Changeling Enigma [Ready]

[GhostGirl]

Name: Enigma

Gender: Female

Age: Young Adult

Species: Changeling

Eye colour: Pale silvery blue gray.

Character colour: Charcoal gray, darkens to black at her hooves, and the tips of her ears and horn and nose, with her wings and the stripe around her middle being the same as her eye color.

Mane/Tail/Other: Enigma’s mane and tail are the same color as her eyes and wings. She keeps her mane in a sort of stylized bob, with her tail kept full and short.

Physique: In her natural form, Enigma is a touch taller than your average pony mare, with an otherwise unremarkable build.

Residence: Enigma lives in Stalliongrad, in a flat above the Iron Saddle.

Occupation: Bartender at the Iron Saddle.

Unique Traits: Enigma maintains a ponysona (for lack of a better word) known as Fable la Fey. She’s a Fet Loch mare with what can only be called a Fet Loch build. As Fable, Enigma is curvy and otherwise somewhere between your average pony and a draft pony in shape. Her coat is a deep, velvety purple, occasionally appearing wisteria or lavender in the right light, but her mane and tail are the same as in her natural form. The cutie mark of Fable la Fey is an open book in front of a filled cider mug.

Aside from this, the changeling is very well connected. She receives a lot of information from a lot of sources, many unaware they’re giving her any information at all (here’s a hint: she works in a bar.) While that may not be terribly remarkable given the circumstances, she does have an uncanny ability to know exactly what drink someone wants before they’ve even ordered it, and nobody has ever had to give her the recipe for a drink, whether she’s heard of it before or not.

History: Like any changeling, Enigma originated in a hive. This hive in particular took up residence somewhere in the Hasufel Mountains, not far from Dragon Mountain. The queen at the time was young and unsure of herself, leaving the hive as a whole a little aimless. The one thing the hive was sure about was that they wanted a sustainable source of nourishment. Struggling to find their way, the hive stayed small. Enigma herself was usually not terribly worried about a food source, though. The hive nurses always provided for her, like other young changelings, and so Enigma was free to spend her days learning.

The first thing the young changeling mastered was her glamour ability. Before she learned to fly, she learned how to take on any form she saw in any book. Soon she was focusing on keeping her glamour in place even when other things required her full attention. She spent so long working on her glamour abilities that everything else came second. When she had only just barely gotten the hang of flying, she could hold an assumed form for hours longer than her peers, and a sudden noise wouldn’t make her drop it. She learned little of the practical magic that was taught to most young changelings, opting instead to practice her glamours further in that time. As a result, her only real magic capability is her glamour, and her flying is… not the most graceful.

Like the rest of the changelings in her hive, Enigma marked her passage into adulthood by traveling to a pony city. Unlike her peers, most of whom traveled south to Trottingham or Canterlot or even as far south as Ponyville, Enigma chose to travel north to Stalliongrad. This was the first time she adopted a form she hadn’t pulled out of a book. She remembered a color she had found appealing, a shape she had been particularly fond of, and in a matter of seconds she was a curvy, stocky, earth pony mare. She thought back to what she had learned of Stalliongrad. It was loud and busy; there was a lot of hustle and bustle; it was a great industrial center; there supposed to be a lot of fantastic bars; information changed hooves more often than bits. The cutie mark came to her quickly, an open book in front of a filled cider mug; if anypony asked her, it would represent knowledge and an uncanny ability to pour the right drink at the right time.

The name was the hardest bit, but she remembered legends involving a mare whose name ended in “la fey,” and bartenders were supposed to be known for their advice… and advice could be found in any fable! The line of thought brought her, finally to the name “Fable la Fey.” It flowed. Enigma liked it. After that was the simple matter of constructing a false history. Her build as Fable la Fey was stereotypically Fet Loch-ian, and she already had a mug of cider in her cutie mark. She might as well be a Fet Loch bartender, traveled to Stalliongrad to possibly find a job. It would be believable! And Fet Loch bars were supposed to be the best. Right? Right!

Her disguise in tact, off she went! She walked through Stalliongrad like a tourist, or a newcomer, both of which were true. The city bustling around her, Enigma began to understand why her peers wouldn’t choose Stalliongrad. There were frequent sudden noises. Any one of the other changelings would have been spooked into dropping their glamour quickly, but Enigma’s held strong. She wandered the streets, occasionally asking passersby for directions. Many ignored her, but one took some interest. “Fable” claimed to be looking for a bar that might be hiring, and the pony pointed her toward the Iron Saddle. It had just opened a week ago and had already gone through five bartenders. Nopony could handle it, and no griffin either. She thanked him, and off she went.

