Whirring Cogs had a happy and near ideal life as a mechanic at the Cloudsdale weather factory. He had his best friend, a good social life, a job that he loved, and time to take joy in flying. While he enjoyed socializing with mares, he had no interest in complicating his life with a relationship, and lived contentedly as a single stallion. Then a mad changeling queen dared to make plans to wrest control of Equestria from the alicorn princesses. It's a pity that she was his queen, and Cogs the changeling had his perfect life ruined.
This is a prequel to my story - "Change of Life" - and explores the events that led up to the beginning of that story, before his fateful encounter with Lavender Dreams.
Chapters (1)
Not bad.
Aww, poor Zevan!
This is something to read, I look forward to his exploits in the next parts.
Good prologue to a lovely story
Okay, interesting Take on the Changeling species/race.
I greatly enjoyed this part of the story and eagerly look forward to reading the next, Great Job!
You might wanna fix your short description for this story. You call Lavender "Lavender Breeze" rather than Lavender Dreams. Aside from that, this is yet another excellent story!
4478433 I made that mistake so many times!
I feel like the other two stories pretty much sum this one's content up, making it more or less unnecessary to exist at all
Count yourself a new reader, this series looks interesting.
Alas, Zevan, it's never a safe thing to tell the truth to a megalomaniac. You're lucky you wound up in the Penal Battal ... I mean vanguard of the glorious Changeling conquest ... rather than recycled for bulk materials. But then you're one of the smarter and better-trained Castes, so just killing you would be a total waste on the investment of labor and love you respresent!
I've been writing Changeling stories as well and it makes a lot of sense that there would be a Caste or Sub-Caste in between the elite Infiltrators and the ordinary workers. Infiltrators would spy out the land, assuming numerous identities as need be, seeking out and testing ways of getting love. Then the ordinary Harvesters, who would intensively study just one or two identities, would establish themselves to harvest love on a larger scale.
Just like the Infiltrators, the Harvesters would run up against the reality that symbiosis works better (for both parties) than pure parasitism, and this lead them into sympathy for the Ponies they knew personally, sometimes extended into sympathy for Ponykind in general. There would be an especial dissonance here with Chrysalis' racial-supremacist ideology. They would tend to be under less pressure than true Infiltrators, but they would also have on the average less intelligence, willpower and training.
They would find themselves playing the same "game" as Nictis in Without a Hive, and coming to similar solutions. The best way to harvest love and friendship is to be friendly and loving toward others, and generally helpful so that one becomes the target of positive affect. Parasitism may accurately describe a lot of what the Changelings do, but predation (as in Chrysalis' ideology) does not. And symbiosis works best of all, since emotional relationships take time and effort to cultivate, and hence it is in the Changeling's interest to protect and enhance the lives of those on whom he feeds, than to destroy them.
Yep. Nazi or Soviet-style penal battalion. To the point that they are willing to forego the use of his valuable skills simply to punish him. That's how Hitler and Stalin did it, too.
They would deliberately lead rather boring lives so as to avoid attracting attention to themselves -- either hanging around in the background like Zevan's been doing, or finding a lover or good friend and sticking with them. The obvious thing to avoid would be trying to break up existing Pony relationships, as that would draw hostile notice from other Ponies. As always, Secrecy Is Survival.
The Swedish military-historical metal group Sabaton has several songs sypathetic to the poor bastards who found themselves essentially in Zevan's position during the World Wars. I feel for Zevan -- this situation is totally not his fault.
Aww, she normally puts Apple Bloom to sleep. Though much more gently ...
And his part of the battle is over ... does this have a TV Tropes page yet? It's a damned good story, conveying emotion and making me sympathize with the main character -- without being melodramatic. Which is suitable, as Zevan strikes me as a rather calm and reasonable Ling.
Ironically, the sort of person who Applejack would normally like, rather than knock out..
Such is the sad truth of war.
I want to smack that overweight idiot/tyrant/bitch named chrysalis upside the head.
nicely written.
Loved it just as much as your chakaverse stories (even if I miss a new Forest Tale). It was very well written. Now, on to the next one!!!
/Lars
Excellent character introduction! Looking forward to reading the sequel
Fun prologue. I look forward to the rest of the story
This story has over 2200 views at not one person has spotted this simple error.
There should be an opening quotation mark between 'imperiously' and 'I bring' since it's the start of Chrysalis' dialogue. I don't know how that got overlooked, especially after this long and during the editing process.
5931528 Thank Celestia you found that horrific error. To think my story was practically ruined by it!
Seriously though, thanks for pointing it out. Fixed now.
5931558 Nonetheless, this was very well written. I enjoy a short, slice-of-life story from time to time and this has definitely satiated that appetite for the moment. I shall be looking at the rest of the series(?) over the next few weeks or so.
And yet nothing else works quite as well...
Oh, this is excellently written! The perspective of an unwilling participant is a very interesting one to explore
The joys of married life
Are herds canon in this story, then?
A couple of tiny errors I spotted:
> It was not easy, but nevertheless by the time the
Double space between "but" and "nevertheless".
> There were several changelings still laying where they fell
"lying", not "laying".
6333491
Yes, but not common.
Thanks for spotting the errors!
This was a very well done telling from the changeling’s perspective of the royal wedding day. I also loved how you explained the location of the hive. Even though no one's sure for sure if changelings actually form hives, but it seems to fit.
~LATEP
*SIGH*
Z, the way you hang out with mares but never hit on any, they've marked you down as gay
Somewhat raunchy joke
Q Why did God give female parts to women?
A Because he knew that if he didn't no guy would ever speak to any woman under any circumstances
O i like this and it is the perfect place to start the house path story line.
Great story!