#did i write this instead of the laurelion amulet meta? ... yes

[kradogsrats]

Stars & Staffs: What the Heck, Guys

So. The staffs. The staffs.

Prior to this, we held the belief that the Staff of Ziard was made specifically for dark magic. I made a meme about it once (why yes, I do think I'm funny):

Now... that could still be the case. The Aaravos/Sauron parallels have always been off the charts, so "the dark lord forged in secret a master ring, and into this ring he poured his cruelty, his malice and his will to dominate all life" is still a definite possibility.

Aaravos also has a strong thread in his plans to bring about the stars' downfall through a vector they had overlooked—humans—and with warped mirrors of their creations—himself, characterized as "their dark brother," and possibly dark magic, itself.

—Ripples

—Patience

So yeah, still strong possibility that the Staff of Ziard is Aaravos's creation for humans, a mockery of their works delivered with irony.

However, the other possibility—that the Staff of Ziard is one of a set conceived for some magical purpose—is super interesting, because it's actually not strictly a dark magic staff in the way that Ibis's staff is a Sky magic staff or the Sunforge staff is a Sun magic staff.

Staffs for primal magic are pretty explicitly sources of power and focus for the mage. The Sunforge staff contains a small Sun primal stone, Ibis's staff appears to similarly contain a Sky primal stone—it's not clear whether these primal stones are powerful enough to be used on their own by a non-mage, but the corrupted Sunforge staff is at least powerful enough for Claudia to use it easily and immediately.

We also have Karim's staff, which doesn't have a visible stone and appears to be somewhat less powerful, acting more as a channel to focus his magic than a source for it. While we see a lot of rune spells cast using staffs, we also see several spells cast with staffs apparently instead of runes.

Most staffs are probably a lot more similar to that, because like... the Sunforge staff is obviously incredibly powerful, being linked directly to the Sun nexus and wielded by former Sunfire monarchs. Ibis's staff also tracks as a powerful artifact—I would not be surprised if Ibis was an archmage of Sky, or equivalent to one in power. Ibis even uses his staff for some rather complex magic—picking up objects, aiming, and launching them at Claudia—without a rune or a spoken draconic incantation.

The Staff of Ziard, on the other hand... it's not actually a dark magic staff in the same way. Instead of itself being a source of magic or using the mage's own connection to a primal source the way primal staffs do, the Staff of Ziard is all about siphoning away the essence of living creatures, whether that's primal magic or souls. Being able to then empower or release that essence seems to potentially be a matter of knowledge—Viren doesn't do it until Aaravos has basically taken over his subconscious, and the only other person we see do it is Ziard himself, draining the sunbirds directly into a corrupted fire capable of burning an Archdragon of the Sun.

Conceptually, siphoning essence to cast spells is very in tune with dark magic... but not exclusive to it. "Magic that takes," as Aditi describes it, apparently exists in several forms.

Additionally, like I said, Viren literally never uses the staff for any magic that isn't unique to it until mid-late s3.

All the dark magic spells he does before then, except for the ones that are explicitly done with the staff alone, he does without it.

(Yes, there's whatever he does to hold Thunder immobile, but that has always been a weird outlier we don't fully understand. We don't know whether it's a spell from the staff—unlikely, given that it doesn't involve or affect the central stone—or a reagent-powered dark magic spell he cast while the camera was focused on Thunder and Harrow.)

So what is the deal with these?

We know that the Celestial elves are guardians of artifacts related to Star magic, Startouch elves, and presumably the Stars/First Elves in general. So the staffs could just be being stored. They do have nice little display niches. What's kind of weird is that first of all, they're apparently powered up in some way, given the glow of their stones. Secondly, they're in full "open" configuration—the way Claudia uses the Staff of Ziard when opening the chrysalis.

Like the soul-trapping spell that is one of the staff's specialties, the chrysalis spell uses a dark magic incantation (rather than the Draconic-based deep magic or corrupted Sun magic spells). It's described as channeling the power of the "sun's first light," and what it does is, I'm fairly convinced, imbue the being inside the chrysalis with essence—on some level giving it consciousness or a soul.

So what if all the staffs work that way, but for different facets of energy or magic or whatever? Why create something like that, whether for the sorts of energy corresponding with primal sources, or for souls and consciousness? Why would Startouch elves need staffs, if they're so absurdly powerful?

Theory one: let's get the least likely one out of the way first. As a whole, the staffs are components of a machine-like spell or group ritual that maintains the flow of primal and other magic through the world. Yes, this is about my theory that the Starscraper is a kind of world-pillar or bridge that funnels magic to Xadia from elsewhere, and yes, I am a big fan of Pillars of Eternity. There's not really a lot of evidence for this, aside from the different stone colors and the arrangement and kind of strange location of the stored staffs. Like, what is up with this?

Theory two: we know the First Elves in some way divided into at least the five other kinds of primal elves. Could the staffs have been somehow related to that, intentionally consolidating and focusing the First Elves' magical nature into separate forms? Again, there's not really any evidence for this beyond that staffs are meant to be carried and used by people, and the theory that the First Elves may have consciously taken on becoming the different primal elves.

Theory three: this is the forbidden magic that was given to humans, not primal stones. We have two sources for the "Leola gifted primal magic/stones to humans" story, and each of them contributes different things—the one that specifies primal stones doesn't mention Leola by name, attributing the gift to unicorns as a whole, while the one that specifies Leola doesn't mention the primal stones, instead specifying that she provided them with the runes and Draconic words for spells. If the staffs are like the Staff of Ziard but for other energies, including primal sources—if they're all "magic that takes," it would make a lot more sense why the stars got so fussed about humans having it. There isn't really any more evidence for this than for my other theories, but shut up I like this one. It would be the chef's kiss Uno-Reverse cap on the entire mangled and obscured story of the history of human magic.

Anyway, my insane TED Talk aside, what in all heck is going on, because every time I think I've gotten this shit kind of figured out, they do this kind of curve ball.