Luna, Princess of the Night

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Player Name: Sword
Player Journal: swordianmaster
Age: 29
Contact: Bahamut725 @ AIM, kataranisword
Characters Played: Flare Star

IN CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Princess Luna
Canon: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
OU/AU/OC: AU
Canon Point: Post Season 3 (With added canon post-Kon Ran)
History: (Disclaimer: Portions in italics have been quoted directly from the show, and are not meant as plagarization, but as flavour. A Wiki page is here, if you want to skip the canon write-up. In that case, feel free to skip down to the section marked "Off-canon content".)

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together, and created harmony for all the land. To do this, the eldest used her unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn; the younger brought out the moon to begin the night. Thus, the two sisters maintained balance for their kingdom and their subjects, all the different types of ponies. But as time went on, the younger sister became resentful. The ponies relished and played in the day her elder sister brought forth, but shunned and slept through her beautiful night. One fateful day, the younger unicorn refused to lower the moon to make way for the dawn. The elder sister tried to reason with her, but the bitterness in the young one's heart had transformed her into a wicked mare of darkness: Nightmare Moon.

She vowed that she would shroud the land in eternal night. Reluctantly, the elder sister harnessed the most powerful magic known to ponydom: the Elements of Harmony. Using the magic of the Elements of Harmony, she defeated her younger sister, and banished her permanently in the moon. At least, that is how the legend of the Mare in the Moon goes. At this point, the only ponies who know the entire story are the two sisters themselves - the elder, Princess Celestia, and the younger, Princess Luna. However, the fable certainly tells no lies. Resentful of her sister's popularity, Luna called upon dark powers and changed herself completely into the force of evil known as Nightmare Moon. Unable to stop the creature formerly known as her sister, Celestia used the power of the elements to trap Nightmare Moon in the moon for one thousand years.

Unfortunately, a millennium doesn't last nearly as long as it used to. Nightmare Moon eventually broke free of her prison on the day of the Summer Sun festival, kidnapping Celestia and sending Equestria into an unending night. It was only through the power of a young filly named Twilight Sparkle and her entouragecompanions that the Elements of Harmony were reawakened and Nightmare Moon was defeated - this time restoring Luna, freeing her from the beast, possibly for good.

Celestia, now freed, welcomed her sister back with open arms, with an offer to start anew. However, such things aren't quite so easy, when one has a thousand-year legacy of being evil. Murmurs of Nightmare Moon biding her time until she could strike filled the cities, and Luna had to spend most of her time shut off from the society that had been taught as children to fear her. Slowly Luna regained her former power (and appearance), and slowly but surely she came out of that shell. Her first venture into modern-day Equestria was made at her sister's urging, a visit to Twilight Sparkle in the town of Ponyville during a holiday in her 'honor' - Nightmare Night, a celebration not unlike Halloween. Despite her best efforts to enjoy the celebration, things went badly when she saw the citizens still treating her as if she was Nightmare Moon, causing her to cancel the holiday altogether.

However, thanks to Twilight's friends (and her quick thinking), she came to realize that the citizens didn't really feel that way - instead, they saw it as a way to let out their fears without a true sense of panic... or rather, "sometimes it's fun to be scared!", in the words of Pinkie Pie. Nightmare Night was reinstated, and became a night not only to playfully cower in fear of Nightmare Moon, but also to celebrate the return of Princess Luna to Equestria.

Since then, Luna has tried to acclimatize herself to life in Equestria, though much of her time was spent focused on reclaiming the Crystal Empire from the nightmarish grip of another user of dark magicks, the unicorn king Sombra. Further complicating matters, the alicorn destined to rule the Crystal Empire, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza (or, as she was more traditionally known, Cadence), was kidnapped and impersonated as part of a Changeling plot to integrate themselves into Equestria and drain its citizens of their love. Luna played a supporting role in these events, keeping her subjects safe, though the credit for resolving both incidents rests on the shoulders of the ones who defeated Nightmare Moon and rescued her, the new bearers of the Elements of Harmony. In response to Twilight Sparkle's part in rescuing Princess Cadence and freeing the Crystal Ponies from their imprisonment, Celestia confided in Luna that she wished to take her pupil to the next stage of her training, wished to set the stage for Twilight to become an alicorn Princess as well.

