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thewizardpoliceareafterme · 5 days

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El Dorado's History, Morganthe's Backstories, and Kane's Plan

Or, in other words, trying to make all of the scattered bits of canon make sense.

Disclaimer: This is headcanon. Though I try to not directly contradict canon, I do have to fill in the blanks a lot, and sometimes something in canon just blatantly does not work with everything else.

So, let's start at the very beginning.

The creation of the Spiral, and the Titans being put to sleep. The way that the Fire Titan sleeps in Dragonspyre and the Ice Titan hibernates in Grizzleheim, the Storm Titan slumbers in (what is now called) El Dorado. I was inspired by this post by @bowl-of-wyrms. Along with the Tritons, El Dorado was home to many species we see elsewhere in the Spiral, particularly in Celestia, Skull Island, Wizard City, and Lemuria: The Watermoles, Crabs, Sharks, Prawn, other Fishfolk, Troggies (though that's such a distateful sounding name for them, I've decided to rename them the Coqui after the animal of the same name, inspired by a friend who has done the same) and perhaps other peoples based on aquatic & tropical species. Collectively, I'm going to call the people who lived there the Doradans.

Closeby to El Dorado was Celestia, a world and people hand-made by Grandmother Raven to steward the Astral Schools, similar to how she made the Kalamar, Dwarves, Nimbari, and Alphoi in Empyrea to steward Life/Death, Fire/Ice, Myth/Storm, and her Edicts. The reason the Celestians ended up separate from Empyrea was because the Astral Magics (being a triad) couldn't make a Paradox Chain the way the other schools could, so Raven placed the world elsewhere.

I like to think of Celestia as becoming El Dorado's moon, or the two worlds being like a binary system. This is in reference to my other headcanons of how the Spiral works as a physical galaxy (which I should write up and post sometime lmao). In any case, these two worlds are VERY close-knit.

Another world that is closely involved with the two is Azteca. It's a bit more of a 'third wheel' in the system, but there had been the trade of knowledge and craft between Azteca and the other two. Azteca has its own extensive craft of Astral magic (as seen in-game with the spells you can learn from there), and El Dorado contains plenty of Aztecan architecture and stonework (I shall explain my evidence for this headcanon shortly).

Aside from architecture and magic, a third notable craft came from these three worlds coming together: the Golden Organs. The Organs were devised to help one control the Storm Titan if he were to ever wake up again. They channel different aspects of other Schools of magic to help one counter and bind Storm.

The Golden Eye gives its user perfect perception, and draws on the Life school as the force of awareness and existence. Observing everything from the mightiest of forces to the smallest pieces of being. It takes in both information and magic, opening more than just your physical eyes to all that the Song of Creation has to offer.

The Golden Mind gives its user perfect recollection, and draws on the Ice school's tankiness. It works as a magical storage system to contain and withstand all the information that comes through the Eye, protecting its user from overwhelm. (And from that perfect knowledge retention comes heightened intelligence like we see in Kane.)

The Golden Heart gives its user the ability to hold all the mana that the Eye helps you take in, drawing on the Fire school's connotations of passion and energy. In nonliving beings such as clockworks, it would also give them the capacity to feel desires and emotion to the extent that a living person does.

The Golden Hand gives its user the strength and precision to harness all the mana within the Heart, taking inspiration from Death being all about finality and transformation and channeling the fear from oneself to others.

Missing just one of the four Organs when trying to control the Storm Titan can spell disaster for both the entity using them and for the lands around them.

El Dorado's reputation of being home to wondrous magics has existed for just about as long as El Dorado itself has existed. Ages ago, the Golden Hand and Eye were stolen away and lost elsewhere in the Spiral. This thievery spurred the Doradans and Celestians to create the Golden Sentinels to guard the remaining two Organs, which were basically souped up versions of the various Constructs we see in Celestia.

So that's my headcanons on El Dorado. Now onto my Arc 2 thoughts.

In my interpretation, Morganthe grew up in Avalon, raised by her elder brother Malory and mentored by Merle Ambrose. After King Artorious's near-death and transformation into the Pendragon, Merle Ambrose decided to leave Avalon and found Ravenwood Academy & Wizard City. Morganthe was among the first students enrolled.

She also became the first student expelled from Ravenwood after her attempts to practice Astral magic nearly resulted in the destruction of Wizard City. She joined Coleridge's crew and ended up in Khrysalis. After destroying the Radiant Alcazar (the burrowers' own Star magic temple) she, Coleridge, and the crew landed on the new North side of Khrysalis, where the Arachna were quick to take her in. They helped her master Sun magic in the Solar Arc, but couldn't help her with Moon and Star. She also began to earn the title of Shadow Queen here, as the Arachna recognized her potential and were willing to build her up as theirs.

