Rival Chitin

by PactOfSkyranger

The Explanations

First off, let’s tackle Elytra’s backstory.
Elytra Necros is an artificial changeling monarch (concept from Braggart and the Bug) who has lived in Equestria peacefully, either as himself or the mysterious Torpor Trance. Born Ellis Robins (and he has another name I plan to reveal in the far future of this story, one he didn’t know about,) he has some questions about his birth, but he doesn’t let these rule him.

One Thousand Years ago, he took the form of Eternal Twilight (design and name from Saphroneth’s MLP Time Loops) and exiled both princesses, taking Celestia’s form in an agreed compromise known as the Millenial Falsity. From this, Elytra took willing love for Celestia into his hive. To the day the series begins, only one pony has actually legitimately found him out: Moondancer, who Elytra has installed as his regent should something unexpected pop up or should Elytra take a trip somewhere he cannot effectively govern the hive.

Elytra’s hive is split up into seven tiers: the Ordinary, the Trusted, the Husks, the Broken, the Vectors, the Eyes, and Elytra’s Honor Guard. Another unofficial tier, the Sensors, concerns Elytra’s human contacts.

HONOR GUARD
This tier is only bestowed to six of Elytra’s changelings: Toraxia, Paryniax, Ryxias, Sylkia, Arthroa, and Flitterwing. If you want to know what these changelings look like, follow these steps.
1. Look at the story Sexy Changes.
2. Look at Reclamation: Bolstering Ranks. I will have it on this site soon, but for now, you can see it here: https://www.deviantart.com/unitedas1/art/Reclamation-Bolstering-Ranks-829186070
3. Look at the snippet Download.Mane6, which is fourth from the bottom.
4. Imagine them as normal quadrupedal changelings in that same appearance.
5. Yes, that’s them.

TRUSTED
The Trusted are Elytra’s main few changelings; Pupa, Roach, D’v, Gossamer, and his main stand-in, Aracha. (Aracha is introduced in Chapter 3.)

ORDINARY
Ordinary changelings in the Necrosian Hive are the second-largest tier of the hive, handling most of the day-to-day operation.

HUSKED
Husked changelings consist of a special biomantically engineered changeling type similar to A: Royals in Friendship Bling and Changing Things, and B: Recarn’s nymphs from Forever a Changeling, known as Husklings. Husklings have full autonomy by themselves, but their minds are usually incapable of storing any memories, placing them into the Archive. This is because a Huskling is meant to act as a redundancy for if Elytra, his Honor Guard, or any of his friends are gravely injured and in immediate danger of dying, or “ceasing vital, aural, and mental functions.” They are equipped with the same kind of hollow fangs as a Recarnian changeling for if they need to save a pony or creature, but are also equipped with hive mind receptors that allow a changeling on Elytra’s “amplitude” to transfer their consciousness and form into them. Because of this, and the fact that changelings are only marginally better armoured than a pony, Husklings are split into three kinds: the Sleepers, the Hidden, and the Royals.

Royals are engineered to have Elytra’s innate physical traits. More on that in a moment.
Hidden are made for urban transfers, and tend to be generic background ponies. They are also the usual medium of the Recarn Method.
Sleepers are Husklings made from half of the “ceased” changeling carapaces.

BROKEN
The Broken are completely subservient changelings created from creatures that were converted, then psionically crushed to have no semblance of their own lives. This usually happens to the changelings that commit crimes by the Hive’s laws, but Bolstering Ranks’ first snippet (the Conversion Bureau one) will tell you that it also happens to anyone that breaks “rules of engagement” in a conflict Elytra has chosen to oversee. It is a crime to Break a changeling without good reason.

VECTORS
Anyone who’s read Back to the Swarm can tell you what a vector changeling looks like and is. Vectors act as the medical backbone of changelings, carrying the changeling medical mutagen Necrosia (which is humanely made with the other half of the “ceased” carapaces) wherever it is needed. For reasons in this book and another that might not pass approval here (Obelisk and Anti-Villainy, which segued into MIMF through Twivine Travels,) Elytra is not short on Necrosia, but does not use it due to the Necrosian Hive’s laws.

EYES
The Eyes are everywhere. They are the main surveillance network of Elytra’s hive, and their influence stretches... farther than you’d think. After all, a changeling, as Ocellus demonstrated, can be anywhere, anyone, and anything it wishes... Of course, the Eyes are never explicitly mentioned in the story, since their whole purpose is to slip through detection and collect information.

SENSORS
The Sensors will be covered in Chapter 2. They are a magical surveillance network consisting of Sci-Twi and my other OC, Astartes Cinch, Abacus’ nephew and the son of a certain miss Megan... Anything concerning Equestrian Magic goes through them to Elytra through codenames, such as Sci-Twi’s own highly wordy codename of Sufficiently Advanced Technology Is Indistinguishable From Magic (SATIIFM.)

LAWS
You are not allowed to replace an innocent creature, save for with royal approval.
You are not allowed to convert any creature into a changeling with the use of Necrosia, magic, or any other medium, save for with royal approval or good reason.
You are not allowed to Break an innocent changeling, save for with royal approval.
Royal Approval must be claimed directly from King Elytra Necros, or in his absence, Regent Moondancer or Honor Guard Toraxia.
You must bring your reason before the appropriate ponies/changelings to claim innocence on grounds of having a good reason.

