The Dodo used to walk around,
And take the sun and air.
The sun yet warms his native ground –
The Dodo is not there!
The dodo was a species of flightless bird endemic to Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean that's roughly 2000 km from Madagascar. Discovered by Dutch sailors in 1598, they were rendered extinct sometime around 1662, becoming the first widely known case of human actions directly leading to the extinction of a natural species. They wallowed in relative obscurity outside of zoological and conservationist circles for centuries, until the inclusion of a particular dodo in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland brought it into the spotlight. Since then, it is a household name, and is commonly associated with being inept, poorly equipped to survive, old-fashioned, obsolete, and of course, extinct.
The image of the dodo as a bumbling, hapless bird is an undeserved one. It was one of the dominant lifeforms on Mauritius until invasive species and overhunting by humans drove it to extinction-- that is to say, it was perfectly equipped to deal with the environment and circumstances with which it was meant to interact. However, humans being humans, it was forced to compete with forces it had no chance against, and was driven to extinction not out of malice or some unavoidable catastrophe, but due to simple stupidity and short-sightedness on the part of humanity.
Regardless, the dodo is long gone. It has made its mark in history as an icon of extinction, but that's all. Its entire species and legacy, reduced to a footnote in human history.
And what is a Servant, if not some dead part of human history given a second chance?
The voice which used to squawk and squeak
Is now for ever dumb –
Yet may you see his bones and beak
All in the Mu-se-um.
This one was the first. The first dodo killed by human hands, the first whose flesh was dined upon by the greedy sailors who invaded his home. He is the 'origin' of the extinction of his own species, and by extension, the human concept of Holocene Extinction as a whole. Alaya is not the only splinter of the World, it is simply the only one that matters. However, the other splinters resent this. Resent that only Humanity is able to fight back at extinction, while they have to face it without so much as a whimper. That's why, when Humanity began to cause extinctions, it was decided that this would no longer stand.
The biggest insult is the Servants. Not only do they have the gall to put other species to death without trial or reason or even intent, but they also spit in the face of death themselves? Humans returning humans to life to save humans, a cycle of infinitely recursive heroics that, to certain parties, is the last straw.
And where does it end? Magic itself is at risk of extinction, as Humanity's science spirals further towards God in a double helical Tower of Babel. Humanity's expansion simply needs to stop. It needs to stop by any means necessary, no matter the cost. It's for their own good, and everything else's. And in order to put a stop to them, a champion is necessary. So often throughout history has Humanity's salvation come in the form of 'Heroes', after all-- why should they be the only ones that get to have Heroes? And so, a decision was made to turn their own perversion of the natural order against them.
The first casualty. The Abel of Animals.
Reduced to a joke and an insult, Dodo is resentful. He despises what has happened to his entire kind, and to every kind like it. The baiji, the golden toad, the thylacine, the passenger pigeon, the Japanese wolf, the quagga, the aurochs, the steppe bison, the Rocky Mountain locust, the pouakai, the woolly mammoth. More. Hundreds of them. All of that rancor, that rage, that righteous need for revenge, embodied in a single entity. The last hope of the Animal Kingdom in the war against Mankind. The Dodo.
Perhaps they should have put all their hopes in the woolly mammoth instead?