Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes Plot Development

[Daniel Krispin]

Sounding good with the storyline, there. I have a point to make regarding the depiction of the nightmare, though.

The hall of Lavos, where he stands, and its supposed being hell (at least in the words of Lavos)... Hell, I suppose, can have a number of different connotations, either from the Norse realm of Helheim (ie. ruled by Hel, daughter of Loki) to the Christian hell, which is essentially an absolute nothingness away from God. I'm not certain where the whole thing of the place of vileness and gross evil came from... maybe Inferno? I don't know, just a guess, as I've never read it - all I know is the term Pandemoneum, 'all demons' comes from it, so perhaps that is the origin of it. But be it as it may, I have always found there being bloody altars and dark deciples, while gruesome and unsettling to the eyes to be far too simplistic, and not as deeply terrifying as hell should be. After all, there is still SOMETHING, and the devil and demons seem like a thing there, lending it substance. Far more terrifying would be a void, limitless and endless, like the cold nothingness of the Tesseract, with but the whispers of some nameless and boundless evil upon your heart, and knowing that NOTHING now will ever come for you, nor will your eyes ever touch anything anymore, nor will you ever taste or hear another sound, and that you will be in this expanse removed from all contact until your very spirit drowns in its own madness in eternity, and far dearest of all wishes will be that you had never been born. THAT is what I think most terrifying of hell would be. As such, maybe that once he comes to face Lavos, or rather, once he comes before the throne, he floats for some time in an absolute emptyness such as that - maybe after glancing into the deep-enthralling eyes of Lavos? - emprisioned by the cageless malice of that ancient gaze, until at last Lavos greets him at the brink of insanity. The evil of Lavos can then fill the void about Crono. Would this not be terrifying? Imagine floating in the coldest reaches of space, the terror of the wonder and glory of the expanse, and knowing that all about you, filling that entire limitless void that is grander than all the stars, is that which hates you beyond all else, to whom you are but a whisper of a dream of power.

Well, that all is just a thought on Lavos. It is just me, I suppose, but I've never been one for the acolytic and ritualistic depictions of hell. Too overt in my opinion, too human and understandable to be the true foe. Lavos being as mighty as he is, he has little need of servants serving him in a corporeal place (though maybe this is in Crono's mind, for it is a nightmare... it is difficult for me to reason through this.) You see, to me, the most dark of evil, the most base and vile of treacheries and terrors, is always disguised as something good. Evil in the guise of good, that is always the most horrid of all! If you arrive in a place where you see dark signs and things chanting evil, well, you know it! This place is dark and nasty, and you know you have a battle coming up. That is a semi-nightmare in my understanding, one that causes fear, but not terror. What causes truest terror is distortion and hidden melefic will, and finding this inescapable! Say not that Crono has come to hell, say rather heaven! This should be his query, and is this god? This should be his query, at which the reply is a most blasphemous yes, and those about are the company of angels and saints who minister before the throne day and night. This nearly catches Crono, for he is offered things of temptation and glory, and a place of honour as the saviour of the mortal world. But certain things in words, certain hints or foreboding, cause chill. Like when the eyes still see things as fair, but the heart feels itself decieved, knowing that there is terror one cannot place. You likely know the feeling in a dream, the surreal feel that things are not as they should be. The music could become off key ever so slightly to exemplify this. Little by little this anxiety and fear overcomes Crono, and being not fully content, knows this is not heaven. But running from the hall, he finds that each leads only back into the same hall (like Neo unable to escape the accursed trainstop), and so he stands before the throne, and askes who this is that so masquerades as god himself. At which this thing replies that he is he that wishes to be god before all men, and will in time hold all dominion, etc. And all at once the void of which I spoke engulfs Crono, and things go as I have before mentioned, till at last coming before him in form, Lavos speaks, and here GIVES Crono a weapon, for assured of his own might merely wishes to make trial of Crono's strength. Aha! And here is yet another great terror, for Lavos appears to be and is represented as a thing mighty beyond understanding, destroyer of worlds and stars, yea even universes and reality! He mocks Crono, striking him down, calling him a fool seeking vain glory, a man of pride who will soon fall. What is even a hero who traverses time to one who is beyond time? All his might, all his deeds, every thing he might accomplish is wind and doomed to fail and accomplish nothing! With a breath he can be killed for eternity!

