whatever you do, don’t think about the “arkeyan memory” story scroll in skylanders: giants and how it explains that arkeyans have difficulties remembering things located directly below their line of sight, and as a result, they’d generally refuse to bury anything precious to them. and whatever you do, don’t think about how drill sergeant was buried alive and trapped underground for over 10’000 years. oh and don’t think about the possibility that not a single one of his fellow arkeyans went searching for him because they likely never realized he went missing at all, because he’s a drilling machine, and drilling machines belong underground, and arkeyans don’t remember what’s below their feet. and don’t think about drill sergeant’s power source dwindling and his inner mechanisms locking up as he waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits for help to arrive. don’t think about him entering sleep mode in an attempt to conserve energy. don’t think about how he ultimately runs out of power anyways. don’t think about it, don’t even worry about it, it’s fine. also don’t think about this part from book of elements: magic & tech, regarding drill sergeant’s thoughts on being frozen and banished to earth pre-ssa:
Arkus in his dying throes: SKYLANDERS, YOU THINK YOUR VICTORY ANYTHING BUT PYRRHIC, SO I SHALL MAKE IT SO. I BANISH YOU TO ANOTHER WORLD, AND TO ANOTHER TIME. I PRAY MY IRON FIST COMES INTO THE HAND OF SOMEONE CAPABLE OF DOING BETTER, FOR THEY WILL NOT HAVE OUR ONE WEAKNESS: KNOWLEDGE AND RECOLLECTION OF WHAT LIES BENEATH.
honestly, i have no idea what this was supposed to be in response to, but it was buried in my drafts & im gonna bring it back because i feel like it should see the light of day for a moment + i wanna add onto it.
to be honest, i think this speel only scratches the surface of my fascination with the arkeyans. i don’t think i can quite put it into words but i’m gonna try.
i think it comes down to how much about them we see, but how little about them they actually know.
this was supposed to be short but it actually isn’t (surprise) so the ramble is below the cut.
i’m tired so i’m going on what’s off the top of my head, but we see certain things that imply things about their culture, but we still don’t know anything about their culture.
the weapon master calls the quicksilver vault a trial of sorts in spyro’s adventure, i think. there was a room heavily implied to be a bakery in giants. they had a whole graveyard in swap force, complete with at least one “guardian” watching over it (which notably is not a robot, nor even resembles any other arkeyan being seen or mentioned, but is a monkey of all things).
why would they need trials to prove honor/worthiness for obtaining the quicksilver? why’d they have a bakery? why would they need a graveyard, of all things, and also a guardian to watch over it?
were they once human/mortal, then turned into robots at one point, or were they always robots who were more human at heart than full robot? wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened in skylanders. (and honestly, the whole Robo-Kaos transformation could be used to swing either way)
but that might explain the simple “why,” but not the deeper “why?” or the infinitely more interesting: “what else?”
were trials and tests regular in their society, or just for protection, or just for testing arkeyan warriors? were they only a race of war machines, or were there civilians? innocents who fell to whatever sealed their race’s fate?
if they had a bakery, what else did they have? did they have their own unique cuisine? was their bakery any good? aside from food, what other “little things” did they have that were a big part of their society? were there artists? craftsmen? musicians? did they play games, sports? and what happened to all of that when whatever happened to them happened? do the remnants still stand? have we seen it and we’ll never know, save for the few location names we’ve gotten, or are they tucked away in the corners of the world we’ve never seen?
and the graveyard. the fucking graveyard. sure, maybe the level was just made as en excuse to bring the Arkeyans back as enemies for a hot minute since it’s never directly called an arkeyan graveyard, but the idea of a graveyard for robots is just so intriguing, again, given how little we know of arkeyan culture. if a robot was broken beyond fixing, couldn’t they just shove it off somewhere? throw it in a vault like where krypt king came from? why did they need a place to bury their “dead?” and since they did, did they have anything special for those with higher honor, or were they all “returned” to the dirt the same? did burials mean anything, and did the “lives” of their fellow machines mean anything special? were the graveyards and graves respected, or just a dumping ground? were the graves theirs at all, or were they put there by someone else?
(other edit: there’s a superchargers track that is basically rampant ruins but it’s called the “temple of arkus” and i’m gonna let you predict my train of thought before i spend another 15 minutes talking about a possible belief system that we’ll never know about. because then i’ll go on a tangent about how we know nothing about higher beings or religions or beliefs in skylands like at all. and that’s for another rainy day.)
and the goddamn monkey. the graveyard guardian. again, was this arkeyan, or from someone else? they “stomp robots rising from the grave,” but that still doesn’t answer anything. if we knew more, it would, but we still don’t know if the graves were intentional or incidental; if the arkeyans were buried with intent, or they ended up there when the race went kaput. if it was theirs, that brings in so many more questions. did they have a certain belief regarding the dead? or spirits or guardians? the monkey not looking arkeyan at all could be interesting from either take, honestly.
(hindsight edit: thinking about it again, the monkey statue kinda reminds me of the statues you had to put back together at the vault of the ancients, but i haven’t played it in a long time so i’m probably wrong but whatever, but that monkey being from the watch wraiths could also be an interesting swing: were they allies or enemies, if it is?)
point is, the arkeyans had so much hinted, but hardly anything told, and every little thing we got didn’t give us answers, but more questions as to who they actually were. i just think their whole lore was so cool, and i’m kinda disappointed they just dropped them entirely after swap force, but i honestly don’t trust the writing of the later games to do them total justice like giants did.
thanks for coming to my ted talk. this will happen again.
So I’ve been hesitating to post this OC bc I’m afraid of the fun police finding her but uuuuUUUUh here we go
Basically, she is an Ancient Arkeyan (I have this weird headcanon that elves didn’t always have white eyes, so she has yellow eyes). Her name is Esmeralda.
Esmeralda, like lots of Arkryans, was skilled in tech-related things (11/10 description, I know). She built robots and was very good at what she did. It wasn’t long until she was discovered and was soon enough building robots to defend the City of Arkus.
However, as the years went by, she had an odd feeling that something was off. The society was becoming more and more corrupt, and she hated it. However, speaking against their king was punishable by death, so Esmeralda kept quiet...until she didn’t.
Esmeralda was found out and publicly executed.
Her death made some Arkeyans realize how bad things were getting, but that only lead to more executions. As a ghost, Esmeralda had nowhere to go, except for inside of one robot. It was a robot she made, a robot that she was proud of. With her gone, it had nothing to do and nowhere to go, and it quit functioning.
Over the long centuries that passed, Esmeralda began to forget things. She slowly forgot about the Arkeyans and her role in their society. 10,000 years later, she completely forgot who she was, and became Machine Ghost (which is why Machine ghost considered the robot their body). The robot was the only thing Machine Ghost could put their finger on. At first, the robot was still not functioning, as it was frozen. But after the Skylanders unfroze it, it worked, and it obeyed Machine Ghost.
Eventually, after Giants, Machine Ghost remembered everything, turning them back into Esmeralda. The corrupt Arkeyans were gone, and the King was defeated. Esmeralda found peace at last.
