Pony Teory : fanfic : Chrysalis origin ?

[Pim 2]

Hi everyone ! SOOoooo...

I'm posting this one here because... It's more a fanfic than anything. When thinking on the matter, my brain made some connexions I'm unsure of, but, when you take that starting theory, a LOT of hints and puzzle pieces start falling together ! Let's begin, at the beginning :

There was a comic that featured the Changeling's origin : a swamp overun with dark magic were a tree was saturated with the stuff and bursted open, releasing a horde of Changelings... But the show has given us Thorax's childhood (grubhood ?), where we see an adult Chrysy forming the Hive from scratch, thus (as the show's canon prevails on the comic's) unvalidating that origin story... Or does it ? Chrysalis created the Hive and other Changelings, but we still don't know where Chrysy herself came from ! So I'm going to keep the "burst from a swamp tree saturated with dark magic" chabang. But that asks a very practical question : were did the dark magic come from ?

That's where my brain plays a weird trick on me... Zecora...

We start our story with a young filly by the name of Zecora living happily in her zebra village. One day, she gets selected by her village's elder/witch doctor/sorcerer(ess)/alchemist to become his/her (I'm gonna stick with 'he' for practicality purpose) student. Turns out, Zecora is not only a good learner, she's down right brilliant ! Her mentor can barely keep up with her progress and she even figures out some stuff he couldn't ! She ends up self-teaching, experimenting during her 'after class' hours to become the best ever !

During these self taught sessions, she stumbled accross a new kind of magic, one that resonates... Differently from the rest... And she quickly realized, the hard way, that these powers weren't to triffle with ! Still, she kept practicing, working ever so hard to unlock as many of its aspects as she could : figuring out the worst hexes she could produce with it, in order to find out how to solve them ! How to cure those affected by similar energies ! Zecora may have been a foal, but she was no fool ! She thought...    Every time she called upon these... Dark powers, she always made sure to purge, to cleanse herself free of it once her work was done.

But dark magic isn't like other magics... It does not disperse kindly after you send it away : it lingers, it crawls, it tries to find an anchor. Thus, every time Zecora would call it a day, the powers she had invoked would roll accross the swamp where her shaman hut was located. One day, by pure coincidence, a strand of it got caught in the roots of a tree, then another one, and another one ! When the dark magic was concentrated enough, it started to draw the lingering energies around it, the more was pooled in one spot, the more was drawn to that same spot. The tree became twisted, tortured as more and more dark energies were absorbed into it, by the end, all the powers Zecora used and discarded in her experiments were siphoned into that one tree in the swamp.

Until one day, there was too much. Too powerful a concentration of dark energies in one place to remain passive... It stirred, it moved, swirled, stretched and gathered, trying to find a shape, a purpose. In a blast similar to a lightning strike, the tree burst open ! and from its smoldering remains emerged a creature of pure darkness, so devoid of love she had to take it from other creatures to survive, to strive ! The creature looked around for prey, and it found it, a village of creatures filled with her sustenance. She was eventually driven out, but the damage caused by her first feeding was extentive...

It took Zecora a while after the attack to put 1 and 3 together, until she found the 2 she was missing... It hit her like a brick ! Everything that had hapened that day, and the rumors that the creature was still at large, hitting other places, it was all HER fault ! she took responsibility : she left her village, swore to never stop until her MISTAKE was FIXED, once and for all ! By the time she caught up with Chrysalis, the Changeling had gotten acquainted with her abilities and needs. Disguised among her future preys, she found out pretty quickly that this peculiar zebra was followng her around...

And so started a years long game of hunter and hunted. With every new place visited, every new people met, Zecora's skills and knowledge grew. She found out how to counter even more afflictions, learned more than she could ever have in her village alone... And with every counter Zecora produced, Chrysalis devised new tricks, new method of getting what she craved ! Until she reached Equestria... What a sight ! LOVE overflowing everywhere ! ready to be plucked and plundered ! Yet, the guard dog (a certain Celestia) seemed a bit too dangerous to poke around carelessly... If she were to score such a massive haul, Chrysalis would have to plan it perfectly ! Also, a few more arms wouldn't hurt... As Zecora lost track of her prey, she was not fooled : going into hiding in such a place meant only more dangers to come later ! And so, she settled and got ready for when Chrysy would make her move. The Changeling was not the only one who could play the long game...

 

Nice and all, but how do I justify coming up with the idea ? what hints might the show have given us that would back up this version of the events... weeell :

-Zecora leads the resistance : in the future where Chrysalis succesfully conquered Canterlot, there just so happened to be ONE pony with EXACTLY the right toolset, the right knowledge AND the right attitude to combat Changelings effectively. Zecora kept the Changelings more or less at bay for YEARS ! And even assembled a full resistance, in a world where you can literally trust NO ONE ! Furthermore, when Chrysy finally found the resistance, what did she ask for ? "you come quietly and I'll let your friends go". An entire resistance movement, an chrysalis still considered Zecora alone to be the threat... (Wether she would have kept her promiss or not is irrelevant)

-Zecora lives alone in a remote location : The argument could (and should) be made that the ingredients for zecora's potions are plentyfull in the Everfree Forest, but she could just as easily live at the fringe between Ponyville and the forest ! Why in the middle of it if not to remain distant from the rest of ponies ? In a world where anyone could be your enemy ready to jump you when you turn your back, trust no one. The harshness of the trip to Zecora's mean she would get few visitors at a time. Making it easier for her to scan for impostors...

-She's the best potion maker EVER ! Yet she remains fairly inpopular, as if no one spread her reputation around, as if SHE didn't spread word of her skills beyond Ponyville... She almost never travel to even Ponyville, letting others come to her... Is she ? Hiding from someone/thing ?

-Why rhyme all the time ? In 'a health of information', as she is heavily sick and disroriented, Zecora can't rhyme anymore. This proves that rhyming is a conscious effort on her part. why go through the trouble of rhyming EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE then ? it's a quirk, one very hard to replicate ! Furthermore, as she does it ALL the time, as soon as she stopped for even a sentence, this immediatly shocked Fluttershy... Good way to raise suspicion on an impostor of herself : if she ain't rhymin', that'd be a Changelin' !

-She comes from very far : Just like Chrysalis' origin was never explained, we've never known why Zecora came all the way to ponyville... the Zebralands were never featured anywhere, despite the map being expanded several times accross the show and the comics... Just how far DOES Zecora come from and WHY would she traverse half the world to settle in a seemingly random spot ?

-Zecora's a badass : She mounts a resistance against Chrysalis, trains twilight during 'a magic duel', doesn't even CARE that she's infected with a deadly disease if a friend put themselves in danger to cure her, and when she's captured by a Rokk all she cares about is the odds that the next one captured ends up in the same claw as her !!! You don't mess with the Zebra girl !

-She knows ALL the magics : Potions ? Check ! Voodoo ? check ! Unicorns and artifacts ? Check and check ! ALICORN magic ? for Celestia's sake, she has a potion that REQUIRES Alicorn magic to trigger !

-other Changelings ? For the entirety of seasons 8 and 9, I've been BEGGING for ANY interaction between Zecora and the reformed Changelings ! So I'm grabbing at straws here : In '2,4,6, great', Rainbow Dash goes to Zecora to request her helping Ocelus with her rhymes... She turns out "less helpfull than you'd think"... (yeah, the straws are pretty thin too ;7 )

-Chrysalis got wood : ever since she has been "unjustly deprived of her rightful throne", Chrysalis has been obsessed with trees and logs ! Creating the 'mean 6' was a clever trick, but when we see her again, she's just carving Changeling faces onto random logs, in large quantities. And later, she's still hanging on to Twilog for comfort whenever she feels like plotting her return to the Hive... I hadn't noticed ANY sort of affinity between Changelings and wood up to that point... Unless she remembers the circumstances of her own birth, and is trying to replicate them to build the army that will conquer her throne back ! An army of already fully grown Changelings, and even a second Queen would indeed be useful to that end, but Chrysy seems to have problems figuring out the details of her coming to be... And as soon as she has the option to become powerful enough to do it on her own, she drops it all to focus on her conquest to come !

 

 

That's a theory, fell free to agree or argue ! Have a nice day !    ;7

Edited September 12, 2019 by Pim