Stormy Squall: All of this is just brainstorming, none of it is canon or set in stone. It's all subject to change.
Ocellus: Of course it is...it's about changelings!

Okay, um…Stormy Squall wanted me to tell you all about changelings from my perspective, so I’ll give it a try. I guess I’ll start by telling you something that every larva hears in the creche.

Once upon a time, in the magical world of Protea, there was a cornucopia of thriving races: arachne, khepri, the warrior myrmecoleons, karkinos of the seas and the deeps, the wise selket that lurked in shadows, the giant tsuchigumos on the far side of the world, the cunning but intelligent anansi, and many others besides. Yet each was trapped in only a single form, and none of them could ever truly know the rest. None but our race, the changelings, who lived among them. In those days love was plentiful, and a thousand queens ruled the Thousand Hives, and all was good.

But the other races, trapped as they were in a single form, could never understand one another, and could understand our race least of all, and soon that grew into distrust, and anger, and hate, and finally war, a terrible war that swept across our world as the races fought each other. The war burned the land, boiled the seas, and turned the very air to poison. The Sun grew dim and the Moons were shattered and the stars began to fall from the sky, and one by one the cornucopia of races were destroyed by their own weapons.

Only we changelings survived, for we were not trapped in one form, but could take any of them, and so survive. We could make our hides thick, we could make our wings broad, we could dig deep our hives. But as the other races fell we learned of the terrible curse greater than even the poison of hate: the never-ending gnawing of hunger. The Thousand Hives withered, and now there is only one, our hive, the Last Hive.

And so has it been for a thousand years…

I. The World of Protea
So, to summerize: changelings used to be just one out of many races on Protea, maybe even as many as are in this new world that I’ve ended up in. But the other races got into a big war and exterminated each other, even though we tried to save them! And even worse, their war ruined Protea! Nothing really grows there except for a few really hardy plants, and some underground lichen and moss. Most of the animal species died out a long time ago too, and the ones that didn’t have mutated into monsters.

I’ve never really been that far from the Last Hive, but from what I hear I’m not missing much. The whole world is just endless desert now. Some long-range scouts have said that there’s still oceans, but they’re slowly drying up. The sky is always cloudy and our Sun is dim. We used to have two Moons, but they collided with one another and both shattered. Pieces of the Moons fall down to Protea every now and then, and stars drop from the sky occasionally as well, which is the only way we know that there even are stars anymore, since the clouds otherwise make it impossible to see them.

Then there’s the storms. It’s always windy, but every now and then these really big sandstorms kick up. The wind gets so much worse, you can hear it howling except if you’re in the deepest part of the hive. There’s lightning too, and the storms kick up sand that blows fast enough to flay a changeling unless we’re in a really tough form, like turned into a rock. It’s better to just burrow down.

And the poisoned lands! There’s some parts of the world, especially near old ruins, where the air and ground and water itself is poisonous. A changeling that ends up in them will get really sick if they spend too long, and then eventually die, though usually horrible things will happen to the changeling’s body first. I don’t like to think about it.

So…Stormy says that should be a good lead-in to how changeling bodies work.

II. Life-Cycle
Changelings are hatched from eggs laid in communal chambers by female changelings. We emerge as larva, with two developed legs and a mostly-defined head, but most of our body at that point is kind of squishy and undefined. Larva are bitey little things and often attack each other, but at that point our bodies don’t really have vital organs and we can heal wounds really quickly so only really weak larva get eaten.

After a year, larva undergo their first molt, and we're called nymphs. At that point we have proper hind legs, though they don’t work very well yet. From there we molt three or four times a year, getting bigger and stronger each time. The molted carapace is delicious and a good source of nutrients, so we always eat our molts…and we try and eat other changelings’ molts, too, if we can, though I’ve got fangs and I’ll use them on any ‘ling that tries! My molt is mine. Some changelings will share some of their molt with another changeling, sometimes, but they’re weird.

Oh, Stormy wants me to point out that larval and nymph changelings don’t really have a sex. I mean, we do, but the organs don’t develop until our nymph stage is nearly done. There’s no way to tell what sex a changeling will be until they’re adults.

During our nymph stage is when our ability to change shape starts to develop. Really young changelings can only do minor changes, like carapace color or distending a few limbs at a time, but after just a few years we can change into a bunch of different forms, and eventually we learn how to alter our size, too.

Changelings molt into adult forms at ten years old. The big difference between a nine-year-old nymph and a ten-year-old adult is that an adult changeling has sexual organs in its adult form, although it’s usually another five years before we’re actually fertile. Adult changelings also don’t molt nearly as often, usually only once a year or so, and after six or seven molts we stop getting any bigger, too, so molting at that point is more about getting a fresh carapace and a tasty meal from our old carapace. A changeling can live to be as old as a pony if allowed to so do…but most don’t live that long. Protea is a harsh world.

So Stormy is apparently surprised to hear all this talk about eating. She thought that we only eat love! That’s not true. A changeling does need love, but we also need to eat solid food to gain mass and nutrients. We need a lot less than ponies, though…what a pony eats in a day, a changeling would eat in a month for sustenance. It’s one of the reasons we survived the war that destroyed Protea. We also use food to create some neat stuff in our stomachs that we vomit back out, but I’ll get to that later.

So that’s our life-cycle in an egg…um, Stormy says the term here is ‘in a nutshell’. What’s a nut?

III. Physiology
So your typical changeling adult is a bit shorter than a pony. Female changelings tend to be a little bit bigger and curvier than male changelings, but since we’re, y’know, changelings, that only applies in our natural form. A changeling will usually just take whatever form is most useful at the moment. Digging is usually done in the male form, since even a few extra inches of space in the tunnels is nice. If you’re going outside you’ll probably be in female form for the extra size just in case there are any hungry mutant animals. Changelings feeling aggressive or about to get into a fight with one another will also usually take on a female form.

Changelings have an interior skeleton, but our bones are kind of ‘loose’. Changeling limbs and joints are capable of rotation in any direction; if I wanted to I could walk around with my elytra facing the ground but all my other limbs and my neck and head facing the way they normally would. I showed that to Snails and he said it was cool but really creepy. This has nothing to do with shape-shifting, either.

