For the most part, Pendragon is fairly consistent with its lore and worldbuilding. There's one thing that's fairly inconsistent though: the acolytes. This might not seem so at first glance, because the mechanics certainly make sense in each individual book, but when you look back across the whole story, some cracks start to show. With this post I will pull the acolyte lore apart, and then propose a simple way to bring it back together.
The title of “acolyte”
At the beginning of the series, acolytes are a mystery. Press, in average Press fashion, refuses to elaborate about who or what they are, just saying what they do; they leave clothes and anything else at the flumes that helps the Travelers blend in to a territory, and sometimes help with tasks like taking care of Press’s motorcycle. when Mark decides he wants to be an acolyte at the end of The Never War, he asks Bobby to look into it, and in the next book, Mark and Courtney go through the journey to becoming acolytes.
They meet Tom Dorney, who claims to be Press’s acolyte, and he tells them that they’re not ready to be acolytes yet. Then they see a flume created before their eyes, using Mark’s ring, and then and only then does Dorney allow them the title of acolytes.
But... this is a little weird. First of all, it’s strange that Mark and Courtney just accept Dorney as the arbiter of the title of acolyte, that they can’t just be acolytes because he said so. And, more importantly, there’s the fact that none of the other acolytes had to go through any trials to earn that status. Even as early as the next book, it’s implied that Travelers simply choose someone to be their acolyte, both with Kasha + Boon and Spader + Yenza. (yes, Spader chose to send his journals to Yenza by book 3, but in book 5 she’s called Spader’s acolyte despite Mark and Courtney having no reason to believe she had gone through anything similar to them.)
acolyte to acolyte communication
The idea that acolytes are chosen by their respective Travelers is one that’s stuck in the heads of most Pendragon fans, despite the implication in book 4 that acolytes have to be given their title by an existing acolyte. This even seems to have been the impression DJ MacHale himself got, or he just changed his mind about what exactly he wanted acolytes to be. Personally, I like the idea that Travelers just choose their acolytes a lot more, and I'm glad that that’s what DJ chose to be true in the end. Still, it makes Mark and Courtney’s storyline in book 4 pretty confusing in retrospect.
In Black Water, one of the reasons Mark and Courtney decide to travel is because they can’t simply send a message to the acolyte from Eelong. This is because, at the time, they don’t know the name of Seegen’s acolyte, and Boon isn’t technically an acolyte yet. (addressing the second part first, I don’t think that Boon not having the title of acolyte yet is inherently a contradiction, because even if we go with the idea that travelers choose their acolytes, Kasha hadn’t actually accepted being a traveler at this point and therefore didn’t really have an acolyte.)
My point is that it’s important in this book that they send messages to acolytes by saying the name of the acolyte. So important, in fact, that if they didn’t need Yorn’s name, Mark and Courtney probably wouldn’t have traveled in the first place. But after this point, DJ seems to forget about this mechanic of the rings entirely, and acolytes send each other messages with the name of their territory, just like Travelers do. In raven rise, Mark sends a message to Dodger and says “First Earth,” and Courtney even wonders if the message would go to Nevva since she had Mark’s ring and was still on First Earth. So what happened there?
You might be inclined to say yes, because someone had to take care of his motorcycle and his sports car. But when you think about the Press we know in book 10, and everything we learn about Solara, what would Press need an acolyte for besides that? Let me explain:
(I had wondered if maybe this was because Mark was using Patrick’s ring and not his own, but this would imply some kind of difference between Traveler’s rings and acolyte’s rings which I don’t think is true at all.)
Does Press even need an acolyte?
Additionally, and this is kind of a whole different can of worms, I can’t see any reason why Press would live out a life on earth. Dorney implies he’s been friends with Press for a while, but, knowing everything that we learn in TSOH (plus the way he acts in Morpheus Road), Press wouldn’t just become friends with a real person from Halla/the Light. On the other hand, Seegen definitely seems to have lived on Eelong for a long time before Kasha, and even seems to have no knowledge of Travelers until Press tells him about them. (either that or he was lying to Kasha very elaborately for some reason.) And then there’s Naymeer, who was supposed to be Bobby’s mentor, but was clearly sent to First Earth to live an entire life. It just begs the question of why they did that at all, and how many of the mentors lived on their territories with no memory of Solara or Travelers. I tend to go with the idea that only some of the mentors did, depending on what they thought would be best for the Traveler they were mentoring. But like I said, this opens up a lot of other possibilities and this post is already very long. So maybe I'll try to explore this concept more later.
