Modern Changeling Combat · 3:55pm Jan 1st, 2014
Changelings are a very interesting race with a wide array of powers and abilities. I started wondering, how do they fight? I mean, surely you can't have a whole invading army defeated so easily by six untrained civilian mares, right? (Granted, two are super athletes, but the other four have absolutely no excuse to be that proficient of fighters.) So, I started developing the changeling combat style, which I will call "Trap Hoof" or "Trap style." This is based on how I think changelings work and the canon of my story Black Queen, Red King.
So, the first and most important detail of this style is it's adaptability. There is a sort of mental checklist that a changeling combatant will go through when entering combat, which leads to a whopping 96 different combat options. Granted, 1/4 of them involve the step "RUN AWAY" and most are rather similar, but it is still a significant number. Furthermore, there is an extreme emphasis on speed, dodging, and 1-hit KO's because the average changeling is too frail to take a beating.
Note: most of the information below is applicable only to the changelings who absolutely cannot avoid combat. It also requires that the changeling be able to actually change their internal physiology (true transformation) instead of just illusions.
1: Did you expect to enter combat? Yes; your goal is to capture/kill/delay, see A below for more. No; your goal is to flee.
2: Is your disguise intact? Yes; you are limited to your identity's fighting style, which is severely limiting. No or willing to break; you can use the changeling style.
A: If you know that you are going to enter combat without your disguise (or are willing to shed it) and have the time to prepare, use the following tips:
Your body is extremely adaptable use that to your advantage with natural-grown weapons.You can transform any object you hold into anything else so long as it is touching you. Good thing you like jewelry, right?
Chakrams are very deadly when manipulated by telekinesis. They can also easily be transformed into a bracelet or necklace.
Do you really need an excretory or digestive system while fighting? The sympathetic nervous system shuts them down while fighting, anyway. Transform them away and you have a neat little body cavity that you can use like an over-sized kangaroo pouch. You could even put an tiny octopus tentacle inside there to manipulate your hidden weapons for an nasty extra surprise for your enemies that manage to get you on your back. Similarly, the holes in your limbs can be filled with other little traps, just in case.
3: Do you have a weapon on hand/hoof/claw? Yes; use it. No; see B below.
B: If you do not have a weapon in reach, you have two options:
~If disguised, use their unarmed combat style. Hope that you are a unicorn or creature with natural weapons already.
~If exposed, grow a weapon. Stingers, claws, barbs, and armor work wonders. Binding gel is wonderful for capturing enemies. The bombardier beetle has the wonderful ability to squirt boiling liquids, and it is easy to mimic those bladder-like organs used to do the same. Or, for a more magic intensive option, grow a dragon's fire gland. Also remember to gain a size/strength/speed advantage by shifting appropriately, switch to a bipedal stance (D. Dog/minotaur/human/adolescent dragon) or keep changing to confuse the enemy. NEVER give up your wings or magic and mix-and-match body parts in chimera fashion.4: How much magic do you have? High; supplement your fighting liberally with magic because even plain TK is a potent weapon in a fight. Low; use weapons first and use magic in very small and precises applications to give you an advantage.
5: What is your goal? Kill; use the rip-feeding technique, an assassination spell, or any (improvised) weapons. Capture; binding gel and changeling venom. Flee; wings/teleport/quadrupedal running stance, once out of sight, change into a flying insect. Distract; continuously re-engage enemy while fighting defensively, use bright colors and bizarre patterns to make it hard for your enemy to accurately gauge your exact position.
The combined answers to each question determines how the changeling will fight. If you are fighting a changeling, be warned; a skilled changeling becomes many times more dangerous once they are stripped of/willing to strip their disguise. If you think someone you know may be a changeling, DO NOT LET THEM KNOW YOU KNOW! Get proof and get help before confronting a changeling. If a changeling starts adding body parts and ends up looking something like a chimera, it might be wise to back down.
(When I say "chimera," I mean the mix-and-match creature, not the Lion-Goat-Snake Chimera of Greek mythology. In this case, THE Chimera is a chimera.)
