Chapters Author's Note
In case you're curious, there was already an argument about this story's legitimacy. Meeester said that this doesn't violate any of the rules.
Introduction & Foreword
When I first met my associate, I locked him up in a jail cell underneath my house and accused him of seeking revenge for Queen Chrysalis's defeat in Canterlot, but discovered that he was neither involved nor interested in the attack. He even presented a solid argument in defense of his queen's actions, stating that they had been starving to death, and that, if I had a thousand children to feed and no money, I would justify raiding an apple orchard.
After explaining some basic facts about changeling physiology to me, and a night spent resting, he attempted to escape, and almost made a meal of my fear in the process. He stopped, and, taking pity on me, confessed that he couldn't bring himself to do it, before locking himself back up without ever touching me. He promised that he would help me learn about changelings, so that I could defend myself in the future from other attacks.
I allowed him to live with me in secrecy, and have since come to know him as my friend. He and I have spent many a sleepless night working together in order to formalize this study, so that the world may understand the changelings as they truly are. He has no intention to harm anyone, and has been convicted of a dozen crimes he didn't commit.
He and I are now advocating for the rights of changelings in Equestria, and ask that you will stand by us in an effort to bring equality to the world you and I know, so that he and his people can live peaceful lives.
After a few days of interviewing him, we discovered a way to access some of the final queen's memories. By connecting to her personal hive mind through her removed horn, we have before us plentiful lifetimes of knowledge and data on changeling biology. Though some of it is inaccessible and much of it is vague, the queen was very familiar with these things, largely due to her vital role in reproduction.
This is a summary of all we have learned, and the most thorough study of changelings I have yet to find.
A fair word of warning: some of this will contain fairly unpleasant topics, and descriptions of the changeling reproductive systems and processes.
When Twilight Sparkle first asked me to help her with this project, I was less than enthusiastic, being chained up and still in a state of shock after my mother's death. But, as time passed, and we came to trust one another, I began to see the value in this study, and then, the necessity of it.
Changelings are a misunderstood phenomenon, and I am the last drone, the last changeling capable of reproduction, the last shred of possibility that my species will exist in a generation. I hold the last semblance of hope for the survival of my people, and, though I still grieve for my mother, for my queen, I look to a new person for support.
Princess Twilight Sparkle gave me the benefit of the doubt when no one would, when I wanted to throw myself onto the spears of my enemy and just get the whole thing over with. She is my friend now, and I have come to understand the magic of friendship through her teachings. She is a mentor, a guide, and a friend to me, and there isn't a shred of doubt in my mind that I would be dead without her help.
To Twilight, to my friends, to my new life as a pony, to my new home, to my fellow creatures, I lower my head in gratitude.
This book is for you, so that you may understand my brothers and sisters, who lack leadership and friendship, who have nothing but pain and suffering left in the wake of their queen's death, and that you may help them if you can. Please, allow us to make amends for our mistakes, and permit us to reach a hoof to you in remorse for our actions.
Please forgive us. Sincerely, Love Bite.
Workers are the lifeblood of a hive, and yet, they lack even the most basic quality of sentient creatures: independent thought. A worker has no mind of its own, and it will fail even to feed itself if it is not instructed to do so through the hive mind, which is, from what I can tell, somewhat comparable to a network of computers.
It relays commands from the queen to each unit that is capable of completing one task at a time, and controls even the most basic of movement. A worker left uninstructed will first fall over, unable to balance itself without the hive mind's orders, and then starve to death or succumb to thirst.
A worker's body must sleep, but what semblance of a mind it may possess cannot actively do anything. It does not dream, and it does not think. If a worker is roused from its sleep, its eyes will open, and it will remain there, unable to communicate with the hive mind. It will stay that way until its eyes roll closed, and it falls back asleep.
It can only truly wake up when the hive mind recognizes that the body is rested and that the worker is inactive. Only then will the hive mind resume its control of the worker, and command it to continue working.
Workers are hatched, and thus, referred to as "hatchlings" for the first month or so after they are born, before they begin working, and go about the tasks with which the queen is too important to do herself, but only domestic tasks. Foreign activities are left to the infiltrators and spies.
These include, but are not limited to: the incubation of the queen's eggs, tending to the dietary needs of the soldiers, the care and nourishment of the young, the construction and renovation of the hive, and the transportation of material and prisoners. They can tether objects together using a special silk produced by a set of spinnerets located inside the cheeks.
While the biology of workers is more simplistic than that of the soldiers or drones, it is perhaps more extraordinary than either of them. Workers have very little in the way of a digestive system, and directly ingest love energy.
