#tdp lore

[dragon-susceptible]

I’m so glad you noticed the way Gren’s voice changes when he’s speaking for Amaya vs himself. I was just rewatching the scene at the breach and the vocal switch between “someone needs to light the fuses” and “but Amaya, you won’t survive” is INSANEEE. He’s so good at his job and so valuable for communicating both his own and Amaya’s unique personalities to the viewer and he’s so so so important to me

His voice is so much softer when it's just him! Amaya's voice is this brash bravado and Gren's is more gentle and openly emotional. I think that's why Amaya likes him so much, too, and why he gets away with censoring her when he does, because that's so not something an interpreter would be expected to be allowed to do, especially not for a woman of her rank. He's permitted these liberties because he's so deliberate about not allowing his own attitude to interfere with her speech, he becomes an extension of her, he just . . . also slips in a little censorship to keep her from offending anyone too badly because he's a diplomat to her soldier. I think that's why they're such good friends, because she can trust him to portray exactly what she means but also keep her out of trouble, and he'll also concede to explaining what she ACTUALLY said if she really thinks it's important. The way she was so tense and angry the entire time he was gone, and she lit up the moment she saw him when he came back to the Breach, it said a lot about their relationship too. She missed him, because he's better at his job than Fen is, and he's such a good friend too.

I also wanted to point out, it warmed my heart, at her wedding, when Gren was projecting his voice to the crowd was the moment he sounded the most like her when speaking as himself. Which just made me happy as this little detail like, he's normally so soft-spoken, when he raises his voice it's Amaya, and you can hear her in him when he has to project as himself too. And you could tell Janai heard it! The way she smiled over at him, gods, I love them all so much.

[sunfire-shield]

Insane that they waited till season 7 to inform us that oh yeah btw when the continent was divided the human half was fully as magical as the Xadian half it just got immediately and violently strip mined

[m4rs-ex3]

i guess we never considered this but like sure. astrid has the star arcanum. i mean that makes sense. ok. that is sick

[fandom-susceptible]

Moonshadow Culture and Values

So, I've seen a few posts going around that made me wanna do this to sort of explain my interpretation of the choices made by the Moonfam in the context of their culture. I'm just making my own post to avoid starting drama with the people who dislike or hate Ruthari as a result of their behavior, or think that they're poorly written.

Buckle up, because this is a whole essay I should probably clean up and put in a google doc.

(also, while a lot of this is pulled from canon, I've also extrapolated quite a bit. I've tried to make it clear where the line is, and my sources will be at the end to check if you're unsure. If you dislike or disagree with any of the extrapolation, that's your prerogative - it's a fictional show! Have fun with it however you have fun! But I do ask that you have the same courtesy as I've had in making this post, and either keep it to your own blog or respond constructively. Let's keep this a safe space, yeah?)

(Now with important map edit!)

First of all, the thing I see overlooked the most in every post, positive or negative, about the Moonfam is that they aren't human. They are not human and are not coming into this situation with human values or viewpoints. We as a fandom need to stop applying human standards of behavior to non human characters (this is a problem in a lot of fandoms with non humans, honestly). It's something that even comes up in the show, with Callum and Ezran (as they're the ones most often with Rayla) forgetting her cultural background is wildly different from theirs.

So to address some of those cultural values I think it's important to take a look at what we know about Moonshadow elves' history. Some of the furthest history back that we know about is from the Mage Wars, when the continent was split. Humans weren't the only ones displaced by that breach. Moonshadow elves specifically were also forced to leave their native lands, to the point of actively destroying their own settlements and holy places to keep their magic from being tapped and twisted by the humans who would take the land. We don't really talk about it in the show because it's a kids' show (or it was when they introduced this information), but realistically, a shit ton of both humans and Moonshadow elves died in these forced migrations.

Then, looking at a map of Xadia leads us to another point. See where Moonshadow Forest is?

It's right there next to the border with the human kingdoms.

They barely made it into Xadia. Plus look at the geography and ecology of the land they left compared to where they settled. This doesn't seem like an ideal location given where they lived before. Plus, Bloodmoon Huntress informs us that Moonshadow Forest is dangerous even to those who live there. It's not a safe place to live, and yet all of them live there.

There's also something to be said about how the Moonshadow elves have a whole path through lava called the Moonstone Path from their ancestral lands to the Silvergrove, when the military focus of both sides of the Mage Wars are focused further north up the Breach. My guess is that the Moonstone path isn't for assassins sneaking back over the border, especially given how the narrative talks about the violence between the human kingdoms and Xadia until recently. It's mostly been open battles. I'm guessing the Moonstone Path was for the refugees fleeing the Moon Nexus and their old home in the mountains, south of the worst of the fighting, and that's why most elves don't know about it now either.