Changeling wings are underneath our elytra, the shell on our back that’s split down the middle. Our elytra only opens a little bit, though, enough to let the wings out. A changeling is usually strong enough to carry themselves and up to their own body weight while flying. We can stand on clouds, too, and move them around if we try hard enough, but we can’t create weather.

Changeling horns can light up, and we can use magic to lift or manipulate things. Our eyes are compound – basically made up of hundreds of tiny little eyes each, which gives us a huge range of vision. They’re also extremely light-sensitive; with just a single candle a changeling could see a whole huge chamber like it was lit up with a bonfire. Our mouths have a pair of fangs, but the fangs are mostly for defense and threat. Living on Protea you eat anything you can when you can, but most changelings don’t like the taste of meat that much. Unless our molts count? Mmm…anyway, except for our fangs the rest of our teeth are flat and better adapted to chewing and grinding plant material…which on Protea mostly means mushrooms, lichen paste, tubers, and so on.

Changelings don’t have nostrils; we breathe through our mouth only. The changeling tongue can extend about two feet from our mouth on average, and is forked at the end. We can taste all the things ponies can, but our tongue is also what lets us eat emotions. I don’t know how it works. Sometimes we’ll flick out our tongue to taste the air, see if there’s any emotions worth eating. Except for being able to taste emotions our sense of taste isn’t any better than a pony’s. Stormy says that there are things called reptiles that can taste stuff in the air, but changelings can’t do that.

Changelings need love to survive. That’s the only emotion that gives us nutrition. We can taste other emotions with our tongues, though. Joy, happiness, bravery, determination, and other positive emotions taste good. Sadness, depression, anger, and fear taste bad. Hate not only tastes bad, it’s actually poisonous to us. A changeling fed hate will die.

The spine that runs down a changeling’s neck, and the ‘tail’ that we have, are decorative. They don’t really do anything other than look nice.

Stormy asked why we’re covered in holes. I don’t actually know why, we just have them. Why are ponies covered in fur? Actually sometimes it does sort of feel like something is missing…but I don’t know what.

Oh, our ooze. Changeling stomachs can break down food and then we can throw it back up into a variety of different oozes. Ooze can be glue, used to stick stuff together, or we can instead throw up an ooze that will calcify very quickly into a dense, hard-but-pliable substance that can be used to build walls or floors or ceilings or whatever. That’s also what we build pods out of. Another kind of ooze, the most liquid kind that’s actually less viscous than even water, can actually carry nutrients and air if you’re breathing it; that’s what we fill our pods with so that whatever’s in the pod doesn’t suffocate or starve to death, though it has to be replenished, of course. Finally changelings have a caustic ooze we can spit out that eats away at metal. It’s harmless to living things, though.

Hey! Stormy just said changelings are gross. We are not gross!

IV. Society
At the very bottom of changeling society are the drones…wait, no, that’s not true. The very bottom are the podlings. Podlings are changelings that are put into pods, which we make from calcified ooze. It can be a form of punishment, for making a lot of mistakes, or for just not being strong enough to keep up with the rest of the hive. Older changelings that have managed to actually live long enough that they start falling behind are also put into pods, but this isn’t a punishment, it’s so that they stop draining the hive’s resources. We view that as more like going to a well-earned rest.

The pods are really important. Protea has no intelligent life left except for changelings, so changelings in pods are our only source of love. See, changelings can’t feed on the love of other changelings normally (except the Queen; more on that below). Only when a changeling is inside of a pod can its love be extracted and fed on. While in the pod, the changeling is in a state of hibernation, unaware of what’s going on around it, and pod tenders and the Queen use spells to induce dreams of love in them. It’s painless.

Podlings aren’t fed love themselves, of course, but something about the pods seems to make them last much, much longer than a changeling not in a pod could last without love. Podlings usually live about three years before expiring.

I’ve heard that we didn’t used to put our own changelings into the pods, just changelings from other hives that we were at war with. But that was a long time ago. There hasn’t been another hive for generations, there’s just the Last Hive. And before the other races messed up Protea, some changelings think we didn’t even need pods.

Oh, by the way, I keep calling it ‘the Last Hive’, but actually there’s five distinct structures all a few days’ travel from one another. They’re called the East, West, North, and South Colonies, depending on where they are, and then the one in the middle is the Central Colony. We keep them spread out so that in case of a disaster to one colony, the rest will survive (which has happened a few times – a star falls on one, or a bunch of mutants attack and eat every changeling inside, or poison air gets inside…the Central Colony has never fallen but the others all have at least once. When that happens we clean up the mess and then re-colonize). The Queen spends most of her time in Central but will go to the other ones sometimes. They’re all connected by underground tunnels.

Anyway, above the podlings are drones. That’s me! Most changelings are drones. We do whatever is needed, though most drones develop specialized tasks after a few years, rather than just doing odd jobs around the hive (though we have those too). Like me, for example, I was pretty good at building structures with ooze, so I mostly worked in construction, repairing damage to the hive caused by the storms or mutant animals. Other drones are warriors, guards, food-tenders, pod-tenders, servants of the Queen, brood mothers, and so on. Basically anything a typical pony would do in Equestria…well, maybe not anything, we don’t have things like candy-makers or artists or actors. The work is exhausting and leaves drones hungry and tired at the end of the day, but it has to be done.

Above drones are hive lords. Hive lords were normal nymphs that were noted to be more intelligent or clever while they were maturing (sometimes stronger, too, but of course strength doesn’t mean much to a changeling). As a result they were singled out by brood mothers and given more love and food while growing up. Techincally a hive lord is the same thing as a drone, but the better nutrition means that they tend to be larger and stronger and tougher and smarter.

Stormy just asked if hive lords are male. They are, when they want to be. Other times they’re female instead. Oh, Stormy just specified that she meant if they’re naturally male. No, not necessarily. A hive lord can be naturally male or female. The balance is roughly equal and the term is gender-neutral. Also, no, ‘brood mothers’ aren’t necessarily female, unless they want to be.

