Characters / Rainbow Double Dashs Lunaverse Changelings

The Changeling Swarm

A mysterious force of otherworldly shapeshifters, slowly infiltrating Equestria and other nearby nations. They have been at work for a long time in the world, yet so complete and subtle is their infiltration that nopony seems to even be aware of their existence beyond vague myth and disbelieved legends.

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General Changeling Tropes

• Logical Weakness: Since changelings feed on love and other positive emotions, negative emotions such as anger and hatred are toxic to them. Avoids Weaksauce Weakness by virtue of not being an issue unless the changeling is actively trying to feed on these ngative emotions.

Ocellus

A changeling drone who stumbled through a dimensional portal by accident, ending up in the Everfree. Star of The 'Ling From Another World and Ocellus's Ordinary Day.

Protea

The changeling homeworld, which exists in a different universe from the main one of the Lunaverse but can be reached - or can reach Equestria - through various means.

• After the End: Once upon a time, Protea was a world much like any other. Love was plentiful and a thousand queens ruled the Thousand Hives of the changeling race even as they lived alongside a dozen or more other races, which the changelings described as having been a "cornucopia". Then came the war.
• Alien Sky: Like Equestria, Protea is a geocentric system, with the planet in the center and a sun orbiting it. Unlike Equestria, it had two moons. Key word being had. The two moons were shattered by the war that destroyed Protea. That same war, or its after-effects, caused the stars to fall from the sky, and the sun to dim into an ugly orange-brown ball of barely burning embers.
• Apocalypse How: Protea, the changelings' homeworld, went through a devastating Class 4 in a war more than a thousand years ago that's heavily implied to have been both magical and nuclear.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The changelings themselves, natch. Also most of the fauna on Protea, almost all of it being insect-like or at least arthrpod-like to some greater or lesser extent.
• Changeling Resources: The only viable source of the vital love that changelings need to survive is other changelings.
• Crapsack World: If allowed to, a typical changeling can live as long as a pony. Most don't. Everything on Protea is trying to kill you, and living to old age is actually considered a drain on the Hive's resources. Changelings that start to slow down are put into hibernation pods and have their love slowly siphoned away to feed the rest of the Hive. Oh, and literally every other animal is trying to kill and eat you, and your fellow changelings will happily eat you as well if the need arises.
• Death World: Protea's oceans are drying up. The sky is constantly covered by thick clouds, and even when they occasionally break, all you'll see in the sky is a dying brown-orange sun, shattered moons, or a night empty of stars because so many of them have sputtered and died or else fallen to the world below (Protea being a geocentric system just like Equestria). Every living there wants to eat you, and vast tracts of land are "poisoned" - that is, radioactive.
  • Word of God is that Protea isn't a dying world, it's a dead one. The changelings and others are merely eking out a miserable existence upon its corpse, but are acutely aware of the fact that their world can no longer support them. They want off, at any cost.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Changelings barely get any of the love they need to survive from animals, and many animals on Protea actually can't feel any love at all. As such, changelings on Protea can get love only by putting other changelings in special pods that slowly siphon away their love for the rest of the Hive to feed on. This, eventually, kills the podded changeling.
• Protea's Lament: Protea used to be a nice place, with technologically and magically advanced races living alongside one another. Then something went wrong and they fought a war. No one won. The changelings survived, as did a few non-sapient animal species. But the planet itself expressly didn't.