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Are all Immortals foundlings?

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  • #26
    That is a very interesting theory. Does it suggest that in areas where a lot of people died (clan wars etc.) occurrence of immortality would be higher?
    May flights of Demons guide you to your final rest...

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    • #27
      Originally posted by Nicholas Ward View Post
      That is a very interesting theory. Does it suggest that in areas where a lot of people died (clan wars etc.) occurrence of immortality would be higher?
      The odds of a foundling being created wouldn't be dependent on the number of dead in an area but rather where the Quickening energy in the earth had come together.

      I imagine Quickening to operate like a magnetic or gravitational force. It is always attracted to itself and pulling towards itself. As more and more of the energy combines, it is able to pull more of it closer which eventually lead to these pools or "sources" of Quickening that can spawn new Immortals. That is also why Immortals can sense each other because the magnetic-like force of the Quickening inside each Immortal starts to pull towards each other, causing that sensation. Also, that would be why the Gathering happens when only a few Immortals remain because they each have a significant portion of the entire Quickening inside each of their bodies. The Quickening would be constantly pulling towards the other pieces, drawing each of them closer and closer to whatever the midpoint of all the remaining Immortals would be. In the original Highlander film, for example, that would have been New York City. It would be like a siren's call that urges them onward to reuniting the Quickening into a whole.

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      • #28
        Oh. Ley lines. Witch ties into the whole celtic/ highlander thing, as far as it meshing with legends as they anciently stand. Nice fit.

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        • #29
          Originally posted by Perfect Warrior View Post
          Oh. Ley lines. Witch ties into the whole celtic/ highlander thing, as far as it meshing with legends as they anciently stand. Nice fit.
          Yes, indeed. The goal was to have it make sense using concepts seen in the show and in the real world rather than make up something completely different and try to force it into the lore.

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          • #30
            Wherever baby immortals come from, I think their origins have to be tied into whoever created the Game and set up the rules. Immortals clearly aren't a natural occurrence. They exist with a specific purpose in mind. So somewhere, baby Immortals are either being birthed or manufactured by some other kind of being that we haven't been introduced to. But whoever they are, they seem to be actively monitoring the rules of the Game, given what happened when Kane tried to take Connor's head on holy ground in Highlander 3. The options, I think, are as follows.

            1) They're Transformed: Using the Methuselah Stone, which works as advertised, the beings creating baby Immortals kidnap human infants and use the stone on them to make them Immortal before leaving them out in the world as Foundlings. In this case, the stone we saw is one which they lost along the way somehow, but not the only one in their possession.

            2) They're Manufactured: Whoever the beings behind the Game are, they simply create Immortals, so in essence they have no parents. They're created from whole cloth the way, I suppose, God created His angels. Manufactured beings, rather than beings which evolved into their current state and reproduce.

            3) They're Birthed: Immortals do have a mother and father, but not human parents, or Immortal parents. Rather, they're the biological children of these other beings who, rather than raise them, decide to exile them and force them into the Game. For that to be the case, though, it'd have to suggest that the Immortals are different from their biological parents and don't possess the same abilities.

            IMO, there can't be any explanation of where baby Immortals come from until the purpose of the existence of Immortals and the Game is first explained.

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            • #31
              I ran into one fanfic where Immortals were designed by a distant alien race on a dying world, as a possible escape hatch, and the final Quickening would be powerful enough to create a portal between the worlds for them to escape and rule Earth. The reason Immortals all appear as foundlings is because they can't send anything bigger. They had a subplot where Methos was the first sent as an adult, and the experience did him such damage that he turned completely against them. Duncan was very specifically engineered to be the person who would bring them through, believing them to be his loving family and parents or something like that.

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              • #32
                I don't buy into the alien theory. There's too much that's magical about them for that to be the case. Both the movies and the series has given us a number of other magical elements, whether it's Nakano's power of illusion, Cassandra's prophesying and mind control, the Methuselah Stone, or Ahriman. Not to mention, why would aliens single out holy ground as inviolable ground for Immortal combat? And if we assume The Final Dimension is still valid to some degree, the creators of the Game seemingly monitor holy ground, as they were ready to lay down the law on that fight between Kane and MacLeod (And the series suggests that the destruction of Pompeii was a result of two Immortals fighting on holy ground).

                I wish I could remember what episode it was in, but there was an episode where MacLeod tells someone a fable he made up on the spot about faeries abandoning their children in the mortal world. I'm thinking that MacLeod's fable is far closer to the actual truth than any other theory out there. There are other beings out there, and they're not space aliens on a far-off planet, but beings far closer to Earth. And, I suspect, they may be very similar in nature to Ahriman.

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                • dubiousbystander
                  dubiousbystander commented
                  Editing a comment
                  That was Bad Day in Building A, and I don't remember anything in that about faeries abandoning human children. Was that a cut bit, or just something they didn't use in the end?
                  DM - Well, they were like regular people, except they lived for... a very long time, and... they never grew old.

