Natural Defection
The Council of Speakers did not meet often. The highest members of the Simic Combine took a stance that wasn't so much laissez faire as it was "don't contaminate the experiment." Most of the time, they met to decide the future course of the Combine. Sometimes, the activities of another guild necessitated a decision from the top. And on occasion, when a guild member showed symptoms of the excesses of the past, they met to prevent the spread of the disease.
The Speakers' Chamber, like the rest of the Simic guildhall, the Zameck, was a plain, almost cavelike structure just beneath the surface of the Tenth District. Algae thrived on the corners of walls. Skylights covered in plax, an æther-infused ooze, gave the light a dreamy, underwater quality. Seated around a crescent-shaped table were all nine speakers of all nine zonots: merfolk, sea trolls, vedalken, and even a rather algal root-kin. The creature who sat in the crescent's curve was none of these. She wasn't easily classified as anything, even by the guild's taxonomy-twisting standards.
The defendant's arms were humanoid standard to a very brief glance. After that, one noticed the translucent skin over the biceps, revealing the musculature underneath. The peculiar, wet-looking pustules along the forearms and on the backs of the hands. The four-fingered hands. The fingertips wholly covered in keratin.
Her legs were unlike those of any unmodified species. They started fairly human, then became progressively more equine at each joint, from knee to ankle to fetlock, ending in hooves half again as big as her hands. More pustules dotted the limbs amidst the short coat of mint-green hair. On each thigh was an image of a double helix within a golden bulb shaped like the tip of a baby bottle.
Her body was concealed beneath a cotton shift. The way the fabric folded suggested a slim form and modest breasts on her chest. The clothing's shoulders were already dark with moisture from the vesicles beneath.
Her face was largely human, but the details hinted at her species of origin. The nose was unusually flat and broad, the jaw a bit protrusive. Her golden eyes were slightly larger and a touch further apart than average, her ears pointed more like a cat's than an elf's. Her scalp extended down her neck, her white and seafoam locks still forming a mane. Oh, and the horn. The horn sprouting from the middle of her forehead was something of a tipoff. Her head was clear of the moist growths, though small ones laid on her neck. Her expression was firm, lips set, eyes narrowed, nostrils flared.
Prime Speaker Zegana opened the proceedings. "State your name, base species, and role in the Combine."
The answer came loud and proud. "Lyra Heartstrings, unicorn pony, journeyman biomancer of the Tentacle Clade."
"Do you understand why you have been brought before us today, Miss Heartstrings?"
Lyra smirked. "Would the speakers like my opinion on the matter, or simply a recitation of the charges?"
A slight frown marred the merwoman's neutral demeanor. "This is a serious matter, Miss Heartstrings."
"I agree wholeheartsedly, Prime Speaker."
The frown deepened. "I beg your pardon?"
"As I beg yours. What delightful symmetry." Zegana's scowl made it clear that Lyra's humor would not be appreciated here. "I neologize for the sake of accuracy, Prime Speaker. I have installed redundant backups of several of my once-unique vital organs, including the heart. Hence, if I am to do anything wholeheartedly, I must speak in the cardiac plural."
Zegana sighed. "Miss Heartstrings, you are not helping your case with these attempts at levity."
"You know who also didn't have a sense of humor? Momir Vig."
In most courtrooms, the resulting commotion would be quieted through the aggressive use of a gavel. Instead, Zegana squeezed a puffy, boneless creature that had elements of anemone, hamster, and indrik. The resulting ultrasonic squeal quieted the courtroom almost instantly even as it provided some much needed stress relief. The prime speaker waited a moment in case the hubbub needed further suppression. Once it was clear that it did not, she declared, "If it were not for your sterling reputation prior to the incident in question, Miss Heartstrings, I would hold you in contempt of court. If I were a more malicious person, I would sentence you to be eaten by waspcrabs. One more flippant remark, and I will disregard both of those conditions. Do I make myself clear?"
Lyra shrugged, her words unapologetic. "I merely sought to illustrate a point, Prime Speaker."
