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lady-writes · 3 years

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Lykon is Hercules and also Odysseus and also the first werewolf and NO AMOUNT OF INST. RACISM WILL STOP ME FROM STANNING.

❤️🤟🏾🤟🏿 POC LOVE MONTH BEGINSSSS 🤟🏿 🤟🏾 ❤️

I know I’m starting late (for shame!) but this write up turned into a BEAST in ways I fully did not expect holy SHIIiiiiit….and in the interest of dealing with my own guilty conscience I’ll post sources later or if asked. BTW there be mild Force Multiplied spoilers with so....

SO LYKON THEN

Third Known Immortal, First Male Immortal, First Black Immortal and the Last of the Ancient Immortals.

I’m making all of my assumptions on Lykon based on the two most solid bits of background that we have for him 1) The Old Guard Through History featurette from Netflix and the few lines and panels that we get of Lykon in the Comics, particularly Issue 2 of Opening Fire and 4 of Force Multiplied.

What feels like forever ago now I dove headfirst into figuring out time and place for all of our Immortal family and getting an idea, primarily at first of how long Andy had truly been alone, but ultimately of where in time our other prehistoric/ancient immortals fell in the history of the world.

Opening Fire gives us the best bit of historical placement that any of the Ancients have.

All of the imagery that the comics give us of Lykon is undeniably Greek in its references.

So Perhaps that helmet in the cave was originally Lykon's, not Andy's (or Hector’s)?

Either way, since the timeline from the featurette actually provides a perfectly clear span of Lykon’s first lifetime, 359-332 BCE, I started there. Regarding Lykon’s first death we can be super specific, Thanks to the fact that the campaigns of Alexander the Great were so well documented we know Ya boi Alex the G and his armies laid siege to Gaza for 2 months. Gaza fell in late October, Alexander took Egypt without a fight at Pelusium in even later October and was in Memphis to be crowned Pharaoh of both kingdoms by November 14th. The trip from Gaza to Memphis had to have taken 3 weeks or less altogether.

Andy says that by a stroke of luck Lykon was only alone for “a couple weeks.” We see Lykon take an arrow through the neck in battle- presumably the wound that killed him. We next see Lykon, alone, in a posture that almost perfectly mimics Andy at the end of Force Multiplied, sitting inside the walls of Gaza. Alexander and his armies have presumably moved on, Lykon was left behind and that is the state that Andy finds him in sometime in between the 24th of October and the 14th of November 332 BCE.

Easter Egg: Despite the fact that Noriko and Andy aren’t supposed to meet in the comics canon for almost 1000 more years after Andy meets Lykon- here the homegirl is tits out and living her best life.

So those are the basic “facts” of the start of Lykon’s immortality….. What’s much more fun though (and 10 times as frustrating) is sussing out his origins and life/culture before he ended up fighting with Alexander.

When I first looked into Lykon’s probable lifespan to make my timeline,I did a bit of cursory looking at the sorts of racial divisions that might have been present in Ancient Greece and the results are deeply inconclusive. The simple fact of the matter is that the sheer weight of our modern, post Trans Atlantic Chattel Slave Trafficking perspective makes it impossible to get an accurate read on race relations in antiquity. Everything from the ingrained reaction that we have to the word “slave”, to the existing historical analysis that we have of first hand accounts up until approximately 1960-70 is vastly colored by the Eurocentric white supremacist views that have permeated western culture. I was pretty discouraged12345 by that, so I moved on to looking at other things that I could get lost in wikiholes on.

So with that in mind, when I started writing this I did my best to keep a distinctly neutral view of the few first hand accounts that I could find and a certain amount of patience.

That did not last because well… racism makes me mad.

In depth breakdown of the failings of academic documentation and HELLA Lykon thoughts/HCs/crack theories behind ze cut...

Looking for historical records of pre-colonial Africa, especially the many parts of Africa that aren’t North Africa, is a nightmare. Colonialism actively destroyed cultural heritage and history as part of its mission to assimilate people living in their own homelands into the mold of “civilized, moral” western society. Prehistory is even harder, because the accounts that would usually make up the register of prehistoric information are not only missing but have in many cases been actively overwritten. And then as a compounding factor a general lack of investment from academia in this area makes it crazy hard to find reputable resources. So any and all research has to be taken with a grain of salt and checked to see what interest the source might have had in portraying native populations and indigenous cultures as savages, whether backwards and primitive or the equally repugnant humble and noble.