Also, look at the sheer scale of the other elves' range in comparison to theirs.

Dark blue: Tidebound, which is every coastline in Xadia and out into the ocean

Edit: I'm slightly color blind and just looked at this map on a screen with different color settings. The "gold" I refer to in a minute is the darker of the two yellows. The other yellow appeared green to me. Sorry about that 😅 you can also just look for Lux Aurea in the north and Umber Tor/the Drakewood in the east for context of which is which.

Gold: Sunfire Empire minimum boundaries, they seem to imply its reaches are very large

Green: Earthblood elves that we know of; there's also a population of crystal-connected ones that we don't even know where they live for sure, though my guess would be the mountains beside the Uncharted Forest and the Tidebound Archipelago.

Light blue: Skywing, who have at least two distinct cultures (the Celestials in the north and the nomads who range everywhere) in Xadia

White: Moonshadow, whose society is comprised of a scattered group of villages inside the smallest forest in Xadia.

In addition, Bloodmoon Huntress tells us that those stories that humans tell about elves being blood drinking monsters that eat people are also told in Xadia about Moonshadow elves. Moonshadow elves tell them about The Bloodmoon Huntress. All of this is rooted back to Kim'dael and her Cult of the Blood Moon, a sect of Moonshadow elves from about 300 years ago who did absolutely do that.

(300 years ago is a guess because she was eventually captured by Queen Aditi, but we don't actually have a date that I know of, and Aditi reigned for over a century)

When we think about that in context, it gets a bit dark, doesn't it? To this day, other elves believe that all Moonshadow elves are like that, or at least tell stories about it. Do we really think that they were making exceptions when there actually was substance behind the stories, on a larger scale? Or do we think that when the Sunfire Empire and the dragons hunted down the Cult, they were just hunting whatever Moonshadow elves they could find, because they didn't know or didn't care that there was a difference? And that's not even touching on the decades or perhaps centuries of predation by the Cult on their own kind before they turned towards the rest of Xadia and caught Aditi and Avizandum's attention.

There was also the Shadow-Eater incident, which we only know about through Zubeia's recollection, which consisted of a creature called a Shadow-Eater hunting down the Moonshadow elves of the southern forest and their being unable to protect themselves from it. Avizandum was the one who eventually eliminated it. In the same short story where Zubeia remembers it, though, she refers to the Moonshadow elves as tribes, which is only really interesting because it's not a word we really see used elsewhere in the franchise, even for the nomadic Skywing or the similarly brutal Riders of the Drakewood.

So, the political situation on Xadia's side of the border amongst the elves seems to be as follows:

The mighty Sunfire Empire, which sprawls across much of Xadia and is widely considered to be the most powerful military force on their side of the border. They have multiple cities, though Lux Aurea was the main one and the only one we see on the map (we also only see the Silvergrove on the map because it's the only Moonshadow settlement that matters to the narrative, it's not because others don't exist). They also have outlying villages and variance within their cultures, and are known for their advanced engineering.

The Tidebound, who don't seem to have a unifying government, but do have a couple of overlying cultures. They have several coastline cities and settlements and a thriving maritime civilization, including some who live entirely underwater, and may have been the most chill with humans during the war (they are the source of humans' stories about mermaids and sirens, implying a mix of benevolent and malevolent ones). A significant portion of their population lives entirely out at sea, similarly to their Archdragon Domina Profundis.

The Earthblood elves, who have not one, not two, but at least three different populations. There are the more violently-dispositioned Riders of the Drakewood, another less-explored forest Earthblood population (Terry may be from that one, as he mentions being from the Uncharted Forest but lacks some characteristics typical of the Riders, but we don't know for sure), and the crystal-based Earthblood whose location we haven't been shown yet. They're also said to have the largest population of any type of elf, even more than Sunfire elves, and range the farthest other than the Skywing.

The Skywing nomads can be found anywhere in Xadia at different times, and they have a subculture of the Celestial elves that live in a singular place. The Skywing also are known for some of the most impressive architectural feats in all of Xadia, ranging from the stairs of the Storm Spire, to the Celestial Spire, to the floating city of Innea.

Finally, the Moonshadow tribes, which are isolated to a handful of villages in the smallest forest in Xadia, all of which share an overarching culture and are mere days apart on foot.

So let's think about this for a second.

Moonshadow elves were forced to emigrate from their homeland during the Mage Wars, and likely lost a significant percentage of their population then.

They arrive in Xadia, and they barely make it past the border and they stop. All the other land in Xadia appears to be already largely taken up by other elven civilizations or is somehow inhospitable (i.e. the Midnight Desert), but this particular forest is so afflicted with the dark side of their own arcanum that the Earthblood elves have said "fuck it" and left it alone. It's dangerous. One night every year it's so dangerous even their most skilled warriors could be lost if they make one mistake - and that's in the modern day, with well established villages and safe zones (per Runaan's warning in Bloodmoon Huntress). It was likely worse before they had those.