Make your hoof sprout poisonous fang with stun poison and hit. Or cower the body part you are getting punched in them. dont even need to make them all that big, just couple of scratches are enough. Also sub dermal chitin. You can potentially make inside of your body all bone, and have skin/bone on top of it.
also 40k Tyranid Bio-Weapons
Also gelatinous cubes/oozes from Dnd for defense/stopping power, you just gotta keep your brain safe, all other tings reform.
Jeesh watch more anime and play more games, and you can come up with something. Idk how far changelings can transform tho.
While it appears to be an effective fighting doctrine on paper, most of it really depends on just how malleable a changeling body is. In the show we've only seen them take on another appearance very similar to their own (in terms of size and shape), but they didn't take any abilities with the disguise (I should note that I haven't read the comics at all). For all we (or I) know a changeling can't actually change it's body, but can put up an expert illusion, like the TF2 spy and his masks.
After that it would depend on how specialist changelings are. Unless you chalk it up to genetic talent or something, it would take quite a while for an army of changelings to become both efficient warriors and skilled actors/spies. Likely they would focus on either fight or flight tactics.
Personally, I think that if changelings had a set fighting style it would try to avoid direct confrontation and rely on distraction, illusion, misdirection, fear, and anything else to mess with their enemies' heads and provide an opening for a quick finish. In my headcanon, based on the show mind you, changelings are generally frailer than the average pony, and their magic fuel (love) also fuels their bodies (AKA their life), so they wouldn't be ones to butt heads with skilled fighters unless they were quite desperate. If they were forced to fight en mass they would still rely on ambushes, confusion tactics, and strength in numbers to overwhelm and subdue. Killing doesn't seem optimal for changelings as a dead pony can't feed them.
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Or you can go porcupine(+ venom needles) and Boar/rhino style charge.
Or you can transform yourself into electric eel type of ting. Especially useful, if you can flood the city somehow. You can go full on chameleon skin too.
If low magic, get needles with venom and levitate /blowgun dart them. Augment your lungs/eyes for better aim/shoot power. You can get some scary power just from normal trained lungs, extra couple of them augmented for more blow power? Scary. You can multi shot too. Combine with chameleon, and you can silently take down armies.
Also Pegasus style anti earth battering ram. Take a log (anything heavy , really) drop it on unicorn casting shield.
Biggest problem are pegasus (they are hard to hit/catch) and strong unicorns (because strong magic = you are fucked). Take them out first, by surprise.
Also use augmented muscles + hard material weapons ( metal sticks preferably, but wooden planks/furniture parts suffice). Nails/ needles with fast acting venom is the best offense, unless you can stealthy get to your targets.
Get all the powerful casters/ fast pegasus knocked out poisoned (infiltrate guard barrack kitchens, catch the wizard researchers alone).
Easy as hell. Come on you got army of physically augmented alicorns(crappy at magic tho).
Sleeping pills/powerful laxatives are your best friends.
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One ting I don't get is why they just doesn't transform into pretty stallions, and are nice to all the mares. Free love all around.
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My headcanon: Changelings can become anything organic, but the more it deviates from their actual body (size, shape, density, composition), the more magic it takes. Also, each body part must be physically usable with conventional biology (with the exception of wings and horns, which are aided by magic).
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I probably should explain more about my head-canon: Changelings are frail on their own, but they can truly shape-shift (not illusion) into another creature, anything they have seen or imagined. That's good and all, but the catch is that any solid hit or lapse in concentration (with the exception of normal sleep) will cause a changeling to revert momentarily. All's good if they can re-cast the transformation in time, but otherwise they are still rather vulnerable. There would be an emphasis on speed, 1-hit KO's, and dodging incoming strikes. They also all prefer to fight at range/from the air. If attacking, the average, solitary changeling will work as an assassin. If defending, the changeling will flee. Most of the stuff on this page is when the first two options are invalid and/or the changeling is desperate.
Remember, the most dangerous changeling is the one you don't see, or if it has nothing to lose.
1671828 My head canon is more Prototype like (Have you played it/seen playthroughs on youtube? It's awesome
)
Basically like this game, but since they loose their changed parts, more on ranged combat. And less consuming, since they can change without consuming.
Edit. Some stealth game-play.
Out of curiousity, could an equine-changeling use their shape-shifting abilities to split their legs into halves and turn each half into a blade (preferably scythe-like)? Then they could be giant death spiders. Nothing inspires fear quite like giant death spiders.
