#staff of ziard

[wheretwofacesmeet]

[stardustamaryllis78]

The Staff of Ziard

I know a lot of people think Aaravos stole the staff from the Starscraper, but may I turn your attention back to a scene in Season 4 where during the scene where Claudia and Ibis are fighting over the staff, Ibis says "If you wish to return the staff to it's true owner" (then he'll have to kill her). This evidence is further proven when he sends his "I'm murdered" message to the main team where he says "The Staff of Ziard has been stolen, this can only mean one thing, The Fallen Star has returned." So this means Aaravos was indeed the staves true owner, not the Celestial Elves.

But then we're now introduced to a new block in the road, well Aaravos only needs The Staff of Ziard and if he's the owner of that staff and presumably made that one then surely he made the others right? Well yes, but obviously the others would not be as powerful as the staff with the Quasar Diamond in it.

Well, why do the Celestial Elves have the other staves then you ask? My guess is because they worship everything to do with the Startouch elves, they somehow got ahold of most of them and kept them within the Starscaper. They probably just couldn't locate the last one or they knew the Staff of Ziard was in use.

Now I want to talk about the staves and Elarion. So Ziard was given the staff with the Quasar Diamond I'm guessing because he was the leader of the mages within Elarion. But we now know there are staves for the other Primal, so were they given to 5 other mages in Elarion?

I have questions and need answers.

But yes ultimately, Aaravos couldn't have stolen something if he was the true owner. Well, unless he stole his own original property.

[felixisbannedfromwalmart]

The staff and the Nova Blade side by side

There are clear similarities too, with the blade hidden in plain sight a place where not many would think of looking. Also, when Ziard was asked where he got it he said it was powerful artifact

[amber-in-the-rough]

and yeah, now we know what the s6 poem meant by "eight in a line". It still could mean those stars from the opening but it's much more likely those multicoloured staffs.

maybeee like i said before, they represent 6 primal sources + dark magic + deep magic.

or, i would still take it if it turns out to be 8 types of deep magic staffs. after all, we DO know there are more than one. there's Power, there could be Love and some more. after all, Callum's spellbook mentions it also more than once - that Love Is Magic :3

.

u can definitely say that im very happy rn

[kradogsrats]

not me getting distracted tracking the configurations of the Staff of Ziard over like five seasons, that definitely doesn't sound like something I would do

anyway, specifically thinking about this:

What's confusing about this scene and line is that Claudia demonstrates what could be two separate behaviors of the staff that we have (at that point) never seen before:

We have the open-front configuration, and then we have the... gem pop-out, for lack of a better description. It's not clear if Viren is referring to one over the other, and I had kind of assumed by default that it was the entire open-front concept he was unfamiliar with. Y'know, seeing as it was also unknown to the audience until this scene.

But then???????

"I didn't even know it could do that." Sure, Mr. Selective Memory.

However, it's still tough to get a good read of this simply because the staff doesn't actually see much of any use in the second arc. My first thought was that maybe we should consider it as a soft retcon for the staff's prior behavior, and the "open-front" configuration is supposed to be read as the standard "extended" state. Except that's demonstrated to be very conclusively not the case:

My next thought, which is slightly more credible, is that it's linked with the staff's unique abilities. Not to beat my own stupid drum again, but while the staff is capable of empowering basic dark magic spells, it has an otherwise-unique ability to move around "essence," i.e. souls. Viren doesn't actually use the staff much at all until mid-late s3 (where he goes hog-wild) and all of those uses are closed-front. Even what could be considered the staff's signature arc 1 spell, the spell that explicitly links a thousand years of dark magic together and to Aaravos, is cast closed-front:

(Remember when we were all debating whether the significantly smaller gem in the staff during Ziard's time was intentional, meaning the gem must have been replaced? Good times.)

Similarly, in the second arc, Claudia uses it for opening the chrysalis, and then it isn't used at all until s6e8. Literally not a single spell is actually cast with the staff in the time span between between opening the chrysalis and Hearts of Cinder, round two.