At some point after this, the Cult of the Blood Moon was founded and began preying on others to extend their own lives. My personal pet theory is that Kim'dael did this because she realized their people were dying out, and she turned to immortality rather than mixing with other elves or just encouraging new generations, but we don't have canon for her reasons really.

The Cult's activities eventually catch the attention of Queen Aditi's Sunfire Empire and the dragons, who turn on the Cult. Stories pin the blame on all of the Moonshadow elves, so it's likely that they were all blamed even then, and the war was launched on the entire Moonshadow Forest until Kim'dael turned herself over to Aditi in hopes of tricking her (and was herself tricked).

And in the modern day, Moonshadow elves are by far the fewest and most isolated elven society, comprised of a few tribes whose settlements are all described as villages - they don't have cities or towns or an overarching government. They're villages that operate on democracy.

After that history, it starts to make perfect sense why abandoning their duty or their companions is the gravest sin they can commit culturally, doesn't it? Especially for a people so deeply connected to the afterlife. They told us in season 1 that Moonshadow elves do not fear death; by season 7, they've elaborated on that to explain that they don't fear death because they know for a fact that death isn't an end. Spirits move on to the next phase of existence, and their magic is so connected to that afterlife that they can summon those spirits back temporarily to conclude unfinished business (such as the Ritual of the New Moon, but Lujanne mentions it used to be done far more commonly when they had access to the Moonhenge). So they'd have no reason to be afraid of dying individually.

But with their numbers so drastically decimated, sacrificing other lives in favor of yours, forcing their families to live with a loss because you were a coward about facing the death that you already know isn't an end for you -

Yeah, it makes sense that's worse in their eyes than personally dying.

It's also likely that Kim'dael surrendering to Aditi didn't fully cool tensions between other elves and the Moonshadow. Assassins came into existence at some point between the Mage Wars and the modern day, and my hunch is that they were the remaining Moonshadow's attempt at containing the Cult. So after Aditi captured Kim'dael, the rest of the Moonshadow were left in a position where everyone considers them bloodthirsty savages and the only warriors they have left are built for precision violence against much stronger enemies that they cannot fight outright. Hence, later service to the dragons and other elves' leaders as assassins. If they don't go along with the more powerful elves and dragons' instructions, if they abandon their obligations to Aditi or Avizandum or Zubeia, what happens to the rest of them? They can't afford to betray or fail their much more powerful neighbors. There's nowhere left for them to retreat to. The humans would kill them, the Earthblood could kill them, the Sunfire or dragons could burn their entire forest to the ground and kill them all too. So they commit. The rest of Xadia believes them to be killers, so they send their killers to serve the rest of Xadia - on pain of death to save the rest of them.

To be very clear, I'm not saying that Moonshadow culture is just okay and we shouldn't criticize it. Their focus on duty and family and the good of the many prioritizes those things to such a degree that suicide is culturally preferable to making mistakes sometimes. That's fucked up! It's harsh! It's flawed! However, given the history we have of them, I can follow the logic of how they got there.

Now thinking about this in the context of the show -

Tiadrin and Lain appeared to abandon their duty, sacrificing a child that isn't their own and not even coming back home to explain themselves (they never show a lotus being connected to the Dragonguard, I'm inclined to believe that's an assassin-specific tradition and they just got the news from Zubeia about what happened). They didn't get a choice about becoming Dragonguard; they were selected by the dragons. So they've left their own child in the care of someone else, only to abandon the other child they were sent to protect, and it wasn't even to come back for their own.

Now we know as viewers that's not what happened, but within the world and their cultural context, that's what their community knows. So they've committed the gravest sin in their culture twice - they've left their child behind, but that was forgivable because they didn't have a choice. But then, they sacrifice another's child, and they didn't even do it for the sake of their own. So they get Ghosted. (I have a whole other post about my theories on Ghosting, but this is getting too long to get into it here).

Runaan and Ethari, who they entrusted their daughter to, take Rayla further into their home as a result. Rayla has already asked to train with Runaan because he's rescued her from her first brush with death, and she's got a bit of hero worship going on. Runaan cautions her about it, and visibly has doubts about his own path in life, but he commits to it because it's what she wants, and his husband reassures him. When Zubeia calls on him as leader of the assassins to take vengeance for her mate and son, he's left with a choice of bringing Rayla along even though he doubts if she's mentally and emotionally ready (he knows she physically is), in order to restore her honor that was stained by her parents' cowardice, or forcing her to stay behind and suffer with their shame for the rest of her life. This is a no-win scenario. Either he brings her on a mission he knows she isn't ready for, and risks her failing and suffering with that, or he forcibly condemns her to living with failures that aren't her own. So either she suffers from Tiadrin and Lain's failures, or from his. So he chooses to bring her, against his husband's advice, and to take on responsibility for it.