                  Belinda - Like Peter Pan!

                  DM - Yeah... sort of. Well, the fairies were handsome... and wise... and very, very clever. The problem was, as time went on, there were more and more people, and soon the fairy people had to leave their home in the fairy city. They moved into the mountains, and into the old forests, and in the caves and in the cliffs. But the other people always found these places, so the fairy people had to move on.

                  Belinda - That's sad. Where do they live now?

                  DM - [whispering] Oh, Belinda... they're all around us. And you know what their job is? [Belinda shakes her head.] It's to protect children. And sometimes tell them stories.

                • dubiousbystander
                  dubiousbystander commented
                  Editing a comment
                  Unless it was something in Season 6...

              • #33
                I had been watching Outlander and in one episode, a woman abandons her infant in the forest thinking it's a changeling. The idea being that the changelings would return the stolen infant before the changeling dies. And of course the baby dies of exposure and Jamie explains to Claire. The mother will be fine because she'll take comfort in the idea that the changelings are taking care of her "real" son. And in Highlander, Duncan's father flat out tells him that he believes Duncan to be a devil spawn, or a changeling and that it was the midwife that offered an infant Duncan in the place of the infant who had died in birth.

                I realize Highlander and Outlander have different mythologies but they both are at some level grounded in the idea of an otherworldly presence guiding events. Highlander even eventually encounters a demon like creature that Duncan has to defeat. So it's not out of the realm of possibility to think that The Game is engineered by unseen entities and that Immortals are the product of these entities. It's possible that quite a few pre-immortal infants still do die of exposure from not being found and that the ones who do have simply survived the first stage of the Game. Even more of them don't get activated and die of old age without ever knowing they are different.

                The entities who engineer the Game could be sending in new immortals for any number of reasons not necessarily known or explainable by our standards.

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                • #34
                  It wasn't the midwife who offered Duncan. "When the midwife looked into your eyes, for it was you the peasant brought in, she cringed back in fear... and said you were a changeling... left by the forest demons... and we should cast you out for the dogs!"
                  Last edited by dubiousbystander; 10-06-2018, 05:58 AM. Reason: had to remove a link that was automatically left in.

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                  • #35
                    Originally posted by dubiousbystander View Post
                    It wasn't the midwife who offered Duncan. "When the midwife looked into your eyes, for it was you the peasant brought in, she cringed back in fear... and said you were a changeling... left by the forest demons... and we should cast you out for the dogs!"
                    Oh okay. It's been awhile since I watched Family Tree so I got it mixed up.

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                    • #36
                      I've never understood why immortals are revealed to be foundlings or orphans of mysterious origins rather than just children of mortal men and women that have the gift or curse of immortality! I mean what does it prove except a supernatural angle that doesn't need to be there!
                      JB

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                      • #37
                        Yeah, this point bothered me a little too. It's sort of like sexual orientation, heterosexuals can have either heterosexual or homosexual babies. So in this analogy, the mortals are heterosexuals and the immortals are homosexuals. Again, just an analogy.

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                        • #38
                          The writers weren't trying to make analogies, I think. This reminds me of Lambert, post HL2, saying that no one wanted to know where Immortals come from. That is a false statement, as made clear in every one of these discussions. The show decision to make that answer unknown, even to such an absolute degree as stating SEVERAL times that they have no known parents. They have no known children. They have no known anything. That was largely about exasperation. However, once they'd doubled down on that, it was a good thing. They friggin' doubled and tripled down on it with Duncan in Family Tree, even.

                          If there's an answer like, say, when an Immortal is born their mother dies:
                          1) That leaves a dead woman, who probably had family of her own, if not the father of the baby.
                          2) It would take next to no time at all to find out where baby Immortals come from, probably within a decade if someone made a determined effort at ANY time. "Where do I come from?" "Ah, well, your mother died of your birth." "Well shoot." "Yeah."

                          Highlander 2 did, actually, very well with it, and I will argue that one until the end of time. Hell, wilusa's variation is that Immortals are all Methos' descendants, that he lost his memory when a temporal disaster flung him back in time!! Also with the "All the poor mortal women die of their Immortal babies' births."
                          Last edited by dubiousbystander; 08-05-2020, 08:06 PM.

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                          • #39
                            Why can't two mortal people beget an immortal child? The writers have really put the pepper in the salt shaker with their odd reasoning here! There is nothing that is really supernatural about the highlander immortals, more super human perhaps though...
                            JB

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                            • #40
                              Originally posted by johnnybear View Post
                              Why can't two mortal people beget an immortal child? The writers have really put the pepper in the salt shaker with their odd reasoning here! There is nothing that is really supernatural about the highlander immortals, more super human perhaps though...
                              JB
                              Let's suppose that they could.
                              The fact remains that immortals have no known parents.
                              So it leaves us with an extremely short gestation that would consume both parents?
                              May flights of Demons guide you to your final rest...