(This one I'm counting as "not cast with the staff" because, look... we've never see the staff do anything when it's not at least extended, and it very specifically is not:)

Now, we do see the staff used an additional two times in the second arc, during visions/flashbacks... and in both of those cases, it's being used for the coin spell, i.e. to suck out someone's soul and trap it.

(Note how with Harrow, we have the gem... recessed, for lack of a better word, but in the scene with Viren and Kpp'Ar it's "extended." I will not be exploring this further because I'm already, y'know, insane. And also because the staff is already both phallic and yonic enough that I cannot fucking handle this train of thought while still taking myself even remotely seriously. THIS IS WHAT AN ART DEGREE DOES TO YOU.)

If you're not keeping track, this means that all of the times we have seen the staff used with the open-front configuration, it has been taking (coins) or giving (Sir Sparklepuff) a soul. Now, someone would have noticed this being the case with with Runaan in s1 if it was actually consistent, but just for the sake of due diligence:

Closed-front, of course. Even so, I'm more inclined to place this scene as a outlier that can be discounted, just because it already has a number of irregularities relative to the rest of the show.

which still leaves us with goddammit Viren why did you fucking say that it doesn't make any fucking sense at all

[fynnlink]

Why: Because Aaravos manipulated the Dragons, Elves and Humans which was uncovered by the Orphan Queen, Zubeia explained it in Season 4 during the ride back to the storm spire. [S4 E4]

How: With the Arch Dragons "beating [Aaravos] at his own game" and then probably similar to Callum's plan only with Akiyu and the Jailer imprisoning Aaravos in the pearl. [S4 E4]

Anak Arao/Anak Arow (Sol Regem is his royal name) told the Cosmic Order (the Startouch Elves' Council) about Leola thus dooming her. Aaravos hated Sol Regem for this and the other Arch Dragons for imprisoning him.

Hasn't been explored yet but at some point she had or found the key of Aaravos

Ziard is the first or was one of the first human's to learn dark magic from Aaravos. Aaravos also gave him the Staff (later known as the Staff of Ziard) which Aaravos stole from the Starscraper "It was a gift from one of the Great Ones" (paraphrased) [S3 E1]. Ziard was Aaravos' first domino to ruin the order his daughter was murdered for. Elarion was the first great human city due to it's citizens' use of (dark) magic.

DID THEY JUST KILL HIM WITH ABSOLUTELY NO EXPLANATION?

Aaravos explained early in the season that Startouch Elves (Laurelion) can die to an Archdragon's bite. The Novablade is forged from Shiruakh's tooth so either it or Avizandum's bite are enough to kill Aaravos.

Also this isn't the end of his story he literally won. He defeated his greatest enemies and wiped the board of any threat and now just has to wait a few years.

wait a fucking minute...

We still don't know why and how Aaravos was imprisoned.

And what exactly his beef with Sol Reg and the other archdragons was about.

And what his relationship was with the Orphan Queen.

Oh yeah! And also his relationship with Ziard... and city of Elarion...

DID THEY JUST KILL HIM WITH ABSOLUTELY NO EXPLANATION?

I'M SO PISSED OFF

[raayllum]

Take my heart. I'll just do it.

4x04 / 6x08

[spicyviren]

Those staves are so yonic.

[inamindfarfaraway]

“Our family was shattered forever.” Let’s delve into the two images accompanying this line, shall we?

Before the shattering:

Soren is looking up at Viren, who saved his life and he chose to stay with, for comfort, guidance or connection. Viren doesn’t reciprocate, fixated on the loss of his wife. The staff of Ziard, which Viren used to imprison K’ppar and Aaravos crafted for his pawns, is a barrier dividing them that Viren actively holds in place.

Viren and Soren are framed inside the arch furthest away and Claudia to a lesser degree inside the nearer arch, enclosed in the wall, the structure of their family home. They are trapped. Lissa is free. She even blocks part of the wall and archway, visually overpowering it.