And then he fucks up. He tests her by sending her after the guard that witnesses them, and he doesn't follow her. He doesn't make sure she gets the job done. When she comes back and lies about it, and they discover the truth, the rest of their team - their whole cultural view, really - demands that he kill her for this failure, for condemning them all, and he doesn't. They respect him enough not to kill her without his permission, either, even though by lying to them and dooming the mission she has committed the worst crime she possibly could. And I think this choice on Runaan's part is partially the fact that he cares about her as a daughter, but also guilt, because he knows he's the one who backed her into that corner. He put her in that position knowing she wasn't ready for it. It's his fault she failed, not hers. So he just tells her to sit it out, sacrifice her hand if they fail but survive, because she doesn't deserve to die for his sins. She may have to live with the guilt of their deaths, but if he succeeds in this, she will at least get to live longer and go home.

Rayla throws a wrench in this by showing up anyway, and she betrays the mission again by not only holding him up, but insisting on rescuing one of their targets. He still doesn't kill her. He threatens to, but when it comes down to it, he's the one that turns away from the fight, not her, to focus on the mission - which again, if he succeeds in it, means she can go home, she can live with his honor and not her parents' shame, even if he can't.

It doesn't happen that way, obviously, but here's where things get interesting - and complicated - with Ethari.

So from Ethari's perspective, all he knows in the end of season 1 is that the mission isn't done, the other assassins are dead, and Rayla is alive. I think it's a disservice to his character and the rest of the Silvergrove to assume they just didn't notice that Runaan's lotus didn't fully sink; more likely is that a sunk lotus means the assassin is as good as dead. They're in a position like Runaan's where they've been captured and declared themselves dead because they know there's no other way out, there will be no rescue and they're not likely to escape on their own. So Runaan's been captured and will die there, and Rayla escaped but has not completed the mission or gone back for him, nor does he expect her to.

So what is Ethari supposed to believe? That she's somehow done the impossible, and found a third way out that will lead to a new era of peace for all of Xadia?

Or, is he to believe that he was right the whole time, she wasn't ready, but instead of committing like she swore she would, she fled, like her other parents did? She sacrificed everyone, including her other father, and ran?

Which one of those seems like the more likely option from his perspective?

Then she comes home, and he learns the truth, but there's nothing he can do about it, because the Ghost spell is permanent. He doesn't even know it can be broken - Runaan has to tell them that's a thing three years later in season 7. So he's left with this horrible knowledge that while on a small scale, it looks like Rayla sacrificed five lives for one (or three, her own with Ez and Zym), with a wider perspective, she was actually doing the most Moonshadow thing possible and focusing on saving more lives than anyone knew could be saved. And there's nothing he can do to reverse his vote, to make up for what he's done to her, so he gives her what he can and lives with that guilt for two years.

The moment she comes back and he sees her again, and finds out there is something he can do, he's willing to throw his entire life away to mitigate the harm their community caused her. I don't think that was demonstrative of his solidarity with Runaan; I think it was driven by spending the last two years knowing that their society is flawed and living with the harm their community did to Rayla.

Also, backing up a bit to season 3 to touch on an example of humans applying their cultural context to Moonshadow things, is Callum accusing Rayla of staying at the Storm Spire out of pride.

He's misunderstanding her dedication here. It's not about personal pride for her. At this point, from her perspective, her parents have committed the gravest sin in their native culture in abandoning Zym's egg. She's been living in the shadow of that shame for a year. She's also abandoned her original duty - sure it was for a good reason, but it doesn't change the fact that she sacrificed the lives of her friends and father. She made a choice for them that ended their lives. The only thing she can do now, culturally, to make up for those crimes is to sacrifice herself in the name of duty and saving who she can; and there's still a chance her spirit won't be welcomed into their afterlife when it's over.

That's why this moment matters. "Just - remember me, okay?" It's not about personal pride, it's about deeply ingrained cultural values. Her name is banned at home. She's asking him to remember her because no one else will (or in Ethari's case, will be permitted to acknowledge they do). I'm not trying to bash Callum here, because he genuinely does not understand this and in the end he works with her and ends up staying just as she does. It's just an example of how even characters in the narrative make the mistake of forgetting that there's cultural divides here.