My associate describes this energy as being similar to magic or water vapor, permeating the universe, and clustering around creatures in clouds of varying densities and compositions. The compositions of these clouds are what gives different forms of love different "flavors".
The workers are anatomically similar to pony mares, but they have no ovaries, and the exoskeleton around their stomachs is capable of stretching incredibly far in order to contain a soccer ball sized volume of eggs.
The eggs in question are relatively small when the worker receives them, and can develop in a few different ways. The eggs can either become new workers, soldiers, drones, or, though it has not happened in a few thousand years, queens. The development of the eggs seems to be determined by the incubator's body, as any two eggs incubated by the same worker will both develop into the same thing.
The exact determining factors of this process are unknown, and will likely never be formally studied, as the last queen has already died without leaving another in her place, and the only living drone is not with the hive. I fear that this is the only broad study anypony has ever conducted on changelings, and that my associate will never be fully accepted for who he is because of what he is.
Soldiers are the class of changelings most behaviorally similar to ponies. They are not sustained by love energy alone, but also require a diet of a carnivorous nature, though they can manage on some tubers and fruits if absolutely necessary, but they must eat meat in order to grow as fast as they do. And they do grow incredibly fast.
They are born live in small clutches, which is notoriously painful for the incubating worker, who will often be kicked out of the hive mind until the pain goes away, and must fall asleep in order to be reintegrated. From birth until the age of three, they are referred to as "grubs".
Ten years after birth, they enter a period of rapid development similar in nature to that of puberty, but somewhat more extreme, and much more disruptive to the otherwise regimented systems of the hive. Before this period, they are gender neutral, and lack any trace of a functioning reproductive system.
The soldiers become hermaphroditic, possessing functional ovaries and testes by the age of fourteen, which cannot actually produce changelings, but will create nearly perfect clones of the other parent, throwing in a few quasi random mutations so as to create genetically unique offspring.
Almost anything can reproduce with a soldier, be it griffon, pony, zebra, or timberwolf, all of which there are examples of, and possibly many more. The seemingly only thing that soldiers cannot create fertile offspring with is other changelings. My associate cannot explain why this is, only that he has seen many soldiers try to mate during their period of rowdiness.
Once fully mature, a soldier must choose between two jobs, infiltrator or spy, whereupon they lose their full independence, and become assimilated into one of two hive minds, though not entirely.
Spies are a subclass of soldiers, who almost never return to the hive once they reach maturity, and will spend their time monitoring targets and relaying information to their hive mind, which is connected to that of the infiltrators. They rarely break away from the hive mind, and only separate from it to gather food or disguise themselves from their targets.
A spy will be evicted from the hive after choosing its career, and receive orders to travel to one of the hundreds of outposts strewn across Equestria. It will remain there with a group of two or three other spies for the majority of its life, standing entirely still as it becomes the hive's eyes, ears, and nose, feeding sensory input into the hive mind shared by the spies, using its own brain sparingly to identify anything of importance that moves.
It will only separate from the hive mind and leave its post to gather food and water, or greet any infiltrators who are tracking a target that it spots frequently. It may return to the hive after several decades of serving it this way, to receive an honor of the greatest heroes in the changeling world, a name.
There are incidents of spies going rogue and running off into the woods or up north, never to be seen again, but this only happens on occasion, and there are always more spies waiting for a post.
I pointed out to my associate that these rogue spies might just transform into one of their deceased or captured targets, and live amongst the native population of sentient creatures, having children and living out their lives as truly independent.
This gave him pause for thought, and he told me that I was probably right.
It would appear as though I am not talking to the first rogue changeling.
Infiltrators are a subclass of soldiers who have reached maturity, and the most independent plebeian caste of changelings, spending most of their time away from the hive, only communicating with a hive mind once every few days to gather intel on their next target, collected by the spies. They are free to think as they desire, and will only return to the hive in order to distribute the love energy they've gathered and to fulfill their role in the reproductive process.
They will assist the hive if they can between missions, helping the workers tend to the younger changelings, keeping watch over the sleeping worker units, and showing new infiltrators the ropes of their job.
Upon receiving a new assignment, an infiltrator gathers as much information on their target as it can from the spies' intel, and make its way to the spy outpost where the target is most frequently spotted. It will be greeted by one of the spies, fed for a day or so while they come up with an alibi, and sent off on its mission.
The infiltrator will disguise itself in a way that fits its alibi, and go off to seduce its intended target, from which it will harvest love in any form it can. These missions can last for years, often with the infiltrator marrying its target, and living with it for several years, returning to the hive periodically to distribute the love it has collected.