Hive lords are our leaders in day-to-day operations; they make plans and get to see the Queen a lot. Hive lords are always the first to eat and always get the biggest potions of food, both solid food and love. But hive lords have to make all the important decisions for the group they’re in charge of, so that’s fair. The hive-lord in charge of my work-group was hive lord Pharynx. He was always trying to make sure that we were as safe as we could be from the storms and the mutants of Protea, and often fought off mutants with aid from other warriors, leading every charge himself. Changelings can’t feed on the love of other changelings not in pods, but we can feed on other emotions, and Pharynx always had a taste of bravery and resoluteness about him that he’d sometimes share with my work-group if we did a good job.

Hive lords are also in charge of reproduction, making sure there’s enough changelings to do everything that needs to be done. Most hive lords only mate with other hive lords, though sometimes if a drone is really smart and skilled a hive lord might mate with them instead, since there’s a good bet that strong larva will hatch. It’s not that common, though. Drones don’t mate with each other…we could, like, we’re perfectly capable of doing it in a biological sense, but if we did we’d have too many changelings in the hive and we’d all starve.

Finally, above the hive lords is the Queen. The Queen (who can also naturally be of either sex) is the ultimate ruler of the hive. She’s the one who makes all the important decisions and figures out how the hive is going to make it another day. She makes all the rules, she decides punishments or gives out rewards, she sets goals and quotas and so on. She also reproduces a lot, since the Queen is obviously the best changeling with the best genes, so we want that to pass on. The Queen also steps in to defend the hive from major threats that even hive lords can’t deal with. I’ve personally seen our current Queen, Chrysalis, defeat a half-dozen giant worm mutants attacking the hive all by herself, and a generation back before I hatched, when a really powerful poison-storm (a storm with winds that carry the poison air I mentioned above) was coming for the hive – it had already wiped out the Southern Colony – I heard that Chrysalis went to the very top of the hive and cast a shield spell around us that protected the hive from the poison storm, though by the end of it she was ravenous, of course. Even the Queen has her limits.

The Queen gets the most solid food, of course. Queens also have the magical ability to feed on the love of other changelings directly, without needing them to be in a pod...though it hurts. At the end of every seven-day period (I don’t know why it’s seven, it just is), all the changelings of the hive gather together in one big room, and Chrysalis takes love from each of us, just a little bit. I always hate that day, since I know I'm going to be extra-hungry and extra-sore on it, but the Queen needs to take all the love she can so that she can defend us when really bad things happen. The Queen generally doesn't feed off of the podlings, at least, so we drones and the hive lords get all that love for ourselves.

I don’t know how old Chrysalis is. She was queen before hive lord Pharynx hatched, but I know there was a Queen before her, and a Queen before that one, and maybe a few more before that, though I don’t know their names. Chrysalis says that it doesn’t matter, since she’s queen now, and we should be concerned with the present and the future, not the past. I think Queens can live five hundred years or so. Sometimes you can confuse a hive lord with a drone when both are in their natural states, but Queens are much taller and stronger, have longer horns, and have manes of hair atop their head. Or at least Chrysalis does. Instead of compound eyes, Queens have eyes that look more like a pony’s. This is so that Queens can focus on one thing and never be distracted by what’s around them, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. When Queen Chrysalis looks at you, you know that you’re the center of her attention and all she cares about…it’s exhilarating.

I don't know what makes a Queen a Queen instead of a drone or a hive lord. It's a secret.

V. What Changelings Know About Equestria
Um…I don’t know much at all, actually. In fact I didn’t even know other worlds existed. I don't think any changeling does. If they did, do you really think we'd stay on Protea?

Every now and then, these portals just randomly open up across Protea. There’s usually some warning, like strong lightning and wind appears out of nowhere. For some reason the lightning seems to really like striking near the top of the Central Hive. There’s a specialized work-group that goes up there to repair the damage whenever it happens. Other changelings aren’t allowed up there, except for Chrysalis and a few soldiers and hive lords.

Anyway, these portals that open up just swallow changelings whole. Then we never see them again. That’s what happened to me, I was outside repairing some damage to one of the Central Hive’s entrances that had been caused by a dust storm. Then there was a howling wind and a flash of light and suddenly it felt like I was being pulled down beneath the ground by a monster or something, and I was half-submerged in this bluish energy field. I saw hive lord Pharynx’s brother, a drone named Thorax, try to get to me, but he was too far away, and I slipped inside.

The next thing I knew, I was in the Everfree Forest. I didn’t know what had happened and I spent two days just tucked under the roots of this fallen tree, shivering and scared. I saw creatures I’d never seen before, tiny little furry things with big bushy tails, dozens of them, and I thought they were gonna swarm me and eat me., but instead they left me alone. Finally I was thirsty enough that I came out from my hole and started looking around and tried to figure out where I was.

To me, this world is weird…but in a good way. The sky is blue during the day and sometimes there’s clouds and sometimes there isn’t, not like Protea where there’s always clouds. The Sun is bright and warm and painful to look directly at…sometimes scout changelings will fly over Protea’s cloud cover and they’ve never said anything about the Sun being a pain to look at.

And the night! You have so many Stars in the sky, and you only have one Moon but that Moon is intact, not shattered, so I think your world comes out ahead of ours. Trust me, whatever you see with your eyes is a million times better with compound eyes.

So there I was in the forest. I was completely alone. At first that was nice. Changelings like it when we can be alone, since work tends to make us hungry and cranky and even though changelings can’t feed on each others’ love (except Queens), drones sometimes try anyway if they’re hungry enough, and hurt their victim in the process; there is nothing more painful than having to fight to hold onto your love while something is trying to tear it away, at least not for a changeling. Or sometimes after you’ve molted you have to fight off other drones so you can eat your own molt, and my molt is my molt and I won’t share it with anything!

Ahem. Sorry.

Anyway, at first being alone was great, but after awhile I found myself feeling lonely, since I started to realize there was a difference between being left alone by other changelings, and being alone, with no other changelings around.

