Here’s Luna, the Princess of the Night! And formerly, Nightmare Moon. Consumed by envy towards her sister, Princess Celestia, she turned into that mare of darkness, and threatened to usher in an eternal night. Unable to talk sense into her, Celestia used the Elements of Harmony to reluctantly banish her sister to the moon for over a thousand years. However, according to legend, Nightmare Moon would escape from her lunar prison, and wreak havoc throughout Equestria, supposedly hunting down foals and devouring them. To avoid being “eaten,” ponies would wear disguises to trick her into thinking there are no ponies anywhere, and to slate her unholy hunger, ponies would collect treats then offer them to a statue of her. Thus, unable to find her pony prey and with her belly full of sweets and treats, Equestria is safe for another year. This would turn into the popular nocturnal festival known as Nightmare Night!

A thousand moons later, Nightmare Moon returned on the first day of summer to finish what she started, only to be stopped for good by the Mane Six with the Elements of Harmony. Restored to her former glory, Princess Luna tried to make amends for her past misdeeds. When Nightmare Night was back, she arrived in Ponyville to reassure her subjects that they should no longer fear her. However, they were scared of her nonetheless, and her rusty social skills didn’t do her justice. Twilight Sparkle and her friends tried to help Luna out, giving her tips on how to become approachable. She succeeded at first, but when the residents got scared of her again due to Pinkie Pie spreading panic and Rainbow Dash pranking them with her storm cloud, Luna lost her patience, and threatened to cancel Nightmare Night forever! Twilight confronted Pinkie about her insensitive behavior, but then Pinkie revealed that she was doing it on purpose because she enjoyed getting frightened-it IS the point of Nightmare Night, after all. Inspired by this, Twilight instructed Luna to play along as Nightmare Moon for the night, and when she saw how much the ponies enjoy the festival, as well as how much they loved her playing the character, Luna could finally relax and have fun, reinstating Nightmare Night once more. Since then, Nightmare Night continues being the spookiest, creepiest, scariest, and most frighteningly fun festival in all of Equestria. All hail the Princess of Nightmare Night!

I made this pic in honor of the pony who started it all - Princess Luna, and her evil persona, Nightmare Moon! While looking through Brony art of her and Nightmare Night, I felt like I should do my part. One of the pics I spotted featured her with jack o’ lanterns. I loved the complementary color scheme: blue Princess Luna and orange pumpkins. So, this was the central focus of my piece. However, I couldn’t just do a pic of her, and some carved up pumpkins. I threw in a spooky background, which included the trees I used for my Nightmare Night projects from last year, as well as Snowfall Frost’s house. The raven should obviously be included. And the vampire fruit bats, however, I included the blue ones to work with the blue-orange color scheme. And speaking of which, Snowfall’s house had glowing green windows from last year, but I changed them to orange for said color scheme. The cloud passing the moon came from the season 4 episode “Bats!” The only forms that break all this is the pile of trick-or-treat candy. This was necessary of course. After all, “Fill up her belly with a treat or two, so she won’t return to come eat you!” Assorting all of these took hours. I could’ve submitted this yesterday if it was so quick.

And as you can see, her eye tells us that Nightmare Moon still lives on in her and is out to cause more frightful fun. And if you notice the angle of her head against the moon, it looks very familiar…