She, however, could not deny Nexus’s innocence. He was just another victim. He was just another pony she had hurt.
And she had to try to set things right.
Lightning crackled around Nightmare Moon’s horn, and the energy quickly spread to her mane. She would attack this poisonous magic outright and destroy it. She would rid the world of it. She would destroy the thing that had dared to threaten the ponies she cared about.
She would destroy the worst part of herself.
That thought, that one thought, echoed in Nightmare Moon's mind like a haunting call, and it stirred something deep inside. She hesitated and just stood idly while the black cloud continued to reach out to her, even as the binding spell on Nexus’s body kept pulling it back.
The cloud was a part of her, the worst part, but… it was still a part of her.
Without even thinking, Nightmare Moon took an anxious step forward, now understanding why she was drawn to the cloud. It was her vengeance, pride, and loathing. It was the thing that would let her become the merciless ruler that everypony expected; it would let her become a whole mare again. It was the part of her that would actually enjoy being Equestria’s tyrant queen.

Context.

But it sounds like you're saying that Past Sins may not even require that.

Yeah, pretty much.
I'll reply to the rest tomorrow. There's some complexity there that deserves my fully-awake attention.

5205886

Excellent. That actually fits the most recent idea perfectly.

It was part of her, arguably the worst part: her unmatched loathing of the Royal Sisters, her arrogant sense of superiority, and her thirst for vengeance. The echoes of her most powerful emotions, the emotions that had once made Nightmare Moon seek the eternal night

Arguably, these are emotions befitting of Hyperion. Luna, on her own, had no reason to manifest these feelings. Not if Luna was a good person prior to her fall. The idea of a fall is that a person is good until they make that fatal decision. But what was the motive of this decision? Something so petty as "they don't appreciate my artwork"?? Surely not. Not for my Luna, anyway. Not for a 4000+ year old alicorn who is the champion of justice and righteousness, and the defender of ponykind in multiple ways... No. She would not fall prey to petty envy and become Nightmare Moon.

So this "part of Nightmare Moon" which Past Sins speaks of. That can just as easily be the transferred motives and emotions which originated with Hyperion that carried the motivations of the Nightmare as she infected Luna. And then, subjecting Luna to strong temptations and enhanced negative emotions for probably a full year, Luna finally gave in to it and submitted her will to the Nightmare.

I do like this model better than the virus idea. It makes more sense because it better explains Nyx's origins. I'll have to work out an update to the original post of course. Shouldn't be too hard.

5205886

An important decision needs to be made regarding Luna. Up until this point, I've said that Sombra's attack on Luna separated her from her virtue, giving her the potential to resume her path toward becoming a wild alicorn.

The problem is that this is a little messy. It's difficult to blend in with my existing lore which says that once an alicorn has their virtue, they cannot become a wild alicorn in the future. Their transformation has stopped. I justified this by saying it was Hyperion's magic which can do things beyond the natural. But is it necessary?

Originally, I did not have the Nightmare (Nyx)* in the picture at that stage. I simply had Luna separated from her virtue, which caused all the problems with Luna turning malicious and transforming into Nightmare Moon, etc. The idea was that Luna would quickly gain power and become an unstoppable wild alicorn. And Celestia had to use the anti-alicorn weapon against her quickly because there was no choice. She would soon be entirely outclassed.

However... after some refinement in the backstory, it seems Luna already outclasses Celestia in terms of combat prowess. That would transfer to Nightmare Moon by default, making the banishment necessary. But would Nightmare Moon have had Hyperion's level of strength eventually? Is that even necessary? She could have enslaved ponykind and brought about eternal night by simply being Luna corrupted. Luna was already arguably the most powerful creature alive at that stage. Fitting, I suppose, since Immortal Game does the reverse and has Luna being the weakest alicorn.

Furthermore, if the Nightmare infects Luna (from Sombra), then she becomes the tempting force causing Luna the emotional anguish that leads her to abandon her moral center and submit to becoming Nightmare Moon. This doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with Luna being separated from her virtue and potentially becoming a wild alicorn. It may be better to avoid that complication entirely because it creates an awkward exception to the whole virtue/transformation mechanics.

Naturally, this means that simply having one's virtue does not protect an alicorn from corruption if that corruption is strong enough. I think I'm fine with that concept.

Thoughts?

* Well, how about that... "Nightmare Nyx", as a story title, is even more justified now.

5205898
Looking it over, everything seems to be in order. The main thing now is finding a way to incorporate this into the story in a way that doesn't grind the pacing to a halt and bore everyone stiff, but we can get to that later. You have a plan for the second act, correct?

Next, I totally don't buy the whole "Luna's emotions created her". I'm sorry, but when people get envious, they don't manifest a second person inside them. They also don't transform into some kind of megalomaniac. Not over something as petty as "they didn't appreciate my night sky" Puh-leeze. I know it's MLP canon, but that's one of those super-weak areas I'd rather fix myself.

There are some issues here, but they don't really affect your story. We can discuss that later.

5207017

Well, here's the thing about that... The world building serves the story. It needs to be complete so that the story has a framework to exist within. Then I won't write myself into a corner unexpectedly. Yes, I'd like to give as much of it as possible to the readers, but ultimately, it's the story itself which needs to be complete and consistent. Take the Fo:E Enclave for example. You can just tell that Kkat fleshed their society out far more than what made it into Fo:E. Because Kkat fleshed it out behind the scenes, it feels much more authentic when portrayed in the story even if we didn't get to see everything she came up with. The main thing is that we saw everything we needed to see so that we didn't have nagging plot hole questions. Not sure if that made sense the way I worded it.