It’s exhausting, considering I do this fandom shit for fun and still have a job and shit. But I like learning and I love cultures so I kept at it.

I made a couple basic assumptions that I think suit the general way the pattern of immortality appears to work. Lykon wouldn’t have been anyone particularly special, not broke, not rich and not necessarily singled out. All of our immortals are average joes amongst their neighbors and compatriots right up until they really aren’t.

So that meant the first thing I had to try and figure out was where black people were in Greece and how they were treated/ received. Which led to having even more questions to answer because the historical register is a mess and everything is disputed. The answer turned out to be, “BECAUSE TRADE ROUTES,” but I’m getting ahead of myself.

After a lot of tiresome reading about slavery and several instances of white and rare but equally annoying black nonsense I had my answer…. ish.

This is a pretty big digression from fandom fun for me by now. It’s more like a challenge has been posed to me by the internet. “Can you make a reasonable reconstruction of the life of one (1) black man in North West Africa in approx. 400 BCE?”

Ultimately there is a Massive Metaphorical Fucking Wall that drops down and effectively closes off the West Center and South African sub continents 3400 BCE and lasts until between 700 and 1100 CE. The 3400 BCE date more or less coincides with the point at which the Sahara reached its current state of desertification and is considered by historians to have been impassable. The historical focus on Egypt reflects this impassable state, for sure. Incidentally, this is also the period where groups start being referred to as civilizations and historical focus shifts from benchmark points for the human race as a whole to achievements that are being attributed to specific cultures.

It’s a 4,100-4,500 year long black hole in the center of world history.

Everything that happens beyond Egypt and Mediterranean North Africa during that time falls into a deeply frustrating contradictory state where pretty much all historians seem to agree that there were at minimum 10,000 distinct states and kingdoms of both centralized and decentralized societies, but none of them are considered to be of any sort of Empire or Civilization of note.

We know that by 1500 CE, barring areas that had been abandoned due to poor soil/lack of rainfall/otherwise inhospitable conditions, essentially ALL of Africa was populated and controlled by indigenous groups. The fact that the academic world at large understands this but still has not shifted its focus to filling in this crazy gap in the historical register of the world and its civilizations is a travesty and should be seen as an indelible embarrassment for any and every academic institution that claims to have any kind of historical or anthropological prominence.

Consider the following: We know that all of human life on this planet originated from the African continent. We know that the continent, which is the second largest landmass in the world, was fully settled and populated by 1500. We know that approximately 26.6 million human souls were callously and wantonly transported against their wills from that continent over ~800 years; a rough estimate of the African diasporas population today is almost 1.1 million people (1.3% of the world population). We know that 17.4% of the current global population is made up of the current inhabitants of Africa, the second most populated continent. And we have as a global culture written off 4,000+ years of that continent's history.

By comparison, the Mediterranean, accounting for approximately 3.88 percent of the current world population, has such a richly investigated history that there are entire academic departments devoted to studying specific pieces of its cultural register. Across 6 rigidly defined eras, spanning only 1,400 years, at multiple universities worldwide, culminating in a wealth of knowledge so inequitably balanced that it turns my stomach as I’m typing this.

The prehistoric Mediterranean, from an academic standpoint, ends at the 8th century BCE. For West, Central, South, and East Africa, everything before colonization is considered the prehistoric era reaching all the way to 1500 CE, in casual parlance.

It’s yet another atrocity that continues to be done against Africa and all of her people.

I’d be lying to say that I don’t have any skin in the game, I’m a first generation American Nigerian, of Yoruba/Esan ethnicity with immigrant parents. And I’m legit hungry to know more about the place and cultures that comprise my ethnic history.

But more so than that, I am fully aware of the sheer amount of work that I put into my attempts to recreate Andy’s background. I’m aware of the cultural richness that I’ve been able to imbue my research into Quynh with, despite similar but blessedly less severe issues. I’ve read an ungodly amount about 11th century Genoa and Tunisia. I would feel wretched presenting only the confirmed and verified info that I've found on Lykon, as minor a character as he may be. Because the history of west Africa and Africa at large deserves the same respect as Iran, Ukraine, Vietnam, Genoa and the Maghrib.

Lykon is portrayed in the comics as a generic “white” presumably Greek or Macedonian man. I have no idea if there was a reason for casting a black actor in his role in the movie, but even with all of this. I’m glad it shook out this way.