All in all, within what we know for sure and can extrapolate about Moonshadow elves' culture and history, I think our three main Moonshadows' choices do all make sense. It also makes sense how they're all willing to forgive each other in the end, because while they've all fucked each other up, it was heavily influenced by a culture that, while attempting to preserve as much as they can, has turned harsh and unforgiving about it. It's not as simple as "Runaan and Ethari are abusive fathers because Runaan took a child to a murder and Ethari ghosted her after". (On that point it's also worth noting that no one questions Rayla being on a high-profile assassination anyways. She's treated as an adult within her own society, just as Soren was at only a year older than her. This one's a spot where we're applying modern day values about adulthood to a medieval world in which being treated as an adult at 15-16 was not unusual.) Runaan and Rayla both fucked up, culturally, and fucked each other up doing so. Ethari did everything right, culturally, and harmed both Rayla and himself in doing so, and then was just alone with that for three years. He couldn't even lean on the rest of the Silvergrove for support because of the Ghost spell and its rules (Lyrennus refuses to even say Rayla's name until she's restored, and Rayla never mentions her parents' names; it's likely all discussion of them is banned).

Anyway, I really hope we get Arc 3 and I hope they expand upon how this experience has challenged the Moonfam's cultural views, and what ripple effects that will have on Moonshadow society as a whole. Runaan and Ethari are both well-respected members of the community, and Rayla is very likely to become a significant figure in their histories too now that she's returned.

TL;DR we need to stop putting human values on inhuman characters. Stop putting inappropriate cultural values onto characters in general.

Sources:

Contents of the show

Through The Moon (graphic novel)

Book One (referenced via This Page on the official wiki)

Bloodmoon Huntress (graphic novel)

The Queen's Mercy short story (found here)

All Storms End short story (found here)

Hot Brown Morning Potion podcast interview with creators (here)

[ac0531]

Did an analysis and got some of the most interesting things Aaron said during this interview!!

“Whatever it unlocks, do you have to be connected or master some arcanum to unlock that? Anyways, I will say that there is a big reveal about the key of Aaravos in season 6”- Aaron

“We have many plans for Terry’s character. He’s a main character and we’ll see a lot of him in seasons 6 and 7. In terms of the meeting story between Terry and Claudia, yes we do have a story in mind but I don’t know how it’s going to get told. Sometimes we’ve talked about a book 3 and a half that’s sort of Claudia’s story that’s focused on the two years Claudia is moving around Xadia trying to solve the problem of saving Viren. You’d also have the story of Rayla hunting for Viren and you might have them cross paths, but yeah during that time you’d see her (Claudia) meet Terry- so we’ve talked about Book 3 and a half as maybe a novel or maybe a movie between season 3 and 4.”- Aaron

“That’s another story we’d love to tell at some point. That story sort of involved her rise from her being an orphan to her becoming the queen of Katolis- part of that story also connects to Aaravos and what happened a few hundred years ago. There is more story after season 7 that is important and I’m actually going to talk about it at SDCC.”- Aaron!

“You’ll learn more about Leola in season 6 and the questions you’ve asked will be answered very clearly.”- Aaron (Goji asked “Who is Leola, if she has a connection to Aaravos and if she’ll play a role in season 6”)

“The two examples that came to mind in your list are one: the symbol on the coins which is also the symbol on the book, and yes it connects to old deep magic and you will see a bit more of that in the coming season.”- Aaron

“And then the second thing you mentioned was the staffs in the starscraper, so I’ll share something a little meaty which is that is where they came from, so the question would be- how did it go from there to Viren? I know we’ve seen the scene with Ziard talking about the staff and it being a gift from a great one but yeah, that (the starscraper) is where it’s from.”- Aaron

“A lot of the origin story on who and why (Aaravos backstory) are going to be revealed in season 6.”- Aaron

“Who is he? What does he want? How has he come to be in a situation where he has somehow been involved in magic passing from Startouch elves and you know the elves and dragons to the humans- what is his involvement in that? Some of those questions will be answered in season 6”- Aaron

[beautifulterriblequeen]

When Aaravos mentions the Garden of Innocence, it's familiar to Claudia.

At the end of the graphic novel The Puzzle House, Claudia gets a map that leads her there. Back in S3, we see Viren casting a powerful spell with what turns out to be Claudia's prize from her visit to that Garden.

When Claudia tricks Terry into taking her back there, she has guilt for not telling him everything.

It sounds like she didn't tell her dad, either.

The slow assembly of lore about Claudia and the unicorn has finally reached its conclusion: she didn't kill it, or even capture it. It was already dead.

[bat-snake]

Something something about "is Aaravos a Promethean or Luciferian figure" with the apples....where a human gave HIM an one, not the other way around, as is "Luciferian" tradition.

[salty-and-spiraling]

Day 10: Fave lore

I think it's pretty obvious. Aaravos and Leola lore.

