Saracen Rue (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ruefulnosetap) wrote2015-08-29 05:08 pm
ruefulnosetap) wrote2015-08-29 05:08 pm
Headcanon
The way I play Saracen is enhanced by a sizable amount of headcanon, especially when it comes to what Saracen's magic is (since canon never actually tells us) and his history in the Dead Men during the war with Mevolent (because canon is so vague on this part of his life). This post is for explaining the headcanon I play him with.
SARACEN'S MAGIC
Details are here, but in a nutshell, I think Saracen can send his own mind back a few minutes in time.
According to the canon wiki, most fans assume Saracen has a sophisticated form of x-ray vision. Most of the time we see him using his magic in canon, he's describing exactly where his enemies are and what they're doing, so this is a logical assumption to make. However, there are many instances it doesn't explain, like the scene in Maleficent Seven where Saracen is sleeping peacefully on a jet plane, then jerks awake shouting about an anti-aircraft missile about to hit them.
In canon, most characters assume Saracen is a Sensitive - essentially a psychic - but Saracen himself debunks that theory time and time again, more and more exasperated each time. So if he isn't a psychic, and his magic still follows the rules of the SP universe, then being able to manipulate time to some small degree is the only explanation. Because there are many canonical events he would definitely have changed if he could have, this ability must typically be limited to no more than a few hours, and there are probably physical consequences for jumps exceeding two or three minutes (exhaustion, dizziness, etc).
SARACEN'S DEAD MEN HISTORY
For context, this headcanon began back before Maleficent Seven came out, and we had reason to believe the character 'Saracen Rue' didn't exist at all. We'd always been told there were only seven Dead Men in the special ops unit during the war, yet 'Saracen Rue' was an eighth name, and the only living Dead Man we hadn't met in canon yet. Because sorcerers choose their own names, I extrapolated from 'Saracen' - which was basically an unpleasant medieval term for an Arab - and 'Rue', meaning 'regret', and decided that Saracen Rue must have been a cover the Dead Men used, with each of them pretending to be him at different points in time in order to spread the illusion that there were more Dead Men than anyone realised. The cover evolved over the years to be as ridiculous and attention-drawing as possible.
Then Maleficent Seven came out, and Saracen was revealed to be a real person. Since the Dead Men canonically began with only seven people, Saracen must have come along later. And in order to compensate for some minor timeline issues, the cover of Saracen Rue must still have existed from the beginning.
Therefore, I headcanon that one of the Dead Men - Hopeless, specifically - had a son earlier on in the war he didn't know about. Saracen was then raised by a mortal mother, and only sought out his father after he realised he wasn't aging. He joined up with the Dead Men when he was about a century old, and since there was pretty much already a name and a persona no one else was using, he took up the mantle and became Saracen Rue. To everyone outside of the Dead Men, he's over 400 years old, and has been with them from the beginning. The choice was as much to protect Saracen as it was to conserve the cover, since people think twice before screwing with the Dead Men, and Saracen didn't have the centuries of experience he would have needed to defend himself alone.
Needless to say, he does now, and Saracen's toned 'Rue' down a lot since then.
Details are here, but in a nutshell, I think Saracen can send his own mind back a few minutes in time.
According to the canon wiki, most fans assume Saracen has a sophisticated form of x-ray vision. Most of the time we see him using his magic in canon, he's describing exactly where his enemies are and what they're doing, so this is a logical assumption to make. However, there are many instances it doesn't explain, like the scene in Maleficent Seven where Saracen is sleeping peacefully on a jet plane, then jerks awake shouting about an anti-aircraft missile about to hit them.
In canon, most characters assume Saracen is a Sensitive - essentially a psychic - but Saracen himself debunks that theory time and time again, more and more exasperated each time. So if he isn't a psychic, and his magic still follows the rules of the SP universe, then being able to manipulate time to some small degree is the only explanation. Because there are many canonical events he would definitely have changed if he could have, this ability must typically be limited to no more than a few hours, and there are probably physical consequences for jumps exceeding two or three minutes (exhaustion, dizziness, etc).
For context, this headcanon began back before Maleficent Seven came out, and we had reason to believe the character 'Saracen Rue' didn't exist at all. We'd always been told there were only seven Dead Men in the special ops unit during the war, yet 'Saracen Rue' was an eighth name, and the only living Dead Man we hadn't met in canon yet. Because sorcerers choose their own names, I extrapolated from 'Saracen' - which was basically an unpleasant medieval term for an Arab - and 'Rue', meaning 'regret', and decided that Saracen Rue must have been a cover the Dead Men used, with each of them pretending to be him at different points in time in order to spread the illusion that there were more Dead Men than anyone realised. The cover evolved over the years to be as ridiculous and attention-drawing as possible.
Then Maleficent Seven came out, and Saracen was revealed to be a real person. Since the Dead Men canonically began with only seven people, Saracen must have come along later. And in order to compensate for some minor timeline issues, the cover of Saracen Rue must still have existed from the beginning.
Therefore, I headcanon that one of the Dead Men - Hopeless, specifically - had a son earlier on in the war he didn't know about. Saracen was then raised by a mortal mother, and only sought out his father after he realised he wasn't aging. He joined up with the Dead Men when he was about a century old, and since there was pretty much already a name and a persona no one else was using, he took up the mantle and became Saracen Rue. To everyone outside of the Dead Men, he's over 400 years old, and has been with them from the beginning. The choice was as much to protect Saracen as it was to conserve the cover, since people think twice before screwing with the Dead Men, and Saracen didn't have the centuries of experience he would have needed to defend himself alone.
Needless to say, he does now, and Saracen's toned 'Rue' down a lot since then.