Thus began Morganthe's warpath. She started in Zafaria, claiming it as a base of operations (which is how I'm interpreting the whole "Zafaria was once her home" comment that Avalon seems to otherwise immediately retcon) and trying to bully her way into learning its Star magic. She gained a sizable following from each of the four nations, though lost the Deck of Shadows that the Arachna gave her in a fight against the newly founded Council of Light.

Embittered by her loss not just in the new Star magic she had just gotten from Zafaria but also the Sun magic from the Solar Arc, Morganthe decides she must go big or go home. So she goes big, marshalling the new Morgantine Army against Celestia, the divine center of Astral magic. The Army is made of Shadow Weavers from the Arachna, some of her Zafarian followers, and the undead she pulled from Celestia's own graves.

This is where El Dorado and Morganthe overlap. The Celestians and Doradans summon the Storm Titan to try and turn the tide (ha) against the Morgantine Army. However, only having the Heart and Mind was their downfall. Without the Eye, they couldn't take in all of the power that Storm had. Without the Hand, they couldn't control what power the Heart was able to absorb and store.

The Storm Titan ended up permanently flooding Celestia, knocking Celestia & El Dorado off of their regular orbits, and even chipping some pieces of El Dorado to scatter into the Spiral. One group of chunks became its own world: Skull Island, where we see remains of Doradan and Aztecan society today in its scattered ruins.

As for Morganthe, she failed to go big so she had no choice but to go home. Back to Khrysalis, where she finally relented and admitted that she couldn't grasp Astral magic yet. It was always far too slippery. She needed something stronger. She needed to actually use Shadow. Becoming the Shadow Queen not just in title, but in ability. It was the only avenue she could see left, the last option presented to her.

Oh and because Lemuria has had me in a chokehold for the past 2.5 years and will continue to strangle me for years after, it's only a few years after the Storm Titan's destruction (also known among the surviving Doradans both on El Dorado & flooded Celestia as "The Great Storm") that Stallion Quartermane leads the Old One to Celestia. The Old One took a fragment of what little dry land already remained and some of the Watermoles & Sharkfolk for Lemuria (whose descendants we see there today), swooping in as some benevolent savior that they oh so desperately needed after they just suffered a mass-extinction event and the loss of a LOT of their people and creations to the flood.

And now this headcanon history jumps some 1500 years later, when Marco Pollo creates the map to El Dorado. He and his crew make the journey there, and Gazpaccio manages to snag the Golden Heart and Mind, though not without angering the Golden Sentinels that the ancient Doradans and Celestians had made after the first thievery.

Gazpaccio puts the Golden Mind to use, creating Kane to help him get a leg back up in society after his former financial allies, the Tortellini family, kicked him to the curb. When the Polarian War breaks out, Gazpaccio released Kane to the King and Queen of Valencia as a mechanical master of strategy that could halt Napoleguin in his tracks.

There's a funny interaction that happens in the background that nobody is really aware of. Out of the four major Spiral Powers--that being Marleybone, Monquista, Valencia, and Polaris--the lattest is the most magical. It is home to the Auroracle (ancient spirit able to give prophetic messages to those who ask it), the Luphilim (guardians of the Auroracle and other divine sites in the Spiral) , and the majority of Borealis Gemstones (the purest chunks of the First World). I'm of the headcanon that Napoleguin became such a threat to the Spiral Powers because he dared to integrate magic into politics and war. He became essentially a battlemage general, similar to Grand General Spitfire perhaps.

And Kane just so happens to be made of an artifact designed to help one control uncontrollable magic. The Golden Mind's more ancient programming kicks in, giving him the drive to rein in magic. First he establishes the Armada to break Napoleguin's army. Next, he encourages the Valencian royalty to include a term in the post-war peace treaty, that magic shall not be involved in international politics. This treaty later expands to the Armada outlawing all magic.

The Golden Mind's anti-magic programming kicking in also activates another ancient piece of code it has: seeking the other Golden Organs. This is what drives Kane to seek El Dorado, to complete the set. He doesn't know where the other Organs are, but is certain that they, schematics for building them, or clues as to their whereabouts, are in El Dorado. And thus, canon Pirate101 (Arc 1) plays out.

also yea this means that Kane destroying the Golden Heart is stupid and just Does Not Work with this headcanon. I am fully of the belief that the Heart had to be destroyed just so it wouldn't stay an unresolved plotpoint as the writers had to desperately tie the plot up in Valencia Part 2. That isn't to say that Kane in this AU would want to immediately install the Heart. Having a potentially-infinite store of magic without having the tool necessary to channel it (i.e., the Golden Hand) may only cause him difficulties. He would hesitate to install it until he had the Hand.

As for Pirate Arc 1's end, with the Machine taking the Golden Mind and Queen revealing herself to be alive?

That's a story for another time.

#wizard101

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