When the infiltrator is sniffed out, the mission is over, and the infiltrator can do with the target as it pleases, often capturing it for the hive's use, or wiping its memory, or committing treason by refusing to return and accept another mission, keeping all of the love it has gathered for itself.
Traitors are often captured by a group of other infiltrators, who will also scoop up the target before it can expose the mission or get away, and bring them back to the hive. The traitor will be forced to give up the love it collected, and then beheaded, and the target will become a prisoner, feeding the workers and soldiers.
Some infiltrators develop a reputation of casting amnesia spells on their targets once they are discovered, and then returning a month or two later to feed on the same target all over again.
Whilst they are gathering love, infiltrators can also collect genetic material from their targets, which can then be introduced to incubating workers in the hive. If an incubator is carrying a drone, these foreign genes can be integrated into the developing drone's genetic makeup as a new mutation. This adds genetic diversity to the drone population, and is largely responsible for their wild differences.
This information prompted me to ask a particularly amusing question of my associate, "So... Which infiltrator decided to mate with a firefly?" This was, of course, referring to his ability to generate bioluminescence in his eyes.
He was much less amused by this than I was.
Drones are the most biologically diverse class of changelings. Each drone is different, biologically and behaviorally, as a result of the extreme heterozygosity of the changeling Y chromosome, along with the introduction of foreign DNA from infiltrators, and has his own way of impressing the queen.
For example, my associate has eyes that glow, and he can cause them to blink much in the way a firefly might. And, while he never personally met any other drones, he tells me stories of the final queen's favorite partners who have long since passed, with features ranging from multiple horns, to flaming breath, and even bioelectrogenesis.
This diversity does present a few challenges when one is trying to make general statements about drones, and this is only worsened by the fact that only one drone is still alive, but one must try.
In general, drones possess a similar exoskeletal structure to those of soldiers, with holes in the legs to mitigate the intense weight of thick chitin, plates of armor on the back and stomach, translucent elytrous wings, a curved horn, large fangs, retractable frills on the back of the neck, and a tail.
They are all biologically male, and born live, but only from incubators that are fed a special diet and carrying only a single egg. The exact conditions of this development and the selection process of these special incubators are unknown, and we cannot access that information yet.
A drone remains independent of any hive mind for his entire life, and will live with his queen of origin until he reaches sexual maturity, whereupon the workers either drive him out or he is summoned to a courtship ceremony by the queen.
There is no such thing as inbreeding in the changeling world, due to the many behavioral and biological safeguards against it, such as the addition of foreign alleles into the gene pool via infiltrators.
Drones feed upon both love energy and certain bodily fluids of other creatures, specifically, those produced during sexual acts. It is the most efficient and potent method of obtaining love, as my associate tells me. They obtain this from prisoners, usually at feasts, although immature drones can take willing prisoners as concubines at their hive of origin.
A drone's concubines are considered to be serving the hive for as long as he is not mature, and, no matter what happens to him, the concubines he engaged with in his youth are exempt from serving the hive in any way, shape, or form, and are still considered his if he ever returns to that hive.
Drones also don't have what we would consider a normal digestive system, though they appear to on the outside. Their salivary glands have been modified to produce a composite of fragrant and flavorful proteins and saccharides, so that each drone can be identified by their unique taste and scent.
A drone's digestive tract connects to the outer surface of his body in three distinct locations, the mouth, the anus, and a series of small pores on the surface of his sex organs, all of which feed directly to a centralized stomach, which processes the fluid gathered directly into basic nutrients and love energy, which is absorbed without any waste products.
The queen is the prefrontal cortex of the hive, the processor of every bit of intel, and the final say in every decision. The queen's importance in the hive's foreign affairs cannot be overstated. She is in charge of everything. She chooses each target, assigns each outpost, and interviews every infiltrator before sending them on their first mission, deeming them fit or not for the task ahead of them.
Her primary role however, has nothing to do with foreign powers at all. It is to mate, and to keep the population of her hive stable. She is the only fertile female changeling, and will court once every few months or so.
The queen possesses the most complex and easily identifiable body profile, being larger than the other changelings, with a stature and figure comparable to that of an alicorn. She lacks the retractable frills of the plebeian changelings or drones, and instead sports a mane and tail that match the color of her aura.
She has multiply lensed eyes, unlike every other changeling, but ones that resemble those of a pony, with visible whites and muscles that allow her eyes to move independently of her head, which the plebeians and drones lack. The pupils are similar to those of a cat, with vertical slits that narrow and widen to adjust the amount of light reaching the retina.
