On Fanlore, users with accounts can edit pages including user pages, can create pages, and more. Any information you publish on a page or an edit summary will be accessible by the public and to Fanlore personnel. Because Fanlore is a wiki, information published on Fanlore will be publicly available forever, even if edited later. Be mindful when sharing personal information, including your religious or political views, health, racial background, country of origin, sexual identity and/or personal relationships. To learn more, check out our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Select "dismiss" to agree to these terms.
Quickening (Highlander trope)
| Tropes and genres | |
|---|---|
| Related articles on Fanlore. | |
Quickening is a Highlander trope, derived from canon.
Quickening' is the mysterious gathering of energy transferred from one Immortal to another when an Immortal is beheaded. Said to contain the knowledge and power of the vanquished immortal, it typically manifests as wild lightning capable of destroying a lot of stuff within an unspecified radius.
Fanon has extrapolated this to mean that the older an immmortal is, the more powerful their quickening will be, ergo the more powerful the pyrotechnic display generated, although this is not necessarily supported by canon. Some writers have interpreted "knowledge" to equal memories; others have not.
Fanon also extrapolates that recovering from a Quickening can require lots of alcohol and possibly lots of sex.
Canon never clearly stated how closely an immortal had to stand in order to receive a quickening, leading to much fannish speculation.
A Dark Quickening is, per canon, one in which the winning immortal is taken over by the vanquished immortal, turning the winning immortal into a darker, more evil representation of himself.
A Double Quickening is one that occurs when two immortals are beheaded simultaneously and the resulting Quickening energies are split evenly between the two winning immortals; credence was given to this due to the special effects department's choice of illustrating such a circumstance.
A Light Quickening -- a purely fannish term -- is one where a previously evil immortal is taken over by the goodness of the vanquished immortal, as what is presumed happened to Darius, who had been a general bent on conquering until he fought a holy man and absorbed his Quickening.