(image by the talented NemoSpecific)
Y.O.H. 1515
As the Great Changeling War approaches its end, and the High Queen Nightmare Hunger is reduced to an ever-shrinking territory and number of Hives, the disgraced Theoretical Infiltrator Compound, already demoted to Logistical Aide, is no longer needed. The resource flow between Hives has ceased, and all she is now is a warm body noling particularly likes.
She is reassigned to to Hive Hunger's Provisional Hive Defense Swarm, a last-ditch unit of Warrior cadets and confused Workers having weapons shoved into their claws and being flung in the path of the Equestrian advance. She has read enough of the reports to know what this means.
Her life is over.
But now, after three long lonely years, among members of a Caste she would normally consider far beneath her, can the impossible happen? On the brink of her death, can Compound rediscover the sense of belonging that alone gives meaning to the life of a Changeling?
Can a pariah finally find friends?
ADDENDUM: AU after S6 finale.
Is there going to be tagging of this as the prequel to Fall of Hive... or is this just a standalone that ties into the greater story?
I've seen this once before in Princess Luna's Suicide Solutions where the author couldn't find a way to introduce characters other than a short one-shot
Keep up the great work man!
I will tag this as prequel to The Fall of Hive Hunger-Prime,which it is, it's about how Compound met Carry and Cowl, and what they did together before they found themselves buried in the spider-hole -- I wasn't sure if I should link two incomplete stories together in such a fashion, though.
I'm glad you liked it.
I'm reminded of something I read pertaining to the Drow in D&D:
"They are a humanoid, mammalian race with all the associated need, urges, and instincts, yet they revere the spider, a creature of mindless predation. They are a community that seeks to become a swarm. They are an innately emotional people who revere a creature with no emotion at all."
I really connect with Compound and these two stories, in a "I know your pain" way. I went though a hellish Afghan deployment as an analyst, more worried about my superiors than the Taliban. Getting juggled from new posting to new posting, having to find a way to do my job with little direction beyond "not like that, do it differently." Then as soon as I got my feet and started getting respect from the people I was giving information to, I'd be replaced by someone who was friendlier with my superiors. After I trained them to do my job I'd be moved to a new job in a new place to start over from scratch. But even that was preferable to going and working back in garrison, I could take initiative out there at least.
I normally don't get bitchy and angsty like this, consider it a sign of a well written story.
5625364
I am very happy that I can convey Compound and the other Changelings as alien yet sapient and sentient beings. I'm even happier that this rings true to someone who has seen real war, as I'm totally a civilian whose knowledge of the military comes from friends and from my study of history. I have the greatest respect for those who serve.
Never mind that one of those delusions is a necessary food source.
Well, it wouldn't be a horrific, dystopian regime without a proper philosophy of evil, now would it?
In any case, Compound really is best changeling. She deserves better than this. Still, it's not quite as bad as she's predicted. I look forward to the following month.
(Also, how does changeling writing work? It seems to be based on both sight and taste, and possibly other senses as well.)
Poor Compound. I get the idea that she's just been assigned to a Volkssturm unit, but unlike her real-life counterparts she won't even get a panzerfaust to use.
I also like the description of Changeling 'writing'. I assume that while it may use some symbols or characters, it depends at least as much on pheromones?
The description of Changeling psychology in Compound's emotional and intellectual responses is very well done. She feels alien but understandable at the same time, and I can really sympathize with her.
And one rather foolish question: you said you were using "other-dimensional" versions of Hive Vespid and the Northern Wolf Packs in the background of your stories. I assume that Hive Vespid mostly occupied itself during the war by having their Workers be employed in Equestrian factories, but just what would the wolves be doing? It can't have been easy for them, what with the new weapons and magic being employed. To say nothing of their cultural difficulties; they'd want to defend their dens and Equestria by extension, but given their near-total lack of magic as compared to Pony and Changeling alike they'd have a hard time fitting in with modern Equestrian soldiers.
5626752
Funny you should mention that ...
... I was thinking of having a scene where the company she's in is ordered to counterattack against Equestrian land-crawlers (aka armored battle wagons, aka tanks) and each team is issued a makeshift anti-tank weapon. A bomb on the end of a spear. Which the wielder is supposed to use by running up to the tank and jamming it into the treads then pulling the lanyard. The theory is that this will wreck a track and thus immobilize the vehicle.
The designers apparently did not consider it important to consider how the operator would get that close to the (undamaged) tank in the first place (given that tanks have, well, cannons and machine-muskets mounted on them); survive the blast (there's no shield between user and bomb); or (in the unlikely event of being alive and mobile after the first two events) get away from the now-hopefully-imobilized but still armed armored fighting vehicle.
Yeah.