Her horn is longer than the other changelings', and her wings are also much larger. Her barrel and hindquarters are guarded by solid plates of armor, which extend below the base of her tail, and form two plates of chitin that keep off any unwanted advances from especially determined drones.
Her fangs are smaller than those of the other changelings, and a sensitive subject amongst the plebeian population, as it is considered sexier to possess disproportionately large fangs.
The queen will live longer than all of the other changelings in the hive by several millennia, and does not leave the hive except to lead military attacks. Throughout her long life, her body will deteriorate and sustain damage, and she must enter a metamorphosis once every few thousand years in order to rejuvenate her body.
Each time she undergoes a metamorphosis, a new layer is added to the cornea on top of the old one. This is supposed to adjust for any imperfections in her eyesight that have developed since her previous metamorphosis. When this happens, new irises develop on top of the old ones, forming concentric circles around the pupil, darkening the older ones near the center.
Her horn will also change during her transformation, and develop extra layers of keratin atop the bone, sometimes filling in any cavities that may have developed, often resulting in a very curved and gnarled structure. She accesses the queens' hive mind through her horn, which contains the wisdom and memories of all her predecessors.
The queen's reproductive system is more distinguished than those of the other changelings, resembling that of a female pony, but with the back of uterus funneling into a tube that runs through an ovipositor, which she uses to deposit her eggs inside of workers.
Prisoners are the primary source of love energy for the changeling hive, and consists of diamond dogs, griffons, ponies, timberwolves, and hybrids of all shapes and sizes, many of whom were once captured by infiltrators at the end of an assignment, or may have even been parented by an incognito changeling.
But there is a distinction to be made here, in that prisoners are not slaves. They feed the workers simply by being around, and have rights upon being captured, such as a month after capture spent free of any changeling interaction so they can adjust to their new life, a sufficient supply of food and water, and their own private quarters, with the caveat that a hungry changeling may show up at their doorway and attempt to seduce them from time to time after their first month.
Prisoners are often captured with their nuclear families, and are not separated from relatives in the hive. Prisoners can get married with one another, and have families in captivity, children raised in relative peace, and even suites designed specifically for families. They are kept in a section of the hive designated for them, complete with a school, marketplace, and arcade.
They are not forced to do anything they'd rather not, aside from living underground, alongside hundreds of other prisoners, and supply some love energy to their captors.
Prisoners can volunteer to do more for the hive if they so choose, such as helping to care for the young and putting themselves on the menus at feasts. They are rewarded for these services with privileges, such as the freedom to explore most of hive whenever they please.
Should a young drone take a liking to a particular prisoner, and that prisoner is willing, they can, essentially, get married, although the drone can marry as many prisoners as he likes until he reaches maturity. These concubines do not have to serve the hive in any other way whilst their drone is young, and, upon his coming of age, are considered exempt from ever serving the hive again.
Sometimes, a drone may return to his hive of origin, and pay his former concubines a visit. Theses relationships are of a purely physical nature, and simply exist to show that a drone has specific tastes in the love energy and essence he consumes.
My associate tells me that my platonic love was quite to his liking in the production of this paper, and that he would have me as a concubine if I had been a prisoner in his infancy.
Again, there is nothing romantic about that. It simply means that he finds my aura and company pleasant. Still, I cannot imagine that these concubines have no emotional attachment to the drones they marry.
A queen can also marry prisoners, in a commitment that lasts for the entirety of the prisoner's life.
All in all, it doesn't sound like too bad a life. Some other countries have treated their prisoners worse, and the changelings have the argument of necessity. They need the prisoners around, and literally cannot exist without them. To be fair, they treat them pretty well, and I imagine most ponies would be fairly happy with never needing to worry about taxes, work, or hunger.
My associate tells me that they even have an underground orchard. How does that work?
That being said, it is still wrong. But, I'm not everypony.
The courtship customs of changelings are, as my associate has described them to me, more of a ritual affair than a selective one. I am willing to infer that this is due to a sudden drop in the population of reproductive males, but the process is interesting nonetheless.
A drone will stand in a line alongside the queen's selection of other potential suitors, while she watches from a distance, and each male will take turns going about their individual acts. These auditions of sorts range from intricate dancing and flight displays, to simply showing off their sexual prowess by demonstrating on a nearby worker.
She will almost never show favoritism while this goes on, and will fend off any males that get too close while it is not their turn. If she is pleased enough during an audition, she will allow the demonstrating male to touch her in certain ways, but keeping the plates of armor that guard her hindquarters closed, preventing him from copulating with her.