I’m miles away from sweet fandom serotonin now, but in a large way this is wholly the reason why things like TOG POC Love Month need to exist.

I didn’t mean to do this when I placed Lykon at the front of the month or when I sat down to start writing this post almost 7 days ago but it's painfully fitting.

ALL OF THAT BEING SAID…

This is what I’ve been able to find.

So, the same as Joe and Quynh and Nile, I based Lykon’s ethnic group on the identity of his actor. Michael Ward is Jamaican, so that meant finding out where the bulk of the enslaved people whose descendants make up the Jamaican population came from in the 17 and 1800’s and where their ancestors were in the 4th century BCE.

It got murky quick but in the spirit of The Old Guard, (which is 100% just semi-realist superhero fiction anyways) I chose to pick all of the best/most coincidental/ #PoeticCinema origins for Lykon. I did my best to stick to what simply makes sense for this character along with some cultural trivia that screamed out to me as shit that would be cool for Lykon, for my own HCs and also some shits and giggles.

In other words: If history won’t give me proper comprehensive information about cultures of the Horn of/Central/West Africa- I’LL MAKE MY OWN HISTORICAL CANON WITH BLACKJACK AND HOOKERS!!!!

Lykon, born in around 359 BCE, would have probably been descended from the Bafour people of the Neolithic era. According to their oral tradition, they were a settled people living in modern Western Sahara and Mauritania. In terms of physical evidence, it's likely that they were an accidentally Nomadic people gradually migrating southward as the climate got more arid during the late holocene era (3050 BCE).

The Bafour would have moved into the dhars (sandstone cliffs) of Southern Mauritania (now called the Tichitt-Walata and the Tagant cliffs) and establishing the stone settlements of Dhar Tichitt, Dhar Walata, Dhar Nema among others between 2500 BCE and 2000 BCE. At the time of settlement, these would have all been oasis areas. Archaeological testimony supports that they were among the first peoples on the continent to produce stone settlement civilizations.

As a way of dealing with the relatively catastrophic weather changes that brought them to the dhars, the Bafour developed a strategy of continuously shifting thier building sites away from the growing Sahara along with moving from the stone structures on the cliffs in the wet season to temporary lowland camps close to water sources in the dry season. As far as the social structure was concerned, the dominant theory is that the culture had a stratified social system involving polygamy or living with large amounts of extended family. Due to the increasingly inhospitable environment where fertile land and pasturage were at a premium, as the population grew they developed a relatively large-scale system governing organizations that can be seen as the precursors to the militarized hierarchical aristocracies that emerged in the same area several hundred years later. During this era, iron smelting and metallurgy started to spread and become common among the West African people (900 BCE). There’s not a conclusive answer as to where this knowledge came from; it was most likely an independent invention.

Dhar Tichitt was what we currently think was the earliest large-scale, complex organized society in West Africa, paving the way for future state formation in Africa. Some of these settlements had massive surrounding walls while others were less fortified but altogether hundreds of stone masonry settlements with clear street layouts have been found. These remnants of sites represent “a great wealth of rather spectacular prehistoric ruins” and “perhaps the most remarkable group of Neolithic settlements in the world” according to some archaeologists.

Archaeologists have found art depicting and/ or physical evidence of the following:

houses with enclosed, turiform gardens and courtyards (ca 1894-1435 BCE)

Hoes and fish hooks made of bone

Millet flour and semolina

Reservoirs and dams to manage water from nearby rivers (wadis).

Burial mounds

art of three trotting giraffes

art of man sitting on an ox with a lasso, bow, or shield

art of man using a throwing weapon on an oryx

art of person holding a basket

art of oxen pulling chariots or carts

iron smelting furnaces and slag heaps

The Bafour might have been the first to domesticate African rice and definitely domesticated millet and sorghum. There is also evidence that their patterns and methods of herding spread into Eastern and Southern Africa and the pastoral cultures that exist today.