But on the other hoof I was dumbfounded by the amount of life around me, and how docile it was. On Protea, anything that isn’t a changeling is going to try and kill and eat you on sight. Here most of the animals wanted to be left alone, even when I changed shape to look like them. I ran into a few more dangerous monsters, things I now know to be called timberwolves, and a manticore, and these three sirens. The timberwolves were easy to avoid since I could fly, and the manticore was really big but I’ve been scared of bigger so I just changed into something small and hid until it lost my scent. It gave up much faster than something on Protea would have.

The sirens mostly just sang at me, which I thought was nice of them, though I guess it was supposed to hypnotize me, according to Stormy. It didn’t work, and one of them complained that they never get to eat anything intelligent anymore, though when I showed them that I could change shape they did try to get me to become a siren and join them in the water. I almost did, but by that point I was hungry enough that I was just tasting all the emotions around me and I could taste their aggression. I think they wanted me to change into a siren so they could lure me into a trap and eat me.

After that what I remember gets blurry. The forest had plenty of solid food, dead or dying leaves and some patches of grass and twigs and roots. I also came across this weird blue flower and ate a few of them, but they tasted awful and then for like a week afterwards I couldn’t change shape. I’m going to leave them alone from now on.

But anyway, plenty of solid food, but there was no love. I was getting hungrier and hungrier, and eventually I just get these flashes of finding Ponyville and…and everything that happened on Nightmare Night, which Stormy says you were aleady told about.

Oh, Stormy asked me how it is that I can speak Equestrian if I’m from an entire other world with no Equestria. I honestly haven’t thought about it. Every changeling learns Protean and Equestrian both from birth, as far back as I can think of. I don’t know why, but the Queen really wants us to be able to speak and read Equestrian fluently. I don’t know where she learned it.

Anyway, that’s all I can think of. Any questions?

Interesting, so a completely different, non-Equestria world.

Hi, Thorny Talon, Everfree Researcher here. I've got so many questions Ms Ocellus... un but most of them seem to be in my notebooks and I'm not entirely sure where they are right now, um, well I guess they'll turn up sooner or later.

Oh, I know! You mentioned you were a builder back on your home world, a bit like my wife I suppose, although she doesn't usually regurgitate building materials, are you planning to build yourself some form of home or nest here? If you do I assume it would be in a safer part of the Everfree or maybe even closer to Ponyville. Given your burrowing ability I suppose could even create tunnels around the area. Possibly even into a say Snail's basement, although I suspect his family might not appreciate that. A certainly wouldn't want a colt making a tunnel to my daughters room.

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Yup! I think I'll build a burrow near the edge of the Everfree, though probably not near Green Grape's vineyard. Ponies seem really scared of the Everfree Forest but, like I said, it's not really all that bad compared to Protea. I had gotten started on a burrow while I was starving...but, well, I was starving, so I made a few stupid mistakes, like building it under Green Grape's shed. He would have found it sooner or later even if I wasn't planning on dragging foals there and podding them. Which, heh, I promise I'm not planning on doing anymore. I don't need to as long as I can get love from Ponyville.

Tunnels are a bit trickier. I could probably build them, but I'm still only one changeling! So building a long enough tunnel to really get anywhere in Ponyville from all the way in the Everfree Forest would take forever. My main concern will be making escape tunnels, and drainage to prevent flooding (which is really weird to have to worry about, by the way, but it's another one of those good-weirds. On Protea you don't have to worry about flooding, there isn't enough water). Snails also says he'll help me do something called "decorate". I don't know what that means.

Snails also says he'll help me do something called "decorate". I don't know what that means.

That's OK, Snails doesn't know either

So, the reason that nobody in the Lunaverse knows about Changelings is that they're a VERY new addition, no more than a year or 2 in EQ.
Look forward to the EOH meeting them. Things are so different that any version of Canterlot Wedding probably wouldn't work.
One thing that I'd keep is Twilight finding out & NO ONE believes her.

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Well to be fair Vinyl already thinks the Night Court is infiltrated by bug ponies who use stupidity rays and nopony believes her.

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is that they're a VERY new addition, no more than a year or 2 in EQ.

Well, as far as Ocellus knows...

One thing that I'd keep is Twilight finding out & NO ONE believes her.

I actually kind of want fillyform Ocellus to hang out at the library a lot, so that she can develop her same love of books that she has in the show.

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Hey, Ocellus. Nice to meet you. Does your hive have any... fiction, like Equerstria or Earth has? Stories, myths, that sort of thing?

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Given that Twilight has less knowledge of the locals than everypony else it would raise the fewest questions if she hung out in the library. Obviously if she actually went to school Cheerilee would ask various questions about who her parents were and unless we wanted to write a farce where Ocellus has to keep walking in and out of the room changing characters each time so her secret isn't found out that's not going to happen. If she wants to find out about pony society the library would be a good place to start.

Oh, I found one of my notebooks, well I guess it's mine, I think the writing matches mine so anyway... are there any limits to your shape changing? Is there a maximum and minimum size? Can you only copy things you've seen or can you make things up from your imagination (I guess your pony form suggests you can unless that's another pony you bumped into). You presumably get the physical abilities of your new form but do you also get magical abilities such as Pegasus cloud walking or Earth Pony aura? Can you copy unicorn spells or just their telekinesis?

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We have some stories about what Protea was like before the war, and sometimes we tell stories about something impressive a hive lord did recently, or something amazing that Queen Chrysalis has done (like fighting off those worms I mentioned). We don't really have "fiction", though. All our stories actually happened exactly as we said they did. Every day in the hive is a struggle for survival, so the Queen says that if we want to spend time telling stories it should be about something inspirational and with an important lesson at the end.

She doesn't like us telling too many of those stories, though, since it can make drones do stupid things trying to get stories told about them. Stories are never told about drones because drones never do anything worth getting stories told about them, other than dying in stupid ways trying to get stories told about them. We're just not as capable as the hive lords or the Queen.