The males will then attempt to collaborate, often to arrange colorful gems in special patterns or perform displays of magic.
After having attempted to woo her as a group, she will select the drones she fancies, and allow them to copulate with her, a process which cannot be completed until his body absorbs a sufficient amount of love from her, indicating that she is satisfied with him.
This is a safeguard against greedy drones getting their way, and a bit humorous, come to think of it, because it means that a selfish bedmate never gets to mate. My associate even tells me stories of drones simply humping away until they collapse from exhaustion.
The queen will often let the failed candidates watch, whether to spite or motivate them to try harder next time I don't know. She will spend a week or two rutting any of her suitors that happen to be conscious, storing their sperm for later use, and then a few months depositing eggs inside of workers. The gestation period can vary widely in duration, depending on the class of changeling the egg(s) develop into; three months for workers; soldiers, six; drones, eight to ten; queens, unknown.
While drones do exist for the sole purpose of reproducing, the queen will keep her selected mates around long after she is done and they've had their fun. She will have workers bring the most desirable prisoners to them for sustenance, and spend what little free time she gets with her chosen mates, ensuring that they are well fed and respected by her subjects.
Incumbent drones will often attempt to strengthen their bonds with the queen, doing minor favors for her, and busying themselves with cleaning her living quarters while she isn't around, which is one less job for the workers to take care of.
But, after a month or two, she will have exhausted the supply of sperm provided by her chosen mates, and allow them one chance to impress her before she assembles what drones have gathered around the hive to repeat the entire process. If they fail, the workers will kick them out of the hive until the next time she needs a mate, giving the other drones a chance to strut their stuff.
The changeling feasts are very much not the same as pony feasts or dinner parties, and more adequately described as monarchically run adults only nightclubs, with any willing prisoners on the menu. None of them are actually consumed, but fed upon in a myriad of sexual activities.
Soldiers may attend, but they have their own section of the venue, stocked with small animals and other things a carnivore needs, and will partake in the main feast as soon as the attending workers have had their fill.
The prisoners are well fed and hydrated during intermissions, and free to take breaks whenever they please. Their job is threefold; stay awake, stand relatively still, and enjoy yourself, because it's not every day you get to have this much fun. All they really have to worry about is exhaustion.
There are no tables, and there are very few rules, but they tend to be consistent. Generally, no one is allowed to cause the prisoners or other guests physical harm, torment them physically, mentally, or emotionally, or engage in sexual activity with and/or impregnate any unwilling party.
They don't sound like my kind of party, but my associate assures me that being on the menu is a voluntary service to the hive, and that none of the items on the menu are there against their will, and are rewarded for their services.
I just imagined someone saying that out of context.
The written language used by the changelings is quite easy to translate from Equish, with a fundamentally similar alphabet, and a nearly identical sentence structure. This is likely a result of early writers attempting to emulate the otherwise universally accepted language of ponies, griffons, dragons, and diamond dogs.
As a consequence of this mimicry, the written language of changelings is not the spoken language of Changeling, but a simplified version of Equish. Nothing is lost in translation, and some changelings do speak the same verbal form of Equish as the rest of the world, but it is not used outside of interspecies communication.
The alphabet is almost an exact copy of ours in the sounds produced by each letter, their placement in the words used, and somewhat simplified rules of grammar. For example, their is no equivalent for the letter K, as it has become indistinguishable from the letter C. Whenever a C makes an S sound in our language, the Changeling version of S is used, and similarly for the P–H pair being replaced with F.
There are Changeling letters that replace certain Equish consonant pairs, such as a single letter for the T–H sound, the S–H sound, the N–G sound, et cetera.
Certain vowels are also split into two separate letters, a long and a short form. An O with a silent E in Equish becomes a single letter.
This means that every possible syllable used in the written form of Changeling is a simple vowel–consonant pair.
This simplicity would be a great thing on its own, but I guess it was supposed be a consolation amongst the terrifying nightmare that is the actual use of this language. Most written documents are much more complex than a simple word for word translation.
Each letter is assigned a number value, and a single document can be recorded as a string of double digit values. When writing, a specially educated infiltrator will use a preselected keyword, such as the subject of the document they are transcribing, and enter the rest of the numbers into a special mathematical formula.
They then convert the resulting string of numbers back into letters, and then write that down.
The changelings encrypt their written word.
When a changeling then reads one of these documents, they are first decrypting it, then translating from Equish into the spoken Changeling language, which has no written form.
