#spooky hormse time!!

[lady-lorienn]

Lot of tiny text in this one guys, sorry! Gonna have to zoom in to read some of that!

BUT

Thought I’d jump on the infected AU bandwagon and play around with the concept a bit, see what I cook up! The magic that ponies tap into itself is the source of The Infection, becoming “Rotted Magic” and warping each of the pony races in a manner specific to their ways of using of magic. I’m still developing an origin as to how the magic got corrupted, but I’m thinking one of the scholarly unicorns (probably Purplesmart) somehow tapped too deep in their quest to fully master magic and disrupted the natural balance, causing this.

The more in-tune with their magic, the quicker a pony will become infected (i.e. Twi would be infected much faster than Rarity). The only way to prevent the colloquially dubbed Rot from fully corrupting a pony is to remove their cutie mark, which is where the signs of the infection first show, before the other symptoms set in. When fully infected, and specific symptoms aside, healthy mana (latent magical energy) attempts to escape the onset of Rotted Magic through the mouth, causing the blood-drool and sapping a pony of their vitality. Dark veins indicate severe infection and stem from where the rot is strongest (cutie mark, eyes, and horn). Once fully Rotted, the infection forces its host to search for healthy victims in search of more magic to consume.

There’s still more I wanna explore and tweak in this AU, and I still have to design alicorns, so I’ll probably come back to it if there’s enough interest!

Some close-ups: