Hmm... I can’t really follow your logic here, my good pony.  I’m wanted dead or alive, yes.  So legally speaking, my situation can’t get any worse.  Ever since my escape, the only consideration I make when deciding whether or not to break a law is “Is this worth drawing the attention of the authorities?”  Sometimes it isn’t, so I avoid petty crimes like shoplifting, mugging; generally I try to avoid committing crimes of passion.  Instead, I commit premeditated crimes, because they’re worth it to me.

Leaving a note for my daughter after my escape was worth it to me, although staying in the Canterlot area for longer than absolutely necessary was risky.  Breaking the Duskraptors out from their prison transport was worth it to me, although it put my life at greater risk than any other endeavor I’d yet overcome.  And hunting an Alicorn is worth it to me, because my pride demands it and because my research on the Draft won’t truly be complete until I brew an Alicorn version.

Hm, perhaps your criticism would seem justified, given I haven’t discussed my plans recently.  Let me share them with you, my little ponies.

I have three passions: cooking, psychology, and predation.  But as a fugitive from the law, I can’t cook for an audience, and I can’t properly practice psychology except for another occasional fugitive.  Through alchemy and careful analysis of my foes, I can still apply these focuses to my life, but I can’t practice them as passions.

But... my fugitive status lets me hone my nature as a predator to a sharpened point.  My time training Hauer in foreign lands wasn’t just to stay away from Equestrian authorities.  It was to toughen him up... and to get myself back to peak condition.  I plan now to put my ability as a predator to the test.  For the Draft, my favored prey is ponies.  Earth ponies, pegasi, unicorns.  In the last eighteen months, I’ve even had the opportunity to test the Draft with a bat pony and a crystal pony.  But now is the time for me to seek the ultimate prey.  My little ponies... I’m going hunting for an alicorn.

I’m not keeping Grace alive through purposeful effort.  Let me finish my story, and that should be clear enough.  But yes, she is formidable.  Every one of my encounters with her left me injured.  Every time, I was in genuine fear for my life.

I try not to be a one-trick pony (far from it), but I have one chief advantage whenever I’m pressed into combat: my speed and agility.  Between the Draft, the Mask, and my natural talents as an earth pony of slight build, I can dance around most foes.  At my best, it’s like normal ponies move in slow motion.  Many trained combatants can correct for that, given half a chance... and I do my best not to give them that chance.

Alias and Serene Grace were difficult foes for me for one principle reason - their favored tactics render my speed mostly useless.  Alias’s shapeshifting is rapid, fluid, and not quite like a changeling’s in nature; she can turn a mortal wound into a glancing blow by shifting her vitals out of the way or even repairing them as an application of the same spell.  Worse, she can see and counterattack in any direction as yet another application of that same magic.  Serene Grace’s multiple-weapon style poses a similar threat.  With each of her three blades able to move independently and freely for a good ten pony-lengths around her, I have to dodge and parry multiple blows for even a single chance at her - and then I’m still attacking one of Equestria’s most practiced fencers, so her experience at dodging attacks was (until perhaps recently) more extensive than mine.  Her technique of conjuring a flurry of throwing weapons can likewise harry me on offense - even I can’t dodge all of the daggers, all of the time.  My ability to beat these foes requires techniques I don’t normally rely on - techniques that I will disclose to you all in the course of telling this story.

Wait, I know this one.  Yeah, he wears it because it sucks up hostile magic and, like... spits it back out when he needs it to.  Or uses it to make him better at... stuff.  And his mind can’t be read while he’s wearing it.  Or his dreams.  Also, it gives him advice.  Whispers things in his ears.  You know, it’s probably pretty dangerous, but to hear him tell it, we would have been recaptured a long time ago without the damn thing.

Oh, and he hates when I take it.

Hoo, that’s a bunch.  Okay, here we go.

What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.)? 

Definitely started with the fact that they were conjoined twins and unicorns.  Their names came soon after.

First, consider why they do what they do.  Second, try to think how it must be like to share your very body, your limbs, with your sibling.  They have forty years of that under their belt (saddle?).  They’re a little different, but they’re fantastically talented at saving arguments for private moments and marching in lockstep (figuratively and literally).

Their Cutie Marks can be read as bringing the special talents of either “nuclear winter” or “cold fusion.”  There might be an alternate timeline where Black Egg and White Snow never turn evil, live quiet lives of research, and in their old age, kickstart a technological revolution for ponykind.

What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.)?

Probably story role.  Alias was the one who brought Red in the first time.  She needed to be magically and physically capable, competent, and no-nonsense.  She fell into place pretty quickly.

It relates to her magic and her status as part of the criminal justice system.  Pretty sure I named Alias and her mentor, Alibi (a memory specialist unicorn), at the same time and for the same reasons.

Alias is somepony who takes the weight of the world on her shoulders.  She does difficult and dirty work because she thinks she’s the only one who can handle it.  That’s not usually me, but I think we’ve all been there at least once.

Did you know what the OC’s sexuality would be at the time of their creation? 

Nope!  Wasn’t immediately relevant.  I decided after a while that Alias was trans and used her magic to transition relatively easily, but I never thought much about her sexuality.  After ruminating, I’m pretty sure she’s bisexual and afraid  of becoming emotionally attached.