See, all this may not be true, but Crono, as the hero that saved the world... this is his greatest fear. That his deeds accomplish nothing, that the world CANNOT be saved, and that he is absolutely powerless before it. That Lavos can never die, and that the world is forever doomed without salvation (well, personally, I hold that true for ours, save for a certain omnipotent action several thousand years ago, but that is beside the point.) This is Crono's gravest fear, and the Flame plays on it in this his most terrible of nightmares. It also carries on from before, where he could do nothing to halt the slaughter in the last nightmare. Now, he can do nothing to save the world, and he himself is but a vain man.

So you see, perhaps more terrible would be if this place seemed as paradise, like fake Calasparan all over again, only far less apparent, and with far more evil things waiting in the wings, so to speak.

Umm... oh dear. I got mightily carried away, it seems. My apologies. Anyway, that is my take on what would make the nightmare the most terrifying it could be. As yet I have yet to help on the plot, so this marks at least one suggestion to account for my being placed in the plot help category. Anyway, what do you think? I don't suppose a paradise and a nothingness would be THAT hard to map, would it?



About the depiction of Lavos...

Sig? I don't remember anyone with a sig depicting Lavos in that fashion, but maybe my memory fails me. Actually, if truth be told, it would be odd, because the whole 'Lavos the Dark Lord' thing was a thread of Hadriel's over at the Chronicles forums, which itself sprung in part from my incessant talking about Lavos in such away, in despite of everyone calling him a mindless parasite (itself born from my representation of him being a dark Lord in Twilight of Fate, capable of being fought and vanquished with swords - yet mightiest in all aspects of cunning and mind, of hand and sinew and skill of sword, of dark sorcery and the shaping of plans spanning one hundred hundred thousand years. A shapeshifter, masquerading as an angel of light, yet trapped by his own evil deeds that cannot fully hide the stench he has become.) Personally, at least, I've never seen anyone make Lavos himself more than a parasite or a semi-present evil. I drew a picture of him holding the Flame and all arrayed in sable armour, with sallow skin, a while back, but it wasn't a sig. Yet it is the closest thing to a dark lord I can think of so far as Lavos goes.

Oh, and lastly, Geistrand is indeed cool. Wish me to draw a sword for it? Of what fashion should it be? Katana, falchion, what?[/img]

[Oswego del Fuego]

(points up)

What he said.  

Wow, not really much I can add, but I think Daniel's ideas re: Crono's nightmare are just awesome.

OdF

[teh Schala]

Here's the sig...


It's like Lavos is black instead of green here, and the gold stuff...while I can't really make out what it IS, it looks like it could be a crown or something of the sort.  He looks more "regal" if such a thing is possible.

[Legend of the Past]

Here's the sig...


It's like Lavos is black instead of green here, and the gold stuff...while I can't really make out what it IS, it looks like it could be a crown or something of the sort.  He looks more "regal" if such a thing is possible.

It's the Mammon Machine. He took the Mammon Machine and placed it instead of Lavos' mouth...

[teh Schala]

LOL...that's weird...but he still looks awesome

[Zaperking]

Yeah, Does look awesome.

[Hadriel]

@Daniel: Go for the Geistrand thing.  Something gothic-looking would be in order, as it's a blade that exists partially in the spirit realm.

@all: The Lavos as a dark lord idea did kind of spring from Daniel's thoughts.  I have my own preconceptions of a true dark lord, though; mainly that of Emperor Palpatine, a dark lord so powerful he cheated death, not once but repeatedly, so great was his mastery of the dark side of the Force.  He was a master manipulator as well, entangling the entire universe into his designs for conquest.  The callousness with which he twisted and goaded beings into doing his will much resembles that of Lavos, and toward the end of the plot this type of attack on the Flame's part will be increasingly apparent, especially regarding the Time Crash.