I just think it's the perfect backstory for Aaravos. It's tragic and adds complexity to the question of how Team Zym is gonna stop him. Now that we know his main motive, he doesn't seem like just any other heartless villain. It also gives him so much more to work with in regards to forming bonds with other characters. He and Claudia are definitely gonna trauma bond over the death of both their loved ones. And Leola is absolutely adorable! Sweet angel, taken from us too soon. 😭 Honestly, I was already on Aaravos's side but his backstory only cemented that for me. Screw the Cosmic Order. The Merciful One is a bitch. #Justice for Leola.

[lunanightriderofthecove]

I really wanna know what that battle between Avizandum and the humans is in the prologue.

[dragon-susceptible]

Important bow information and also, reblogging it here because of This Fucking Thing.

So as much as I adore Runaan's bowblade as a fantasy weapon, there is absolutely no fucking way it would actually work. A bow needs to be able to be drawn, and sword blades need to not bend. These are mutually exclusive requirements.

However, for the sake of argument, let's just say moonsilver has Magical Properties and the bending vs solidity of it works just fine Because Magic. I'm okay with that because it's a fantasy world and this shit's cool as fuck.

However, How Is He Stringing It That Fast, Holy Fuck

Either Runaan is stupidly strong and quick, or the string is magic, because it clearly isn't strung when he uses the blades apart. They aren't tied together.

But he wears it slung over his chest with the string! So it must actually be there physically at least sometimes!

What is the truth, Runaan?

Why was Odysseus’ bow so hard to string?

(The bow I use in this is Chinese in design rather than Greek, but it hits some of the key shape points)

[dragon-susceptible]

something about Callum's birth father losing his life to a breathing sickness and the first spell Callum masters is the breath of wind

[fandom-susceptible]

Horns and Antlers: Elves

Just a moment of nerding out to help fuel everyone's The Dragon Prince elf horn headcanons, here's the national park service's breakdown of horns vs antlers:

"Antlers—found on members of the deer family—grow as an extension of the animal’s skull. They are true bone, are a single structure, and, generally, are found only on males.

Horns—found on pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and bison—are a two-part structure. An interior portion of bone (an extension of the skull) is covered by an exterior sheath grown by specialized hair follicles (similar to human fingernails). Horns are usually found on both males and (in a diminutive form) females.

Antlers are shed and regrown yearly while horns are never shed and continue to grow throughout an animal’s life. One exception is the pronghorn, which sheds and regrows its horn sheath each year." (source)

Summarized!

Antlers are made of bone and shed every year

Horns are made of bone with an outer covering of keratin (the stuff fingernails, hooves, and hair is made of), and don't tend to shed.

The sexual dimorphism is different too, antlers are usually exclusively a male thing where horns may differ from male to female but usually both have them.

(caribou have antlers on both males and females, though in different seasons, and pronghorns shed parts of their horns every year though, so there's flexibility within the general rules!)

(deeper dive of science and how it connects to the show under the cut, but CW for blood and arguable gore, as the science of antlers is a bit graphic, but I wouldn't say it's worse than certain deaths that occurred in season 7.)

Because they are made of bone at the core, horns are likely to bleed when broken closer to the base, but de-horning/trimming the tips off of horns is commonly done in cattle to keep them from injuring themselves or each other with no adverse effects for the animal. Imagine a much larger version of trimming the claws of a cat or dog - the tips are fine to go, but get too close to the base and you're hitting live tissue and veins.

Antlers have a different growth cycle. When they first grow, they're covered in a thin skin and fur layer called velvet, which is absolutely riddled with blood vessels to bring nutrients to the antler. If the velvet is broken, it will bleed, and scraping the velvet off is often a very bloody affair. Shedding it is literally just . . . scraping off a layer of skin and letting the antler wear and harden, it looks brutal, but the deer don't seem to be particularly distressed about it. If the antler is broken while it's still in velvet, it will bleed. If it's finished growing, though, an antler will calcify and harden, meaning there won't be blood in the antler itself once the velvet is removed (unlike horns). That's why the stumps don't bleed when they're shed later in the year. (source)

On that note, neither antlers nor horns have nerves the way the rest of the body does.

Antlers only have nerves in the velvet, and those are shed with the skin when the antlers are done growing. Again, despite the velvet being actual skin with nerves in it, they don't seem to mind it! I'm no professional, but I would hazard a guess that since there's no further need for extra blood to the area to grow the horn, reduced blood flow results in reduced sensation as they go to shed the velvet.

Horns don't have nerves in the tip, which is how dehorning can be done safely with cattle. When the horns first start to grow, the nerve and bloodless tip will be most of it, and it can be removed without harm to the animal, and if that trim is maintained, it will never grow longer horns. However, once a longer horn is grown, there are nerves in the thicker base just as there is blood.