There’s this misconception I’ve seen across the fandom that Press and the other Travelers’ mentors were a previous generation of Travelers who went on their own adventures before the events of the series. I understand why people think this, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if DJ had originally intended this before he ended up going with Solara. But what we learn in book 10 is that each Traveler (with the exception of Nevva) was created and sent to their territories with the purpose of stopping Saint Dane, and that each Traveler had a mentor. The mentor’s job was only to help the Travelers, but the job of stopping Saint Dane was left to the Travelers themselves. This is all to say, what would Press even have to write journals about? If he’s a spirit of Solara who was trying to interfere with Halla as little as possible, why would he have written physical journals? And why would he need someone to keep them safe?
The theory
Calling it a theory is maybe a little misleading, because I truly don’t think this is what DJ intended, but more like this is just an idea that fits pretty well into the story and makes sense of a lot of the contradictions and inconsistencies I just talked about. this is: why I think Tom Dorney is Saint Dane.
Dorney acts kind of suspicious in the first place, with the way he changes the subject when Mark asks to read Press’s journals.
He’s also the one who tells them in the first place that they have to say the name of an acolyte to send them a message, something that is pivotal to Saint Dane’s plan to get Mark and Courtney to travel in the next book. (and Dane clearly uses this to his advantage, since Bobby conveniently doesn’t meet Yorn until his second journal on Eelong.)
Evangeline, Aja’s acolyte, seems to know Dorney, and Dorney knows her well enough to comment on her character. But, with everything we know about Dorney’s personality, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would write friendly letters to other acolytes and become friends with them. It makes more sense to me that Saint Dane could be sending Evangeline friendly letters under the guise of Dorney to gain her trust and plant the seeds for his plans with Mark and Courtney.
It’s also worth mentioning that Evangeline is a little suspicious herself, since her appearance as the first acolyte Bobby meets is very convenient and happens almost immediately after Mark mentions he wants to be an acolyte to Bobby. Plus, Dorney and Evangeline both know Press is dead, but that’s something Bobby has to tell most of the other characters who knew Press, including Aja! Why would Evangeline know press was dead if Aja didn’t? But if i’m being honest, the idea of Aja’s adoptive aunt and only real friend on Veelox being Saint Dane makes me kind of sad, so I’m not gonna go all in on the Evangeline-is-Saint-Dane thread.
The kicker for this theory, though, is one little piece of lore we learn in book 10: Saint Dane created the flumes. The event that causes Mark and Courtney to go back to Dorney and insist they’re ready to be acolytes is when they witness the creation of a flume in the Sherwood house. (they also have a run-in with quigs at the house, meaning that Saint Dane was expecting them to be there.) The spirits of Solara are capable of creating flumes, but they have no reason to, since making physical changes to Halla drains their power.
Also, and this is a bit of speculation on my part, but the fact that Saint Dane created the flumes always implied to me that he also controlled the flumes, that he was the one sending the Travelers “where they needed to be, when they needed to be there” all along. And since the flumes and the rings are made of the same stone, I also believe that Saint Dane controlled the rings (meaning rather hilariously that he would plan out the journals’ arrivals to be at awkward moments for Mark). That’s how I explain the inconsistency about saying an acolyte’s name to send them a message; since Saint Dane was controlling the rings anyway, it didn’t really matter what they said.
You might be wondering at this point, why would Saint Dane do this in the first place? I think the biggest reason is that he wanted Mark and Courtney to get more involved in Traveler business, to push them into traveling in book 5. (I can go into why Mark and Courtney traveling was so important to his overall plans in a different post if anyone wants.) Making a flume closer to where they live than the Bronx flume makes traveling even easier for them, plus making the creation of the flume happen right before their eyes rather spectacularly gives them even more of a connection to it. I could also say that maybe Dane didn’t have the power to make another flume at that point in time unless he used Mark’s ring as a sort of conduit, but admittedly that’s just speculation on my part.
Dorney completely vanishes from the story after Black Water, aside from a brief mention in The Quillan Games, which is a little weird in itself. By all means, it’d make sense for him to be a more important character as the only other person on Second Earth who knows about Travelers, but he just dips after he’s served his purpose in book 4. Even in book 5, it’s mentioned that when Mark calls him to see if he’s gotten any messages from acolytes, he makes the interaction as short as possible.
It’s almost like Saint Dane is done with this character, and is just doing the bare minimum to keep his plan on the rails.
The only thing this theory doesn't explain is Press's motorcycle and car, which he did just leave out in the bronx for anyone to steal. I could maybe make the argument that solara had the power to make his motorcycle disappear, not dissimilar to bobby's house? But regardless of whether you agree, I hope you found this interesting! thanks for reading <3