This early in the day, the Iron Saddle had only a few guests. The owner, a draft stallion who looked particularly exhausted, was behind the bar, cleaning glasses with a rag that looked like it had seen better days. Enigma wandered up and struck up a conversation, hoping to learn anything she could. What she learned was that she could have the flat upstairs and a tidy sum each week if she would please, obviously being a talented Fet Loch barkeep, work the evening shift. Enigma thought for a moment, and then thought some more. After a moment, she asked how he was so sure she had anything to offer. He looked desperate, and all he could manage was that she just struck him as the barkeep type. Finally, she pointed out a few specific bottles from behind the bar and poured a drink, pushing it over to the barkeep.

It was perfect. Nopony knew what she had just poured (and the owner had called over the few patrons to try it as well), but it was perfect. She poured a different mixture of drinks. That one was perfect, too. Enigma found herself wondering if she’d somehow managed to glamour herself so completely that she could do a job she’d invented for her disguise, one she’d never learned herself. She’d never heard of such a thing happening, but, then again, she’d never met a changeling who could keep a glamour going as well as she could.

The owner of the Iron Saddle made his offer once again. Fable could have the flat upstairs and a tidy sum each week (plus her tips of course, and he knew she was sure to make plenty) if she would work evenings at the bar. She thought. She pondered. Finally, she decided she was curious. There was only so much you could learn from books, and she wanted to know more about these ponies. There was only one problem: she couldn’t just not come back to her hive. It was decided that she would come back the next day. First she had to go back home. She had no idea how her hive might react if she weren’t to return. There was no precedent for it.

When she returned home that evening, Enigma went before the queen of her hive and made her intentions clear. Neither the queen, nor anypony on the council, were sure how to react. Finally, one member of the council piped up. He stated that he had been in a bar with a mare barkeep before. Stallions frequently fell all over themselves to offer the mare their affections. Drinks also had a tendency to loosen the tongues of an establishments patrons. If Enigma were to take up residence in Stalliongrad with a job such as that secured, she would have a well of both information and love sitting at the tips of her hooves.

Enigma was sent back to Stalliongrad the next day with the full support of her hive, and began work in the Iron Saddle that night. They haven’t needed a new bartender since then.

Character Summary: Enigma has spent so long as Fable la Fey (not all in one go, of course; she takes her natural form when it’s just her in her flat) that at this point there’s no differentiating between how she acts in her natural form and how she acts as Fable. She’s the kind of mare who leads ponies on without them quite realizing that she’d leading them on. It’s how she harvests love at this point. She flirts incessantly with her bar patrons and they, especially her regulars, provide her with sustenance. Then she pours them a drink. Everyone leaves happy. It’s win-win.

There’s a sort of unspoken agreement between female bartenders and their patrons. The agreement is that as long as a patron doesn’t attempt to pursue her seriously, she’ll still be at the bar the next night, and will still be more than happy to flirt and pour drinks and laugh her bell-like laugh. Enigma knows this; all of her patrons know this. Despite that knowledge, the changeling has no idea how she would react to somepony actively pursuing her for that form of a relationship. If she were to let somepony get close enough, they would eventually learn that she is not, in fact, a mare from Fet Loch (though her accent is perfect). She avoids these circumstances at all costs.

She does, however, take time to get to know her regulars particularly well. They open up to her. She learns about them, what they do for a living, what they do for fun, how they think. She takes all this knowledge and balls it up and turns it into a drink and she names that drink after that regular. They always love that drink. It’s her uncanny knack at work, and it gets them to open up even more.

And for all the information she takes in, she has information to give out as well. She trades information with sources outside of the bar until she has material she can give groups of adventurers that nearly always come her way. It’s impossible to walk into the Iron Saddle any night of the week and not hear the line “I’ve heard rumor that there’s some unfathomable riches tucked away in…” Sometimes the information turns out to be a wild goose chase, but there’s been profit from those little tidbits often enough that everyone takes Fable’s word as truth. They just assume that if there’s no treasure, somepony else got there first.

[Armony]