Vatan Haini

Player Name: Sword
Player Journal: swordianmaster
Age: The ripe old age of 30
Contact: kataranisword, Bahamut725 @ AIM, katarani@gmail.com
Characters Played: Flare Star, Princess Luna (AU1)
Name: Hain ("Vatan Haini", if he's asked for a full name)
Canon: MLP: FiM (IDW comic universe)
OU/AU/OC: OC
Canon Point: Some ambiguous time frame after the Revenge of Chrysalis arc, at least a decade's worth of time
History: The life of a changeling drone starts simply. Some are converted from living ponies, others still are spawned asexually from an abundance of emotion devoured by the hive. The changeling who would later be known as Hain came about in the second manner, one of the 'youngest' changelings to come out of Queen Chrysalis's hive, a product of the huge amounts of love devoured from the creatures of a land known as "Wuvy-Dovey Land". Perhaps that's where things first started going wrong.

The changeling's first memories are of his Queen gathering up her forces and planning for an upcoming comet. He learned that she sought revenge on the unicorn who outed her right at the pinnacle of a major coup that would have settled her in as a member of Canterlot's elite nobility, from where she could overtake all of Equestria. While he was not in the original swarm that kidnapped three schoolfillies to use as bait for the plan, he was there to splinter the friendships of Twilight Sparkle and her friends, only to witness them overcoming their troubles, banding together, and arriving at the castle his Queen had overtaken.

Then, he watched as Queen Chrysalis acted. His 'mother', the creature in control of his life, his Queen, proceeded to deviate from her own plan. Instead of draining the magical energy from Twilight Sparkle as soon as the comet passed overhead, the surge of magical power within the unicorn impressed Chrysalis so much that she offered Twilight a place in the changeling ranks, in exchange for her friends.

This went about as well as could be expected.

Still hardly past pupation, the changeling had been given his first taste of his Queen's sheer, unyielding incompetence. This continued for months. She knew better than to challenge the creatures in Celestia's lands or the Crystal Empire, and yet no matter how inconsequential the maneuver, he witnessed his Queen failing. She had absolutely no skill at subtlety, no knowledge of how to read body language or emotional cues. While individual changelings still managed to sneak into pony realms and gather adequate amounts of love for the whole hive, she kept many of her troops close to her at all times. She never approached a new community of creatures with any mindset past "attack and slaughter". By the time the changeling was fully matured, he was utterly fed up with his Queen's ineptitude, even with the added persuasion of the hive-mind to support her in his eyes.

In fact, the hive-mind was starting to pick up on his displeasure, and tensions were running high. There had not been any further female changelings born, and without a queen, a hive would die. Knowing this, the changeling did what he could to silence his own dissent, knowing revolution would only lead to the death of the hive. With time, he had almost completely severed his mind from the mental network, to the point that others could barely sense him. In addition, the excuse that he had "gotten high off a bad batch of love" was only going to fool his Queen for so long. Knowing this, he started to make plans to escape the hive.

Then, one night, around the time that Twilight Sparkle was being blessed with the gift of an alicorn, he broke free. He ran, severing the mental link between himself and his hive, fleeing as fast as he could, knowing full well his former Queen was going to hunt him down as a deserter should she find him again. He didn't care; she was going to doom the hive, in his mind, one way or the other. He needed to find other changelings. Needed to find a new queen, start a new hive.

If he couldn't do that, he'd rather die in solitude, instead of watching his brothers die alongside him from malnourishment and suicide missions.

In fact, he almost did die in utter solitude. Fully severing himself from his hive left him unable to draw emotional sustenance from his hive's stores, and he hadn't found a good opportunity to feed himself. That is, until he came across an old Appleoosan mare living in the Badlands with a large... no, huge number of cats. Her eyesight was failing, so she didn't chase him away in fear when she found him collapsed at her step. In fact, she repeatedly claimed he reminded her of her former husband, bless his soul. Naturally, he weaseled his way into her house, and into her heart, using her energy to recover his strength, and to bide his time.
There, he learned of the stallion he was essentially replacing. A psychiatrist in Appleoosa, apparently he had been put to the gallows and his wife had been exiled due to his advice nearly leading to the buffalo and ponies going to war with each other a second time. That was decades ago, though, she told him, and last she had heard, Appleoosa had relocated right into the path of the buffalo migration and started a second war anyway. She was happy in her exile, though, living with her cats.