HOW CHANGELINGS WORK IN THIS WORLD
Different changeling hives are determined by their Amplitude, the Frequency being their individual psionic identifier.
A changeling has three different types of energy: Psionic, Magical, and of course, Emotional. Emotional energy such as Love is the most common means of using changeling abilities.
A sufficient sustained dose of Love Energy can rewire a changeling to the offering Amplitude. (Idea from Shining Chitin)
Magical energy and Love Energy can be used to retune or disable objects containing an invasive Amplitude.
Changelings can use special talents with sufficient effort.
-Heart’s Artifice creates a dense but light crystal with different names depending on the emotion used that can be shaped into all sorts of things. Being derived from Love, Amoritite, the most common, is an antithesis to love-averse things such as Umbrum and their Atapriax, or Umbrum Crystal, that they produce,mirroring how the Crystal Heart’s light and love is anathema to umbrum entities such as Sombra and Rabia. Amoritite is also a good binding crystal for harmonic energy, which is how a blade of it can house a sliver of the Elements of Harmony‘s power. Elytra, with love to go around (mainly from his tenure as Celestia and his tendency to drink himself silly with love poison,) has quite a bit of skill with this.
-Biomancy is a magical changeling science of fleshcraft. Theoretically, it can create a clone of a pony, and in some worlds (looking at you, Nation of Love,) the talent has been used to create a sort of Matrix, with “pony” things sentient enough to feel love, but only just so. However, Elytra’s experiments in changeling constructs such as illusion pods violate less ethical constraints than the Omnifaria Love Factory, since the tests are consensual and involve no form of imprisonment (really, the pods are meant to be a sort of changeling virtual reality/game streaming device that harvests love.) Elytra is much less practiced in biomancy than Heart’s Artifice.
Every changeling in this world can digest love poison, but it will render them unconscious while the poison is converting the artificial infatuation into love energy.

ELYTRA’S OWN ABILITIES
As I mentioned before, Elytra is skilled in shaping things from love energy, and a good amount less skilled in making a Pony Matrix, the Biological Clock, or cloning ponies. (After all, his biggest feat of biological engineering used a foot-powered glass chamber to save the minds of the Mane 6.) He is, however, well skilled in sword craft, which brings me to his innate physique.

Elytra’s physique is that of a changeling monarch (think male Chrysalis,) and though he doesn’t use the more intimate parts of this physique as implied by other worlds (FAMILY STORY,) he does have a unique ability; his hooves contain clawed hands and feet, and he can actually call these out with a thought, which ties into his use of swordplay when friendship is not an option.
He prefers his Heart Blade, a mix between a short sword and a katana, and as I previously stated, a sword made of Amoritite like this can easily contain the power of the Elements of Harmony, giving the sword a unique smart function on par with... well, I don’t think you want to talk of Nintendo and Phillips’ retaliatory lovechildren against Sony’s exclusive rights to the Nintendo/Sony PlayStation’s games. Suffice to say, the sword will pass through an innocent pony with nothing but a tickle, but it will innately burn away at magical corruption such as a Nightmare Self or dark/evil entities such as an Umbrum. The sword has a sort of mind of its own, and can see the truth about its target, but it will never hurt an innocent creature (and for those asking, three things; someone who is blindly following along with evil entities is classed as innocent, Sonata Dusk is innocent enough to me that she is classed as innocent, and, due to the comic influences of this series, Discord is classed as Innocent in lieu of Cosmos.)
Elytra becoming a monarch has something to do with his family, but... no spoilers. What I can say is that he has hardened his mind, and the minds of his changelings, against mental assaults and magic. This makes them enter a sort of standby mode while the mental magic is worked out of their system. Sort of like an emergency shutdown. The standby removes their disguises and pulses their position to the rest of the hive. This will be important to remember later because of Discord.
As a counter point, Elytra has practiced ordinary pony hypnosis alongside Changeling hypnosis, and uses them as a sort of entertainment and tactical strategy.
However, Elytra and changelings do have one weakness; their colloquial vulnerability to Love Poison. You know, that stuff the Crusaders brewed up? A changeling digests it like the hardest cider, and imbibing enough will knock them out while the potion is worked through their system. On the plus side, it introduces artificial love energy into the supply, which for the Necrosian Hive is a communal trust that any changeling can draw from.
Elytra, like any changeling, knows how to pretend to be somepony, and he has had one thousand years of practice as Celestia, though these years were offset by body sharing with Celestia.
As compensation for the banishment, Elytra invoked two known variances of the Princesses: Sun Surfer Celestia from the MLP Loops, and Gamer Luna. As a response, Nightmare Moon and Daybreaker are less crazy, and Luna has worked through some of her angst at ruling the time of day everypony slept through, despite her efforts to garner interest.

CHANGES TO THE TIMELINE
Elytra, as Celestia, was motherly and moderately supportive to Sunset, but still stern enough that things went about ordinary.
Celestia and Luna were both banished, but Elytra took Celestia’s role through the Millenial Falsity. Celestia saw what he did, heard what he did, and contributed input for courts.
Sci-Twi, with Astartes, has gathered copious knowledge on how magical energy works, but she is about canon levels in her own research come Equestria Girls.
Twilight and her friends, due to Elytra, know what a changeling is. Due to Elytra’s plans, however, they will have no idea about Chrysalis.
Elytra has installed contingencies for the events of the splinter timelines in Cutie Re-Mark.
Starlight and Sunburst learning of each other’s current states due to D’v and Gossamer.
Elytra and Gossamer were leaders of music groups.
If you’ve read all of Bolstering Ranks, then you know of how Elytra sacrificed all of his hive’s love energy at a point 20 years before the story in a universe similar to The Broken Bond. He still hasn’t recovered all that energy.

Author's Note:

Next up, the timeline.