The scary thing is that I modeled this horrendous last-ditch weapon after a real device, thankfully as far as I know never actually used in battle. The Imperial Japanese Lunge Mine, which worked essentially just like the Changeling Anti-Crawler Bomb Spear, though with better explosives and a verymarginally better design (because the Japanese employed a shaped-charge rather than simple bomb, so it would have been slightly less suicidal for the attacker).
Yep. It's things like this which make me re-iterate that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic attacks, by inducing the Japanese surrender, saved a lot of Japanese lives, on the whole.
I already know how my trio survives. It has a lot to do with Compound's brains, Cowl's scavenging skills, and Carry's size and physical toughness. I'll reveal it in-story.
ADDENDUM: Whoops. Never underestimate Japanese suicidalness. This is, after all, the land of the Suicide Wood and the war which invented aeronaval kamikaze tactics. The Japanese used these insane devices at Leyte Island and presumably thereafter. They would have used them a lot more, of course, in Downfall had it happened.
5625588
Doesn't translate properly. Hunger's philosophy is that felt-love is a weakness, useful to the Changelings only because they can consume the love of "lesser" Kinds. My fault, because I've already established that my lings feel the emotion of love themselves (though their culture is such that it is rather vague and diffuse among most lings, Compound being an exceptionally-intelligent and emotionally-intense individual), and distinguish it from the love they consume.
Hunger's philosophy is much nastier than the normal pre-Reconciliation Changeling guiding assumptions, which were basically "service to the Hive" and "in secrecy lies safety." In other words, Changeling are normally eusocial and afraid of revealing themselves to outsiders. Most are perfectly aware that their relationship to the other Kinds is normally a form of mild parasitism. It was Hunger, back when she was Chrysalis and even back when she was Kifuko, who instead decided to become a predator, and regard killing as an expression of her superiority.
The Changelings are normally not very fierce, save for their Warrior caste, and even their Warriors normally see what they are doing as "defending the Hive." What Chrysalis did by uniting multiple Hives under her and flinging them into war against Equestria was very abnormal behavior for Changelings. She is horribly-aggressive by Changeling standards, and she increasingly comes to terrify other Changelings as well -- which is part of the reason she fails, in that she drives other Hives to ally with Equestria.
Ah. More perspectives, ones that really highlight the different worldviews of our heroes. Cowl can't see past the bureaucracy that he was literally born and bred for. Carry can scarcely conceive of something other than hauling loads, though to be fair, he is quite imaginative in that area. Only Compound truly appreciates how doomed they are. Definitely looking forward to seeing how each adapts to the new circumstances.
5657165
I'm really glad that I seem to have succeeded in letting Compound, Cowl and Carry speak in their proper "voices." Compound is brilliant, intellectual and very well-educated about the larger world in which the Hive is embedded. She's also a moral idealist (though some of her morals would seem strange to Equestrians). She knows theoretically what life is like at the bottom, because her Infiltrator training includes it -- but she's never really experienced it for any length of time.
Cowl has a narrow but deep knowledge of his specialty; he's reasonably intelligent but very much blinkered by his conventionality. He has no idea how bad things are becoming for the Hive. He's a bit selfish but also very naive. Carry is really good at Lifting Loads, and he's also really good at making and keeping friends, though he doesn't realize that this is also a talent. He's not very bright but he is logical, and uses what brains he has very effectively. He genuinely loves other lings.
All of them are going to develop over the course of the story, until they're the trio we meet at the start of The Fall of Hive Hunger-Prime.
I really like the new material! Cowl comes off as somewhat snobbish and overly focused on his work, like the low-ranking office employee who constantly flatters himself with 'This place couldn't run without me'. That poor guy is going to get one hell of a shock when he finds himself in the front lines.
And Carry seems like a real sweetheart for a Changeling. If he's anything like the Workers that the "rebel" Hives gave to Equestria, I can see why they were able to do as much war factory work as they must have. And I like the touch with Big Dolly and her "larva". Though when you consider just how the Changelings got it in the first place...
And this seems to answer some questions I had about how the Queens and Princesses bred the various types of Changelings they needed:
Twice, a Princess actually had him breed her. Her name was Princess Cementite and she mostly made heavy Workers; she'd actually talked to him a bit before and after. She'd been nice, plain-spoken, not what he'd have thought from a Royal.
She'd been Reassigned to another Hive; he had no idea what happened to her because it was none of his business. Sometimes he caught himself hoping in a general sort of way that she was okay. She'd been nice, even kind of sweet.
I wonder, how would a Hive Queen or Princess breed any members of a caste if they lost all of them due to accident or violence? Or would they limp along as best they could without them?
5659330
Yep, and yep. He has no idea what's going on and he is rather full of himself, in part because he is trying to avoid being terrified by his situation. He's denying even what he should know of reality. True danger and hardship actually improve his character. Ironically, he's peripherally aware of Compound's existence already, as a higher-up he's hoping might show to save him, either personally or in the form of a message. He's not going to be happy when he realizes that she's down the same tunnel as himself.