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There are limits. Taking and holding a shape takes magic - which means it takes love, since to a changeling, love and magic are the same thing. The more different something is from us in shape, the more magic it takes to assume the shape, though holding one is a little easier. If something has more mass it takes even more magic since we need to use magic to create mass. Becoming smaller doesn't help since then we need to use magic to get rid of mass. Of course, this same problem occurs if we have to drastically add or subtract limbs, like if I was to become a snake or a hydra, even if the mass was basically the same.

There isn't really a limit to how big or small a changeling can grow in theory, but it takes a lot more magic the bigger or smaller you get. If I were to go any smaller than, say, a house cat, or any larger than a manticore, then I'd be using up so much magic to assume the form and hold it that I'd only be able to keep it for just a few minutes before my magic "gives out", and at the end of it I'd be very hungry...probably not hungry enough to immediately drag somepony off and pod them, but hungry enough to start seriously considering it if there wasn't any other way to get love.

I can't hold a form long enough to starve to death due to lack of love, any more than you could hold your breath long enough to suffocate. Natural reaction makes me assume my true form well before that. Turning back into my original form doesn't take any magic at all.

Conversely assuming a form of basically the same size and shape - like, a pony - isn't very taxing. On my own I could probably hold my pony form for six or eight hours, and as long as I was in an environment with plenty of love, like Ponyville, then I'd probably be gaining love at a rate greater than I was losing it (the same environment could probably let me hold a more radically different form, like the manticore I mentioned above, for longer than a few minutes as well). I could imitate another changeling for even longer. I've spent a few days as a male before when digging tunnels.

It's easier to assume a form I've seen before, or something basically like it. It's not hard to alter colors or mane style or something. Coming up with something completely new requires me to be able to picture it in my head clearly, and to get it perfectly right in the real world would require me to shapeshift a number of times, using up love each time. Most changelings wouldn't want to do that, especially since there's almost always an existing form you could assume. Why become something with the speed of a dune runner when you could just become a dune runner?

Oh, our shapeshifting is totally magical, and it's completely real, not an illusion. When I look like a pony I am a pony, inside and out. That allows us to duplicate pony magic, though it takes practice, and we don't have a pony's cutie mark or special talent so everything we do is harder for us than it would be for a pony with the talent. Some hive lords, and the Queen, are capable of casting spells in their own right anyway. This also applies to assuming the form of a minotaur, zebra, griffin, or whatever.

Greetings little changeling, Ocellus, is it? I am Bocogu Yangin, greater jinn and teller of tales.

I am curious if you have ever heard the tale of "The Emerald Queen and the Three Travelers"? There are as many variants as their are lands in the world, but being from Naqah, that is the version of the tale that I prefer to tell.

This was just after the reign of Caliph Demir Yapici, literally the "Iron Maker" in Equestrian. Known for being a builder of amazing things, like a golden palace in the mountains, a garden with eternally flowing fountains and....other things.

This took place in a little village in the foothills of Naqah's mountains. The local community had come to befriend a rather strange camel there. One with rushing water for hair, a glorious sea green coat and who wore a necklace of coral and pearl. Sure, she looked kind of strange compared to other camels, but she helped make the crops grow by summoning water. Oh, how happy everyone was! She played with the foals. She helped summon rainbows. She'd greet every rising morning sun with a song!

But then one morning when she was out summoning water for the fields....a shadow stretched over the town.

"WHERE IS THE JINN!" roared a sleek orange shape as it swooped and swirled overhead! "GIVE ME THE JINN, OR I WILL BURN THIS LAND TO THE GROUND!"

That poor water camel had no choice. She surrendered herself to the dragon and vanished into the gaping depths of its hoard. The townsfolk cried, moaned and beat the ground for their lost friend! They cried and yelled so much that they caught the attention of three travelers. They had heard of other jinn being taken by dragons and were here to late to stop this kidnapping. The greater jinn needed some way to hide. Some way to...change. And being masters of stories, they knew the tale of a queen that might fit their needs.

So the three travelers pierced the veil and walked to a devastated world. Through what was once the remains of glittering kingdoms and long lost cities. There were many times they wished to give up in light of the devastation they saw, but onward they pressed. Onward they pressed until they reached a bristling construct of black stone. They journeyed inside till they reached the throne room, where the Emerald Queen sat in all her buzzing splendor, surrounded by a thousand angry wings.

"Why have you come to my lands?"

"Oh most clever and venomous of all calamities," the first of the travelers began. "We seek a new liege to serve and land to hide in. How may we improve your lot?"

For then, they threw their hoods back, revealing that they too were jinn! The clever, clever queen, far of sight and great of knowledge knew what they were and their plight, so she made her first demand.

"Oh creature of water! You have seen my lands! They are dead and parched! Bring life to them once more!"

And so did the sands explode with water around the bristling black tower and the queen was pleased. "You, jinn of air! Blow the poisonous clouds away from the sky!"

"As you wish, my obsidian shelled lady!"

And so, the second traveler summoned mighty winds to blow away the poisoned storm. But this was where the trick began! For the master of air did weave her breezes through the tunnels and holes, letting the sounds the wind made get infused with magic! Soon an enchanted tune began to play and that tune lured the the Queen and all of her creatures to sleep. As the queen and her minions slumbered away, the three travelers extracted a bit of glittering emerald flame from the depths of the queen's body.

When the Queen awoke, she howled at the heavens in pure fury. And since those days, the greater jinn have been able to change as well.

And that, little changeling, is the story of "The Emerald Queen and the Three Travelers".

6650278 6650319 6650211
I hate to be a party pooper, but I should probably remind all of you that official site rules prohibit any and all forms of roleplay on FiMfiction.

As fun as this might all be, and as much as I know a certain mossy maned mare who'd love join in running her mouth, we should probably switch this thread over to a more straight forward discussion of the topic before anyone gets in trouble.

6650319
HHHYOU ZZZTOLE FROMMM A QUEENNN?!

ZZZzzzzzzzzz...

*faints*

6650505
Wait, really? Why? And even in group forums?

Well...shoot.