(*** OFF-CANON CONTENT STARTS HERE ***)

Luna did not wholly agree with the idea, though she could not contest it. Her own unease, she knew, was partially linked to jealousy and Celestia's points were all sound. Regardless, it troubled Luna enough that she buried herself deep in her royal duties, even making a habit of spending most of the upcoming nights walking amongst the dreams of other ponies and helping them with the problems that brought on any nightmares she might find. Thus, nopony else noticed when, while exploring the dreams of ponies out in Las Pegasus, she ended up awaking elsewhere...

In a hospital. They told her that she was human, that she had been in a coma, that this was her home - a city known as Kon Ran. Her life in Equestria and the fact that she saw others as something other than human were simply aftereffects of an Incident only referred to with a capital I. In Kon Ran, she met others like herself, including one of the ponies she knew from back in Equestria - Pinkie Pie. Perhaps Luna adjusted too quickly into her new life as "Natalie Watson", a local mortician in Kon Ran. After all, it was an escape from the sins she committed as Nightmare Moon. She didn't find it quite so bad, and acclimatized better than many others, including distancing herself from Pinkie Pie and growing closer to other humans. In fact, she often found herself siding with the judgement of the city's Viceroyalty, something very few of the other "patients" did. She knew what it was like to be royalty, after all; she knew whatever judgements the Viceroy made were in the best interests of her people.

However, there were signs that things were not as they seemed, that the world she was in wasn't her home. One of the other "patients", a turtle by the name of Donatello Hamato, had brought with him a mutagenic virus that spread into the city not long after she arrived there. Starting as flu-like symptoms, it later progressed into changing a large quantity of the population into monsters and very likely would have been terminal. Thanks to her proximity to the city's main hospital, she was able to help develop and distribute a cure amongst the population - though such distribution was often violent and did end up with her having to jab her horn through the side of a friend's significant other. That was when the questions started - if they were truly human, how could she still have her horn? How could Donatello have brought the virus into Kon Ran?

Those questions bothered her for the better part of several months, though she put it out of her mind as much as possible, taking in the local culture. She still stood by the Viceroy's judgements, and stood firm against the threats and claims of the KIM - the Kon Ran Independence Movement, a group of radical terrorists - even as several other "patients" were murdered by creatures later known as Gentlemen. However, those murders only brought more questions. The victims never saw the morgue where she worked at, and in fact actually woke up in the hospital not long after their supposed murders. Luna had less time to question that, however, as during an international summit, the KIM attacked the Nuwa Tower, kidnapping the Viceroy. As an act of defiance towards the KIM, the Viceroy activated the energy core hidden deep within the tower, restoring some of the powers back to the "patients" of the city, Luna included. Armed with some of her former magical prowess, she joined with others like her and helped to rescue the Viceroy, and things returned to a brief normalcy.

Then the KIM attacked again. This time, their leader, Gang Kwan used his own abilities to harness the same power the Viceroy tapped into, bringing back fellow revolutionaries from the dead. Trapped in her own morgue, Luna and a fellow patient and co-worker named Haruhi fought off the restless undead for what may have been days or even weeks until the Viceroy gathered up enough strength to spiritually connect to Luna herself and use the Princess's powers... sending many of the "patients" of Kon Ran into a dream of a dismal future.

There, the truth was revealed - the reason that Luna and the other "patients" had been brought into the world was to fight an interdimensional scourge known as The Other, creatures beyond mortal understanding that sought to destroy this universe and as many others as they could. The Other had their powers stripped away, and sought the power within Nuwa Tower - the energy of deceased creatures much like them - in order to return to their destruction. Thus, a seperate faction of those creatures, known as The Visitors, had drawn people from alternate realities in order to stop the invasion of The Other. The truth was not much different from the lie - the soul known as "Natalie Woods" was simply that universe's equivalent to Princess Luna. They were simply sharing an existence for the moment.

The Viceroy used the last remaining bits of her power to restore the "patients" of Kon Ran to their original power, and with their help, the creatures known as the Other were repelled from Kon Ran. One of the relatives of the Viceroy, a young lady preferring to go by the name Fay, revealed to the "patients" exactly what powers could be utilized with the core of the Nuwa Tower, as well as how to return to their own worlds. Luna would have preferred to stay in Kon Ran to protect the people there, but she knew she had her own people to watch over. It did not take long for her to decide that where she was truly needed was in Equestria, ruling alongside her sister.