He is. Carry's not exactly brilliant, but he's kind and compassionate, and other lings tend to like him. Princess Cementite did: while there's not much emotional meaning to breeding-sex among the Changelings (less than there is to Play-sex, as Play-sex is completely pointless save emotionally), a Royal would still all other things be equal prefer to mate with someling she at least minimally likes. That's why she decided to mate with him a second time. That's also why she talked to him.
I know it's a standard marker for "dead child," but we don't actually know what happened to the original owner -- just that it somehow fell into the claws of a Changeling gathering team who thought someling might want it. She could be dead, could have been captured, might have died in captivity or been liberated by now -- she might have even gotten away in the evacuations.
Dolly is a truly not very bright Worker: Carry is quite intelligent compared to her. She's pretty sweet, though, and she wishes her job involved more tenderness. Carry likes her, though he's sometimes worried that she'll make a mistake and get squashed by a shifting Load.
Load-Lifters' jobs are normally not as dangerous as implied by Carry's flashback to moving the parts of the land-crawler; what happened is that they underestimated the difficulty of moving the tank's engine block and specifically that their floor wasn't really strong enough for that kind of a load concentrated on their hooves. More often, the risk is of a minor injury which requires downtime to heal. The Changelings actually have a pretty good medical technology: better than Equestrian in some aspets.
Though as noted, the Changeling Medics are far more willing to use euthanasia than would any Equestrian doctors. Workers in particular often have easily-replicated talents and skill sets, and past a certain point of injury or old age, the Hive doesn't think they're worth the resources to keep alive. They're gentle about how they do it -- they consider it their eusocial obligation to give them painless deaths -- but they do it nonetheless, and consider it only rational.
They could re-create them from related stock: if necessary, they can do actual genetic engineering, but that's the hard way to accomplish it. It also helps that a Changeling Royal can keep seed alive for years in the complex compartments of her uterus and associated organs.
They can also "promote" by feeding the Changeling specialized foods, though this works best if done in Larval stage. Most specifically, they can switch on the fertility of an Infiltrator, making a new Royal: in time she'll even grow a pheromone crown. They can also to some extent turn Warriors into Workers or vice versa, or turn a smart Warrior or Worker into an Infiltrator (a stupid one would be useless in that role). It takes time, resources and retraining, so they don't do this sort of thing unless the Hive has a real need of it.
That's one of the things which is ultimately altered by the Reconciliation, and in general by the vastly-greater prosperity the Changelings enjoy after their open integration into the Equestrian economy. By the days of Queen Aphroditis (one of the protagonists of my planned Venus colonization story Sky Hive Aphrodite), two Equestrian and several Changeling generations later, this is remembered as being part of the "bad old days" when the Changeling Hives lived at subsistence levels.
5659624 And I like the touch with Big Dolly and her "larva". Though when you consider just how the Changelings got it in the first place...
I know it's a standard marker for "dead child," but we don't actually know what happened to the original owner -- just that it somehow fell into the claws of a Changeling gathering team who thought someling might want it. She could be dead, could have been captured, might have died in captivity or been liberated by now -- she might have even gotten away in the evacuations.
True, but even so, that foal must have been scared to death for a long time. It serves as a subtle reminder of just what sort of human (equine?) price modern-style 'total war' demands.
And thanks for the explanation on just how a Hive that took losses would manage to replenish their numbers of Workers, Warriors, and Infiltrators. That will be helpful to know.
5659701
Oh yes. Equestria's been badly disrupted by the War. Even though there were large areas that didn't come under direct attack, hundreds of thousands of Equestrians died and millions were displaced. This is the worst thing to happen to the country in at least half a century, maybe over a century. Compared to this, Windvane's Rebellion was a mere destructive incident.
5665238 Beg pardon, but what was Windvane's Rebellion?
5665351
Something I haven't written about directly yet but which is the sequel to Love Amongst Monsters (whenever I finish that story). Takes place in YOH 1512; involves an attempt by Fluttershy's evil uncle Windvane and his followers to seize control of Equestria with an airfleet and super-weapons powered by the Pegasus Device, including a clunky artificial version of the Rainbow of Darkness. It was meant to take place at the same time that Chrysalis attacked from the south, but he got overconfident and jumped the gun, which is why both attacks ultimately fail.
Thing is, Windvane gets stopped by Princess Luna, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Scootaloo, Shining Armor and Cadance when he tries to destroy the Crystal City from the air. He had only maybe ten thousand hardcore followers; in contrast, Chrysalis doesn't launch the Great Changeling War until she has several million (though many of these are young Warriors or Workers). That's why Windvane's attack is over and done in a week, while the Great Changeling War lasts over two years.
5665387 Ah, that sounds like it'll make for a good story. Thanks for the explanation.
Before I read this, what is the Gore and Dark tag for ?
And how bad does it get ?