Artist’s description from DA:

Figured I’d revisit Moonlight Ripple again now that I’ve gotten a whole lot better at drawing ponies. She first showed up here and here as a doodle of a random alicorn.

Later I spun her into alternate mlp universe where Hearth’s Warming never happened and she was the alicorn princess (or “goddess”) who arose instead of Celestia and Luna. Basically, the whole gist of the AU is that the unicorn nobles accidentally dropped the sun onto the world when attempting to use it as a super weapon to win the race war. Everything got turned into desert until Moonlight came along and began to heal the world with her magical connection to water and the celestial orbs.

1) <ins>Moonlight Ripple</ins>:

• her power waxes and wanes with the moon. Her hair only flows like water on nights near the full moon

  • is only a full alicorn during the night. Her daytime form is a small earth pony named Moonlit Waters. Only her priestesses know about that, everyone else just assumes she’s sleeping.

• everyone calls her the Water Goddess and she has a whole temple dedicated to her. She’s the head of government and is helped out with her priestesses. Her assistant and best friend is High Priestess Willow.

  • She’s rather irresponsible, acts like a 20 year old mare (which she is), and has a lot of trouble presenting herself as the goddess everyone expects her to be.
  • Willow and her spell choir of unicorn priestesses help her raise the sun and moon because Moonlight isn’t very good at magic
  • At night, she patrols the Nameless City, protecting it from monsters. The Night Guard helps her fight them off
  • During the day when Moonlight is an earth pony, the Day Guard protects her and the temple

• Was an earth pony pre-ascension, so she’s really strong and can go for a long time without resting (she doesn’t sleep a lot either)

  • she has a small, thick horn typically used only for raising and lowering the sun and moon. Everything else she does by hoof because she’s used to that
  • Moonlight enjoys flying a lot, so she’s developed large wings and has become very skilled2)

<ins>Moonlight and Willow:</ins>

Willow is Moonlight’s best friend and advisor. She always has a lot of ideas to make things better in the Nameless City, but Moonlight is often reluctant to try them out. Willow was the one who suggested elevating Moonlight to the position of “goddess” to help improve stability amongst pony-kind post sun incident.

Moonlight is sitting in her daytime earth pony form. Her hair is a lot lighter and she looks rather plain.

3) Some sketches of Moonlight’s love interests. She’s got a thing for pegasi, which kind of makes sense as she loves flying. From left to right:

<ins>Dusk Skies</ins> (or “Dusky” as Moonlight calls him): a commoner in the Nameless City who makes pottery. When Moonlight meets him in her earth pony disguise, she’s shocked to find that he seems to be hiding even more secrets than her (which is saying something, since she’s the one pretending to not be the goddess). He’s rather short and scrawny and his wings are really scruffy. His only accessory is an enchanted golden earring.

<ins>Sandwhirl</ins>: A pretty boy from the Day Guard who flirted with Moonlight in her earth pony disguise and became her first crush/coltfriend. He had no idea that the small earth pony priestess was actually his goddess, and when that secret came out, their relationship fell apart.

<ins>Fallen Star</ins>: The fierce commander of the Night Guard. Out of all her previous love interests, he’s the only one who knows Moonlight as the goddess since he helps her fight monsters during her nightly patrols. They began as really good friends and he’s known her for the longest (that’s why their relationship was the least turublent). Moonlight was also one of the few ponies who didn’t care that he was a threstral and thought that bat wings were a whole lot cooler than feathered wings. Fallen Star disapproved of Sandwhirl when Moonlight was dating him since he thought he was a bit too empty-headed.

Unlike the other mlp pieces I’ve been doing, these are digital sketchs that I colored over. I’ve been really busy with prelims lately, so I just free-handed all of these with no proportions. I’m shocked how well they turned out.

I might get around to writing Moonlight’s story down if I have more time, or if I get assigned to write something for my fanfic class.