By the time she returned, day had broken. None were around to directly spot the bright flash of light, nor the bright rainbow rays that struck right where Luna returned to the world she called "home" - the onlookers from Las Pegasus had noted an unscheduled rainbow, an event that continues to confuse Cloudsdale to this day. The official record will show that it was just an unknown pegasus joyriding on a raincloud, explaining the unusual lightning as well. Luna hurried back to Canterlot, hoping to apologize to her sister for her absence... though when she returned, she found that she had only been gone a single night! In addition, when trying to speak with Celestia about the world she had been in, and the things she had seen, her claims were dismissed as a particularly vivid dream she had intruded upon - after all, Pinkie Pie had been there too, yes? Surely it wasn't strange that the Element of Laughter's dreams would be so bizzare!

Regardless, after her "extended" stay in another land, she readily agreed to Celestia's idea of allowing Twilight to progress to a new stage of pony learning. Perhaps the world truly did need more ponies with power on par with the Princesses and Discord - whom she had learned had been freed and rehabilitated while she was singlemindedly focused on her work - if they wished to survive any outsiders that may or may not wish to invade.

Little did anypony know that in the middle of the party celebrating Twilight's coronation as a princess, another rainbow much like the one Luna herself saw would appear... and obliterate Ponyville Town Hall, bringing a swarm of new ponies into Equestria. Except this time, there were witnesses to the event itself, and word was quickly brought to Princess Celestia. Knowing that they couldn't wave off Luna's claims any further, the two Princesses got to work readying a batch of magic scrollpads for the new arrivals...

Personality: On the surface, Luna is a very regal, proper sort. She used to speak in a somewhat archaic dialect, and often found herself slipping into the royal 'we' as she spoke, though she now only intentionally invokes it when she is reprimanding or scolding an individual pony. She's somewhat caught up in her own emotions, prone to violent outbursts of temper just as easily as overwhelming joy and crippling sorrow, and never does any mood half-way. Despite the strength of her emotions, Luna is quite a guarded individual, afraid of getting close to anybody out of fear. Rather, she's afraid that others will be afraid, when she wishes to show them that she means no ill will at all.

Being of royal stock, Luna is more than minorly obsessed about image, though it's less about physical appearance in her case as it is about escaping her past. For a thousand years or more, she was viewed solely as an evil mare of darkness, and she wishes to escape such implications desperately. In fact, the remorse she feels for her days as Nightmare Moon are quite the open wound for her; no amount of penance she can provide will ever truly make up for the wrongs she committed. Exacerbating that problem is the love she feels for her sister, Princess Celestia. Being the only family she has and the only real pony she can confide in, Luna feels especially ashamed about the pain she put her sister through, a fact worsened by the fact that Celestia forgives her for the past completely and totally.

Despite wanting to distance herself from the days of Nightmare Moon, Luna finds she can't fully shake the feelings of jealousy and inadequacy that led to her initial fall from grace. A part of herself feels she will never be able to earn her sister's full respect and love, leading her to mildly resent Twilight's high standings with Celestia. In addition, she has a bit of an inferiority complex due to such things, finding herself believing that perhaps she doesn't deserve Celestia's love in spite of all that's happened. She does the best she can to keep such thoughts bottled up as deep inside of her as possible, however.

To say Luna is "old-fashioned" is a bit of an understatement, but it mostly comes from being imprisoned alone for a thousand years. The life she knows is one that is now a millennium old, and as of such, she is completely and utterly confounded by anything but an antiquated, high-crust lifestyle. This includes such things as modern convenience and, in her own admission, "fun". She's recently learned about the latter concept, and finds she quite likes it, though she is fairly naive in her acceptance of new things.

