History's Greatest Monster

'''High Lord Executor, leader of the Nihilius Clan, has finally fallen, and Arachnos reflects on his well-earned demise. But he is not the only one to ponder the same topic - and others may have a rather different perception of the late High Lord...'''

Background
This solo, written by Arachnos, takes place shortly after the death of Executor and SDM's Final Fall solo. It showcases the perspectives of Arachnos, Oneiros and Terminos in regards to Executor's demise, and presents the High Lord as an ambiguous character embodying both selfishness and selflessness, despair and hope, destruction and protection.

Synopsis
The solo opens with Arachnos having taken time off his duties (something very rare for the workaholic engineer) to think about Executor's sudden and unexpected death. As he remembers the landscape of statues of himself Executor had turned Canterlot into, Arachnos concludes it's fitting the tyrant would have met his end surrounded by a monument to his ego. Elsewhere, though, Oneiros comes to the opposite conclusion regarding Executor's character as he reminisces on how their former friend chose to throw his own life away for their sake by becoming the Factory's scapegoat. Oneiros beats himself over the fact that none of them saw it coming that the only possible outcome of such a scenario would be Executor's death.

The solo cuts back to Arachnos, who is now thinking about how Executor's forces had been slowly crushing Equestria. From this, the former spider draws the conclusion that the High Lord had been an individual of unparallelled sadism, who delected in smothering all hope in his enemies. Terminos, meanwhile, remembers how Executor had once managed to pull him out of his despair and teach him that even if you lose everything, hope is the very last thing that should go, no matter how much the odds seem stacked up against you.

Now, Arachnos is remembering how monstrously powerful Executor was, and decides that he and his Clan had been perhaps the greatest threat to Equestria's existence ever. Terminos, however, does not see it that way: as he thinks about how Executor helped them master Nihility and assisted them against Nihilius, he concludes that without the fallen alicorn, Equestria would probably have been doomed, since there would have been nobody to oppose a worthy resistance to the hostile Anathemite.

Oneiros, meanwhile, is remembering their shared past, watching helplessly as Hellgate ravaged Equestria due to Arachna's incompetence. He realizes that Executor turned himself into the likes of his own most hated foe without a second thought, just for the sake of protecting the three of them. He is proven right in his assessment when the solo once again cuts to Arachnos, who is expressing satisfaction that Executor, whom he compares to Hellgate and deems even worse, is finally dead.

Tracklist:
Executor's theme - The Incomplete Stone A Capella (NieR Gestalt & Replicant OST)