Most importantly to Lykon’s story, the Bafour had a copper-based agro-pastoral society that traded in jewelry and semi-precious stones from distant parts of the Sahara and Sahel, establishing pathways for what would become the Trans-Saharan trade route in the early CE. In response to the new opportunities afforded by north-south diversity in ecosystems across deserts, grasslands, and forests, trade developed with people to the north and south, with the Bafour offering the meat and grain and possibly strong but rudimentary fabrics. Their desert nomad and forest dwelling trade partners would have supplied salt and higher quality fabric along with furs wood and iron respectively

In the middle of the Neolithic period (~550 BCE) another intense dry spell started the cascading collapse of the Neolithic agro-pastoral system at large, leading to the abandonment of the dhars and the start of a new migration pattern. Dhar Néma, the last built and inhabited of the Neolithic Dhar sites collectively referred to as the Tichitt culture. As the most southeastern-most of these sites, Dhar Nema may have served as a transitory area for the Bafour people /Tichitt Culture as the area Dhar Tichitt started to be abandoned due to the people trying to get away from the continually encroaching desert. Additionally there was a dominant theory that most scholars are beginning to challenge due to a clear bias, that the Bafour people were conquered by an unspecified Berber population from the north. Those Bafour who continually fled southward would be the ancestors of the Soninke people who are most commonly associated with the Dhars and Tichitt culture. This transition from the Bafour to Soninke people and the Tichitt culture that they straddle is one of the many points left unclear by a lack of historical attention.

Regardless, Dhar Nema’s existence and placement point directly to the last stop on the historical journey that has been decoding Lykon’s origin’s. Dhar Néma’s governmental and physical organization was also a likely precursor to the proto-egalitarian civilization of Djenne-Djenno in Mali, which came into being around 250 BCE, and is still populated now. The Soninke people are an offshoot of the larger Mande ethnic group that is the parent culture for no less than 16 ethnic groups on the Gold Coast area of West Africa.

The Soninke are largely known for being the founders of Djenne-Djenno in 250 BCE, but for our purposes we’d be looking at the Soninke people living at and around Dhar Nema in the specific area of Bou Khzama. This is now the twilight of the era of the Tichitt culture, which is considered to have ended in 200 BCE, but before the existence of Djenne-Djenno.

There are two major milestones in this period that would be relevant to Lykon’s life. First, with a century of environmental migration starting in around 400 BCE we get the first recorded contact between West Africa and the Mediterranean, specifically the culture of Carthage, and mutually beneficial trade begins. This trade involved the export of gold, cotton, metal, and leather in exchange for copper, horses, salt, textiles, and beads. The second milestone is the emergence of the Soninke people themselves. By the 1st millennium BCE, environmental migration has caused the Bafour people to fade from the historical register and the Mandé ethnic group is beginning to make itself known. Beginning in 1000 BCE, the early stages of a massive migration referred to as the Bantu Expansion begins. As various people groups migrated away from the Sahara to the east as well as down the West African coast they began to break into groups that would form new ethnic groups. Two of those groups were the Mandé and the Akan people of Ghana.

The Akan people made up the vast majority of indigenous Africans shipped to Jamaica as slaves so this is more or less where I decided to place Lykon. That was the final end of that starting thread that I started this whole thing by pulling on.

The Mandé languages belong to a divergent branch of the Niger–Congo family, and are divided into two primary groups: East Mandé and West Mandé. The Mandé peoples and the Akan people share a long history of trade and many similar cultural elements.

It's likely that the Mandé and Akan people intermixed, considering they were culturally coming from the same ancestral groups, but there's nothing to actually verify that.

However the Mandé people and their subgroups have some fantastically appropriate qualities as far as Lykon’s background is concerned.

The Mandé are noted as having been among the first on the continent to produce woven textiles (by a process known as strip-weaving), and as well as the founders of the Ghana Empire and Mali Empire, as well as being responsible for the expansion of the Songhai Empire across West Africa. Historically, fabric has been used as a form of money in African cultures, a fact that European colonizers took advantage of to devastating effect, so it's not a reach to assume that this tradition goes back to the era of Trans-Saharan trade. It actually might have formed the basis of a valuation system for the use of fabric as money at some point.

I took note of the Mandé tradition of fabric arts, specifically because I’ve seen the HC previously that Lykon may have come from a family of weavers. The blue strip of cloth wound around Lykon’s spear (which can be seen in the historical featurette as well as Lykon’s promotional images from that feature) is distinctly reminiscent of adire, an indigo resist dyeing art that was wildly valuable, generally done in a familial setting and is still produced today. The earliest existing piece of adire is a men's hat from around 1100 CE but oral accounts and common sense indicate that the method is considerably older. Notably, the weaving tradition was seen as exclusively masculine work while the dying of fabrics was exclusively feminine.