I do have plans for Act 2, but I'm not sure how well it will play out. I'll probably make a thread about it so we can talk it over.

5207378
Ahhh, yep. Sure. I had assumed you were going to shoehorn all this in somewhere.
But anyway, we should be working on chapter four. I'll write up a comprehensive reply to the ideology stuff for later, given how evidently distracting it is.

5207396
Oh trust me, I will try to fit it in somewhere. But only if it "fits". A story must read naturally if at all possible.

5207483
E-di-ting! E-di-ting!

5205908
One thing I'm curious about in all this is the Tantabus. Luna created it to punish herself, so was the Tantabus a similar thing to the Nightmare, only on a smaller scale? And if a similar event as Past Sins occurred with the Tantabus, could you create a Nyx-like being?

5208516
I'd say no. The Tantabus seems to be a shard of Luna's psyche that was a side effect of her immense guilt. In the show, it behaved very much like an automaton rather than an intelligent separate person. It's debatable whether or not Luna created it voluntarily or involuntarily. I vote involuntarily because she's not that stupid, and self-deprecating characters have a very specific and serious psychological problem that I'm not going to assign to Luna. They don't go away with a simple "But Luna, you should just forgive yourself" speech. Most interestingly, the Tantabus merged back into Luna after the crisis was over. This hints strongly that it was a part of Luna all along. So it was like a part of Luna was torn away and twisted in such a way that it would torment her. It got out of control and started spreading. Then it returned to the whole at the end. So no, this would not have been a separate true person.

5205908

“…but My Sister,” Celestia’s voice trembled, “was younger. Weaker. And no matter what I did, I couldn’t prevent Her from dying in My arms.” Tears streamed down from Her quivering lavender eyes. I held Luna until Her body grew cold…”

Context.
It's missing a quotation mark.

5208874
In my story, Celestia is 5286 years old. Luna is 5280. (Or 4280 if you discount the banishment)

Also, Celestia stopped her transformation at the age of 22. Luna at the age of 23. Luna also spent significantly more time with their father than Celestia did.

I shed no tears for breaking Fo:E canon.

The way Fo:E treated much of the main cast I find rather distasteful. I have no problem rewriting certain facts - especially facts which do not carry dependencies the rest of the story relies on.

Also... "arms"?

5209333
Mmm. Breaking canon is acceptable, but you should be aware you're doing it.

5209347

Absolutely. And as I've said many times when talking with Duvet, the more fleshed out my own story gets, the more I regret the chains which Fo:E has bound me to. There's nothing I can do about that at this point except to just say that this is most definitely an AU. Originally, I wanted to make my story 100% FO:E compatible. But that was before I had much for good content and world building. Now, I need the room to spread my own wings and make this story great and internally consistent. I've also got Past Sins to account for, and there are several direct contradictions between the two stories. It never could be perfectly blended. But both can certainly be blended well together if we are willing to accept certain concessions.

Having Twilight be an alicorn was the most vocally opposed by die hard Fo:E fans because she was factually a unicorn in Fo:E itself. But the way I portray it wouldn't change what happened with the IMP disaster anyway. Twilight is just a winged unicorn. Things like that.

But messing with the royal sisters and their strength has always been something I've had to take dominion over. Alicorns and their metaphysical dynamics are what this story is about, after all... I need to take the helm on this one and whatever canon I need to break, then so be it. The fact that I've allowed for alicorns being insanely powerful and the sisters somehow not being able to win the zebra war by themselves was probably my biggest feat in terms of manipulating the story. Expanding on that has only produced more data to work with. Data which doesn't always jive with little details of either origin story.

In case anyone's interested, I've just updated the original post of this thread. The big change is that there's no longer a 3rd entity in Nightmare Moon. It's just Luna and the Nightmare (Nyx). Additionally, as per Past Sins, it was a part of Nyx that was stripped off by the Elements, so it ended up becoming a 3rd entity.

I also added a few more pictures and edited the whole thing for flow. Should be a pretty clear history of Nightmare Moon now.

5375937
(Might have mentioned this earlier, but it's been a while.)
I'll be interested to see Hyperions reaction to Nyx since she is an unforeseen outcome of his magic. I suppose he'd view her as simply another tool, considering he wants to blow her up and all.

You know, in a very roundabout way, Hyperion is almost Nyxs father considering he created the Nightmare which she, in part, is made from. That could be an interesting angle for Starfire to take in the future, since he's a crazy mixture of different souls.

5382231
Yep, that's my thought as well. Not sure if it's worth exploring in the story, though. I do think he'd be upset. The reveal to Celestia will shock her to the core.

When Starfire bursts out of the cavern into the daylight, Celestia gives chase and joins Luna as they engage Starfire in combat outdoors. Starfire takes a moment to appreciate the irony.

Celestia demands to know who (or what) he is. There has never been a zebra alicorn in all of history.

He taunts Celestia. "My little Sunshine. Do you not recognize me?" 

Celestia nearly faints in fear. She knows it is her father, somehow. Luna stares in disbelief for a moment and then attacks. The pair of alicorns is outmatched, as Starfire has passed their strength during his ritual. They fight for ten minutes, and it does not go well for the sisters.

But Nyx... he would know who she is from Storm's memories, so I'm not exactly sure how to weave that into the drama. I guess we'll find out when the time comes.

5382318
I'm sure he'd have a few words to say to Nyx once he has her where he wants her. He'd probably consider her just another failure like his children, something you can hint at before the big reveal.

Starfire and the "daughter" angle make for some great sequel material. Since Post-Hyperion Starfire has too limited a screen time to really build his character it gives you plenty of freedom for the next story.