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                              • #41
                                Originally posted by johnnybear View Post
                                Why can't two mortal people beget an immortal child? The writers have really put the pepper in the salt shaker with their odd reasoning here! There is nothing that is really supernatural about the highlander immortals, more super human perhaps though...
                                JB
                                They do heal from every injury save a lost limb. The only scars that stay are from while they are latent, or from when they were nearly decapitated. They can get their brains smashed out and they'll come back, memory intact. They stop seeming to be aging after mortal injury. What's not supernatural about that?

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                                • #42
                                  But with actors being human the ageng part is a definite! I mean how do you explain Connor Macleod's appearance in the later films and series compared to his original film introduction and even Adrian's eyebrows calm down in the first season despite the flashbacks in the later seasons!
                                  JB

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                                  • #43
                                    Originally posted by dubiousbystander View Post

                                    They do heal from every injury save a lost limb. The only scars that stay are from while they are latent, or from when they were nearly decapitated. They can get their brains smashed out and they'll come back, memory intact. They stop seeming to be aging after mortal injury. What's not supernatural about that?
                                    Well I've always thought of supernatural as evil rather than unexplainable and most of their powers although not understandable are well documented by the Watchers and us at home while watching TV!!!
                                    JB

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                                    • #44
                                      Originally posted by johnnybear View Post
                                      But with actors being human the ageng part is a definite! I mean how do you explain Connor Macleod's appearance in the later films and series compared to his original film introduction and even Adrian's eyebrows calm down in the first season despite the flashbacks in the later seasons!
                                      JB
                                      The same way they do in every show with vampires, or any other immortal characters. They usually don't bother. Of course also, most of those shows don't usually last long enough for the aging to be hugely obvious. In some cases, costuming or makeup makes it a moot point. These are not actually things that require explaining. How did shows like Married With Children or Roseanne explain that, for a while, completely different women played main characters? Answer: They didn't. There are things that don't need explaining. "Why does Connor MacLeod look older?" "Because Christopher Lambert is older." Or let's try actually another one. In the original Highlander movie, Immortals did not stop aging at 1st death, they just stopped aging whenever. In the second movie, Connor was restored to his prime. In the third movie, Connor had won the Prize in the first movie, so he had also aged. When the other Immortals escaped, he stopped aging. He's still in his prime, so did not suddenly become younger.

                                      Why is he so much older in Endgame? They didn't have quite the funds to really pull off what they wanted, and there was still an element of laziness to the making of that movie. Modern day Connor can easily be explained by having just spent ten years drugged senseless, strapped in a chair, and apparently with bolts driven into his skull.

                                      Well I've always thought of supernatural as evil rather than unexplainable and most of their powers although not understandable are well documented by the Watchers and us at home while watching TV!!!
                                      Ah, well that's not what the general world thinks supernatural is. To the general world, supernatural is anything that is not natural.

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                                      • #45
                                        That's true isn't it, that supernatural is anything out of the ordinary and yet I've always felt a tang of mischief or evil with that word!
                                        JB

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                                        • #46
                                          Yes, all Immortals are foundlings. Even Connor. Though it does make his "mother"'s final words more endearing that she considered him so much her own son (but he couldn't have been, not genetically) that she was willing to die for that belief in "Endgame."
                                          Highlander: Dark Places

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                                          • #47
                                            The problem there in Endgame was again a foolish confusion of dialogue choice. They wouldn't have been demanding that she admit Connor wasn't her son. They WOULD have demanded she admit that Satan was his father.

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                                            • #48
                                              Originally posted by dubiousbystander View Post
                                              The problem there in Endgame was again a foolish confusion of dialogue choice. They wouldn't have been demanding that she admit Connor wasn't her son. They WOULD have demanded she admit that Satan was his father.
                                              I think the idea is that there's a poof of light, a baby appears, and suitable parents are always there to "just happen" to notice it there (which makes me think the appearance of pre-Immortal babies is strategical by some higher power). So this must have happened for Connor's mom. She immediately claims its her real baby and that's that, and for 18-20 years kept to that story. Now they want her to say it was all a lie? She's like, "Hell no, that's my son. My real son. Go ahead and burn me like you were going to do anyway."
                                              Highlander: Dark Places

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                                              • #49
                                                Originally posted by Andrew NDB View Post

                                                I think the idea is that there's a poof of light, a baby appears, and suitable parents are always there to "just happen" to notice it there (which makes me think the appearance of pre-Immortal babies is strategical by some higher power). So this must have happened for Connor's mom. She immediately claims its her real baby and that's that, and for 18-20 years kept to that story. Now they want her to say it was all a lie? She's like, "Hell no, that's my son. My real son. Go ahead and burn me like you were going to do anyway."
                                                Yes, and she would know that. How would THEY?

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                                                • #50
                                                  It's a plot point they never pursued in any of the films or TV series!
                                                  JB

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