Doppelgangers in the Black Omen

[AuraTwilight]

Let's alll hold hands....here in the sunliiiight.....

[cupn00dles]

Woo Hoo

Shiny happy people holding handsssssss

[SilentMartyr]

J, I am curious as to what your stance is on who/what creates the gates in Trigger.

[Lord J Esq]

J, I am curious as to what your stance is on who/what creates the gates in Trigger.

My "stance" is that the Magus Castle, Ocean Palace, and Black Omen gates are all Lavos' doing, that the Red Gate is the Entity's doing, that the Epoch is Belthasar's doing, and that the main gates are open to interpretation. I don't necessarily hold that these main gates must be the doing of either Lavos or the Entity; instead I leave open the possibility that they could in fact be some combination of the two, or even the possibility that, much like a hologram, responsibility for the gates depends on which part of the game you're looking at it from. To put it succinctly, where the main gates are concerned my jury is still out.

[Zaperking]

I agree with you. Lavos shows he has the strength to open up time portals, one we see is a time portal that he willed, the others were accidental because of his energy. His true willed gate was the one that engulfed Chronopolis and started to send it back in time. The Chronopolis technicians could stop the time crash in time before getting to 12,000BC so Lavos like missed it there. The rest were accidental - The Janus and Guru warpings, The Magus Castle portal etc.

[SilentMartyr]

There is no evidence to show that Lavos made those gates, it is just the popular belief.

And wouldn't it have been the TD and not Lavos that pulled Chronopolis back? Or had it not "merged" with Schala yet?

Black Omen gate? Do you mean when the Omen was sucked into that big black bubble after Zeal was defeated? I would attribute that to the pocket dimension over anythihng else.

I ask because I would be compelled to use the gate creation as an argument that Lavos has sentience. But since I think its all Entity, all the time I'll just back away slowly.

[SolidSnake_8608]

well of course lavos didn't make the gates, otherwise, the gate in 65,000,000 BC wouldn't be able to exist before he fell.

[Zaperking]

The gate never even existed there. Obviousally either the entity or the pendant reacting with the Telepod caused the gates to be openable.

The Ocean Palace gates were the ones that teleported The Guru's and Janus.

And you wonder why the Magus' Castle is popular to be deemed as Lavos' meddling? Because it has the most proof. Magus states that some unimaginable power is pulling them in.... Now that sure sounds like Lavos. Besides the very point that Magus was summoning Lavos in the first place.

It's like saying that TTI and TD is simply a popular belief... well it is anyway

[Exodus]

Chrono Cross states that LAVOS took Chronopolis back in time as a last resort to save itself or some such.

I'm sure they would have said the Time Devourer, had that been the real culprit.

[Lord J Esq]

There is no evidence to show that Lavos made those gates, it is just the popular belief.

"No" evidence? Come now, there's a whole topic here on the Compendium devoted to the lineage of the gates. Anyhow, you asked for my stance; now you have it.

Black Omen gate? Do you mean when the Omen was sucked into that big black bubble after Zeal was defeated?

I was talking about the initial ascension of the Black Omen:

Marle: What's that?!

Lucca: We're getting some
   interference from an enormous
   Gate!
   It can't be! Lavos!!??

Robo: The Epoch's
   space-time compass has gone
   haywire!

Magus: That's...!

Marle: I think they're calling us...

Lucca: It feels like we're gonna get
   sucked in there.

Robo: It's enormous!
   I'm picking up a tremendous amount
   of spiritual power!

Frog: The Ocean Palace hath risen?
   Surely, it doth beckon us!

I ask because I would be compelled to use the gate creation as an argument that Lavos has sentience. But since I think its all Entity, all the time I'll just back away slowly.

We know that Lavos by its very nature can influence or disrupt the flow of normal time. There is no need for this to be a sentient maneuver; in fact, it is just as likely if not more so to be the opposite. Nature is full of elaborate constructions that exist not because sentient creatures chose to create them, but because it was in those creatures' inherent behavioral instincts to do so. Spiders spin webs because that's what they have evolved to do, not because they willfully decide they want to spin webs. Birds build nests, trees grow toward the sun, and salmon swim thousands of miles to spawn in the streams where they were born...not because of a sentient will to do so, but because it is in their genes to do these things. So Lavos' gate creation could be a self-serving instinctual behavior.

Or perhaps the gates are a byproduct of Lavos' natural existence, if I may use the word "natural" in its broadest sense. That is to say, the gates might be of no tangible worth to Lavos , but rather are some sort of natural "bodily" processes. That gates could even be a waste product, or maybe even a sort of environmental footprint, the same way wheat sucks up nutrients from the ground.

