Red Guardian

This topic might have a better name.

The Red Guardian to fit in with The War Chief, The Ancient One (The Curse of Fenric), The Cheshire Cat and the like

Talk about it here.

The Red Guardian was the Guardian of Justice. Along with the other five, he was part of the Six-Fold Gods of the Six-Fold-Realm. In the creation myth of the Tharils, he was known as the Blood Thief. (PROSE: Lungbarrow ^[+]Loading...["Lungbarrow (novel)"])

Along with his fellows, the Red Guardian was in attendance for the creation of the universe. (PROSE: The Whoniverse ^[+]Loading...["The Whoniverse (novel)"]) The Tharils, who lived in the connected universe of E-Space, had a cosmogony in which Vlasolf the Timewalker "walked the wind back to the very dawn of all hunting", where he saw the leonine Night Hunter and Light Hunter divided, with their respective black and white prides preparing for eternal battle, only for their roaring challenges to be interrupted by the Blood Thief, the "red-handed Jackal whose cunning balances the scales of war". (PROSE: Lungbarrow ^[+]Loading...["Lungbarrow (novel)"])

Along with his contemporaries, the Red Guardian imprisoned Kronos and cast him into the Time Vortex. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel ^[+]Loading...["The Quantum Archangel (novel)"])

The Toymaker claimed he created conflict through the universe to justify his existence. (PROSE: Divided Loyalties ^[+]Loading...["Divided Loyalties (novel)"])

In the video game Happy Deathday, played by Izzy Sinclair on the Time-Space Visualiser, the Beige Guardian recalled that Red and White stuck him in a gym locker for nearly three centuries, noting that his peers mocked him for not being assigned a "cool" colour. (COMIC: Happy Deathday ^[+]Loading...["Happy Deathday (comic story)"])

Behind the scenes

In the notes of Lungbarrow, Marc Platt commented that the Black and White Guardians were balanced by the Red Guardian in the same way that Rassilon and Omega were balanced by the Other.

The idea, echoed in Divided Loyalties, that the Guardians of Time should be counted among the Great Old Ones and originated as the "upper echelons" of the earlier race of Time Lords who ruled the previous universe, was based on a cosmology outlined by Craig Hinton. Notes explaining his view of the matter were written as part of the preparatory work for The Quantum Archangel, and later printed in the charity anthology Shelf Life. Therein, Hinton explained that in his theory:

The High Council of the Old Time Lords were all linked to the Matrix when the universe ended. They became the Guardians – sentient life forms that acted as the vessels or conduits through which the fundamental essence of the Universe could act.Craig Hinton

In particular, the President of the High Council became the Black Guardian, "the Guardian of Dark in Time, the Guardian of Chaos, the Guardian of Entropy, He Who Walks in Darkness" while his Chancellor became the White Guardian, "the Guardian of Light in Time, the Guardian of Structure, He Who Walks In Light". The War which destroyed the old universe is described as roughly equivalent to the War in Heaven, suggesting the Black Guardian was originally his universe's equivalent of the War King, alias the Master. Also on the High Council on that fateful day was "the Renegade", this universe's equivalent of the Doctor; becoming the Red Guardian, this entity, "the Guardian of Justice and Morality in Time, the Guardian of Right, He Who Walks in Judgement", is incarnate in the present-day Doctor, who is fated to become the Red Guardian again upon reaching his final regeneration (a scenario Hinton wrote in his charity short story Aspects of Evil, name-dropped in the Quantum Archangel notes). This implicitly identifies the Red Guardian as the Other outright, who is referenced elsewhere in the Archangel notes.