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The Queens: Aconita, Cerbera, Lucani, Belladonna

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Queen Aconita

(Name derives from Aconitum, the scientific name for Monkshood, or ‘Queen of Poisons’, or many other names.)

"I will ask you... Just what does the Court stand to gain from war?"

Age: 31

Features: silver, almost reflective mane and tail – perfectly straight and manicured. Ocean blue eyes with a significantly darker, midnight blue inner ring. Gemstones on her crown are pearls/cloudy quartz. Carapace is steel silver.

History: Queen Aconita commands the second largest hive in the south, and is considered by most to be Queen Chrysalis’ direct competitor. After Chrysalis’ failed invasion of Equestria, it was widely believed that Aconita would succeed her as Queen of Queens in the Court. Chrysalis, however, doggedly hung on to the title despite Aconita’s considerable favor.

Aconita herself is cold and calculating. A born manipulator and schemer, she almost always has an ulterior motive and is rarely direct with her intentions, even when appearing to be. Many can agree on one thing, however; she is only interested in herself, and her legacy. Whatever angle she plays, whatever move she makes, it all leads to either herself, or her heir coming out on top.

Hive: The Aconita Hive is matched in size only by the Chrysalis Hive. However, unlike its competitor, the Aconita Hive is less aggressive and militaristic, instead focusing on more subtle endeavors.

It is through Aconita’s hive that the status quo is maintained. Through manipulation, subversion and trickery, her hive maintains the mystique surrounding the changeling race, casting them as supernatural spirits of the jungle in the eyes of other sentient races inhabiting the jungle. In this way, they maintain control over all peoples without them ever knowing of their presence through careful orchestration.




Queen Cerbera
(Name derived from the plant Cerbera odollam, also known as the ‘suicide tree’, which prefers to grow in swamps and marshes in India. It yields a potent poison often used for suicide and murder.)

"Hmm... too much, yes, yes... too much... Flesh melts too quickly. Must make adjustments! Yes, yes..."

Age: 35

Features: dark brown mane and tail with thin strands of vivid green – medium length, curly and unkempt. Eyes are a striking shade of bright green, with a darker center. Gemstones on her crown are bright, vivid emeralds. Carapace is brown in color.

History: Once upon a time, Queen Cerbera was considered one of the brightest minds the changeling people possessed. Cunning, sly and creative, she rose quickly in her hive and ascended to the thrown at a young age.

And then Queen Phantasma struck.

Queen Cerbera’s hive was one of the first few to resist. Hers was also the last. The horrors endured in that battle – being locked inside her own hive with a bloodthirsty Sylphid, watching it consume her entire swarm and forced to resort to extremes just to survive – shattered her mind and sanity, leaving her a lunatic without morality.

The Queen Cerbera of today is only a shadow of her former self. Unstable and prone to psychotic breaks, she rarely ventures away from her lab, where she spends days on end concocting more and more vile poisons and tonics with each passing moon. Only in the safety of her caustic brewing chambers can she muster some semblance of her former intellect as she creates horrific brews capable of inflicting much, much worse than a mere agonizing death. Most queens avoid her, because the permanently haunted look in her eyes serves only to remind them of the darkest chapter in their history.

Hive: the Cerbera hive is one of the smallest hives remaining. With the destruction of their former hive, the swarm has taken up residency within the Central Hive itself, far below ground. However, they are still fond of the dangerous marshlands in the east, where they routinely venture to scavenge and forage.

The changelings that make up the hive are a mirror of their demented queen; sociopathic and amoral, their sole goal in life is to find more and more potent ingredients to fuel their queen’s mad drive to concoct the perfect toxin. And when she creates a new brew, they are only too happy to test it for her – be it on wildlife, sentient races, other changelings… or even themselves.




Queen Lucani

(Name derived from Lucanidae, or more commonly known as the Stag Beetle.)

"You telegraph too much. Your posture leaves your neck and flanks exposed. Too much follow through with your attacks. My legs have fewer holes than your defenses do."

Age: 45

Features: Bronze mane and tail – long, wavy. Eyes are gold with a dark honey inner circle. Crown is adorned with four golden nuggets. Carapace is bronze.

History: Queen Lucani is an extreme rarity among changelings, in that she is a born fighter. Over the course of her life, she has honed many magical and martial skills to razor sharp points, which she passes down only to those few in her hive she deems worthy. Strict, unbending and proud, she is a born soldier and tactician, and always carries with her a grim sense of duty and superiority that most other queens find infuriating.