Lissa has an arm raised to her chest defensively, no longer feeling safe around Viren; Soren’s arms hang passively at his sides; Viren’s posture is stiff, one hand on his staff and the other behind his back (as he’s becoming a more emotionally repressed and manipulative person who doesn’t always want to show his hand, so to speak); and Claudia’s are desperately, futilely reaching out to Lissa.

The children are both between their parents. Claudia is closer to Lissa, alone in her section of the frame. Soren is right next to Viren, making their height difference and power dynamic more obvious.

Claudia is in Viren’s shadow, which is framed as a bridge between Viren and Lissa in this brief instant before Lissa takes another step - darkness connects to her to her family. As with Soren, Viren doesn’t show any interest in her. Unlike Soren, her distance from him is her choice. She’s running ahead of him in the direction he’s facing, like in his dark magic dream where she follows in his footsteps and then surpasses him.

Claudia’s left leg is barely visible under her dress, looking almost like the stump it will eventually be reduced to.

Only Lissa and Claudia are crying. A link has recently been established between tears and dark magic, and while Lissa had a bodily fluid harvested for a spell against her will, Claudia will volunteer her blood when a spell demands it.

The light is literally behind the family with shadow surrounding them, indicating sunrise or sunset. Sunset would be most thematically appropriate for the last memory of the whole family, but it would make sense for Lissa to start her long journey at dawn in a time and place with such limited artificial illumination (especially without the use of dark magic). It is a new dawn for her as an independent woman, after all.

After the shattering:

The point of origin is Lissa, as her decisions to divorce Viren and let the children choose who to live with, leading to Viren raising them on his own, define the new state of the family. All the cracks radiate outward from her forehead, her mind, and she’s by far the most fractured. That’s a worrying picture of her mental health. The cracks break and distort her family and their home, but she cannot see this and clearly doesn’t intend it.

The same crack crosses through Soren and Viren and another vertical one descends part of the way between them as well. It hasn’t fully divided them yet, but it will.

Soren is gone except for his legs and head. His head - still searching for something in his father - is even lower and further away from Viren. None of the others are diminished like this. The imagery of a severed head and missing torso full of vital organs ironically evokes death, despite his preserved life and perfect health. Viren doesn’t kill him, but he will destroy much of his spirit.

Viren is almost completely duplicated, in contrast to Soren being eclipsed. His copy is fainter, shorter and overlaps partly with Soren’s legs, as if he’s replacing his son and the man he might grow into with a vision of himself. Perhaps he’s in two minds about the path he’s chosen? Or beside himself with grief under that cold exterior? He takes up more space, but is also broken and trapped more tightly in the fractures. Like Soren, part of him is lost; he’s the only one to have what appears to be a missing shard interrupt his depiction with a slice of nothingness, reflecting the piece of his soul that he’s turned into a black void. The head of his staff being above Soren’s legs represents dark magic replacing Viren’s relationship with his son in his life.

Claudia is actually intact, but a duplication of one of her legs is cut off. This may reference how she will duplicate her lower limbs into five tentacles and then have one of those cut off, Rayla probably thinking it was an extra that wouldn’t correlate to her human leg. Like Viren, she’s boxed in by the cracks, which draw lines between her and the rest of her family on all sides. Viren and Soren share a shard with Lissa, but Claudia doesn’t. Her indecisiveness has left her even more isolated.

[self-spaghettification]

both staffs were a gift from aaravos!!

and the parallels continuing into season 5!!

hopefully girlie does not get incinerated for the greater good too 🙏 bc i could see that with how much she’s sacrificed so far

Claudia really just tied a skull to the corrupted Sun staff to make it MORE edgy and goth 😂

I mean, I stan the aesthetic, but also wonder if the skull has a purpose?

[herwrittenuniverse]

Just sitting here thinking about how Aaravos committed atrocities to avenge his murdered daughter, and Viren's mantra S1-S3 was to do anything to protect his family, "however dangerous, however vile."

Two parents wiling to to risk whatever it takes for their kids.

And then there's Kpp'Ar, who we can assume has no family or kids because he's by himself in his weird Puzzle House. And when Viren comes to beg for the Staff of Ziard so he can save Soren's life, Kpp'ar refuses. Viren accuses, "A child will die!"