Those cats hated the changeling, and were constantly tormenting him. Despite that, it was the safest place for the changeling to stay for several years. He slowly replaced that deceased therapist, reading up on the stallion's old psychiatry journals, using those words to learn how to better manipulate pony emotions. The stallion had also kept a few books on the Ottomane Empire, something the changeling researched to try to get a better knowledge of military tactics and political maneuvering. Several years he spent like that, feeding only the barest minimum off of the mare and slowly learning more about the world of ponies and the way their minds worked. It wasn't meant to last, though, as one day old age caught up to the mare and, unable to find food of their own, those dozens of felines turned on him. For the second time in his life, he ran... though not nearly as far as before. By that time, the barrier around Equestria had weakened, and he was able to set foot in those green lands, on the provision that he was severed from his former hive, and should they ever appear, he would be the first put to death or banishment.

He accepted those terms, starting to build his identity by going from town to town, slowly creating a name for himself. "Vatan Haini" was the name he had started to go by, based off the old Ottomane words for a turncoat... after all, that's what he was, abandoning his hive to live amongst ponies peaceably, wasn't he? If Chrysalis still lived, he knew she'd certainly think so. In addition, he learned that ponies were largely unnerved by the appearance of a changeling, but for the sake of earning the trust of those ponies, he never used his powers, instead opting to buy a false mane and facewear to better make him seem approachable. It didn't always work, but he was at least earning himself enough love to manage - after all, ponies were absolutely thrilled to have someone who could fix their problems for free.

Personality: Hain, being a changeling drone, has a very skewed sense of emotion. He doesn't acknowledge emotions as something he feels, though he certainly does feel frustration, compassion, and even pity at times. However, he remains detached enough from emotional stimuli that he ends up seeming as if he's emotionless as he truly is. He also keeps the few emotions he does feel bottled up, as those thoughts are neither productive, nor particularly helpful in many cases. For the most part, despite what he says, he cares very little about the well-being of ponies in general, seeing it as only a means to an end, that end being his prolonged survival until which point he can properly set up a hive not run by Chrysalis. Ultimately, that's his final goal - to find a queen to lead the changelings into prosperity instead of down the path of destruction he feels Chrysalis is leading them down. To that goal, anything else is expendable - ponies lives, personal connections, even his own life if need be. It's difficult to get Hain angry, but when he feels he has been wronged somehow, he will stop at nothing to seek to ruin that person's - or pony's - life. Conversely, if you treat him well, he'll defend you as closely as he would a fellow changeling.

Hain outwardly expresses a disdain for the changeling way of life an an embracing of the pony ideals, though such things are simply due to circumstance led by a duplicitous nature - it's safer and easier to be "on their side" until he can dethrone Chrysalis than to be a rogue agent acting on the instinctive, chaotic feral urges his kind have. In fact, that disdain towards his kind and refusal of his primal instincts lead to him being a bit of a snooty intellectual type, the type who uses large words and then looks down upon you condescendingly when you don't understand them.

He's incredibly studious, and will routinely jot down notes about both his clients and the ponies he's interacting with - their names, appearances, mannerisms, daily schedules... after all, you never know when you need to take over a pony's life, or use another pony's daily interactions to help sabotage their life by seeming coincidence. Despite his detached demeanor and peaceable manner, he is still a changeling, though, and one with a mind that has been honed to a level almost as keen as a changeling Queen's would be. He takes a significant amount of pleasure from those times when he's "forced" to utterly ruin a pony's life, finding such things to be a rare, hedonistic indulgence when he gets the chance to revel in them. He's also fairly street-smart, due to spending most of his life on the run and more recent years helping ponies with their problems - he knows how to say what he needs to in order to get what he wants, and knows where to ask to find things for the most part.

However, he's also a bit socially awkward when it comes to himself, and to making actual friends instead of business acquaintances - he's used to helping others with their problems, and will balk significantly when the same is offered his way, unsure how to handle kindness as anything but a lead-in to feeding. He's not personally fond of parties, though he appreciates their purpose as a means of cheering ponies up and will encourage them whenever possible... just not attend them, if possible.