Lucani bears a very unique designation; she is the only queen to ever survive direct combat with Queen Phantasma. The former Queen of Queens was so impressed with Lucani’s strength that she let her keep her hive – at the price of her swearing total fealty to her. The resulting wound on Lucani’s towering pride has driven her to hold nearly unreasonable standards, and a deep disgust for those who cannot meet them. She wears her broken crown – damaged in the battle with Phantasma – around her neck at all times as a constant reminder of her greatest failure.

Hive: Queen Lucani’s hive is maintained a very small size, due mostly to her stringent policies. Her hive has one of the highest mortality rates – which she refers to only as ‘weeding out the weak’. Those that do encompass her hive, however, are some of the strongest, most skilled warriors the changeling people have to offer. It is through her hive that security is enforced among the other hives, and whenever an armed response is called for, it is her that administers the hammer blow. Almost all queens want to remain in her good graces to earn her protection, thus ensuring her meager hive remains strong and competitive with its larger rivals.




Queen Belladonna
(Short for Atropa Belladonna, daughter of the late Queen Nightshade.)
(Name directly comes from the scientific name for ‘Deadly Nightshade’.)

"No one calls me Atropa. No one!"

Age: 28

Features: Pink mane and tail – bushy, medium-long. Eyes are yellow in color, with a slightly darker center. Crown is adorned with vivid pink gemstones. Carapace is pink.

History: Of all the changeling queens in the Changeling Court, none are more distrusted than Queen Belladonna, and for good reason. A born sociopath, she presents herself as a mild-mannered, bubbly lady. But on the inside, she is manipulative; a talented actress with a sadistic streak. However, she is also quite immature; she offends easily, and will not hesitate to lash out at anyone who belittles her.

Belladonna earned her reputation in the manner by which she ascended to her hive’s throne. Her mother, Queen Nightshade, did not wish to bow to Queen Phantasma, and was prepared to fight her to maintain her freedom. Belladonna, however, saw an opportunity for something greater in Phantasma’s conquest, and her greed drove her to slay her own mother. Her actions spared her hive from Phantasma’s wrath, but the damage was done.

To this day, Belladonna feels no remorse over her actions, and only sets her sights higher and higher with each passing day.

Hive: the Belladonna hive has been quite successful, thanks in part to its predisposition towards being fantastic actors and role-players. Drones disguised as ponies are rarely, if ever discovered as being fake, and so they have remarkably high supplies of love.
However, it is generally agreed upon that the hive has much more than it shares with the rest. This reputation of being secretive, greedy squanderers has lead most other hives to keep their distance from Belladonna and her swarm, limiting their potential growth – much to the indignant fury of their queen.
The profiles of the first four changeling queens; Queen Aconita, Queen Cerbera, Queen Lucani, and Queen Belladonna




Queen Aconita appears in my story, The Advent of Applejack. Her initial design when I created her was to make her more of a mystic, like a coldhearted fortune teller kinda; she'd have a tarot card deck that she constantly referred to, a crystal ball, the whole shebang. I'm not entirely sure why I went away from that version, actually... Maybe to simplify her character while writing her. Idunno.




Queen Cerbera is created with two main sources of inspiration in mind; the first being Gollum and Primordius, a boss in World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria; her speech patterns follow a form of gibbering similar to them -- lots of talking to herself, lots of repetition, general crazy talk. The second inspiration didn't go too far; the Laughing Skull orc clan in World of Warcraft, Warlords of Draenor. If I had to compare, I'd say her hive was pretty close to those crazy effers.




Queen Lucani is perhaps my favorite queen of the lot, and I can't rightly describe why. I think it was her name; I felt right proud finding it and making it work. It just stuck with me. The entire idea behind her is that she breaks the mold; changelings are not warriors by nature, given how fickle their strength can be. But by the same token changelings are inherently unpredictable, and that concept gave rise to Lucani.




Belladonna... she can best be boiled down in two words; spoiled brat. That was the idea I had, like a child star; all cute and sweet one second, and then downright murderous the second someone tells her no. She's the kind of queen who can and will hold a grudge, and never will be satisfied wit any amount of power she gains.




And that's it for now. Up next: Queen Venus, Queen Honeycomb, Queen Solifuge, and the twins - Queen Neutria & Queen Nephila.

Next>>>Venus, Honeycomb, Solifuge, Twins
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segamarvel's avatar
Are you the same guy who wrote this story? www.fimfiction.net/story/15546…