In addition to this bit of headcanon influenced placement the fact that Lykon is born during this particular transitory phase makes the Soninke subgroup of the Mandé people a very interesting choice specifically due to the existence of a specialized ethnic group of note in the Soninke Wangara.

Across the Mandé diaspora there is a notable tiered system of socio economic classes: Nobles, Farmer/Vassals, and skilled professionals. In the Soninke culture there is a fourth particular class that in Lykon’s time would have been treated as a cross between the noble and professional classes: the Wangara traders.

The Soninke Wangara eventually operated all throughout West Africa Sahel-Sudan fostering regionally organized mercantile trade networks and were referred to later as "[one who] engages in trade and travels from one horizon to another.” But originally, they were known as both the vendors and the secret keepers of the gold veins that would eventually make the Gold Coast famous in the medieval period on account of “the great quantities and good quality of that metal.”

The Wangara were noted for their honesty and industry and were instrumental in setting the basis for what would become the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai Empires in the coming centuries. In particular, Herodotus tells of silent trade between Carthage and unspecified regions to its south. If true, trade with Carthage possibly started as early as the 6th century BCE. In Lykon’s time they made contact with almost all West African people groups at the time and would have been facilitators of trade between them. Long distance trade contributed to the development of an ethos of migration among the Soninke, arguably making them the most traveled people of the whole continent.

The decline of Carthage after the Punic Wars would have left the Wangara in need of new business partners since Carthage kept their source of African gold secret- a vital tradition for the Wangara to protect their monopoly. By the time Lykon was an adult, the Wangara gold traders would be operating out of the progenitor city of Jenne, controlling the gold trade between the goldfields, their African neighbors to the south and east and the outside world at large. The geographic location of the Soninke/Wangara/ Mandé people at this time, between the Sahara and the Sahel, would place them in an ideal position for access to trade routes from their ecological zones into the West African forest, East African plains/grasslands and the North African desert and beyond in an considerable advancement of the same trade network that their ancestors developed.

In the same sense that the Soninke Wangara were known as the protectors and purveyors of one of the most valuable natural resources of the area- the Wangara were also referred to as courtiers to nobility. Based on that description, it seemed likely to me that there may be some element of martial training that these people may have also undergone to make them a more formidable or even simply an equal threat to those who may present a threat to the ruling class or the trading ability of the Soninke people.

In the same way that Andy’s immediate associations are to horses, and Quynh’s are to water and the color red, Lykon’s could be to trade and gold, along with perhaps weaving, iron smelting or the indigo trade.

Lykon would have been a kid who grew up in a large family of pastoral weavers and dyers or possibly crafters of some other type. Perhaps his family had a history of contributing to the work of the Wangara class or maybe Lykon opted to become a part of that tradition in an attempt to see more of the world outside of his settlement and its way of life. The Lykon who we briefly see, seems to be quite the adventurous type after all. He probably trained as a caravan guard to protect his people’s products and wealth. As he begins to travel and experience a more multicultural life, maybe he decided to explore further away from his home.

Depending on his family, he might have been one of too many sons or maybe he simply wanted to get away from the place he grew up and realized that becoming a trader was an ideal way to do that.

It’s not unlikely that he might have been sent to a trading outpost on the Egyptian coast and decided to join up with Alexander’s army to see more of the world. He’d be more than equipped by his culture for long journeys on foot or riding.

Maybe his caravan was ambushed and the survivors of the attack were sold as fighters along with the goods. Maybe he got arrested or into debt over the course of his travels and was press ganged into military service.

One way or another he ends up in a hoplite citizen army. The general makeup of such and army would be people not at all dissimilar from Lykon himself: Merchants, farmers, and artisans, but most of those people would be untrained. We don’t know what type of member of the guard Lykon was a part of: the experienced fighters or the “I don't know how I got here but it was Not My Intention.” Regardless we do know that Lykon was on the March with Alexander the Great.

That finally brings us back to Lykon in the Mediterranean where Andy finds him.

As far as Lykon possibly settling in Greece, particularly with regard to the way he’d be received by Greek culture, he’d be treated perfectly normal so far as I can tell. Ancient Greeks didn’t see in black and white as we do. They saw Free or Servile, and were relatively free of melanin-based prejudice. The Greeks also thought that the African continent more or less ended after the Sahara.