6650509
Unfortunately, otherwise I'd have probably long since had Clover host a few quirky Q&A's over on my user blog.

https://www.fimfiction.net/rules -- Specificly

•Roleplaying is not allowed on Fimfiction. This includes carrying out RP scenarios with other users and acting out online personas. This ban applies to all site functions including PMs. Consider using email or an IM client, the UI is better suited for these tasks. For more information, you can read knighty’s post about this subject.

Apparently the short of it is there were a few users who ruined it for everyone by getting carried away, eating up too much server bandwidth, and even crashing the forum database.

6650538
Tttthhhhpppppp...

Well, fine. No more Ocellus telling things from her perspective, though I was specifically restricting things to her perspective for a reason, I wanted her to be an unreliable narrator.

6650543
Well, if you'd like to keep it up, a simple solution would be to link a gdoc. You can still control Ocellus in the main text, and every one else can post their own characters as "suggestions" or "comments".

6650543
6650560
If questions were restricted on our end to simply asking them and not roleplaying, then I think RDD could use Ocellus' perspective to respond without it being considered "roleplay". Honestly I doubt anyone running the site who actually looked at this would think what we were doing here is an actual roleplay session of the kind that caused issues on the site in the past.

Like it seriously wouldn't make any difference in terms of post volume whether RDD responded in his own voice, or used Ocellus as a colorful manner of explaining lore concepts of answering questions, so I figure as long as the rest of us aren't using characters, then it can't be considered an RP.

6650900
Plus I'm pretty sure the moderators will only find out if someone tells them.

6650966
Well to be fair I get that Emeral is basically saying "better safe than sorry", I'm just not sure how this could really be construed as an RP. Someone would have to really be looking at a simple lore QnA session in a real pear-shaped manner to think it was RP just because the answers were written in a character's voice. RP is clearly multiple characters interacting solely for the purpose of interaction and telling a story, usually involving hundreds of replies. This ain't that, quite clearly so.

Then again, I've run into people, site mods or otherwise, who do have a tendency to look at things in exactly such a pear shaped manner, so I don't know. *shrugs* I dig what you're doing here, but I can't say Emeral doesn't have at least some small valid concern here. But, better to ask forgivness than permission, right?

6650982

6650966

If I recall the rule was put in place after there was s huge spike in activity and it was discovered that about 90% of the forum activity was from about 2-3 roleplays going on a Vex said it involved 100's or replies.

6651092
From the post that Emeral linked, try nearly seventy thousand posts. For just one thread on one roleplaying group. According to Knighty one user had over 1% of the total notifications on the site, and that one guy's notification stream would repeatedly lock up the whole site. Remember the days of 502BadFimfiction? That was one guy.

So I do get it. It's just...unfortunate, since I didn't know about the issue, was entirely uninvolved in the debacle, and was just trying to have fun.

6650900
I like Vex's idea.

6650966
My lips would be sealed.

Actually I've decided to just take the honest and probably most direct route and ask Knighty what to do about it. FiMFiction moderators and administrators have always been reasonable, at least to me, so I figure the worst possible consequence of that is him asking me to lock this thread (fair enough), but on the other hand being honest has a nonzero chance of getting us an exemption.

So we'll see where that goes.

Ok, I've got a few questions about feeding but I'll wait until there's a call no how we can discuss them as the in character version's pretty fun.

6653185
Ask away! Stormy says that things are okay.

Ah, good glad that's sorted out.

Snails described a certain draining feeling when you fed from him but also that he didn't really feel diminished. You also mention that your species's podlings seem to be preserved rather than expiring from being fed on, so is your feeding process in any way harmful? Is there a limited amount of 'nutrition', no that doesn't sound like the right work, um, 'sustenance?' which can be removed from an individual and does it vary between individuals, are some ponies naturally more 'lovable' than others? I certainly think Rosie and Sprout are, but then I'm somewhat biast.

You've also said you can feel off the 'background love' of Ponyville just by walking around. How large a population is needed for that and is there any effect on the ponies?

6650278
Hmm, sounds kinda dismal. Well, I just saw a piece of human fiction called Bohemian Rhapsody. It's about a group of humans who make music. Music is very important in Equestria. So to help you blend in a bit, here's some of the songs they've written and sung.

God, I love this band so much. Such perfect harmonies and playing. Anyway, if you sing these around Ponyville, you should be able to blend in better.

6656012
I haven't really been around enough pony settlements to know how small you could get and still support me without me having to actively attack and drain ponies. When I talk about "background love", what I really mean is that ponies seem to be so free with giving out love that all I really need to do is stand near (maybe...five or so feet?) some ponies who are feeling a lot of love, then as long as I eat slowly they don't notice they're being fed on. The hard part is disguising that I'm eating...like I said, when I transform into a pony I am a pony, but that means that I don't have my changeling tongue, which is what's needed to feed on emotions. So when I want to eat some love while in disguise I need to transform my tongue back. Snails got me a scarf that I can wear to hide it when I do that, which is good for as long as the weather is cold. Once the weather starts getting warmer I guess I'll just have to be careful or think of something else.

When Snails felt the "pull" on him, that was because I was starving and draining as much love as he was willing to give me as fast as I could. If he'd been resisting instead of giving it, then the "pull" would have hurt, a lot, and it would have taken me longer. Snails had a lot of love he was giving up, too...but while I was trying to stop starving to death, I didn't want to gorge myself. A changeling is never "full", there's really no limit as far as I know to the amount of love we can eat, but there is a point where we're not "hungry" anymore. I just ate love from him until I reached that point.

If I'd drained any more love from him, there would have been some pretty bad effects for Snails. He'd have been like a zombie, really open to suggestion, especially from a changeling, but not really able to do anything himself, even eat, unless ordered. We do that to mutants on Protea sometimes, when we can (it's really dangerous to attempt since the mutants are so deadly, though, and since they're not intelligent we don't get a lot of love out of it). They make pretty good guards or heavy, simple laborers in that state, but tend to end up starving to death due to not eating enough, both because we don't have a lot of solid food to spare (especially not changelings! Well, unless the changeling did something really bad) and because they just won't eat enough. That or they "snap back" for some reason, and usually end up very angry and so have to be put down.

