I know I pushed for a less detailed backstory, but I ended up needing more on the Amulet for my chapters, so I began thinking, and I think I came up with something good.

Now, this is entirely up for debate. Moreover, since we only see the Amulet through other ponies, it can probably be ignored if you so wish. But I am really happy with what I came up with, and I think there's a lot of potential.

The Amulet is built to trick people. I think it was made in a darker age milliania ago to protect people. Back in those days, the spells needed to make being independently capable of thought was new, and Sci-Fi hadn't been invented yet so nopony thought about the implications. The Amulet is designed to enhance both it's wearers power and intellect, otherwise they wouldn't know how to cast high level spells. It was created to ensure that the land was always protected, but poor wording meant that it would do anything to ensure that it had a bearer, leading it to becoming the tempter. Slowly, as it was worn by more and more ponies, that spell/program mutated until it began to start to become self-aware.

Before, it didn't need to understand why exactly what it was doing was working. It prompted the other mind to think of a stressful situation, and when the emotions were at their peak, it offered a way out. All the hard work was done by the sapient mind. Slowly, it began to learn how other ponies thought, and it's temptation systems became more and more sophisticated.

Now we get to Rainbow's chapter. It has realized that it's ordinary paramaters are not sufficient, and so it decides to attempt something new. It still doesn't think of it's self as sapient, and would deny it strenuously if asked. This is why it blames other ponies for the whole "mad-with-power" thing.

However, it is a sapient being. it has learned feelings and emotions by emotionally torturing others for countless centuries, and that's screwed it up just a tiny bit. It's forced itself to become sapient through sheer determination. It's an amazing,beautiful creation that needs help, that deserves to live, but it'll try to break anypony that could help, so it must be destroyed.

The reverse temptation chapter needs to be about somepony that can see what the Amulet really is, and make the Amulet see what it truly is. Pinkie could fit the bill, but I'm still looking. But anyway, that's what I think the Amulet is.

5989339 I do like the idea that the Amulet doesn't understand emotions because it has learned them through less savory interactions. It even lines up with some ideas about how real life emotional and social development work.

Remember, however, that motivation and backstory are two distinct things. They can go hand-in-hand, of course, but I think that giving the Amulet too much backstory might ruin some of its menacing vagueness. I'd rather we have a clear idea of its motivations, and leave as much of its backstory up to interpretation as possible.

So perhaps the Amulet is a tragic figure in the sense that it doesn't understand emotion. It learned it 'wrong', and now that wrongness is such an inherent part of it that it can't change. When Pinkie tries to help it, it can't understand that what she is doing is good for it, because its understanding of ponies is too warped.

It's sad, but it's also believable.

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I wasn't planning on giving any of this backstory to the readers; I just needed a better idea of where the Amulet was coming from for myself.

It's sad, but it's also believable.

Thank you!