Now because the Tidebound exist though, I'm going to delve into coral and shells for a second too, though mind, I don't know any of this shit nearly as well as I know horns (lived around cattle and deer) so this is what I could glean from some basic research and is by no means definitive

Coral don't have nervous systems the way we would think of them at all, with only the most basic of nerve nets throughout their bodies allowing them to react, and only minorly, to stimuli. Many scientists believe this means they don't feel pain as we would perceive it, but rather just register touch and cannot differentiate sensation. Others suggest that since they react by withdrawing from harm, this qualifies as some version of reacting to pain. However, since coral have no brains or backbones or advanced nervous systems, it's all rather theoretical. (source) So, my personal take would be that Finnegrin can probably feel things touching his "horns" regardless of where it is (where Terry probably can't at all, if he's not in velvet, and Rayla wouldn't be able to feel the tips of hers), but he wouldn't necessarily be able to differentiate what the touch is, just that it's there.

Shells are a whole different beast. The shells of vertebrates like turtles are way different than the shells of mollusks and gastropods, but the latter are the ones we see in Tidebound elves. Those are super unique in this conversation because not only do they not have nerves, those shells aren't living tissue at all. They don't even have proper cells. Those shells are constructed of very basic proteins and minerals that are hardened over time into the shell around the creature that lives inside. The shell can't be felt at all, though if the creature inside has enough of a nervous system to feel sensations, they will likely feel the shell move around them if there's contact with it. (source)

So, from what we know about elves!

If Moonshadow elves have true horns, Runaan should have been bleeding heavily for a few minutes from how low that horn was broken (though likely not enough to do him serious harm from blood loss, he'd just feel a bit iron deficient for a few days. Horns tend to clot quickly when broken). We can assume they did not do this because of the kids' rating of season 1, even if the writers knew horns should bleed. He also likely felt a significant amount of pain, and probably has a nasty headache and possibly a concussion from having his head rattled that hard.

In contrast, even if his horn was carved to fit the caps he wears, Ethari probably wouldn't have really felt it (other than vibrations in his skull). However, horns can be trained to grow in certain configurations over time, and the caps might have been a training tool to ensure they grew into the desired curve, and then just left on as decoration or armor. Moonshadow elves seem fond of dual-purpose everything, so a metal cap that's training tool, decoration, and armor all at once is right up their alley.

(on the note of Moonshadow elves, also, it seems likely that the "wood grain" we see on their horns is also willful decoration, as the Moonshadow children we witness don't have that grain, and the interior of Runaan's broken horn lacks any evidence of it. As we can see in this shot with Ruthari, the patterns also aren't of the same style from elf to elf, but the grain on Runaan's horns is mostly lines like his tattoos, and Ethari's horns and tattoos both feature delicate swirls.)

Sunfire elves definitely have horns, though they are intriguing as it seems there's not a very strong delineation between skin and horn. However, that could also just be art style, as there's plenty of horned animals that have fur or skin roughly the same color as the base of the horn around the base of it. This includes some pronghorns, which you'll remember are the neat antelope that sheds the keratin layer on their horns and regrows it but keeps the bony core, and antelope. We've pretty much covered how their horns would work with the Moonshadow elves, as they're pretty similar, though Sunfire elves' horns are smaller and their vulnerable zones would be as well, though they're also thinner and likely more vulnerable to breakage (hence, I imagine, all the armoring on them).

Skywing elves are an interesting conundrum though, because unlike Moonshadow and Sunfire elves, they have a quite varied set of horn styles. Astrid seems to have a fairly basic goat horn curve (as does Kosmo).

Nyx's horns curve so sharply that from many angles she appears to have two sets, but in her concept art we can see that she just has a secondary branch at the very base of her horns, which is reflected in Hendyr (the Skywing Dragonguard) as well. And all of these people are among the 20% of Skywing who have wings, so it's not genetically linked to that trait. The lobed pattern of Nyx and Hendyr's horns appears to be more standard, with most unnamed Skywing also having horns that are layered to look like feathers. The Elder is like this as well.

Suroh, the little Skywing boy Rayla meets in Bloodmoon Huntress, however, has goat horns like Astrid - except placed lower on his head, and having ridges that hers do not.

So far though, all of the Skywing seem to have some common traits: their horns are relatively short, and curl close to their heads, having ridges or lobes that mimic feathers. All of them resemble various types of goats, all are definitely horns.

I dunno what the fuck was wrong with this guy, why does he have dragon horns when none of the others do, what makes him special?

Everything. Everything makes Ibis special. I miss him so much.

*coughs* anyway, Skywing elves likely have a fairly strong culture of training their horns to grow in specific directions, based on the variance in how they curl. Also, if Astrid's horns continued to curl in that direction they would absolutely eventually stab her if they hadn't stopped growing or been trained to grow that far from her head. Imagine if she had the tight curl we see with Suroh but with her horn placement.

Now we get to the Earthblood, where things get more interesting.