"And what point could that possibly be?" boomed the sea-troll at Zegana's left. Trifon, speaker of Zonot Four, glowered at the unicorn. "That you have no respect whatsoever for your guild? That you completely fail to appreciate how close Vig and his thrice-damned cytoplasts brought the Combine to complete destruction? Well?"
"That this entire guild has an irrational phobia—"
Trifon pounced on her words like a hungry shambleshark. "Irrational!?"
Zegana raised a hand. "Let her speak."
"Zegana, you can't possibly—"
"This may very well be an upwelling, Trifon. An unwelcome one, perhaps, but that does not mean we should scorn it." The troll grumbled at this, but quietly. Zegana gave Lyra a nod. "Continue, Miss Heartstrings, but know that you touch on a sensitive issue."
"Understood, Prime Speaker." The altered pony took a deep breath to steady her nerves. Trifon did that to people. "As I was saying, the Combine as it is has an irrational phobia of anything to do with Momir Vig. I do not claim that it was wrong to turn from the path he sought to travel, but it was wrong to discard virtually all of the progress made under his leadership."
Zegana gave a sad shake of her head. "What you call 'progress,' child, the rest of us call 'madness.'"
The hardness left Lyra's eyes as she brought them to the floor. "Do you know what convinced me otherwise?" Instead of blasting out the question with stentorian pride as she had before, she barely managed conversational volume.
A hint of gentleness slipped into Zegana's reply. "I confess that I do not."
"I was at Zonot Three during the attack." Several of the speakers murmured at this. More than a month ago, there had been an attack by the Gruul on the remote base of Simic operations. "Given Zonot Three's focus on botanical and fungal studies, we were ill-equipped to handle a sudden assault of vandals and berserkers. I was hiding amid my then-current research – attempts at an amphibious phytohydra – when I saw her."
"Her?"
Lyra nodded. "An earth pony mare, though were it not for her blue coat, I'd have thought her a mindless beast. She was streaked in blood, at least three different shades, but she had apparently decided to stop for lunch." She chuckled for a moment before choking herself off. "I... I'm sorry." She forced back a sob. "Times like this, y-you have to laugh so you don't cry..."
"Take as long as you need, Miss Heartstrings."
"Thank you, ma'am." Lyra took a few deep breaths. "In any case, there she was, idly grazing heads off of my most promising specimen. Of course, they grew right back. At first, all I could think was that if nothing else, I'd made a new snack food for the pony market.
"But then she trotted away, nude but for her accidental war paint, not a spark of thought in her eyes, and I wondered, 'what difference is there between us?' Pony genetics being what they are, we could be sisters. Me, sister to a savage creature scarcely different from a wild horse."
She scowled. "I couldn't accept that. We were able to repel the Gruul in time, no zonot is defenseless, but from that day on I couldn't look at myself without seeing that... that animal. I needed to distance myself from her by any means necessary, distinguish myself from that beast in every way that I could."
"You became disgusted by your own nature and sought to change it." Zegana shook her head. "It is no surprise that you went adrift."
Lyra leapt to her hooves. "I tried! Luna damn it, I tried! Every permitted form of biomancy, every sanctioned hybridization, every procedure that didn't put my self-awareness at risk! And it wasn't enough! For all the bells and whistles I could sprout, underneath it all, I'd still be the same damned horse as before!"
"And so we return to your crimes."
"They are crimes only because the Combine proscribes anything with a hint of Vig's influence out of fear of what he did!"
"And we are better for it." A hint of steel slipped into Zegana's voice.
Lyra sneered. "Are we? My mother told me of the cytoplast treatments that helped the lame and crippled walk again. The work by people like Dr. Nebun to cure diseases when the other guilds could suppress the symptoms at best. The days when seeing the Simic signet meant that here was something designed to make life worth living. Experiment Kraj was disastrous, no one is denying that, but it cannot erase the benefits that the old Combine brought to the masses! Benefits we cannot provide so long as we follow hermetic policies like the Holdfast Principle!"
"And so you use yourself as a demonstration of the good we could do if we were to return to Vig's methods," concluded Zegana, her words slick with sarcasm.
Lyra shook her head. "No, not Vig's methods. The methods that were in place for decades, centuries before Vig came to power."