Kon Ran didn't change Luna much, though it did allow her the time she needed to open up and become more social - slightly, at least. She's mostly moved away from speaking in the royal, antiquated "we", and has even gotten slightly more casual in her speech, becoming slightly more similar to her sister, albeit with a more formal tint to her words. She normally would not share a word of what she witnessed to anypony, though if she believed that others would hear her claims as anything more than a farce, she might speak of it. She's had a decent enough time to dwell on the metaphysical state of alternate dimensions, though she mostly works off of baseless conjecture at this point. She certainly would understand the plight of the new arrivals much better than Celestia, having been in a similar situation herself once not long ago - twice not long ago, considering her return from her imprisonment. More than anything else, it has taught Luna that she's not particularly fond of jellyfish, spicy foods, or heavily rule-based tabletop games. She certainly has no idea what the appeal of staring at a bunch of numbers is; if we wish to roleplay, why do we not simply play our roles?

Strengths: The most obvious strength is Luna's birthright; not only a princess but an alicorn, a pony combining the strength of the unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies in one single being. Notably, Luna appears to be incredibly well-versed in magic, able to give life to inanimate objects and summon (dramatic) lightning as needed. The most obvious show of her magical prowess is in her role of raising and lowering the moon every night and walking amongst the dreams of other ponies. In addition, she's known to have some experience with dark magic of some variety, considering that she called an unholy power unto herself in order to become Nightmare Moon. There is also THE ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE, which does have some magical backing behind its force (and reverb), even if a large portion of it comes from a healthy set of lungs.

Weaknesses: Luna's biggest weakness is arguably her temper, as when she gets upset it's very rare for her to calm down on her own. In addition, that anger has started wars, terrorized bystanders... it's the reason why Nightmare Moon is such a fearful presence, even now that Luna has been rescued from that influence. In addition, due to spending a thousand years sealed away, her manner of speech and view of the world is best described as "archaic", though she has been getting better. She's still rather new to modern technology even in Equestria, though, due to her imprisonment, and will generally resort to using magic to solve a problem even if a more sensical traditional method can be found. In addition, her memories of the world known as Kon Ran trouble her now and then, possibly more than her former time as Nightmare Moon.

Possessions: A single sliver of Nuwa Tower's core, kept hidden in her tiara. She hasn't told anypony else about it, not even Celestia. All she knows is that it will allow her to return to Kon Ran; she has no idea of what other powers it might grant.

Pony/Animal Type: Alicorn

Cutie Mark: A crescent moon, surrounded by the night sky

Pony Picture: A pretty, pretty prin-- Oop, pardon, loaded the wrong slide. As we were saying, a pretty, pretty princess.

SAMPLES

First Person:
New Equestrians!

Greetings to all of you; I find the name 'newponies' to be slightly unpleasant, so I shall call you simply as you are: new citizens of Equestria. My name is Princess Luna, sister to Celestia and ruler of the night. Believe me when I say that I do indeed know your plight of finding yourself in a strange new world, a place where you do not know where you may fit in without finding trouble. However, my sister has told me that, more than anything, I will be of aid to many of you where she could not. I have had to rapidly adjust to modern society in Equestria, so while my troubles may not be identical to your own, I can certainly relate to your woes. If thou wouldst have any questions you wished to extend to the Canterlot court, then I shall do my best to answer them.

Third Person: Princess Luna put the scroll down with a weary sigh after she sent her message, knowing she would not have more than a few moments of respite before others started inquiring about the ins and outs of Equestria. It was true, she knew better than anypony else about what it was like to be in a world completely different to your own, though it was for reasons unrelated to her time as Nightmare Moon... a secret that only she and her sister were truly aware of. Reflexively, she let a wisp of her telekinetic magic brush over the odd shard tucked in her mane, feeling its power - a reminder that she did not dream the months she was trapped in another world, even if it was less than a day in Equestria.

With that comfort came its own doubt, however... what if it was her fault that these events had transpired? She had returned to Equestria with the intent to protect it, not to open it up to further danger! She wished she had more time to prepare herself for addressing her new subjects, but she knew such luxuries were beyond her means. She could not retreat into the dreams of other ponies for comfort, not now. The moon had been raised, but she knew that many ponies would be awake for an hour or two yet... and she knew others still would be awake much longer. Perhaps this was part of Celestia's plan, as well - a way to find a friend for these ponies... and for Luna, as well. She had long dismissed friendship as a thing that came after one's duties... but perhaps she needed to reevaluate herself once again.

When the scrolls started to glow with the green hue of dragonfire, she uncorked a fresh bottle of ink and took her quill once more, looking to reply to the new arrivals into Equestria. It was likely to be a long season...