#aztar

Since we don’t know much about Pariah Dark, other than being sealed away a long time ago, I’ll mostly be pulling his backstory from Kell Mossa, a scientist who accidentally brought his universe to Anti-Monitor’s attention and watched it be destroyed as the only survivor, renamed Pariah by his savior, Monitor (Anti-Monitor’s “good” twin brother). He involuntarily watched Anit-Monitor destroy several other universes, blaming himself for (supposedly) releasing Anti-Monitor, though he is later assured that Anti-Monitor was just doing what he had always done and Pariah had simply diverted his path of destruction. Pariah is dropped off in a random universe, where he tried to live a normal life, though he was constantly drawn to impending disasters that he had no hope of preventing, as no one heeded his warnings (like a mix of Pokemon’s Absol and Greek’s Cassandra); he was killed and revived a few times, only to eventually fall through the cracks of reality and driven insane. Instead of being found by Flash and sent to the “paradise world” called  Earth-Flash.1, Pariah became the first inhabitant of the newly formed Ghost Zone pocket dimension and declared himself the Ghost King, sometimes calling himself Pariah Dark. (He may or may not have connections to the cosmic Great Darkness, I haven’t decided)

Pariah decides to use the ghosts of the Ghost Zone to invade the living realm of Earth but now he needs a lieutenant he can trust...

After turning completely evil, Eclipso was replaced as the Wrath of God (yes, THAT God, cuz apparently He exists in DC) by Aztar, who instead calls himself the Vengeance of God, and is bound to a human host to keep him from turning evil like Eclipso did. He’s had many hosts over the millennia and his most recent host, James “Jim” Corrigan, had been the hero Spectre with Aztar since Jim’s “death” around 1940, but he was getting old and had chosen Detective Crispus Allen of the Gotham Police Department as his replacement in 2005. The ritual to transfer Aztar’s host was interrupted by Pariah Dark and Aztar was “recruited” as Pariah’s lieutenant, killing Jim and leaving Cris unpowered and in distress. Pariah convinces Aztar to join him by promising freedom to choose his own path rather than be tethered to some goodie-two-shoes human and Aztar accepts. Danny is called on to defeat Pariah by the ghosts that don’t want to serve the self-proclaimed King (most of whom end up being Danny’s various Rogues Gallery) and is thrust into leading the resistance; meanwhile Cris enlisted the help of Batman and the rest of the Batclan (and maybe some members of Justice League Dark), who join the resistance as well.

I’m thinking this will be the first big crisis Damian will participate in as Robin, though I’m not sure if I want Duke Thomas (Signal) to have been recruited yet or not; if he has been recruited already, he’s still in training and hasn’t become Signal yet. I’ll get my timeline ironed out for my next post.

Various other connections:

There is a Pandora in both continuities, so after she “accidentally” released the Crime Syndicate (evil JL) into this universe, she decided to move and found the new Ghost Zone to be acceptable, as the inhabitants amused her. She recognized the ectoplasm that saturated the pocket dimension as being related to the Fountain of Life but didn’t bother looking into it or telling anyone because she didn’t want to risk them ruining her fun. She let the Box Ghost steal her box and toyed with Danny before agreeing to help him retrieve it. She could probably take down Pariah on her own but that would be really hard and this resistance thing sounds like more fun than she’s had in ages anyways.

DC Cronus is more-or-less the same as the god from Greek mythology but has also been equated with Chronos, the Greek god of time. After Cronus was imprisoned in Tartarus by the Olympian Gods, Clockwork was given his duties as the God of Time by Hera, loosely working with the Quintessence’ Observants.

Speaking of, DP’s Observants seem to fulfill a similar role as DC’s Quintessence, so I’ve decided that the Quintessence are the gods in control but they employ the Observants to catalogue and categorize events for the Quintessence so they don’t have to do everything themselves. The Observants are the ones who decide what deserves the attention of the gods in charge. I’ll probably have the Quintessence decide the fate of the Ghost Zone after Pariah Dark is defeated.

The Guys in White are an obvious reference to the Men in Black. Looking up various government agencies in the DC Comics, the Bureau of Normalcy (formerly Bureau of Oddities) seems to serve a similar function, so I’ve decided that GiW and BoN are both departments of the larger Department of Extranormal Operations (DEO), where the GiW are specifically focused on eliminating threats from ghostly (and similarly paranormal) origins, while the BoN handles cover-ups and convincing the public that everything is “normal” and work both in the field and in cyber security. BoN people often accompany other agencies to run interference so the other agencies are able to do whatever they need to do without fear of being seen or regular people getting in the way. The GiW was beginning to investigate the uptick of paranormal activity in Amity Park and would have contacted SHADE if they ever discovered Danny Phantom was anything more than an ordinary ghost.