Emerald Hues

Emerald Hues is a PRPG2 player character. She is a female unicorn (later alicorn) who is the bearer of the element of magic in her time. As a unicorn, she had a mint-green coat, pale green mane and tail, and blue eyes. Her cutie mark is a hexagonal cut emerald sparking with magic.

Early Life

Emerald Hues was born 21 Harvesting 3307 AE. Her mother was Diamond Hues, scioness of the Hues Noble House, a family of wealthy minor nobility in Sparkle City. Her father was Shining Facets, a middle sibling in a family of Pony Republic landed aristocracy. Both of her parents were unicorns of high magicality, with Shining Facets having been carefully selected by Diamond Hues per long-running Hues practice to impart maximized potential for magicality in her foals. They had three children, all fillies. Emerald was the oldest of the sisters, Topaz Hues being the middle foal of the family and Sapphire Hues being the youngest. Emerald and her sisters were very close throughout their lives.

From a young age, it was clear that Emerald was powerfully magical. Her cutie mark appeared when she was a filly during an incident on a nature walk, in which she magically sensed a large (approximately 100kg) deposit of emerald crystals underground embedded in stone matrix, and displayed her prodigious telekinetic strength by pulling up the mass of gemstone so hard that it burst out of the earth. As a child she was sometimes challenging for educators, ironically partly because of her precocious reading habits. Her parents allowed her mostly unrestrained access to the expansive and voluminous family library; she often preferred reading the more advanced books there to the basic texts and homework she was assigned in school. Socialization was also difficult, due to both this bookishness and the fact that Emerald magically outclassed her peers. When it became clear that Emerald was often bored and not socially benefiting much from school, her parents placed her with a private tutor, where she was better engaged with suitable challenges. After finishing private coursework covering the scope of a full secondary education, she earned her pony equivalent of a high school diploma two years early. After taking some time off, largely occupied by her own independent reading and study, she prepared for and took college entrance examinations, scoring very highly. She attended Radiance Magic College for undergraduate studies, earning a BM, then earned her DM at the Crooked Tower (thesis "Relativistic Effects in High Energy Applications of Telekinetic Magic") during the tenure of Everwood Wand as archmage.

After earning her doctorate, Emerald largely spent her time working and studying at home among her family. She became locally noted around Sparkle City as a scholar, but avoided most social engagements, finding them unpleasant and outside her comfort zone. Although noticed for being physically beautiful and considered a desirable marriage prospect, she seemed totally disinclined to consider suitors.

PRPG2

Emerald was finally drawn into traveling by a letter sent under the pretense of being an invitation by Queen Meridian of New Equestria to access New Equestria's royal libraries. During the course of PRPG2, Emerald became pregnant by a changeling, Cloud Lane. She also purified and became the bearer of the Element of Magic.

Post PRPG2

After the contiguous events of PRPG2, Emerald returned home to give birth to her daughter, Amethyst Hues. Cloud Lane, encountering problems in Crystal Cliffs where he was employed in intelligence, fled and joined her in Sparkle City sometime before Amethyst's birth. Although she and Cloud Lane remained a long-term couple and raised Amethyst together, they never married. Emerald was a dedicated mother, spending most of Amethyst's childhood years at home raising and educating her. Emerald's sister Topaz became pregnant with a daughter not long after Amethyst was born. Topaz was a single mother whose work as a magical demolitions specialist occasionally required travel, so Emerald accordingly helped to care for her niece as well. She described her years spent raising children as some of the best of her life, stating, "I love my family more than anything, and kids with developing high-powered magic are about the right amount of exciting."

After Amethyst reached adulthood, Emerald began returning to the world of academics and scholarship beyond home study. She took a professorship at her undergraduate alma mater, Radiance Magic College.

Alicorn

In 3359 AE, Emerald became an alicorn by switching bodies with Elly. Elly, slowly dying of an irreparable soul injury, had decided to use the last of her remaining time in a coherent frame of mind to enact a plan to neutralize the threat of the Dread Pantheon. Since her plan was likely to prove lethal to herself, she and Emerald exchanged bodies in order to avoid wasting an extremely rare alicorn body. This "ascension" was sometimes a mixed blessing; it thrust her into public view and occasionally invited more scrutiny than she found comfortable. Religious devotees frequently contacted her seeking guidance on various issues. Others contended that as an alicorn, she was required to be titled a Princess and insisted on referring to her as such. Emerald herself declined to opine on this directly, and steadfastly never affirmed a claim to any title other than Dame Hues (later Lady Hues, after being passed the title by her mother).

Later Life

Emerald continued to work with Radiance Magic College. Through her patronage and lobbying she contributed to its expansion into the Radiance University system, a process that saw the addition of Colleges of Biology, Astronomy, and other subjects. After this success, she was urged to continue in politics, but declined. She cited a lack of personal interest as well as reservations about the appropriateness of a Bearer of one of the Elements of Harmony taking sides in political processes, noting that friendship and power usually prove to be uneasy mixes. She also privately expressed fear of the even greater public exposure that a life on the political stage would result in.

After her work with Radiance University, she was hired by the Crooked Tower in 3510 AE. In the following years, the faculty of the Tower attempted to elect her as archmage twice, but by this time she had grown to love teaching more than administrating and worried that this would impede her ability to devote classroom time to students, and so resisted the appointment. However, in 3548, a scandal erupted when it came out that several of the senior staff had secretly conducted experiments with necromancy in a pact to jointly pursue a reliable method for becoming liches. The resulting crisis of leadership and cleaning-of-house left a vacuum of positions to fill. The incumbent archmage, though not herself involved, was forced to resign, and Emerald, far and away the most qualified among the remaining untainted faculty, finally felt bound by duty and the honor of her institution to take up the office and steer it aright. Her tenure as archmage has been mostly successful, with a significant highlight being the construction of the Cardioid Point satellite campus at Heart Pond. She remains in office as the archmage of the Crooked Tower as of PRPG3 in 3645.

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