He's got a healthy dislike of cats, who seem entirely too eager to hate him regardless of what form he's in.

Strengths: Hain has all the powers and abilities of a normal changeling drone, up to and including knowledge of his shapeshifting abilities, flight, limited telekinesis, and the ability to feed off of emotion. In addition, he's of a heartier constitution than some other changelings, meaning he CAN feed off of negative emotion, though it's still incredibly unpleasant. In seperating from Chrysalis's hive, he's also freed himself from her command, meaning she cannot imprint her will on him as she may be able to on other changelings, nor may any other changeling queen. In addition, he's proven himself to have an above-average intelligence, having little problems picking up the amount of knowledge he's taken in regarding psychology. Said knowledge also allows him a remarkable amount of insight on the troubles of others.
Weaknesses: Aside from the natural pony aversion to changelings making positive interaction incredibly difficult, his seperation from the hive means that he can't distribute his emotional sustenance amongst others - he's just as prone to the effects of starvation and overfeeding as any pony would be, which is a significant problem when your sources of food aren't as easily controllable as a daffodil sandwich would be. He's also fairly physically unfit for a changeling, and wouldn't be able to hold his own in a fight. On top of that, seeing as there's already a Queen Chrysalis in game, there will be.... problems involving any pre-existing changeling queens.
Possessions: A pair of (non-perscription) reading glasses, a ratty, slightly overlarge toupee, and a clipboard with an assortment of quills. Normal, really.
Pony/Animal Type: Changeling.
Cutie Mark: Changelings don't have cutie marks of their own! They just impersonate the marks of other ponies.
Pony Picture: I use my hair to express myself. (That sounds really boring.)
First Person: An introduction
Third Person: "So you see, one thing led to another, and what started out as just sitting down in a comfortable way ended up with me starting to look into all these 'humanes' the newponies were talking about! It's not WEIRD or anything, just... they got me curious, is all!" The seafoam green mare's voice was loaded with denial, Hain could hear it in every word she tried to defend herself with. He tapped the quill against one of his large incisors, nodding to himself before dipping it into his inkwell again, scribbling down a few more notes. Ashamed of interest and hobbies. May suggest more than a simple desire for knowledge. Tends to ramble when stressed, slips into a Canterlot accent when distracted. Having written down enough to do a passing job should he need to, he finally answers her protests.

"Tell me. Who are you trying to convince that your tastes aren't strange? All ponies have their own quirks and ideas; to a schoolteacher, a high level of interest in parties might seem unhealthy, whereas were the shoe on the other hoof, the second pony might find that schoolteacher stuffy and unfun. Every pony has different thoughts, and they must conflict in order to achieve a level of harmony." The word rolled off his tongue unpleasantly. Harmony was a concept that changelings never took to well; the idea of coexisting in spite of differences was strange to them. In order to coexist, one had to share goals, ideas, and thoughts with their brothers, right? Regardless, he chokes down that foreign distrust of the word as he provides several more examples to his patient, making sure to use the identities of other Ponyville citizens - but never their names - to help make her feel at home, give a reason to believe him without feeling he was spreading gossip.

He supposed that in a way, he was. They had told him all this either in confidence or it was public knowledge - using their names was simply his way of getting 'even' with them. Pinkie Pie certainly rarely needed his help, and Cheerilee hadn't scheduled another appointment for months. Certainly, he had many other ponies he could try to help, and he certainly wasn't in dire need of feeding, and yet, he felt that there was little need of keeping confidentiality. If ponies made assumptions, whose fault would it be but their own? He wasn't talking about Cheerilee's opinions on Pinkie Pie, after all, but on the natural distrust "a" schoolmare would have towards any pony that liked parties.

If ponies came to the correct assumptions, it was their fault, not his own.

"Regardless, miss Heartstrings... the way you keep insisting that there is nothing wrong with your interests tells me that you believe someone in this room doesn't believe you. I've already insisted, several times, that I believe you, which leaves only one pony. So tell me, once more." Hain readjusted his glasses and leaned over.

"What, exactly, is wrong with being just the way you are?"