And what's Kpp'Ar's response?

A cold "Yes."

This show is becoming a very interesting commentary on what lengths parents will go through to protect their kids.

[wheretwofacesmeet]

Terry x Claudia cheek kiss (#2, Part 2)

[random-remzy]

what do you meAN WE ONLY HAVE 9 EPISODES?!?!

SEASON 7. OF THE DRAGON PRINCE. IS DROPPING IN LIKE. A MONTH!

HOW THE EVERLOVING FUCK ARE THEY GOING TO GET THROUGH EVERYTHING IN 9 FLIPPING EPISODES?!?!?!!

Aaravos arc

Claudia and Terry's relationship

Ezrans anger arc

Callum's character

Rayla's bonding time /w Runaan

Ruthaari reunion

Janai and Amaya's arc

Is karim back? did he die?? do we see him again???

Potential sorvus????

Astrid's arc

ALL OF THE MAGIC OBJECTS MENTIOED SO FAR + THE NEW MAGIC OBJECTS!!! (the cube key, Claudias neclace, Runaan's coin, the novablade, The staff of Ziard, the moon primal stone, etc)

Aanya development.

^Possibly meeting Grark???^

Zubeia screentime / Zubeia arc

The Star dragon??

The Orphan queen?!

The jailer?!?!?!?!?!??!

LEOLA?!?!

the whole "Your brother Ezran needs you" Thing????

The final battle

Unleashing the dead into the living.

the whole master plan that Aaravos has spent centuries planning?

Learning about the other kingdoms. (<- @eleyctra)

There is a lot to get through-

(If anyone has anything else to add to the list, let me know so I'll add it)

Yes, i'm aware that this is just the end of arc 2, and arc 3 is still on the table. But I imagine that if Arc 3 isnt greenlit, then they would probably give the characters at least, semi-satisfying endings.

I have been hyperventilating all day. december 19th cannot come soon enough-

I AM SO EXCITED!!!

but also.

IM SCARED!!

I guess you could say I'm

Terry-fied...!

no?

I'll see myself out-

[stardustamaryllis78]

Aaravos' face when he sees Ziard come out of the Nexus portal is everything.

I love those Elarion emo boyfriends 💖

Listen, he could have entrusted the resurrecting Avizandum mission to any ghost but he chose Ziard. Handing him a staff just like he had in the past.

I want more of them.

[xadianglyphs]

Seventh Source: The Dark Magic Symbol

In honor of Book Seven: Dark, I want to revisit and expand on analysis of the dark magic symbol, itself—something I'm always low-key thinking about, but now I'm going to make you think about it, too.

We are lucky enough to have a fascinating window into the design process for all the primal source symbols (both individually and as a set) through the portfolio of Samuel Thompson, the designer. This includes the dark magic symbol:

I've scaled up the secondary, "also-ran" designs so they're all the same size, because I do want to talk about some of them. There are several paths of development visible, and each one reveals something that was seriously considered as a possibility for representing dark magic as a whole.

It's in the Blood

So to start out, we know on some level that, during story development, what became dark magic was originally blood magic. Two years ago, when I first looked at the concept art for the symbols, the filename used for the dark magic symbol image was "blood." That was corrected at some point when the designer uploaded new images with better presentation (as one does when maintaining a portfolio), but it happened.

There's also more than enough association between dark magic and blood developed over the course of the series that it seems pretty clear that the name changed on a surface level but the underlying concept remained.

It's even visible in the designs that not only was a blood droplet considered as the entire symbol, but it was incorporated into variations of multiple design directions.

Dragons in the Dark

There's a bit of a problem when you go from "blood" to "dark," which is "how do you represent darkness in icon form?" The primal sources are ultimately elemental—you can see in their design process that a lot of it was about creating a balanced set where the symbols are both individually distinct and yet related enough to fit together as a group. Earth has the usual "do we do rocks or plants?" decision-making, but otherwise it's just... the sun is the sun, water is water, etc. But what the hell is the iconic form of darkness?