Zegana waved a hand dismissively. "Regardless, we have been sidetracked long enough. This is neither the time nor the place for such discussion—"
"Then when, Prime Speaker?" Lyra pressed. "When do we look at ourselves, at our actions, and ask if we're acting for the good of all, or merely for what we spawn in our laboratories?"
"With what you have said today, Miss Heartstrings, I can only assume that day will be very soon." Zegana glanced at the papers before her. "Now, while we have deviated from the normal procedures for this sort of hearing, we can certainly be flexible. Miss Heartstrings, in addition to violating the Holdfast Principle and using forbidden biomancy, you have also performed self-experimentation without permission from a master biomancer, have confessed to elective bio-augmentation without a license, and have failed to document a new krasis once it proved viable. Is there anything you would like to add?"
"That hat looks stupid and you should feel stupid for thinking otherwise."
Zegana shook her head. "And add poor taste to the list of offenses." She folded her hands, thinking for a moment. "I would like to note that we are willing to lessen your punishment if you tell us where you managed to find living cytoplasts." More gently, she added, "Please take the offer, Lyra. We need your compassion as much as you need our better judgement."
"I'm getting judgement no matter what I do," huffed Lyra. "Besides, you'll just kill them as you did all the others."
"There were no others, Miss Heartstrings. Until we learned of your experiments, we had assumed that the Kraj project had absorbed every cytoplast in Ravnica, and thus they were all destroyed with its death." Zegana paused for a moment before nodding to herself. "If you were to point us in the right direction, we might consider preserving one, if only so that future generations would not forget the lessons taught to us by Vig's folly."
Lyra said nothing for nearly a minute, but her shifting expression betrayed the battle that was raging in her mind. Finally, she sighed, shook her head, and smirked. "You know, it'd be obvious if you came out of your holes a bit more often. I was looking for something that supposedly didn't exist anymore. Who do you think I asked?"
The librarian was updating the encoded orders in a copy of Meditations on the Nature of Truth when he heard a cough. "Just a moment, please." Didn't want to send old Circu after the wrong fellow, after all. The lobotomist was pushing ninety, and his eyesight was getting iffy when it came to anything that wasn't pinkish-grey and wrinkled.
Once he finished double-checking the cipher in the text, he looked up and put on his best "people face." "Hello, welcome to the Ismeri Library. How may I Prime Speaker Zegana!?" What was the fish woman doing here? Shouldn't she be off feeding squidflies to eelhawks or something?
"Shh." Zegana smiled as she murmured, "This is a library."
The librarian, who just knew his days were numbered, gave a nervous chuckle. "S-so it is. How may I be of assistance, ma'am?"
The guildmistress maintained that maddeningly opaque grin. "I'm here to see a horse about a man."
Ditzy came to a landing among the gargoyles of an Orzhov cathedral and sighed.
One of the sculptures turned its head and opened its mouth wider than stone should've allowed. A bubble manifested around its head and shook as it absorbed the piercing scream.
Ditzy watched as the gargoyle examined its new headgear. Got to appreciate the little things, she thought to herself, or the big ones will grind you down.
A luminous, blue humanoid walked to the side of the cathedral, then kept walking up the wall. Ditzy watched this as well. As the figure approached, the details in the light indicated that she was looking at an invisibility spell. She waited until Jace reached the top and dropped the illusion before asking, "Having fun?"
He glanced at the gargoyle, who was now bouncing its head against the roof. "You seem to be."
Ditzy wingshrugged. "Hey, if you want to rack up a hundred years of posthumous servitude, go ahead, break the thing."
"Point." Jace leaned against an inanimate grotesque. "So, the Implicit Maze."
"Yup." Ditzy looked out across the crowded skyline. "Should be interesting."
Jace looked at her like she'd sprouted a third wing. "It's going to throw the entire plane into chaos."
"Right. Interesting."
"Don't you care? This is your home."
Ditzy sighed, rose, and stretched. "Jace, I've spent the past several weeks circumnavigating this world, looking for some way to defuse this thing before it got started." She turned to him, resignation clear in her eyes and drooping ears. "You know what I found?"
He could guess. "Nothing?"