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Theoretically, they could do 'giant death millipede. ' Also, do you think that if a dozen changelings worked together, they could collectively become a daikaiju (giant, godzilla-like creature) or a fully grown dragon?
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I suppose that they could do that if they found out a way in which to do so. However, it would be extremely difficult to do and would require tons of magic to do so. Plus, how would it happen. They don't appear to have any way to link to each other. Hmm... do the changelings have to change from base form to something else, or can they switch from, for example, a pony directly to a Gryphon(do they have to go back to base form before changing into a different form)? Also, do they have a mind/consciousness/personality/"soul" anchored to a specific body, or is it a large number of individual "souls", memory and personality included, in the hivemind which choose a body similarly linked to the hivemind (could one changeling bail its own body and hang out as a loose "soul" in the hivemind and hop into another body? Can two changelings "souls" live in the same body if one wanted to bail its own and ride with another, etc)? If it is the second one one both accounts, then they could, theoretically, turn into a liquid/gel/clay like form, then they could shape it into a creature. Or they could pull off a giant form similar to the character called "Chaos" from the Sonic franchise. Or they could become the Smooze.
Also, could they break their form up into a number of smaller forms? For example, a changeling turning into a small cloud of locusts. Or a battalion of miniature changelings which each go to individually collect data/information, followed by all of them reforming and massing all of the learned data back into the one being. (If the hivemind is more like a cloud of "souls", am mentioned earlier, then loose "souls" could hop into each smaller form.)
P.S. Sorry, sometimes I rant/lecture when a topic begins to interest me. I can pull off these types of thoughts, sometimes writing comments that are thousands of words long, yet I still have trouble writing a half decent story. This irritates me greatly.
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In my head-canon, changelings are a special type of soul (linked with a network of other, similar souls to form the hive mind. Like internet and king=admin). They can change into anything so long as it is an organic, living creature. I've never thought about what happens if they die, but I have decided that if you swapped a pony and a changeling's souls, the pony body would become a changeling while the changeling body would either change to match the pony or lock up in the changeling's last form. I don't know if changelings could wander as free souls. With the hive mind, they could coordinate to form a larger creature (I become a leg, you be the torso, etc.).
I don't think that one changeling has the power to become a swarm by themselves. What would happen if one of those bodies got squished? I still think a solid impact can force a partial to complete restoration of their true form, meaning that squishing one could give you a disembodied leg or something.
Also, remember the changeling that went through several forms before pinkie asked it "DO ME! DO ME!"? I don't think that changelings need to revert to their base form before they can transform into something else. Hey do you think changelings need to do the full-body flames to change a minor detail (like eye color)? I don't think so. Chrysalis changed her eyes during the song, so...
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Chrysalis changed her eye color during the song because of a lack of concentration, so she started to change back a little bit. If you look at the scene where the Mane 6 fight the group of changelings, you will clearly see that, when they turn back without wanting too, there isn't a large burst of green flames, their form just falls away.
Minor changes most likely wouldn't need the full body flames, unless the changeling was truly horrible at shape-shifting. However there would be some kind of give away (for example, the changeling's eyes flashing green when changing their eyes).
Also, a problem that the human-changelings might have. If one of them got a blood test in their human forms, do they have human blood, or is changing their actual blood too wasteful of their magic supply? Also, if a part of them (in this case, their blood) is separated from their whole, followed by them changing back, would the separated material change back with them, or would it stay in its changed state because it is seperate from the body?
Finally, if changelings were to come together to form a larger creature, how would the multiple changelings physically connect to each other? The mental part is easy, for them at least. But , if one changeling was a leg and another was the body, how would you get the leg and the body to stay together?
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True changeling blood is visibly identical to human blood, but lacks all antibodies and antigens (it would act like both AB- and O-). It would take some extra testing to see a difference. Even then, a changeling could donate to anyone and receive blood from anyone without complication. I think that they could mimic a blood type for a test if they really tried, but it would take extra concentration. It would probably freeze in whatever form it was last in as the changeling soul within those living blood cells departed upon their extraction from the main body.
Honestly, I don't know how they would stick together.