And they are doing this without so much as a calculator. Granted, they have a hive mind to work with, and offload the math to that, but still, I wonder why this standard of encryption was introduced to begin with. It seems like a lot of trouble to go through.
There are some creatures known as brood parasites, who rely on others to raise their young. A good example of this is the cuckoo-finch, which will lay its eggs in the nest of another bird, and even go so far as to drop the host's eggs from the nest.
Now, given that hundreds or even thousands of eggs are incubated at any given time within a single hive, and keeping track of every single one would be a logistical nightmare, the changelings are exploited as the hosts of many many such parasites.
One particularly predatory example of this is simply known as the "darklings". Sightings of fully mature ones are few and far between, and their exact origins are difficult to pin down. Though, there are enough incidents of their behavior that I'm confident in believing that they do exist.
On occasion, a worker will give birth to a few special, sickly looking children, not unsimilar to changelings in appearance, but with blood red eyes, and horns covered in spikes. They have no relation to the worker's queen, and the queen cannot tell for sure if she ever gave the worker any eggs, because the workers are all the same.
After giving birth, the worker will fail to follow any orders, though it will still be connected to the hive mind, and won't let its offspring leave its sight. It will harbor them in some secluded part of the hive, and defend them with its life, even from its queen.
This is unusual, to say the least.
After a normal incubator has borne its eggs, it may take a day or two to sleep, but then it's back off to work. It cannot distinguish the young it carried from those carried by another worker, and, thus, is incapable of discriminating between them. A worker does not have maternal instincts, especially not a willingness to attack its queen under any circumstances.
And yet, these host mothers will launch themselves at their queen, and even attempt to kill her. I can only make an educated guess here, but I'm willing to infer that some action of the darkling affects the worker's nervous system in such a dramatic way.
If the queen and other changelings give up on trying to assuage the host, after a month or so, all that will remain is bones.
I mentioned to my associate that this is incredibly disturbing, and he agreed with me, but also said that there is little anyone can do. Nothing short of killing the worker can stop it. It cannot conceive the notion of itself. It has no sense of self, much less self preservation. It is committed to the parasites the instant they are born.
I have mentioned that, after a long life of serving the hive, changelings can be granted honorary names. At this point in a changeling's life, it may choose to retire, and become a member of the nobility. All noble changelings wear a purple object wherever they go, be it a cloth or an amulet gifted by one of their former targets.
The nobility make up The Council of Elders, which is comparable to a senate, serving as the only (and usually ineffective) check on the queen's power. They make the major decisions concerning new laws, though their word itself isn't law, and any legislation they pass can be vetoed by the queen.
For all intents and purposes, the queen is an absolute power. She can respond to challenges of her authority without due process, as long as she decides that it would be a waste of time or that the crime committed is more than public enough for anyone to have challenged her if they found it necessary.
The only limitation on her power, is that, once she appoints a council member, she cannot revoke their position. Essentially, she can give power, but never take it away. The gift of retirement and an honorary name is a strictly no take backs deal. A council member can only be removed from service by death itself. And I'm willing to believe that some very untimely, very unfortunate, and very bloody accidents have occurred as a direct result of this rule.
The Council members don't have to attend every hearing or session, and can choose to opt out of federal duty, but, they can always change their minds.
This is the only system of government that exists, as far as we can tell.
The concept of gender is an odd one to the changeling mind, as most of the changelings either don't have independent thought, or lack a biological gender.
Workers don't have a biological sex, for their lack of reproductive organs. They don't have free will or a concept of identity, much less gender identification.
Soldiers don't have a binary gender, and, though they are the more individualized of the plebeian castes, do not have the concept of gender thrust upon them by any institution of the social order. It is hard to imagine that they ever confront such a thing as gender.
I have referred to queens as "her" in the entirety of this text, but that is merely a result of the changelings referring to their queens that way, and my mind's desire for the creature who once attacked me that looked like a mare to be a female. Queens may or may not identify as female, or they may never think about gender.
Drones are the one caste with what we would consider an unambiguous biological gender. I refer to my associate with male pronouns because he calls himself the queen's son, and refers to all previous drones with masculine pronouns, but my sample size is limited to a single anecdote, so take this with a grain of salt.
I suspect that the changelings only use gendered pronouns as a way of recognizing the upper class and to conform with pony customs so as to mitigate the sudden shock of their prisoners' transition into a new environment.
This all makes the question of orientation rather difficult to say anything meaningful about, but there are memories we have gained access to that at least give us a few generalizations. Drones, the only caste with a universal, unambiguous, biological gender, are all recorded as being omnisexual. Queens will only interact with the drones and workers for the purposes of reproduction, but will make bedmates out of any prisoner they please.