Well, apparently it's dragons, because pretty much all of the rest of the designs are a clear evolution of what began as a dragon symbol. It gets stylized into a set of wings that is then further stylized, and in combination with other influences discussed in the next section, we eventually start getting something like the final symbol.

There's one other direction kind of explored here, which is the ouroboros dragon(s). I actually wrote out a whole thing about the ouroboros as a symbol historically vs. through the lens of modern Christian-influenced western culture to use here, but really none of that is the point. The most likely scenario is that they told the designer, "let's explore some possible directions dragons" and the ouroboros designs are just something you do in that situation. Obviously you don't want to actually choose it for the final direction, because then you'll never escape the specter of Fullmetal Alchemist.

But like... why dragons? I mean, this is not an accident. The designer dragon-ed the fuck out of this shit, and the only reason to do that is "that's what he was specifically told to do." So at some point during development, there was apparently a consensus that dark magic should be represented by something related to dragons.

Now, this could be as simple as "dark magic uses the essence of magical creatures, and a dragon is pretty much the epitome of a magical creature," or something like "dark magic elevates humans to being equal with dragons." After s6, however, I feel like there are enough weird little things connecting the Celestial Order, the archdragons, Aaravos, Laurelion, the Staff of Ziard, and various other stuff that it could be... something else. Something we're not yet able to see in its entirety.

But that's something we'll have to wait to find out.

The Staff of Hermes Ziard Hermes

Now to return to reality: the influence of the caduceus on the dark magic symbol is a done deal. It has literally been said. Even if it hadn't, it's also just... kind of obvious.

Like yeah, that sure is a set of wings with a little knob between them and a twisty stem, just like the the final dark magic symbol and all the designs that most resemble it.

I'm not going to go over the caduceus in depth because I did that once already. You can tell I was naught but a wee, innocent babe by the way I use the words "wiki" and "confirmed" in the same sentence. In that post, I spent a lot of time digging into the associations of the caduceus and Hermes/Mercury as if that was a window that would tell us something about dark magic. It was a fun post but largely irrelevant, now—this time, we're going to come at it from another direction.

Setting aside the more distinguishing features of the caduceus like the wings and snakes, what is it? It's a staff. (Or a rod, depending on your interpretation of the distinction between the two.)

Well, interestingly enough, we happen to have another staff to bring to the table for consideration. One that's important within the setting, inextricably linked with dark magic, and with an iconic design.

Now bear with me, because here's my argument: the dark magic symbol is based on the caduceus, but in relationship with the Staff of Ziard, with either the staff influencing the design of the symbol or vice versa.

To see what I'm talking about, we can take a look at the staff from a few different angles. Personally, when seen closed and from the front, I think it already looks plenty like wings.

But if we put it in profile I can do a little overlay to show what I'm talking about more easily:

It's not strictly the most anatomically accurate setup, but stylized in a way that's interestingly similar to the stylization of the "wings" in several of the symbol designs. This could be related to the the "dragons" stage of the designs, assuming that there is some connection with the dragons, or it could just be visual influence from the caduceus itself.

We should also consider the shape of the staff from the front when it's extended (unfolded?):

The rounded rhomboid/oval shape, the diamond in the center? Come on, work with me—it could conceivably resemble the symbol, right? Though yes, I do know what you're thinking. A professional would call that "yonic" and definitely not giggle about it.

As for the twisty bit—what would be the coiling snakes in the caduceus—there's a certain iconic spell associated with the Staff of Ziard:

Maybe a stretch. But you don't get much twistier than a tornado.

Contexts and Meaning within the Setting

Now that I've chewed on my tinfoil had enough that I'll never get the taste out of my mouth, I also want to just touch brief(-ish)ly on the actual use of the symbol within the context of the series setting. Like the primal source symbols, the dark magic symbol doesn't actually show up very often. The two biggies are Claudia's spellbook and the Key of Aaravos in Callum's dream:

I'm going to ignore Callum's dream because the use of the dark magic symbol there says more about Callum's psychology than it says about actual dark magic, while Claudia's spellbook is a use that its author presumably intended to be meaningful for other dark mages.