And the catchall term they used for every dark person who walked outta the Sahara at this point in history was “Aethiopians".

After Alexander the Great dies in 323 BCE there’s an increased knowledge among Greek people of Nubia (in modern Sudan), Egypt’s neighboring kingdom along the lower Nile. Cosmopolitan metropolises, including Alexandria in the Nile Delta, and others on the East Coast and Horn of Africa become centers where significant Greek and African populations are living together. Prior to that though the only contact that the Greeks had with “Aethiopians" was as traders. And the thing is there is hard evidence that the ancient Greeks REALLY FUCKING LOVED BLACK PEOPLE.

From Jstor

Think of teenagers plastering their walls with boy bands…. Or even just the way people always marvel a little when a distinct new accent joins a group of people speaking. Except obviously you can’t shut your skin color up so everyone will stop looking at you funny. Essentially, the Greeks made first contact with New PoC for the first time in their history and completely lost their chill.

It is worth noting that the Greek and eventually Roman fascination with black people did get REAL fucked up, particularly when it began to form the backbone of the system that became the infamous Trans Atlantic Murder Machine Slave Trade. Continental slave trade of Africans within Africa became the exchange of slaves from different nations for the novelty of seeing/being served by people who looked different. This happened in BOTH directions for a time. Using black bodies as currency for goods on the Mediterranean market became a thing. It is VERY important to note that the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade is nothing like the Indian (Ocean)/Atlantic Slave Trade (which is distinct from the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade) that came into being in the 1000’s and lasted into the 1400’s. But it would also be disingenuous to say that it didn’t contribute.

By 5 CE the Trans-Saharan trade route that Lykon would have traveled ~300 years earlier had expanded to account for the trade of black slaves to Rome directly from West Africa. Black people were expensive and fancy ~exotic household slaves who would have worked off an indenture and then regained their freedom and assimilated into the population. This was the expectation of slavery, more or less world wide up until it became necessary to invent racism to ensure the perpetual existence of free labor. One of the more well-known examples of this is the mixing of the East, South and Central Africans into the people of the Iberian peninsula.

But anyways THAT’S NOT HAPPENING YET!!!!

So when Merchant/Trader Lykon comes to town, buys wares, sells wares and pays proper taxes, no one has a problem with him. Even if Lykon entered Greece as a slave or prisoner it’s far more likely that he was treated better than his “Greek looking” compatriots than worse by nature of simply looking different.

For the geek in all of us I did far too much looking at the gear Lykon would have had, because Michael Ward’s choice (I hope) to play Lykon as a reckless dude who’s too cool for a shirt is a delight for my eyes but also like…. The man was a soldier at one point, he’d know not to go into battle with all that exposed skin.

Looking at his armor and arms when we see him with the army, he’s almost certainly a Hoplite soldier and an elite one at that.

(Note the decorated shield, chest armor, and helm. Some money went into that gear at the very least)

If Lykon was the kind of guy who loved a good fight it's entirely possible that he worked to become a Hetairoi, one of the elite cavalry that Alexander himself chose to ride with in battle. It's equally likely that after a few battles where Lykon performed better than average he might have gotten noticed and drafted into the ranks of the _. But what we see in the comics is a man who looks to have plenty of experience and some rather nice armor.

The hoplites were primarily represented by free citizens – propertied farmers and artisans – who were generally able to afford a linen armour along with a spear and short sword. The wealthier members of this group might be wearing bronze armour instead but would otherwise be outfitted the same. Comics Lykon is armed very similarly to the Hetairoi heavy infantry who wielded weapons like the single-ended spear called a xyston, meant to be used from horseback along with a kopis, xiphos, and secondary standard issue hoplite spear called the dory. They got ya boi armed up! So even though we never see Lykon on horseback, it's a fair guess he was part of that upper echelon of soldiers.