Part of the dialogue between Crono and Lavos will lend itself to how Crono thinks of Hell and pain.  One who believes in any kind of religion hopes that they will go to heaven when they die and has an attachment to those beliefs; they are the "precious" for that person.  This also applies to atheists; one who either does not wish to be morally accountable or who does not find sufficient evidence for the existence of a God continually hopes that they're right, since there's no way to tell for sure.  Hell is more than just a place in any of these cases; it's a question of ideology and perception, of who's right and who's not.  The Sorin backstory uses the Tesseract as Hell; Sorin is erased from history by his own best friend, who will not even remember him after the fact.  The only ones that do are the team, because of time traveler's immunity, and they're the cause of his eternal suffering.  This is the same situation, but in all cases the Tesseract only serves as an enabler; Hell is created from the victim's own perceptions and not from any outside force, just as the Western idea of Hell was created from the thoughts of certain artists and writers such as Dante.  Lavos having an army of fanatical minions and rule over the entire planet is his wet dream.  

But, as I said, the fun doesn't stop there.  What follows is Lavos' master plan.  I'm pretty sure I was drunk when I thought of it, even though I don't have any alcohol in the house and never have.

---------------------------------

The Lavos that Crono encounters in his Tesseract nightmare is only an extension of the real Lavos' will; Lavos has placed Crono into his personal dream, which just happens to be a timeline that never came to pass.  Lavos is trying to use the Frozen Flame, which is still trapped in the mortal world, to alter time in such a way as to make this dream a reality; he's using it as his One Ring, except infinitely more 1337.  In his dream, the Entity itself does not exist; Lavos, using his power and knowledge, has destroyed it and installed himself as the planet's new Gaia, remaking it in His image, which is why it's so twisted.  But that's not even the limit of it.  I've often said that due to the extreme resilience and knowledge that Lavos -- one single being -- possesses, a ship constructed by an entire crew of Lavoids would be a feat even the Galactic Empire would crap their pants at.  This Lavos-controlled planet is the warship.  And there's more of them out there.  Earth was a rare find on Lavos' part, in essence a jewel of the cosmos; the number of planets that have the necessary conditions to evolve critically-thinking, technologically capable life is extremely small, at least on a cosmic scale.  Having been the product of a race on an Earth-like planet experimenting to better themselves, Lavos' birth was something akin to the birth of a Messiah.  He eventually took over his world and, with an entire planet filled with acolytes and willing followers much like the one in Crono's nightmare, set off to conquer the rest of them.  And when I say the rest of them, I absolutely mean it.  He has designs on the entire universe, and the capacity to transfer his soul or extensions of it into other bodies; hence the Frozen Flame.  He can even possess entire planets, rendering him theoretically immortal so long as the planet's star doesn't explode.  He can overshadow others' life forces, willing or not.  He had planned to possess Earth and use it as his body, but just as Earth itself was a unique occurrence, so was its spirit, the Entity; the only one strong enough to resist him.  For sixty-five million years, he waged war on the Earth itself, drawing the DNA and residual spirit energy of the lifeforms on its surface and evolving progressively stronger lifeforms to get more.  This was the only flaw in his plan; eventually, beings strong enough to fight and defeat him occurred, but the vast amount of energy he'd collected enabled him to operate even from the Tesseract, infusing the Frozen Flame with his power.  What he's trying to do with all his power is manifest his dream in the very beginnings of the planet, when the Entity was a nascent consciousness.  In essence, he's trying to kill the Entity in the distant past, and this course of action is causing a massive tear in time.  What this means is that in certain locations, reality and the Tesseract are spilling into each other.  But he isn't through yet; with his planet-ship and his timerip, along with the other worlds conquered by his disciples and Lavos Spawns, he's going to systematically take over the entire universe, absorbing the power of each new planet he conquers for himself.  That may and probably will take him trillions of years, but he's literally got all the time in the universe to make it happen.  When he accomplishes this, he's going to initiate what astronomers and cosmologists term the Big Crunch, and all the planets and stars and galaxies, all of what will at that point be extensions of his will are going to be drawn together, creating a universal point of supergravity and rendering all matter and all possible timelines in the universe a part of Lavos.  At that point, you can guess what the universe will be like; Lavos will remake it in His image.  He will literally be God with a capital G by fulfilling all three of the requirements for such a being:

1) Omnipresent.  All matter and energy in the universe will be a part of Lavos.
2) Omniscient.  He will possess knowledge of literally everything in the universe, as a corollary to number one.
3) Omnipotent.  Come on, would you try to beat him up?  He'd drop a quasar on you and not think twice about it.