Soldiers can reproduce with anything, but don't mind what their partners identify as. Infiltrators and spies can have children with any non changeling creatures, though spies don't frequently interact with anything of such nature, and infiltrators serve their own role in the reproductive process. Workers only engage in productive sexual interactions with the queens and infiltrators, but can also serve as outlets for developing soldiers and demonstration partners for drones.
Most of the information contained in this section does not apply to queens, and there are some exceptions for workers.
It is important to note that changelings are not arthropods, much less bugs or insects. That doesn't stop them from using such euphemisms as "what the bug", in place of the pony phrase "what the buck", and "love bugs", when referring to prisoners who have gotten married.
Their outer surfaces consist of a chitinous exoskeleton, with a bony vertebrae and skull, and cartilaginous ribcage and limbs. The exoskeleton is thinner at the joints, and softer in other areas, to allow for flexible movements and intimate contact, while thicker around the bases of the legs and chest. In the thicker areas, the exoskeleton develops holes, so as to not weigh the changeling down.
Each changeling has a unique arrangement of these holes, and they stop forming after they reach maturity. As they age, the chitin around the holes will begin to crack, and the thinner chitin will wrinkle, though, only in a select few places.
Changelings have curved horns, with thin ridges running vertically along its surface. These ridges serve an unknown purpose, though I speculate that they are functionally similar to the spirals on a unicorn's horn, allowing the magic to be collected at the end of the horn.
Their eyes have a single lens, though difficult to formally classify. They are fixed into the eye socket, and cannot be moved independently of the head as a whole. They lack distinctive pupils or a blind spot, as the photoreceptors are located in front of the axons that connect to the optic nerve.
Their teeth are blunt, save for the enlarged fangs at the front, which grow continuously, and are a common indicator of an individual's fitness. Larger fangs are considered the height of sexiness, and a changeling with a chipped or missing fang is considered especially attractive, like a scar. Fangs unequal in length are likely the result of having one previously removed, often in a fight.
My associate even once blushed after looking over one of my sketches of him, insisting that his fangs were not that big, but that he was incredibly flattered by the image, and then chose not to heal one of his fangs after it was cut off.
They have retractable frills on the back of their necks, which are extended when trying to assert dominance or engage in a hostile encounter.
Their wings can be vibrated at incredible speeds, emitting humming sounds, which they use to communicate, along with chirping sounds produced by their vocal cords. They all speak the same language, but with different castes using different layers of complexity and nobility of the language.
A hive mind is like a network of computers, but each computer is actually a brain, and the network exist in the connections between them. They directly control the actions of the changelings connected to them, and feed information to any linked changelings, who are somewhat loosely connected.
There are four separate hive minds at any given point in time.
One is for the queens to share throughout time, serving as a backup storage of the information necessary to make the hundreds of decisions that rest on her shoulders and any memories she may not have the capacity to hold in her own brain. She is always linked to it, and can fully integrate herself into it from time to time. It is not connected to any other hive mind, with the queen alone keeping it from true isolation.
One is for the workers, who spend their first month after hatching linking up to it, and then the rest of their lives fully connected to it. It is directly connected to the queen, but not to another hive mind.
One is for the infiltrators, who are only either linked to or separate from it. They link to it between missions, and sever the connection when incognito. It is directly connected to the queen, so that she can direct the infiltrators.
One is for the spies, who are either fully connected while on duty and independent while gathering food and water. It is linked to the queen, so she can access all of the information about potential targets, and directly connected to the infiltrators' hive mind, so they can research their chosen targets.
Hybrids exist in two distinct forms, halflings and quarterlings, and are best classified by the process through which they are conceived.
What my associate calls halflings are the products of sexual encounters between undisguised mature soldiers, usually infiltrators, and almost anything that isn't a changeling.
Due to the nearly clonal nature of the undisguised soldiers' reproductive system, the biological gender of the halfling will always be determined by the non changeling parent. Every time a female creature is impregnated by a soldier using its male sex organs, the child will be female, and all halflings born from the female sex cells of the soldier and the male ones of another creature will have a one in two chance of being male or female.
Halflings tend to have at least a few features of the changeling parent, which can be disguised or transformed like any part of a full changeling. They are almost always born inside the hive, from prisoners captured before they were conceived, and almost never submit to becoming full members of the hive.
The non changeling parent is allowed to choose between letting the hive raise the halfling, or parenting the child, either with their partner or alone. They grow and develop faster than full members of their non changeling species.
