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currentlylurking · 5 years

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The Ancients

(a clip from Reign Storm I’ll be referencing - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x3EwfbWH0DuFXKfwlta1bYHkO7wXefpg/view?usp=sharing sorry for the google doc link, copyright kept hunting me down)

So! If you know me, you know I have Several Feelings about the Ancients. For the Folklore portion of today’s World Building Week prompt, I’m going to over-analyze this brief bit of hearsay-history and a few other scenes to explain who some of the most likely canon candidates for the Ancients are.

Now, starting from the beginning:Skulker’s first lines are “it was many years ago. Before you,” (the shot focuses on the trio) “before me,” (the shot focuses on him and the Box Ghost) “before most of us.” (the shot focuses on Walker, Sidney, and Dora.)

Sidney is from the fifties. We are told this. Walker speaks with a southern drawl that can’t place him more than a couple hundred years back - something easy to hear. But Dora? Dora, the dragon-shifting princess who lives in a realm trapped in the past, who spends her earlier episodes upset and enraged that her mother won’t let her go to a ball, and has allegedly spent fourteen thousand years being oppressed by her brother? Skulker said most, and Dora fits the bill to be the exception perfectly.

But that still leaves the issue of her missing mother.

Obviously, Beauty Marked takes place after Reign Storm and suffers a case of unaddressed missing mother syndrome. It’s also worth noting that Dora spends the entirety of Reign Storm as a dragon, implying that she is furious. Ember also states that Pariah, while only being free for a day, has already started to destroy their homes.

It’s reasonable to assume that Dora fled because her realm was targetted. It’s reasonable to assume that not everyone else managed to.

I’d like to introduce our first likely Ancient: Dora’s mother, and potentially her other parent as well, who were killed by Pariah in an act of vengeance during Reign Storm.

Of course, depending on the shot, there are between six and seven ancients, so that’s not much of a dent in the mystery. Granted, as you can see in the clip, there are only seven in the final shot - the implication there being that one was in Pariah’s Keep. The question is, why? Were they a spy or a prisoner? Or perhaps... something worse?

I’d like to introduce you to our next potential Ancient: Fright Knight, the traitor.

Vlad refers to Pariah’s Keep as “home of the Fright Knight, and before that, the Ghost King.” Here he implies that Fright Knight occupied the tower after Pariah was sealed away. Given that Fright Knight himself was eventually sealed away as well, it’s reasonable to assume that he did something awful to warrant it.

It’s worth noting that the Crown of Fire, aside from colour, matches Fright Knight’s aesthetic more than Pariah’s. The legend also shows Fright Knight riding in to present it to Pariah, who does nothing but sit on his throne and wait. This can explain how despite the Ancients taking away the Crown of Fire from Pariah, he is still locked up with it.

It’s also worth noting that Fright Knight and Pariah have very minor struggles for control - when Fright Knight tells the skeletons to act “on my orders” Pariah cuts in, much more forcefully, “on MY orders.” Fright Knight is quick to abandon Pariah for Vlad, and past that, for Dan.

Fright Knight, for whatever reason, gave Pariah the crown. The other Ancients, for whatever reason, still believed him to be on their side. I don’t have an answer for whether they thought of him a prisoner or a double agent, but they did not consider him a threat. Inevitably, he proved them wrong and was sealed away in a pumpkin.

For our next two, I’m going to talk about scars

Here’s Pariah, our local tyrant.

Here’s Clockwork, our next Ancient (and a very popular pick for one).

And finally, Nocturne - yes, I know there’s no E at the end of his name. Unfortunately, I do not care. I think it looks so much better with one, so the E stays.

Clockwork is the Master of Time and demonstrates that by constantly shifting ages. It’s not unreasonable for his scar to still be fresh.

Pariah was locked away. The mark on the eye he still has could still be fresh. But on the eye that matches the other two, as you can see, there’s a faint outline of a scar under the eye patch. It could be a coincidence - or it could be a consequence of turning against the other Ancients.

(it’s worth mentioning here that, obviously, we never see any hint of Fright Knight’s eyes beyond the glowy orbs under his helmet. Who knows what marks or scars he has?)

Now, Nocturne does not have time powers. He was not shoved in a magic box for who knows how long. There is no reason his scar should be fresh.

Clockwork, as he appears in the show, seems to be under contract work with the current judicial, if not full-blown ruling power of the Ghost Zone. If that’s his relationship with the Observants, it could have been the same with Pariah - or maybe it never was. Maybe the Observants pointed their Master of Time at this new ‘Ghost King’ and told Clockwork to get rid of him! Or maybe Pariah and Clockwork were close once, and this was personal.

And then there’s Nocturne.

Oh, Nocturne. Why would he be an Ancient? He proclaims himself to be the ghost of sleep - something that is to a blade of grass as the Master of Time is to one of those ancient redwood trees. Nocturne wants to be all-powerful, as he says in Frightmare. Ergo, he wants to become equal in power to Clockwork. He also calls himself the King of Dreams, despite being unable to fight without any dream energy to harvest.

You could say that Nocturne was the true traitor and Fright Knight was in the way - that he helped Pariah, and let Fright Knight take the fall. Or you could say that he wanted to learn from the Ancients who were, as Skulker said, powerful. With Nocturne, there’s a lot of uncertainty - an unfortunate consequence of being a season 3 villain and having most of his episode dedicated to Danny and Sam’s budding romance. Regardless of his intentions, he was the fifth Ancient.

Of course, that still leaves two to reach our final seven. Now, as I mentioned before, Pariah has Nocturne and Clockwork’s scar. He could have been one of them once, and that fact could have been lost to time. But even then, even if we want to consider that, there is still one spot left. Who was the last Ancient?

To that, I say; Fright Knight had to do something particularly awful to be sealed away, and the Frostbite’s people had to be so ecstatic about Danny’s defeat of Pariah for a reason. The last Ancient was a member of the Far Frozen - maybe even the leader before Frostbite.

So, those are my picks for the Ancients! Dora’s parents (particularly her mother), Fright Knight (the perceived traitor), Clockwork (the mercenary), Nocturne (the shifty, power-hungry one), a member of the Far Frozen who was unfortunately killed (maybe while defending the Infi-map), and Pariah (who simply was never taken off the register of Ancients, even when they were fighting him).

#Danny Phantom #Currently Talking #World Building Week #wbw19 #wbw19 day 2 #these aren't even all my headcanons lmao I can go so much more in depth #watch me ramble about skull symbolism for 500 words just for funsies #headcanon #I've had drafts of this post in the works for YEARS so TAKE IT

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