For my personal headcanons, I like to think that Lykon has a perfectly comfortable life as a merchant and when the time comes to go to war for Alexander, not only is he pumped to go (he’s only been training his whole life right? And he’ll get to see so much MORE of the world!!) but he has the funds for the sweet armor we see in the comic. Once his CO’s see that this guy is actually TRAINED and CAN RIDE??? Bye-bye Hoplite, Hello Hetairoi, it's time for some ~Destiny. Our dude Lykon is tearing it up as heavy infantry in Alexander’s army one fateful October day when he takes an arrow to the throat and dies, changing his life 5EVA

A note on the movie continuity- The scene where Lykon dies in the movie is meant to be happening sometime in the 1200’s in central Asia, based on shooting notes and the like…. That directly contradicts the Netflix featurette which is again weirdly precise about Lykon in particular. The 1200’s date for his final death splits the difference between the featurette and the comic which states that Lykon dies in the 1400’s during the various wars between Italian city states. This particular continuity snarl introduces yet another fun potential bump in the guard’s history: Joe and Nicky and Lykon…. Did they ever meet? Did NicoJoe dream of Lykon as they made their way to Andromaquynh(kon) only to have him suddenly disappear from their minds? Did NicoJoe dream of Andy and Quynh’s terror as their brother in arms / lover bled out inexplicably and wake up to clutch each other close terrified by what they had witnessed and praying for the first time in a century (or more perhaps) that somehow this dream was less true than all the others they had dreamed thus far?

Just food for thought

Speaking of which, all that stuff above? It’s all reasonable and cool I guess, but here’s some Mary Sue Ass shit for Lykon because WHY SHOULDN’T HE BE A FUCKING DEMI GOD?!?!

There are whole bunch of semi-mythical Greeks who could arguably been described as black and therefore could be based on myth, legend or hearsay about Lykon.

Odysseus, Achilles, and Memnon are all in varying places referred to as black/wooly haired/or darkened. Memnon in particular is supposedly from an Ethiopian kingdom

Herakles/Hercules is depicted as black in art dated to 510 BCE. Various legends and myths about Herakles can be attributed to translations of earlier Egyptian myths. If Lykon got up to any famous fighting exploits perhaps he may have been called Herakles reborn? I would personally love to see Andy and Quynh scoffing about this

In accounts of the battles at Troy there are 3 different Lycon’s who get killed in battle. Not subtle my dude…

Also Lycon: one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India because why be a person if you can have horns instead?!

For any Lykuynh(???) lovers out there: please take this lovely myth about Omphale to go along with the Herakles tidbit. She became the mistress of the hero Heracles for the period of a year during which he was required to pay her via servitude, which writers and artists obviously wasted no time in exploring sexual roles and erotic themes. The entire thing reads like Lykon may have lost a bet, and I would LOVE to read that story.

Across West Africa, forges are considered to be female, and the act of smelting iron is equated to the gestation period. Thus the male smith is often considered the “husband of the forge.” Though women are involved in many aspects of the metallurgic process, they almost never work the forge. Interesting given the fact that Quynh could also be a student of metallurgy

And speaking of myth theres of course Lyacon the fucking OG WEREWOLF and Lycon the actual guy who was a king of a place somewhere or smthg. I have no idea about the timing for any king shit and I would never accuse the Best Bean Lykon of cannibalism BUT the fact that there are not 10,000 stories about Lykon in canon being a werewolf and doing only god knows what??? A CRIME

I also like to think that maybe there’s an alternate universe where somehow Lykon staying alive stopped the whole damn Trans-Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery from happening. Especially because the timeline given for his death in the comics and the unconfirmed Asiatic battle, are RIGHT as slavery in Africa is about to transition into its final and worst phase. Maybe if he he’d been alive between the 1100’s and the 1500’s he would have put his foot down and dragged his team to go burn every seafaring vessel that the Dutch East India tea freaks, Muslim slavers, and Portugal had between them and helped East Africa get some forbidden cities shit going on. #Wakanda

(Which of course raises this question: how did Nile’s parents meet, and where did Nile grow up in this alternate universe where her ancestors weren’t kidnapped and forced to build white people’s wealth in North America?)

And a final question that truly keeps popping into my head:

Do the Guard get new people at the moment of massive culture paradigm shifts? It’s got to be that or near to minor revolutions in travel. All of our immortals match both of those respective categories and I am inordinately fond of the travel theory if for no other reason than to think about SPACE PIRATE! Nile.

So that is my sojourn into history and the full story of the life that Lykon might have lived. Go forth and make canon for the homie cuz God, knows Nile could use a black immortal friend.

#TOG POC Love Fest #the old guard #tog meta #Lykon #meta post #racism in academia #institutional racism #africa #prehistory #long post #ITS FINALLY FUCKING FINISHED HOLY SHIT #now its Quynhs turn XD

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