Those are definitely goat horns, and not even decorative mimicry like Astrid's, just straight up bighorn ram. Simple. Case closed, right?

Nah.

Because this little kid is an Earthblood from the same community, who clearly seems to have branching going on in his head ornamentation already, which is generally a trait of antlers. (Though, there's those pronghorns again.) Unfortunately, we don't really see enough to confirm whether they're antlers or horns, but let's just assume antlers for the fun lore of it all. Earthblood elves start growing them at a much younger life stage than most antlered animals. It also makes sense why Earthblood elves seem to keep shorter hair than many other elves - the antlered ones have fucking velvet to worry about. Can you imagine getting dead, bloody skin out of your hair??

What's interesting is that Terry's horns do not have the branching I would expect from antlers. As a matter of fact, his horns are virtually indistinguishable from a Moonshadow elf's, though he doesn't have the purple wood grain effect we're used to seeing with them (again, my guess is that that's painted on anyway). So based on Terry alone, I would actually say he also just has horns, and N'than and Earthblood Callum (and the elves that indulge Earthblood Callum as a trope) being the only indication they sometimes have antlers.

oh but then, then we get into some Really Interesting stuff with Mukho. Look at that. Do those look like antlers? They do seem to have branching, but they also have what appears to be flat plates. I would actually hazard a guess that Mukho is one of the Earthblood we heard about back in the day, with horns of crystal or stone rather than antlers or goat horns. That one, I don't really know how to make work biologically, which is why I didn't give a rundown for it up top. This one's just magic.

The Tidebound also have some interesting shit going on, though. Finnegrin here has coral on his head, and if you remember, coral has basic nerves throughout its body but scientists debate whether it can feel pain as we understand it. My guess would be that Finnegrin and other Tidebound like him can register touch to their horns in a way that Rayla wouldn't be able to feel at the tips of hers, and an antlered Earthblood wouldn't feel unless in velvet, but he wouldn't necessarily feel pain at one of them being broken. He'd just be aware of it.

Akiyu would feel her "horns" even less, with shells being made of basic proteins and minerals and not, strictly speaking, having nerves or live tissue at all.

So! Elves have wildly varying cranial ornamentation and there's some Science about it!

Also, to veer into conjecture a bit, it's worth noting that while Moonshadow and Sunfire horns are constructed similarly, they're likely for very different evolutionary purposes. Moonshadow horns are larger, yes, but are heavily angled towards their back, indicating use either ramming with the length or base (as we see with goat horns) or defense against attacks from behind. Sunfire elf horns are smaller but often angled much more upright, indicating more ability to use them as stabbing weapons.

[beautifulterriblequeen]

enjoying the implication that the ribbons on Ruthari's horns during their wedding dance

means that this couple at the Moon Nexus had a Very Interesting wedding day

[dragon-susceptible]

Am I using this passage from dragonprinceofficial to fuel my theory that not only did Viren ultimately kill Sarai, Amaya suspects it? Absolutely yes.

You should tell us more about Amaya and Sarai's relationship and things they liked to do as sis,,,,,, hahhaha,,,,, jk,,,,,,,,,,,, unless ??? 🥺🥺🥺

They were really, really close. Amaya looked up to Sarai, but Sarai never looked down on her sister (in some ways Sarai found her little sister to be her greatest strength). They’d try to get Viren to lighten up (they were good friends then -- Amaya didn’t turn cold on Viren until after Sarai’s death.) They taught Callum sign language together and looked forward to teaching Ezran. They cooked, but not very well. They sparred (they were each other’s best opponents, because Harrow could never keep up). They signed secret messages to each other -- especially dirty jokes. They’d go for long horseback rides outside the castle and into the forest together and share memories, sometimes about Callum’s real father, and they’d talk about what life was like before they became “royalty.” They promised each other to knock the other upside the head if they ever lost the perspective of where they’d come from. 

[redr0sewrites]

Out of all the arch dragons from the dragon prince who is your fave?

URGHH THATS SUCH A HARD QUESTION <\\\3 if were talking design-wise, then id probably say luna tenebris bc her design that we saw just seemed really aesthetically pleasing to me, and she just looks very interesting and she is probably going to be important lore-wise and i just want to know more ab her. if were talking ab archdragons that we know better/have interacted with in the show, id probably say zubeia. shes a caring mother towards zym, and the whole corruption bit at the end of s5 made me feel really bad for her. im glad that shes helping to make progress towards peace between the humans and the elves, and i just think her character is very interesting. all of the archdragons have interesting characters and personalities, and i feel like theyre all really cool to think about lore-wise and theory-wise! (also, id like to clarify that i saw ur other ask and in working on it currently, tysm for requesting! :D)

[lunanightriderofthecove]

How come I only recently realized the sunbirds accompanying Sol Regem in the prologue have 6 eyes?