My first colored drawing of Lanceshaft, I traced an IRL drawing and layered it over everything to act as texturing, that’s why she looks kinda papery… I drew this to further experiment with lighting and shadows, but I gave up when trying to make her breastplate and mane shiny, I can’t draw shiny stuff to save my worthless life… I can bearly understand lighting, how in the world am I supposed to draw something that reflects light… Self-pity aside, here’s a Night Guard.

So, in the headcanon that I intend to fanficify, bat ponies are universally distrusted and sometimes outright hated by the other races of ponykind, any attempt for bat ponykind to found their own country has resulted in disaster, thus most of them are nomadic and separated, living in small quantities almost everywhere. The largest grouping of them is an order of knights who go from church to church, converting them into small fortresses to hide their kin from discrimination. This began to change as Flash Magnus, the first king of Equestria, hired these knights to serve as a mercenary army along with his griffon mercenaries, although unlike the Griffons, the Bat Pony Knights weren’t given their own land in Equestria to call home… Thus after the 7-Years War, a war fought by Flash Magnus to unite the tribes of ponykind, who even after Hearth’s Warming, had still yet to unify under a single banner, had passed, they found themselves as a nomadic order of knights again, this changed for the second time with the crowning of Princess Luna, who created the Night Guard to serve as a counter to Celestia’s Royal Guard. The Night Guard served in the first Crystal War, and in the first Changeling Invasion, but following the Lunar Insurgency and the banishment of Princess Luna, the Night Guard were disbanded and anti-thestralism was so strong that some more radical organizations began hunting them as demons and burning them alive. Many of the surviving Bat Ponys were driven north, beyond the former Crystal Empire. They returned in the modern era following rumors of Princess Luna’s return, and many of them settled down in the newly returned Crystal Empire, this would prove another mistake following the return of King Sombra and the beginning of the Second Crystal War in which Sombra would begin systematically purging them as revenge for his defeat during the First Crystal War. After the Crystal Empire’s eventual defeat at the hands of the Allied Powers, consisting of the Kingdom of Equestria, the Kirin Republic, the Griffon Kingdom, and the Changeling Republic, Princess Luna would personally ensure that the Crystal Empire fell under the rule of the Bat Ponies, at last giving them the homeland that they desired, however within a few short years, the Kingdom split in half in civil war due to Crystal Ponies who didn’t like their new Bat Pony rulers.

The Night Guard depicted here, one Lancer Ironshaft, or more simply known as Lanceshaft to her friends, is the 15th captain of the Night Guard and lived from the years 121ce to the year 201ce and was the last captain to lead the Night Guard before their disbandment following the Lunar Insurrection and spent the last few decades of her life living in a small town to the south of Yakyakistan and just on the northern shore of the Luna Bay, raising an adopted pegasus filly, as due to some magical or genetic defect, she was unable to bear any natural children.

The main armament of the Night Guard during this time was the Thunderlock Caliberd, along Thunderlock Rifle with an axe-head on the bottom connected to a bayonet and a spike on the other side. However, Lanceshaft used a Gemlock Caliberd instead… Thunderlock weapons work by using a small vial of bottled Lightning as ammunition and were designed by Flash Magnus himself, a cocked hammer being used to shatter the glass vial and release the blast of lightning, the Unicorns eventually improved on the design with the Gemlocks, which used a small enchanted gemstone as the ammunition, and while not as powerful, the Gemlock rifles were twice as accurate and could be fired twice as quickly, however, their use was mostly reserved to the Royal Guard, as they both required a unicorn to enchant the ammunition and were more expensive to produce.