Of course, even after foiling that plan, the El Nido paradox will still exist; its sheer magnitude will eventually allow Lavos to absorb enough energy to go about his universe-consuming plan anyway, with Schala's power as an extra added bonus.  This isn't Sephiroth-level Messianic delusion here; Lavos has the knowledge, the resources, and the patience to back it up.  And therein, with the concept of Lavos as God, lies another moral dilemma; how do we know the universe won't be better with Lavos running it?

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So, to recap:

~Crono nightmare #3 is Lavos' ideal version of Earth where he is the Entity controlling the planet.  That's exactly the reason why it's Hell to Crono.
~Earth is extremely rare; it's one of the relatively few planets that has the potential to evolve life as complex as Lavos.  Earth also has a powerful Entity directing life on its surface; humans are a result of the evolutionary conflict between Lavos and Gaia, possessing the most potent traits of both, albeit in a practically embryonic form.
~Lavos evolved on an Earth-like planet as a result of its denizens attempting experiments to make themselves better.  His birth was the result of a great deal of that modified genetic material being vastly increased in potency with magic.
~Lavos took over his planet and is now looking to conquer the universe in order to become God.
~When Lavos takes over enough planets (almost every single planet in the universe), he's going to initiate the Big Crunch, thus imbuing all matter in the universe with his will.
~Lavos will then remake the universe in his image, right down to the laws of physics, provoking another troublesome moral debate amongst the cast.
~Failing that, Lavos will use the El Nido paradox to absorb enough energy to where in the far future he can just eat the damn universe.  This sets the stage for Chrono Cross.  The reason he can do this is because while a simple alteration in time merely effects a causal shift in the patterns of universal matter, a time paradox creates an infinite number of timelines, one after the other.  Their creation is governed by the flow of Time Error.  The objects and creatures in those timelines possess spirit energy, and residual spirit energy remains in the Tesseract when the timeline is changed.  This is how the Frozen Flame can summon lifelike copies of people out of the DBT.  Lavos consumes whatever spirit energy he isn't using in the mortal plane.  This will mean that Sorin is consumed by Lavos.  Make what you will of that.
~The only way to thwart Lavos' plan is to defeat the Frozen Flame, and the only way to do that is to beat King Zeal, since the Frozen Flame needs an Arbiter to function.  The full extent of Lavos' plan will not be revealed until after the Magus sidequest.  Right after that, we will introduce the Chrono Break and Gaspar's role in thwarting the Flame; as we established earlier in the Sorin story, the Chrono Break's power is to banish someone to the DBT.  Using this on King Zeal would have the desired effect of removing the Frozen Flame's Arbiter, especially since he's an incredibly powerful combatant, but as is demonstrated by the Sorin backstory the effect hasn't been controlled or perfected yet.  Gaspar's knowledge and Schala's sacrifice might be needed for this.  The Chrono Break can also possibly be used by Lavos to assassinate the Entity, thus setting the next phase of his universe-conquerage plan in motion.  The Chrono Break's essentially a McGuffin for the last little bit of the game.

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Anyway, now is the time for comments and thoughts.

[teh Schala]

Whoa...  Deep...

[Legend of the Past]

Whoa, you really made Lavos a Dark Lord. A Lavos universe, now THAT freaks me out. And I thought the Dead Sea and 2300 A.D. were depressing.

Excuse me for being ill-informed, but I thought Schala was an Active character? If so, when does she merge with Lavos, or is there something I'm missing here?

[Hadriel]

When I said Schala was an extra added bonus, I mean that in the sense of Chrono Cross; at the end of CE, in order to set the stage for CC, she becomes trapped in the DBT with Lavos.

[Legend of the Past]

Okay, So let me get this straight... This is Schala who got freed by Serge, time travelled and merged with Lavos again to set the stage for CC?

