Changeling Lands

**Changeling Lands** is the collective name given to a region south of Equestria where Changelings make up most of the population.

Changelings are organized into hives: population centers that control the territory around them. Hives often form alliances, but they are politically independent and are akin to city states.

Under extreme threats, hives have been known to form large alliances practically spanning the entirety of the Changeling Lands, but these cases are rare.

## Hive classification

Hives typically are either Erebian or Iridian depending on the race of Changeling that inhabits them. Usually alliances form along racial lines and hives of different races live in permanent war, but rare cases of alliances across them have been documented.

### Erebian hives

In hives populated by Erebian Changelings, the queen is the most important member as she lays all eggs and is needed to maintain the population. Because of this, she typically rules with absolute power.

As survival is a hive-wide task that requires an entire hive to come together to maintain a queen and the eggs she lays, these hives develop a strongly collectivist culture.

Efficiency and productivity is a high priority for these hives, and they attempt to boost these factors through a system of assigning jobs based on the aptitudes of individuals.

These hives often use banishment as a form of punishment for lack of loyalty, be it for disobeying the queen or for being friendly towards enemy hives. Banished Changelings are often known as pariahs and other hives won't accept them as immigrants as disloyalty to the hive is strongly frowned upon in Changeling culture.

Stepping out of a social role (such as trying to become a warrior when you're assigned to be a worker or vice versa) is also strongly frowned upon and may carry banishment.

Usually, male Changelings take on construction roles using their wax production and female Changelings collect pollen to make honey.

The royal chambers of the hive have a secluded garden for the queen to produce royal jelly while under the hive's protection.

Erebian queens will raise one or several female larvae on royal jelly to become their heirs after their death. Once a heir bears larvae of their own, other heirs will be culled to avoid a succession crisis.

### Revolted hives

In some cases when a queen is particularly unpopular, she is deprived of all power and forced to perform her duties as a servant rather than as a monarch. These are called *revolted hives*.

These hives largely retain their culture and systems in place in spite of the change in leadership. The new government usually consists of a council of revolution leaders.

### Decadent hives

If the queen of an Erebian hive dies without an heir, the hive becomes unable to produce any more larvae and it becomes a *decadent hive*, which has a sharply declining and quickly aging population.

Decadent hives may attempt to stave off the decline by allowing immigration of pariahs and by stealing eggs from other hives, although these practices are hardly successful or sustainable.

### Resurrected hives

A decadent hive may reverse its population trends by allowing Iridian immigrants who can lay eggs without a queen. These hives become resurrected hives.

Their population has both Erebian and Iridian characteristics. They tend to be very accepting of immigration and ideologically diverse.

It's also possible for a hive with a racially mixed population to be created if the queen of an Erebian hive breeds with an Iridian Changeling, but this is extremely rare.

### Skopocracies

In a skopocracy, court intrigue gets to its extreme and the intelligence agencies of a hive end up taking over the government. Because of the government being centered on intelligence agencies, espionage from these hives may cover a particularly wide area or be particularly insidious in its intelligence gathering.

### Iridian hives

Iridian hives are more versatile. As Iridian Changelings can still have queens, some of these hives may be monarchies, but as their queen isn't necessary for survival, Iridian hive republics are common.

Iridian cultures can still be collectivist, although they tend to have a less authoritarian approach to government and their systems are more flexible. They usually follow the ideology of harmony.

## Politics

### Espionage

*Main article: Changeling Espionage*

Hives often possess highly capable intelligence agencies thanks to the Changelings' natural abilities.

### Foreign relations

Due to their ideology, Iridian hives usually have closer relationships or alliances with Equestria while Erebian hives seek the protection of Qilinia.

## Demographics

Originally, Changelings were entirely housed inside their hive. Hives grew larger in size and hosted larger populations as technology improved, enabling the construction of larger hives and sustaining larger populations.

During industrialization, population growth first began outpacing hive growth, causing Changeling settlements to start sprawling outside of the hive. The hive retained a prominent role as the center of major social functions, but increasingly its housing capability became reserved for elites and the working classes moved to outhive neighborhoods.

Outhive neighborhoods remain under the authority of the government, but as they stray further from the hive, they aren't under the same close watch as the inside of the hive, turning these neighborhoods into centers of subversive, illegal or frowned-upon activities, such as unauthorized foreign trade, creation of pornography and illicit materials, and political satire.

## Economy

Hives have a self sufficient economy, although trade can occur. Honey and wax are common export goods that can be exchanged for foreign technology and luxuries.

Fruit orchards make up most of Changeling agriculture and they produce both the pollen to make honey and sugary fruit to eat.

### Units

See Units of measurement#Changeling Lands

## Culture

### Visual art

Because of Changelings having a different visible spectrum than mammals, Changeling art is often considered bland as it uses less colors in the mammal visible spectrum and often uses ultraviolet colors which aren't visible by most mammals.

### Architecture

Originally, Changeling buildings were constructed exclusively using wax.

In early history, they started incorporating materials found in nature, such as wood, straw and gravel, bound with propolis and plastered with wax. These improvements in materials enabled the construction of bigger and stronger hives.

The first neighborhoods to sprawl out of the hive were initially built similarly to the hive but in a smaller size. Later, new neighborhoods consisted of housing blocks assembled from standardized precast concrete plates.

These blocks have hexagonal plane sections to optimize housing space yielded per unit of wall. The concrete is made by breaking and burning the calcium-rich carapaces of the dead to create lime. The lime is then combined with water and gravel.

Around Iridian hives, the housing blocks may be less standardized and have different shapes.

### Prosoponymy

In Iridian hives, the names of individuals are chosen by the parents. Often, names are borrowed from cultures the hive has had contact with.

In Erebian hives, however, names often consist of a code assigned by the state upon hatching. This code is often numeric and might be composed of several parts including the date of birth, unique identifier of the batch of eggs and unique identifier of the individual. The names of royalty are a notable exception and may or may not follow the same conventions as the rest of the hive.

### Games

A turn-based strategy game called **changeling checkers** is common in both Erebian and Iridian hives.

Changeling checkers is played on an hexagonal board made of hexagonal tiles. There can be two, three, four or six players, each starting from one side of the board. Each player has a number of drone pieces and a single queen piece.

Each turn, players spawn a new drone piece if their queen is alive. If the queen piece is captured, drones stop being produced, but a player isn't considered to be defeated until both their queen and all of their drones have been captured as a queen without drones can produce more drones and drones without a queen can continue fighting without a queen.

Usually, the loss of a queen anticipates the defeat of a player, although there have been cases where queenless players have managed to take other players' queens and their drones and win the game even with the disadvantage. One esoteric strategy followed by particularly confident players consists in purposefully sacrificing the queen to other players early on and trying to win without the queen.