Ignoring the garbage symbols in the corners, the central hexagonal symbol is reminiscent of the geometric tree of life diagram, which you may be familiar with if you are into either one of several varieties of religious mysticism... or anime. Let's be real, it's probably anime.

I'm not going to explain it in detail because honestly I don't know a lot about it and it's (intentionally, as with most mysticism) pretty complicated. Extremely summarized baby version which suffices for my purpose here is: the hexagonal tree of life diagram is a hierarchical arrangement of nodes and connections between them, with each node representing a distinct facet through which we are meant to recognize a single greater truth or divinity. On the cover of the spellbook, we have the dark magic symbol surrounded by smaller symbols for each primal source. This is a clearer arrangement that could be conveying the same concept—each of the primal sources is only a facet of a truer, deeper magic, which we are to take as being dark magic.

None of that is particularly important, I just think it's neat. Anyway, what I want to do now is propose that there is, as of season six, one additional appearance of the dark magic symbol within the setting context. This one:

Like... rhomboid shape, little diamond in the center, twisty stem? This isn't something unique to the Hearts of Cinder spell, it's an early or ritualistically stylized version of the dark magic symbol.

To contextualize this further, allow me to draw attention to this image from Tales of Xadia, part of a larger graphic showing a scroll that illustrates significant events in the history of dark magic:

We have a sacrificed creature, from which dark magic flows. On it appears to be carved some symbol composed of straight lines, which because of the size and angle we can't really see clearly. I spitballed a while back that it could be a straight-lines version of the Star primal symbol. We also have use of the actual dark magic symbol, which I'll spare you my analysis of since really it's just more of the same.

It's still a little bit fuzzy how dark magic spells get the magic resources from reagents, but generally a living reagent (used in its entirety) is killed and non-living reagents (harvested from a larger source) have some destructive act performed on them, like crushing. We have a spell that uses a living(?) human heart, which is apparently distinct from a human life in some way, even though the latter is not going to be getting very far without the former. For casting such a spell, unless you're currently holding someone else's still-beating heart in your hand, you probably want to be at least a little specific about exactly which heart in the vicinity is gonna get consumed. I'm putting forward that there's a way to mark a reagent such that it connects properly with the spell in cases where squishing it in your fist or whatever is impractical.

Like with a symbol, right? And what better symbol than the one for all of dark magic, the staff that may or may not be behind everything?

With that, thanks for coming to this long-ass TED Talk that was entirely an excuse to say "the symbol Viren carves over his heart to mark it for sacrifice is an ancient or stylized version of the dark magic symbol, which itself likely on some level derives its shape from the Staff of Ziard, which he is literally holding in his hands." I've wanted to say it since s6 released. I cannot be stopped.

[kradogsrats]

I was writing out a whole thing for this but it can actually be summed up in half as many sentences, and maybe I'll write a post-s6 revisit of the Staff of Ziard to cover the rest:

Anyway, the archdragon-killing spell and the spell used to heal Soren are functionally the same on a technical level (as well as a symbolic level). Both use an ephemeral, largely symbolic ingredient from an individual—Sarai's breath, Harrow's blood, Lissa's tears. One uses a unicorn horn, the other a wind elk's antler—like, they could have chosen literally anything there, and they went with an antler. A severed antler.

There's only one key difference, and it's ultimately not really a difference at all:

Unicorn horns are implied to be incredibly powerful for dark magic, and probably also incredibly flexible with their Star primal connection and its association with shit like wishes and doing whatever the fuck you want with the space-time continuum. If a wind elk alone would cut it for healing Soren, Viren would have done that already. He needs the staff to enhance the spell and provide the power that brings it up to... maybe not unicorn horn level, but enough.

This is super funny to me just because I've theorized before that Kpp'Ar's search for a unicorn in Puzzle House was related to a plan for using an equivalent of the archdragon-killing spell to heal or even resurrect Soren, which is now bust because of timeline issues, but still somehow managed to be like... conceptually correct.