(This doesn't work on changelings, since only the Queen can feed on a changeling not in a pod, and if she were to drain a changeling enough to turn them into zombies like that, the changeling would die from lack of love.)

Some creatures have more or less love, but I don't think it's a species-wide thing, just about how much love a particular creature feels or doesn't feel for others. Animals that act on pure instinct feel love, though, but it's really..."simple", I guess is the right word, so it's not very filling. Intelligent creatures have more complex and filling love. Until I came to Ponyville I mostly thought that love was love, since all I'd ever had was love from the podlings which sort of mixes together when you're in the creche (we keep the pods in the same place that we keep eggs and larva, so that they get enough love while growing), but having been here a little bit I'm starting to notice different..."tastes", I guess. Like, the love Lyra and Bon Bon have for each other is different from the love that Snails feels for his family, or Cheerilee feels for pony nymphs in school. I'm trying different kinds of love to figure out what tastes best.

Stormy just told me that pony larva and nymphs are called fillies or colts, depending on gender. That's weird, knowing what you are right from when you hatch. I didn't know until just a few years ago when I finally molted into an adult.

Wait, what do you mean ponies don't hatch from eggs? Where do fillies and colts...fine, foals, whatever...come from, then?

...

WHAT?!

Stormy, please stop telling me about how ponies are born. Ponies are gross...

6656019
Music is kind of new to me. The first time I encountered it was three sirens trying to get me to leap into a river and get eaten. So I was kind of nervous when I heard a pony singing in Ponyville the other day, though apparently that was about how they'd gotten the mustard out of their shirt. Whatever mustard is. Or a shirt.

I'm not sure I like it. Every time I've heard it I've had this weird urge to shake or wave around some part of my body, and with the sirens I almost wanted to step into the river like they wanted. Music is some weird hypnotism. I'd try to avoid it myself, but a lot of times when I hear it in Ponyville there's some delicious happiness or love around it.

6656213
Shaking and waving about is natural when it comes to non-Siren music. Embrace it, especially the human music I posted earlier. You play that or sing it around the ponies, you might actually get full.

6656213
Ah, hello there. Don't mind me little one, my name is Grimwald, just a friendly and inconspicuous griffin of no noteworthy notoriety. I'd like to ask a little bit about the...hmm, let's call them "practical" applications of your species unique shapechanging abilities. For example, where you to say, become the unfortunate recipient of a deep stab wound to some vital organ or another, let's say the kidney (do you even have those?), would your ability to shapechange allow you to remove the wound as if it weren't there? Or conversely, were a sufficiency bladed weapon to remove a limb, could you morph in a new one with a poof of shapechanging magic? Does blood loss even matter to a species who can rearrange their internal structure? What would you say are the vital areas on your body, if indeed you even have any? Are you resistant to any particular toxins, venoms, or other poisons you might be aware of? Resistant to acid at all? How well does your species hold up against fire?

...Asking for a friend.

6657745
Hello Grimwald!

Changelings do have vital organs, and getting stabbed in one really hurts! But yes, we can use our magic to shapechange wounds away, even if we've lost an entire limb. However keeping it away is another issue...it'll come back once we're no longer holding the magic. Depending on the size of the wound we might be able to keep it away for days, hours, or just a few minutes (and it is always a function of size - what has been injured doesn't really matter: a tiny hole in my heart is much easier to shift away than if a big part of my leg is missing). If the wound was inflicted while we were shapeshifted to a limb we wouldn't ordinarily have an analogue for, however, then instead once we let go of the form, the wound will just disappear. If I'm a Orthros and you cut off one of my heads, once I change back I'll still keep the other head. Wounds also change according to size; if I were hurt while shapeshifted into something big, but then turned back to my normal form, the wound would shrink down proportionately, I'm not left with the same-size wound on a smaller body. But it still hurts!

Normally holding a form is basically subconscious, but if we receive a sudden enough shock, usually pain, while shapeshifted, we might revert to our original form. That happened when Dinky was yelling at me when I was disguised as Pipsqueak; all the anger she was feeling was really scary and painful, and I was starving so I couldn't stop myself from eating it despite that.

The good news for injuries is that changelings don't bleed a lot (something about muscular action and rapid swelling in our muscles quickly stopping the flow of blood, even from big injuries)...and we can regrow anything! Well, except our heads, if those come off or if our brains take too much damage then we're goners. But if I lose a limb or a wing or a vital organ, it'll regrow on its own over the course of a few weeks (how many depends on the amount of mass to be replaced), though only if I'm in my natural form (since that's the only way for the wound to "be there" to heal) and if I'm getting plenty of food, both love and solid food. Last year I lost my right front hoof when a strong wind knocked loose a weak edifice of the Hive and it fell on me pushing Thorax out of the way. Hive Lord Pharynx moved me to temporary brood mother duty to recover. I got lots of love from the podlings and the extra rations that brood mothers get. Fortunately even though larva bite basically anything that moves they're not strong enough to bite through changeling carapaces, so I didn't have to spend extra time healing. I'm also proud to say that in the two weeks I was there, no larva were eaten by the others!

Anyway, we've...had a lot of time to test this, both intentionally and not intentionally when mutants attack or accidents happen. And a lot of the time if the changeling is too injured and there aren't enough food rations at the moment, they may be put down instead of saved - I was lucky since my wound wasn't crippling, so that wouldn't have happened to me in any case. But kidney, heart, lung, esophagus, spleen, legs, wings, abdomen, trachea, everything can grow back if the changeling gets enough time and care and food! Also if it's something like the heart or lungs then only constant magical attention can keep the changeling alive. That means the Queen, only she's strong enough to, for example, keep a changeling's blood flowing even though they've lost their heart. And it takes a lot out of the Queen, so she can only do it when we're having a really good stretch of time with a lot of spare food. In my entire life it's never happened, it's always been better to just put down the changeling. At least the rest of us eat good when that happens.