She shook her head. "Worse. I found someone else looking for the same thing. And he's joined up with the Boros!" This got a humorless bark of laughter. "How crazy is that? Someone joins the army looking for a peaceful solution! It just makes you wanna..." Ditzy dipped her head, unable to hold back the tears anymore. "M-makes you wanna..."
Jace hesitated for a moment before kneeling and awkwardly tousling the pegasus's mane. "Um, there, there?"
Ditzy sniffled and glared up at him. "My home's about to tear itself apart, you idiot." Her voice cracked even as she held the glower. "This situation calls for a hug."
The human complied, mechanically wrapping his arms around his friend. "Please don't get snot on the cloak."
Ditzy giggled a bit. "You are the worst at cheering people up, you know that?"
"You laughed, didn't you?"
"Only because you're so pathetic." One last sniff, and Ditzy smiled, wiping her eyes with a pastern. "Okay. I'm okay."
"Ready to go fix this?"
"Ready to minimize the damage." Ditzy's wings started to shine with brilliant white light. "Get on."
"Um, couldn't I just—"
"Jace." The mare locked both eyes on him. "Get. On."
After a helpless shake of his head, Jace complied. "Could you at least tell me where we're headed?"
Ditzy grunted a bit under the added weight, but with the magic bolstering her strength, it was nothing she couldn't handle. "Sunhome. We've got a friend we need."
Simic Guildpony GU
Creature — Unicorn Pegasus Wizard
Flying
If one or more +1/+1 counters would be placed on a Pony, Pegasus, or Unicorn creature you control, that many plus one +1/+1 counters are put on it instead.
"A guild is like a herd. Countless strengths brought together by singular purpose."
0/1
Lyra, Genetic Engineer 2GU
Legendary Creature — Unicorn Human
Creatures you control have evolve. (Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control with less power or toughness than that creature. If a creature has multiple instances of evolve, each triggers seperately.)
"The rest of the Combine calls me a radical, but no one born with thumbs could ever understand my motives."
1/1
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Based on your thing and its 70% accuracy, Shining Armor's affiliation, and Celestia and Luna's nonexistence, it seems like Rarity's a pretty safe bet. Which of course means it's not her. (jk, it's totally her (or is it?
(omg, it's Trixie! It's totally Trixie! (in that "absolutely not" kind of way (or maybe I'm joking again to throw you off 
(way too many parenthases 
))))))
Well, it's not Luna, so no using that chart you made as a cheat sheet. No one else I can think of really seems to fit, so I'm going to take a wild guess and say it's either Bon Bon or Cranky. Though if you wanted to go for irony, someone like Trixie, Iron Will or Braeburn as a Dimir would be hilarious.
Also, I think that Zecora would be a good Gruul shaman. Any chance of that happening?
Lyra should have Graft 1, because cytoplasts.
I'm going to have to go with G S tol Kriaal. It's most likely Rarity. My own version of her is even Blue/Black.
The next guilds, as someone else has already determined, with their associated Pony (as guessed by me):
Dimir: Rarity (See above)
Golgari: Applejack (Most of the Golgari are farmers, so it could be Big Mac, but I think you'll have the Mane Six through your first ten chapters)
Selesnya: Fluttershy (Because she's just so very Selesnya)
Orzhov: Flim/Flam (Con "men" would fit Orzhova well enough, even if I don't care much for them and would rather not have them in my guild)
Then when the cycle repeats, I don't know if you're going to use the same ponies or a different one.
3297376
I don't know, Rarity just never seemed very blue to me. Agreed on Fluttershy, though.
Also, I now have this picture in my head of Harold Hill working as an Orzhov enforcer, and I blame you.
Hmmmm Maybe Chrysalis? she is the perfect spy.
3296787
Iron Will would be either the worst Dimir agent ever, or the greatest. He'd come charging out, bellowing about taking your valuable artefacts for unspecified buyers and then running off with one magical item and like four random kitchen implements of no value, and everyone present would be like "Who does that Gruul retard think he's fooling?"
I think we're going to be visited by either Dimir Blueblood or Fleur.
Are the Dimir opposed to cake?
A good Dimir agent should be the one you least suspect.
Therefore, I vote AJ.