[Hadriel]

This is definitely Schala. The crew finds her relatively early in the game, in the ruins of the Ocean Palace; this enables us to have her as a player character.  Lavos was trying to take control of her then, but she's a very strong woman, so it took a while to fully make her submit.  She was sitting inside the Mammon Machine; the crew gets there and frees her before Lavos takes complete control, but his imprint is still left on her mind.  At the end, she sacrifices herself to destroy the Frozen Flame, and becomes trapped in the DBT.  Shortly thereafter (from her frame of reference) she hears Serge crying in 1010 A.D. and sends Kid to Lucca, thus starting the sequence of events resulting in Chrono Cross.

[Legend of the Past]

This is definitely Schala. The crew finds her relatively early in the game, in the ruins of the Ocean Palace; this enables us to have her as a player character.  Lavos was trying to take control of her then, but she's a very strong woman, so it took a while to fully make her submit.  She was sitting inside the Mammon Machine; the crew gets there and frees her before Lavos takes complete control, but his imprint is still left on her mind.  At the end, she sacrifices herself to destroy the Frozen Flame, and becomes trapped in the DBT.  Shortly thereafter (from her frame of reference) she hears Serge crying in 1010 A.D. and sends Kid to Lucca, thus starting the sequence of events resulting in Chrono Cross.

If she destroys the Frozen Flame, then, how does it appear in CC?

[Oswego del Fuego]

This may not be the best place to post this, but I'm not sure what is.

Has anyone given any thought to having Temporal Flux expand its menus and displays?  Looking at one of Zeality's screen shots, I noticed the item names could be expanded one character without messing up the look of the main screen.  Extra characters in yellow.



Just a thought.  Since item and tech names are limited to a mere 10 characters, even adding one more character could open a lot of doors when it comes to naming stuff.

Frankly, Crimson Echoes is going to NEED something like this.  Presently, player names can only be 5 characters long (hence we have Crono instead of Chrono),  and Schala's name is 6 characters.

OdF

[Hadriel]

Well, I suppose she doesn't "destroy" the Flame per se so much as foil its plans.  ZeaLitY and I discussed this a while ago, and came up with a sort of fix for it that I guess I'll go back up there and edit in.

King Zeal is the Flame's Arbiter at this point in time.  Without an Arbiter to attach itself to, the Frozen Flame and thus Lavos has no influence in the mortal world.  In order to destroy its influence and thus Lavos' plan for apotheosis, one must destroy King Zeal.  This is why in Chrono Cross it's so essential that Serge dies.  Unfortunately, in this case, the Frozen Flame isn't being so subtle as it was in CC; just as it does for Antaeus, it pumps fucktons of energy into King Zeal for the final fight, but unlike Antaeus, King Zeal has a ton of inborn magic power - almost as much as his children.  Amplified by the Frozen Flame, he can become a fearsome fighting force.  King Zeal has to die, and somehow Schala has to be the one to effect this.

I wanted a storyline that has Lavos living up to the ultimate ambition of a dark lord; the method by which Lavos intends to become God stems at least partially from the Force, as does the defeat of the Frozen Flame.  The Force is said to bind everything in the universe; it even exists in things that aren't alive, though those things are not integral parts of the life cycle.  It is almost as if life itself is a dream of the Force, in the same way that life in Chrono originates from Zurvan, the sea of dreams.  Under the Force's power statues can defeat crack assassins, beasts can fell armies, and a kid barely out of high school (home school?) can make a torpedo execute a 90 degree turn in less than a second at 70,000 Gs to destroy a moon-sized battle station.  

In the vein of Schala, Palpatine was not destroyed without sacrifice.  He was not destroyed once, but no fewer than three times before he was finally gone forever.  Once was in Return of the Jedi, once was six years later in Dark Empire by Luke and Leia, and once shortly after that when Han Solo shot up his ailing, inferior clone body with a good old-fashioned blaster flurry.  After that, Empatojayos Brand, an aging, long-absent Jedi of the Old Republic, imprisoned the dying Palpatine in his wounded body, destroying his spirit and killing Brand.  Of course, Brand went on to join the Force, while Palpatine went to whatever constitutes eternal separation from it; by being a Sith, he was directly opposing the Force's will, which is that of life.  Death is a part of life, but not death caused by sentient atrocities.

Edit: Bloody hell, you'd think I'd remember that Schala has 6 letters in her name.