Ozpin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clocktowers) wrote2021-02-11 10:15 am
clocktowers) wrote2021-02-11 10:15 am
headcanon. (wip)
But it's way more fun if he did attend, and CRWBY is never gonna provide canon enough to joss me, so let's do this. All of the following was constructed w the help of the Deerwby cast, especially Kei (Glynda-mun) and Floral (Salem-mun).
BEFORE OZPIN
The Warrior King was named Ozymandias, because guys, come on, how good is that. He built the Academies which would obviously be stalwart and impressive beacons of hope and justice, they could never fall, what could possibly go wrong
Oz (the immortal entity) lived as Ozymandias (the specific lifetime) from approximately Year 100 BC (Before Canon) - Year 40 BC. Within that lifetime, the Great War raged from 90 BC - 80 BC, or the duration of his thirties. He died as an old man. It took a couple years for Oz to reincarnate after Ozymandias's death, because otherwise this timeline makes even less sense.
He then reincarnated into Ozpin, age 16.
BEFORE BEACON
Before he was the wizard, Ozpin was an absolutely nobody. From an OOC perspective, his name is so strange (not color-rule-compliant, no surname) because CRWBY probably didn't decide on "Ozma" as his ancient name until late in the game. But this requires an IC explanation, so: he came from outside Vale kingdom walls, where the new naming traditions hold less sway. He lived in a small, semi-nomadic group. They were probably traders.
Was his hair black or silver as a kid? I've never decided. Maybe someday CRWBY will bless us with canon. (I parse Ozpin as mixed white/Asian, due to Monty's influence on his design - so I lean toward black hair.)
Regardless!
Ozpin's group often interacted with other small settlements outside Vale's walls. One of these, a well-structured family group, included a young woman about Ozpin's age. Her name was Glynda Goodwitch, and she fervently wanted to be a Huntress. Ozpin, a comparatively lazy and nerdy kid a couple years older than her, never showed such interest.
Then the wizard appeared in his head, and Ozpin left home for Beacon Academy.
BEACON: YEAR ONE
He arrives to Beacon and gets special treatment from day one. The existing headmaster is a very old man, and he's Ozymandias's hand-picked lieutenant. The other "old guard" among the staff are similarly loyal. Ozpin's age turns some heads, but ultimately, most of Beacon leadership treats him like their king reborn.
Ozpin spends a great deal of time in the headmaster's office. The old headmaster is relieved to have his guidance, and so Ozpin become his "protege" publicly and his advisor in private. Quietly, Ozpin gets to hand-select his own team:
Team OAAK (associated with the colors white and green) immediately becomes the top-ranked team in the school. Ozpin is their slick mysterious prodigy of a leader, even as Ozpin-the-host plays boy Arthur to Oz(ymandias)-the-wizard's Merlin. Alva Llyn is a tall, talented female knight associated with lakes and water, and plays his Lancelot. Argent Blanc is the
For the first year, they know nothing of the war.
age 17 / beacon year 1: wizard goes to beacon to bask in his own greatness. he's a super slick prodigy kid half the time and a frazzled mess the other half and it's all very upsetting and no one understands.
BEACON: YEAR TWO
age 18 / beacon year 2: headmaster is publicly grooming for succession, he tells his team about the war
age 19 / beacon year 3 (glynda year 1): he's now pretty thoroughly the wizard and well-known as a prodigy. glynda enters the school, sees how changed he is, gets the truth from him. is his only friend.
age 20 / beacon year 4 (glynda year 2): rebellious and depressed host ozpin hooks up with glynda. alva/lancelot loses her shit about it. the vytal tournament gets messy bc of personal dynamics. team fracturing begins here. there's probably some big showy public mission victory to put OAAK on the map and pave the way for...
age 21 / headmaster year 1 (glynda year 3): old headmaster retires and cedes the school to ozpin, his apprentice! there's a lot of fuss about it from the councils. but all the headmasters are in the know and have enough pull that it goes through. OAAK starts doing shadow war missions fulltime. team fracturing is getting worse. alva/lancelot's pining for glynda has been used as leverage by elaine. morgause tells argent/mordred the truth about his silver eyes. gavi/gawain tries to stand up for oz. big fight, lots of casualties, ozpin gets there last. OAAK is wrecked.