They are usually capable of reproducing with members of both their race of origin, and any mature soldiers. They can usually feed on both love energy and edible matter, and are permitted to opt out of joining the hive, with the caveat that they are still prisoners, and spend most of their time feeding the changelings.
Quarterlings are conceived when a disguised soldier or worker of any age or maturity mates with a member of the species they are disguised as. Such creatures mothered by workers are very rare, as it requires the mother to remain disguised for the entire gestation period, which they don't often do. Incognito workers can still sire children, as it only requires them to maintain the disguise for the entirety of the conception.
More common are the quarterlings parented by infiltrators during missions, who are often brought to the hive at the end of the mission, and may not even be aware of their changeling heritage until such a time. They will often lack external features of changelings, but possess an innate ability to detect the fields of love energy around them, and even better parse the feelings of others without any other information.
If they are brought to the hive during infancy, they may find themselves communicating in changeling tongue fluently, or at least understanding changelings that do. This is due to the infiltrators' hive mind recognizing them as a changeling, and subconsciously teaching them what basic information all infiltrators must know.
They are not considered to be changelings by the hive at large, and do not serve as soldiers or workers, but primarily as sources of love energy. They are considered fine delicacies at changeling feasts, as they produce as much love energy as the non changeling race from which they were born, and can even sometimes have halfling children with mature soldiers.
Changelings use very basic and early medical treatments for wounds, and some unusual cures for diseases. In some ways, the changeling medical world is decades behind that of ponies, but has a few things I think we could stand to learn from.
Burns are treated with aloe, bandages are made from changeling silk and old cobwebs, and cactus needles can be used in acupuncture. This is all very primitive when compared to the advanced medical research that goes into pony medicine. We have big laboratories and plenty of innovative people coming up with new treatments every day.
Changelings don't have formalized doctors, medical facilities, standard practices. They don't have vaccines, they don't have giant machines to test millions of drugs at a time, and they don't have fully sanitized spaces for medical procedures.
The more interesting aspects of changeling medicine is in their use and sources of antibiotics. Some workers are tasked with a special role, which takes place in a specially designed section of the hive, known as the garden, where the changelings care for and harvest parts of certain fungi, which is then chewed and applied to open wounds, preventing infection.
Changelings have been coevolving with these fungal species for thousands of years, and have a distinct knowledge of how to care for each kind of fungus. Some are grown alongside ant colonies, so that the ants can assist the changelings in caring for the fungus. The ants get something to process their food of leaves and honeydew, while the changelings get medicine.
Changelings have been using antibiotics for thousands of years, and we only even realize that they existed in the last century.
Some infiltrators can take up a second career as a physician, counseling the prisoners and nobility about seeking medical treatment. Though, this job is mostly taken up by the task of measuring and briefing new prisoners on the life ahead of them.
The ants I mentioned before can also be used as a treatment for pegasus mites, like how some birds will sit on an ants' nest and let the insects kill off the parasites. Though the prisoner is usually hesitant at first, my associate tells me that he has seen several prisoners enjoying this process.
That being said, most of the changelings who never leave the hive live relatively short lives when compared to those who do, which makes sense. The fewer changelings in any given area, the lower the odds are of one individual getting a disease, and when one is disguised, they rarely contract any changeling specific illnesses, though they do become susceptible to the diseases which haunt their species of choice.
Over centuries of isolation from the world above ground, the changelings have made use and allies of many other creatures for both species' benefit.
Several species of herbivorous ants produce antibiotics for the changelings. In return, the changelings protect the ants from parasitic wasps and insectivorous rodents, and safeguard their fungal farms from more aggressive species outside of the hive. These ants also serve as farmers for some of the changelings' other symbiotic partners. All of them share a single colony, with some species existing in a monogyne form, and others observing a polygyne from.
A single colony of eusocial fireflies lights up the hive through a long series of tunnels built from translucent materials into the ceiling and walls. They also defend the ants in tunnels too small for the changelings to access. In return, the ants provide food for them. While this colony overlaps with that of the ants, their many queens are housed in a separate chamber from those of the ants, and there are many tunnels that connect to this chamber from which the ants are prevented to enter.
My associate tells me that the changelings have also domesticated other things, such as a flavor of apples unique in all the world, grown in the prisoners' city.
They have pacified many beasts of the Badlands, such as the basilisks and the tatzelwurms, and even tamed some of each species. They are not trained for war, but to dig tunnels to expand the hive, as they know the subterranean world better and can dig faster than the changelings ever could.
Author's Note
This is probably the last update for a while. School just started, and I'm gonna be busy with homework.