My theory is that Simic is going to be Rarity. Fluttershy is almost certainly a Selesnya. Also, what do you mean Simic is best guild? That honor goes to Izzet.
Rarity would make good Dimir because of her skills for accumulating gossip and social manipulation, and being a unicorn fits to Dimir. It would also work with Pinkie's mention of Rarity in the first chapter.
Trixie, if competent, would also make a good Dimir, because because nobody would expect someone so unsubtle to work for them, alternately she would make a good Orzhov. Chrysalis as a dimir would fit well, but she will probably only show up later, her showing up now would break the pony theme. AJ being Golgari and Fluttershy being Selesyna is obvious, though they also would work the other way around (necromancer Fluttershy is too kind to let people die).
I really love the Simic alicorn, she is my favorite guildpony so far.
3296787
Although the saying makes me sad,
The one Gruul here is barking mad.
So I planned it, though I may
Be able to find a way
To include a stripy mare
In the future here, somewhere.
3297164
When Lyra said she was using techniques that had existed long before ol' Momir, she wasn't kidding. Her cytoplasts are the old, pre-Vigean kind that require surgery to move from host to host. No graft for her.
3298108
"Late on your debt? That you'll regret!"
Hmm. Actually, he was fairly insistent on getting paid in the show, wasn't he?
3298627
The only guild opposed to cake is the Gruul, because cake implies ovens and mills and largely intact buildings, all of which the Gruul are strongly against. The Dimir, meanwhile, like cake quite a lot. Not only is cake delicious, it can also be used to store a wide assortment of useful devices, from hacksaws to memory vials.
Also, I will go on the record saying that the featured character has been named in the comments for this chapter, though not necessarily in the right guild.
I for one can't wait for the Golgari-AJ chapter.
What is that gonna be called, anyway?
Rot Apple Acres?
Dredge Apple Acres?
Sweet Rot Acres?
Sweet Apple Sewers?
I've never read a Magic novel, but the world of Ravnica is so intriguing. . . . Maybe I'll pick one up.
3301922
He was, but he also honoured his satisfaction guarantee and left without really pressing the issue (once she said she wasn't happy with the service, anyway). A Dimir would probably just collect the payment without informing you (probably before they even deliver the items, in fact). An Orzhov would show you page seven, article three, subsection nineteen-point-one, which clearly states that the any "guaranteed satisfaction" is subjective and therefore the return of any payments rendered is solely the purview and decision of the individual to whom the payment(s) were made. Then it turns out there was a fee for trying to get your money back despite that part of the contract. Then it turns out there was a fee for having that part of the contract pointed out to you.
3298108
Well, the Dimir do occasionally pretend to be members of other guilds (blaming assassinations on Rakdos, in particular).
Also:
Vorinclex hides in the shadows!
If the chagelings are not part of Dimir i will be dissapointed
This story is just stunning and hilarious and fantastically written. The way you bring Ravnica to life is a joy to read. :) This chapter actually reminded me a lot of Isaac Asimov's Foundation, was that intentional?
5369286
Huh. I've only read the first book in the Foundation series, but some of it may have crept in to my interpretation of the Council of Speakers without me realizing it. On the other hand, appropriately enough for the Simic, it could just be a case of convergent evolution.
5369477
The first book of Foundation opens with a trial which reminds me a lot of this one. Asimov was fond of having opposing sides engage in passionate, civilised debate. If I go with the analogy, then that would make the Simic Combine the Empire, who fell because they became too complacent and failed to prevent the empire from stagnating (and exiled Hari Seldon/Lyra for stirring up trouble).
Prime Speaker also sounds exactly like something out of a Foundation book, although that's a coincidence. :)
10167618
You picked a really weird place to plant your flag. What, if anything, does this have to do with this story or a chapter published a year and a half before we'd ever even heard the name Starlight Glimmer? Lyra is talking about something completely different here.
What is Lyra's Cutie Mark for?
I guess Genetic Engineering? The "making new life" bit explaining the baby bottle?
10470842
It just looks like the tip of a baby bottle. It's a stylized, yellow stasis cell containing a single double-helix. One whose outline just happens to resemble the lyre she'd have in more familiar timelines. And yes, magical mutation is her special talent.