age 22 / headmaster year 2 (glynda year 4): glynda is invited to become beacon staff to finish earning her license. she becomes ozpin's fierce second-in-command bc she has nothing else left to her. STRQ enters the school and ozpin, mourning the loss of his best agents, fixates on some bandit kids. he has found his next project.
no subject
Ozma was a 20-25 year old adventurer. He died, his gf pissed off the gods about it, they ended the world. The "good" god felt bad abt that and so offered him a chance to return to life and undertake a test to ~prove humanity's worth~, reincarnating until the test was done. Ozma refused, then realized this was the only way to be with his gf, and said yes.
O2ma is what we call the lifetime that happened next! O2ma's host-soul got pretty brutally overwritten by Ozma's parasite-soul. This happened around age 20ish. We can assume he journeyed for a bit, found Salem, and they were together for 10 years. The marriage flamed out, their kids died in the crossfire, she murdered him. Oz-experienced age: ~40. Cumulative age, given that he absorbed all O2ma's memories from before his parasite-arrival: ~60.
Next, "centuries" passed as he recovered from his grief. We see an alcoholic old man and a couple others. In this period, we see him as the father of two silver-eyed children, even tho his eyes are amber and his wife's eyes are blue. Silver eyes are the mark of his lineage and convey special good-god-themed powers.
I tend to assume the story of The Hunter's Children takes place around here! Hunter's Children is one of Ozpin's favorite fairy tells to make his students read, which generally means it's a thinly-veined memoir. It's about ~the very first hunter of monsters~ which really reads like him. We don't get much from it, just that he loves his kids, his wife was killed by the Grimm (monsters), and he accidentally created the institution of Huntsmen (monster-hunters).
I also assume The Infinite Man happens around here. It's a VERY loudly true story about a reincarnating immortal who is sad bc he misses his family, and upset bc people keep trying to form cults around him. He then forms a cult.
Infinite Man is really interesting bc his cult is explicitly pro-gods. They all KNOW the end times are coming and want to be judged worthy! Oz is at this point carrying out his god-assigned task in an open, positive tone.
Salem then has every man woman and child in the village killed except one, so she can spread the sad story of the fake-ass cult wizard who couldn't protect them.
Oz gets real quiet about his god-task after that.
Next, I think The Indecisive King happens during this period! It's another fairytale that reads as VERY Oz. It's about a king who discovers a magic artifact (there are four of them, they are part of the god-task!) and is driven mad with despair bc it keeps showing him a future choice he doesn't know how to cope with. At the end of it he falls in love, which now brings our count of post-Salem Oz romances up to 3 (silver-eyed family, Hunter's Children, Indecisive King).
Interestingly, he seems to lose the artifact, because he has to hunt it down again in a future life.
At this point, assuming 20-40 years with each host and a lifespan of ~60 unless otherwise shown, we've got:
- ozma [25 by the end]
- o2ma [40/60 by the end]
- sad old man [?? let's say 60 experienced/120 cumulative]
- another sad man [let's say 80/180]
- a tentatively recovering man [120/240]
- daddy lifetime [160/300]
- infinite man might feasibly come here [200/360]
- the man who got the bad news :c [240/420]
- recovering from that [280/480]
- hunter's children [320/440]
- huntsmanning starts to catch on [360/500]
- warrior in the woods [400/560]
- indecisive king [440/620]
- he starts hunting relics [480/680]
- unfortunate facial hair lifetime in which he hunts down the Lamp of Knowledge [520/740]
- the lamp gives him bad news! it tells him he will never succeed at his god-task and thus can never die and be at peace. he becomes a miserable hermit for "centuries." imo he backslides into hijacking/overwriting his hosts. [560/800] [600/860] [640/920] [680/980]
- some nice girls tell him to get his shit together. he gives up most of his magic so they can be his avatars. good wizard lifetime. [720/1040]
- that happened "thousands of years ago" according to Glynda? Qrow? during the V3 lore dump. We know literally nothing abt the intervening lifetimes except that he got back on his shit and gathered all the relics, then eventually became a king, won a world war, and founded some academies.