Alias is possibly the story’s most understated character, so she has to hold her own without doing anything crazy.  Even her physical design is kinda muted when she’s in her true form.  I have to hold back and pace myself when I write her, and I think sometimes I fail at that.

Well, I just discovered her sexuality while writing this post.  Seriously, though, this post especially has given me some stuff to think about for the character.

Serene Grace is a perfectionist, and an inherently unhappy pony who does what she does because she doesn’t know any other way to be.

The largely unexplored details of Canterlot nobility, the related lack of backstory for King Sombra, and the status of telekinesis as the “basic” unicorn spell (leading me to wonder about a unicorn who focused on thorough mastery of that basic spell).

Serene Grace’s mother, Solemn Vow, was and still is abusive, emotionally and physically, making young Serene learn a glamer to hide evidence of her own abuse.  That was a pretty recent development.

Serene has the raw magical might to ascend to Alicorndom, but was ruled out early by Celestia because she has very little capacity for self-introspection.

First, he’s sneakier and smarter than he lets on, and second, he’s not evil so much as raised in a culture of killing and ruthlessness.

I decided to kill off his mother early and I kinda regret that.  She was potentially a more interesting character than Stormare.

What is your favorite fact about your OC?

He’s named after Rutger Hauer.  All the Duskraptors are named for Germanic actors.  Still a better naming theme than the canonical “real names that happen to begin with G” for griffons.

Probably backstory.  I think I started with the idea of having a convict answering asks from prison.

How did you choose their name?

It came to me pretty quickly as something that sounded like a pony name but could also have a darker connotation.  Red was designed ground-up as a Hannibal Lector-based character, so it also played up Hannibal’s erudite cooking/cannibalism angle.

In developing their backstory, what elements of the world they live in played the most influential parts?

The pony racial differences in abilities turned out to be really influential.  I also assumed due to the near-utopian nature of pony society that they wouldn’t have a death penalty.

Is there any significance behind their eye color?

In the books, Hannibal is described as having maroon eyes, so I more or less carried that over as part of making the color scheme.  Red was originally sketched in a Pony Maker program, and it had the option of doing the eyes as pupil-less, just iris all the way through.  That became the most significant element of Red’s eyes.

Did you know what the OC’s sexuality would be at the time of their creation?

I don’t think it ever occurred to me that Red would be anything but heterosexual.  It’s another carry-over from Hannibal’s character - Red has a vaguely predatory sexuality with a shallow but specific type.  He’s physically attracted to female pegasi exclusively and only a certain demeanor can hold his attention for long, but of course he never feels real love at the level most ponies would.

How far past the canon events that take place in their world have you extended their story, if at all?

Within a few months of creating Red I knew how he’s eventually going to die.

I like it overcast, or at least partly cloudy.  I think the sky always looks best when there’s several different types of clouds around at once.  That kind of sky looks good at midday, good at night and it looks amazing at sunrise and sunset.  AND it’s good cover if I get caught in an aerial battle.  Most pegasi and griffons aren’t as good at using cover as I’ve gotten to be.

Well, whether you condone revenge or condemn it, everypony understands revenge.  Holding onto a grudge is an instinct that all intelligent life displays in some fashion or another.  So if you can’t understand the motive for a mean-spirited action, revenge jumps out as an option.  If the victim and perpetrator have a known connection of any sort, it seems all the more likely.

In a way, we make this assumption to comfort ourselves.  Let’s say your best friend was walking down an alley one night, and I (for example) killed him.  “I was out for revenge” may not sound comforting, but dig deeper and you’ll see why it’s assumed.  If I was out for revenge, then your friend (on some level, probably) deserved it.  It’s more comforting than thinking “I kill people totally at random,” or even “I was desperate for blood and your friend was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”  If you assume one of those latter two was my motive, then you’re admitting that bad things happen to good ponies.  And that can’t be true, after all... you’re a good pony.

Ponies who think every slight deserves revenge are a very different case, and I’ll talk about them some other time.

Yes, actually.  This was soon before my rendezvous with Stormare, so I was traveling alone.  I’d opted to travel by night and spent one day sleeping in a quiet town’s back alley.  I was awoken by a warm, wet feeling - some lout of a stallion was urinating on me.  He’d had too much cider, too early in the day, and he’d decided to take it out on a homeless pony... which, technically, I was.  I asked him what he was doing, but my sentence was barely finished when he lashed out at me, interspersing messy hoof strikes and unintelligible insults.  I could have killed him, but with my attention on him I didn’t have the focus to spare to make sure we were alone.  So I played helpless and let him hit me, waiting for a lull to assess my situations.  I needed to get back in practice at rolling with a blow, anyway.

The gambit paid off.  Other ponies were on us in seconds, restraining the stallion and tossing him against a wall.  The lout’s friends and neighbors apologized for his behavior, saw to my injuries (”luckily,” I was barely scratched) and one even offered me a shower, meal, and a bed for a night.  I graciously took him up on the offer, and when I snuck off at night, I left him a nice note of thanks.

I also made note of the offending stallion’s name.  If I’m ever back in that town, I will grind his bones into a hangover cure.