As for poisons, there isn't really a lot that can hurt a changeling there. I actually enjoy the taste of arsenic and hexarachnid venom. While I was lost in the Everfree a weird snake with this rattling tail in the Everfree bit me in a weak spot in my carapace and injected me with its venom, but it didn't do anything (the bite hurt, though! But I ate the snake so I came out ahead there). The only exception is the poison air, earth, and water from the poisoned lands, but nothing can survive that. I think it's called...how would I say it in Equestrian...new-cue-lur ray-dee-shun, or something like that. If it's "hot" enough it can kill in minutes, but even a little bit can cause a lot of horrible damage to a changeling's body that we can't heal from. But the good news is that nothing else can get all that close, either, so they can't use it against us (and nothing on Protea is intelligent enough to try anymore, either). Some mutants have a bit of resistance but even they can't stay in the poisoned lands for more than a few days.

Oh, and hate is the most dangerous poison for a changeling, it basically works by robbing us of the love we've stored up, while also making us feel like every fiber of our being is on fire. But as long as we don't try and eat it, we're fine. It's only dangerous to a changeling that's already hungry and can't stop themselves from eating any emotion they encounter. Other negative emotions like anger or fear hurt and taste bad, but aren't poisonous the same way hate is.

6657765
Did the snake taste good?

6657793
Blegh. Not really. Like I said, changelings are adapted to eating plants mostly. But on Protea you eat whatever you can no matter how bad it tastes. You never can be too certain when you'll get a chance to eat a good meal next.

6657820
Ah, yeah. Eat what's there, for tomorrow you might go hungry.

Here. I'll listen to some Queen to give some love to you!

6656019
Just thought I'd mention, by the way, that '39 is my favorite Queen song. So good call.

6657978
Thanks. :) It's one of my favorites. It's very hard for me to choose my 'favorite' Queen song.

So has Ocellus had a chance to listen to any of them, yet? I'd love to hear her opinion on them! :D

6657992
Ehhh...

While this thread has permission from a site moderator to exist, the implicit understandimg was that it would be about Ocellus talking about changelings. So I don't think I should stray too far off of that topic, else we are definitely drifting into RP territory.

Sorry, but I feel I should err on the side of caution, unless I can think of a way to respond that still imparts a bit of an info dump about changelings.

6658194
Sorry, RDD. Didn't mean to stray or anything. I was still on a bit of a Bohemian Rhapsody high from earlier in the week.

6658214

How is the film, I've been meaning to see it but haven't gotten around to it first.

Maybe we should take this to the lounge?

6658227
Well, we can talk about anything here, it's only Ocellus who can't. Though I suppose talking about the film is off-topic. But I'm the absolute last person who will ever complain about that.

How is hiding around Ponyville working out for you so far? I think it would be best if you kept well away from Cheerilee, you could probably learn a lot about Equestria from her but she'd certainly have questions about a new unaccompanied foal wandering around (maybe you could claim to be from Hoofington?) and might ask to talk to your parents. The library might be a good place to learn about your new home I'm sure Twilight would appreciate someone asking for help (by the way can you read Equestrian? I'm not sure if writing would be an important skill in your previous role, although I would strongly recommend it.

If you continue to spend time with Snails his parents and sister might want to meet you. His parents would probably be quite proud that their colt is growing up but they might ask somethings which are rather difficult for to answer. Snails might try to hide your presence but I don't think he's all that good at keeping secrets or lying.

Most of the other element bearers probably won't notice a new foal hanging around although Ditzy might have a few questions and ask around about you but I doubt Carrot Top, Lyra or Trixie would notice you. The other foals might be more interested, again claiming to be visiting from Hoofington might be a good cover story.

6658285
I can read! ...a little! Reading is mostly for the hive lords and the Queen, though all nymphs are taught to read Protean and Equestrian...but most of us forget a lot. I'm actually really surprised how well Snails can read. And he says he's not even the best in his class! I'm trying to remember what I can about spelling Equestrian...Stormy has actually been helping me out a lot here.

She's not really all that bad! — Stormy Squall

I've decided to avoid Cheerilee in my fillyform (Snails and Stormy both tell me to spell it that way even though I'm pretty sure it's wrong), even though she's a good source of love - and not just her! When I'm anywhere in Ponyville's town itself when school is in session, if I stick out my tongue I can always taste the love coming from the school building. Not enough to eat from so far away, of course, but I don't want to just hang around nearby, Snails says that an adult doing that would be creepy, though he couldn't tell me why, he just says that it would be.

My first go at going to the library...didn't work out. Fortunately I was disguised as an adult pony, but I think that was part of the problem...I had to fill out a library card and I don't know my own birth day, and couldn't think of one for who I was disguised as, and I didn't even know Equestrian months or what year it was anyway. Twilight noticed and at first I could taste some pity coming off of her since I looked like an adult but had a nymph's reading ability...but then I started tasting suspicion, so I said I needed to go dig a new tunnel and ran out of there. Snails is going to help me come up with a better cover-story next time I go, which will be in my fillyform.

We're putting it together now: I'm Sprite, a unicorn from Hoofington, on the run from a horrible home-life where my parents, once nobles in the Night Court, are forcing me to get engaged to a beast of an archduke named Prized Perfection in order to increase their standing. But there's more than that, as while on the run I discovered an incredible secret about myself with the help of a handsome stallion named Snails, but also now find myself pursued by the attractive yet evil pony Smoky Ire and his henchmen, who wants the secrets I possess and is willing to do anything to get them...

I had no idea pony lives were so interesting on average! Snails and I got the idea from the back cover of one of his sister's books by Bodice Ripper that he's borrowed (without asking...which I'm pretty sure isn't "borrowing"...), and he says a lot of her books have similar stuff written on the back, so it's gotta be common. We're trying to adapt it to me, hence why we replaced the stallion Sky Gallery with Snails.

(Speaking of Snails' big broodmate, she has a lot of love in her too. But also a lot of anger...when I catch her at the right time and in the right mood it makes the love kind of "spicy". It hurts to eat just a little, but at the same time the love is really tasty!)

Leaning towards "Sprite" as Ocellus' alter-ego, incidentally, both because sprites are a kind of fairy (a nod to the otherworldly origins for changelings), and because there's a number of different insects called sprites, such as the sedge sprite. So it seems like a name that Snails might suggest.