Or there may even be no biological component to the time gates at all, and they may simply be a purely physical result of Lavos' existence, just like highly structured weather phenomena such as hurricanes and lightning storms will arise purely as a consequence of our complex environment.

In any case, what it all comes down to is that there is no legitimacy to the line of argument wherein Lavos as creator of the gates directly and sufficiently establishes Lavos to be a sentient being.

well of course lavos didn't make the gates, otherwise, the gate in 65,000,000 BC wouldn't be able to exist before he fell.

I'll just address this one quickly. We've known Lavos to transcend normal time in many strange and bizarre ways. Once established on the planet, it is a possibility worth investigating that Lavos' influence could extend backward in normal time prior to its physical arrival. For instance, we know that killing Lavos' shell in the future causes it to cease to exist in the past as well. It is therefore a strong likelihood that Lavos itself was capable of influencing the physical environment without respect to the linear flow of normal time.

It is also possible that Lavos does not have to exist at both ends of a time gate. Significantly, every gate in the game has at least one of its ends anchored to a period where Lavos physically existed on the planet.

[Zaperking]

Just to recap on the whole Lavos pulled back Chronopolis.

IT IS TRUE! IT IS ALL STATED IN THE GAME! And I'll try to explain it to the best of my ability Oo

Kk, It's stated that Lavos' back-up plan was to pull back Chronopolis in time. But until the Chronopolis workers activated it, only then could Lavos have done it. The sole purpose of the time crash was to make sure that Lavos could intercept the Frozen Flame by either
1) Get it back to the moment when he exited the first pocket dimension to get the FF fused into him so he can destroy Crono and co.
or
2) Fuse with the Frozen Flame in the time steam... I will explain more now.

At the end of the game, at Opassa Beach, it is stated that only when The Ocean Palace was crumbling to pieces, a time gate had opened up again and started sucking in everything. The Mammon Machine and Schala were sucked in the process.
This time gate was different. For it seems that it did not travel to a certain time, but let you fall through every age till you landed in the Darkness beyond Time.
Basically, to explain what was happened, it's like saying that you're at the top of a building. The building has a vent and you jump into the vent. As you fall, you pass time, and the sides of the vent are clear and you can look in time through it, and if possible, stick your hands into the walls and basically travel into that time.
This is what happened with Schala.
Schala was falling down and down in time, Chronopolis' technicians managed to stop the Frozen Flame before it was fully dragged to 12,000BC or 65,000,000BC. As Lavos himself was falling in time after his defeat, and the attempt failed, he crashed into Schala in the time steam and started to merge with her. Her mind was being overtaken by his evil, she had no choice. She did what had to be done, creating Kid and playing god. Schala stuck her hand out in time and Kid was set forth into the world. But whilst this was happening, she heard Serge's crying echo through the time steam. Lavos and her landed in the DBT but the time steam was still around them. She attempted casting herself into the timesteam, but failed and resulted in the Magentic storm. With those few minutes, Chronopolis malfunctioned and Schala somehow used her powers to get Serge, Wazuki and Miguel unconcious and land them at Chronopolis. By this time, Lavos had intergrated with her, all she could do was call Serge to the flame, and he was healed....
And Schala was encased in that shield as the murger continued.

Basically, the fact is that Schala and Lavos never merged, but Lavos started the merging process. Because Time goes differently in the DBT, to them, it may have been simply 13,000 years worth of time passing in there, but none of it affected them. In all this time, Lavos was only able to merge with the Mammon Machine and the Lunar Dragon. Personally, I think that case that Schala is in was acctually a shield so that Lavos would have a harder time merging with her.
Nether the less, I think Time Error works in this occasion.

I think I went off topic Oo

[SilentMartyr]

There is no evidence to show that Lavos made those gates, it is just the popular belief.

"No" evidence? Come now, there's a whole topic here on the Compendium devoted to the lineage of the gates. Anyhow, you asked for my stance; now you have it.

I worded that kinda badly, I should have said no physical evidence. By that I mean nothing that clearly states whether or not it made them.

Like I said, I don't think Lavos made any of the gates, so I was trying to avoid you making a rebuttle. But you did anyways. Oh well.

Zaper, I wasn't denying that Lavos did it. I was asking if it was Lavos before it merged with Schala or after it merged and became the Time Devourer.

[Zaperking]

Didn't think you were either. I just wanted to get my point across to others, and that's what pretty much happened if you stick everything together from what Belthasar said, and from the dates that Schala interfered.

[SilentMartyr]

Hokay, but you still didn't answer my question :p

[Kazuki]

Silent, I thought Lavos would actually be dead in the DBT had he and Schala not began to merge, so I assume it's when he becomes the Time Devourer.