Sealed Doors, Past and Future, and the Mammon Machine

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Posts: 388

(11/13/08 9:01 PM)

Regular

I C I got the room mixed up with the room the Mammon Machine was in. *hymm* I'll have to play that part again.

Edit: Changed "Mammoth machine" to "Mammon Machine". I never knew I was so careless with words.

Last Edited By: empcrono 11/13/08 10:57 PM. Edited 1 times.

CTcronoboy

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Posts: 3093

(11/15/08 12:32 AM)

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I don't think that the pendant is specifically the only thing that can open the doors. For one in 2300 the Nu opens to Sealed Door to the Epoch when you originally get it. What is most likely the case is that the doors are sealed by magic and if that magic force is manipulated correctly the door will open. Basically a key of sorts. The pendant would be a kind of key since they group would have no way to know how to manipulate the doors locking mechanism. As Cors said anyone that was behind any of those doors has high magical ability so this is the most likely case as to how the doors are opened.

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.

Magus 86

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Posts: 33

(12/13/08 7:21 PM)

Regardless of how anybody other than Crono & Co. can open the doors, the ones in the future HAVE to have been made by Belthasar, for obvious reasons. Some already stated, some not... I find it highly unlikely that these doors would just happen to have survived. If they did, where the heck were they between 12k BC and 2300 AD? Those domes weren't there during those times either, so they would have to have been built. Also, even if it does require Lavos's energy to open the doors, and even if Belthasar wouldn't want to use that power, he wouldn't have much of a choice. If you think about it... why would he not have a special door protecting his time machine? He wouldn't want it to get into the hands of just anybody. Plus, anybody who would be able to open the doors would have to have visited Zeal first. He planned for someone to find it, so maybe he really did have something to do with Lucca's experiment going wrong and sending Marle back in time.

Maybe Belthasar is the one pulling the strings the entire time. He somehow knows that someone will come to his time and open the door. Also, inside his dome, he has means for bringing back a lost life. Why would he have all that unless he planned for someone to use it? The message he leaves behind is rather specific to the situation. I can't imagine he ever expected anybody from the future coming around. He resides in a very secluded area, and those who know of him think that he's a crazy old geezer. We learn in Chrono Cross that he apparently left the future to go to the time of Serge and Kid. He knew of and expected Serge to show up in Viper Manor. He even created a smaller version of the Epoch. So maybe, just maybe, before all of this crap took place, he went zipping around time, pulling strings here and there. Maybe he messed with Lucca's Telepod. Maybe he messed with or replaced the pendant Marle had with one that would interfere. Who knows? He seems to understand much more about what's going on throughout both games than anybody else. Hell, maybe Belthasar is the Entity. Maybe after he arrived in the future, he started to remake the Epoch so that he could hopefully one day return to Zeal, or maybe he wanted to find out as much as he could about Lavos to try and find a way he could stop it himself. Maybe then he found out that he was powerless to do anything, so he searched for the strongest warriors throughout the history of the earth and set everything in motion so they would join forces and defeat Lavos. Who knows??

Personally though, I think that Schala is the entity because of what happened in CC. And also, in the CT DS ending, we see that she can apparently send people, or at least her own brother, to different periods of time. I'm sure she can do other things we don't even know about. And we know she can apparently clone herself. She somehow knew about Serge. She created Kid so that Kid could save Serge, so that Serge could get the Chrono Cross and free her. Maybe her original plan was to simply destroy Lavos and it backfired, or maybe that was Belthasar's plan, but it caused problems for Schala.

We can sit here and speculate/debate all we want, but we'll never get answers unless we get another game(or maybe there's more hidden goodness in CT for DS). I'd personally like to know exactly what caused the time devourer in the first place. And I want loose ends between CT and CC to be tied up... and damnit, I want an explanation for the video of those two shadowy figures fighting each other, thus ending Guardia's reign... And how Porre got strong enough to defeat Guardia in the first place... I'm guessing the elements, but where did the elements come from in the first place? Bah... My head's starting to spin.

"Oh, how dreadful. Say, can you hear that? It's the sound of the Reaper..."

Corsair5

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Posts: 1611

(12/29/08 6:46 AM)

Moderator - Library

I'm of the opinion that the Entity is a genuinely God-like entity, or possibly the Planet's consciousness. I find the concept that Schala or Balthasar have the power that the Entity is suggested to have rather unlikely.

ctnovelist

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Posts: 2572

(12/30/08 11:45 PM)

CT Novelist/Project Leader

Haha--wow, Magus86, I think my head is spinning after just reading your post! But, yes, we all want those answers!

Following the original intent of this topic, I maintain that all of the magical doors existing in 2300 were indeed created by Belthsar. Similarly to the Epoch, he must have had items of significance that he didn't want to fall into the wrong hands, so he scattered them throughout the various remaining facilities and sealed them with his doors.

I enjoyed reading the interesting speculations about HOW the doors are opened. Indeed, all we can know for sure is that Crono and friends can only make it happen with the pendant. As for everyone else, I agree that they probably possessed "keys" or powers of their own with the ability to produce similar effects. We know that the Gurus made the pendant, so they certainly could have made other similar objects. These objects just didn't as effectively get passed down through time, or they simply stayed with their carriers as they got whisked away into Lavos's portal. That explains how Belthasar could make and control more doors in the Future. It could mean that Melchior actually had some amount of "red rock" in his cabin the whole time. And, if Gaspar had something, then I guess he just wasn't very nice for not sharing it with our heroes early on.

While there is very interesting evidence to support Belthasar being the Entity, I doubt it's the case. Everything he did relied on the magic of Zeal, and based on the way Crono and the others got there, there's no way Belthasar could have known that they would actually end up there at some point. Everything that happened to that point is simply too impossible for a human to orchestrate, as it all relied heavily on specific events in times past, present, and future to Belthasar. Everything he did in the Future relied on Zealian technology because he hoped to the point of despair that someone possessing the ability to break the seal would come. And come they did, just in the nick of time. Belthasar is not the Entity but one of the Entity's greatest tools.

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Corsair5

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Posts: 1612

(01/08/09 3:26 AM)

Moderator - Library

Also, Balthasar was just a man. He had no special powers. No one except Lavos and the Entity were ever suggested to have any power over the Gates. And while you might suggest that the Blue Gates are all just coincidental, The Red Gate at the Campsite is a little much to swallow Balthasar doing just out of the goodness of his heart, especially given that with the Gate Rules as the game presents them it is impossible, the Red Gate transfers Lucca across both Time and Space.

CTcronoboy

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Posts: 3096

(01/11/09 11:41 PM)

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I agree with the notion that Belthasar cannot be the Entity. He would have had to have known WAY too much beforehand for that theory to be correct. Under the Entity theory he would have sent himself to 2300 AD which would make no sense considering he could have done his Lavos research at anytime in history. He did not need to be stranded in a dead time going slowly insane trying to figure out how to get back to Zeal.

CTDS actually explains the endings with the shadowy figures. So you should definitely buy it!

Magus 86

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Posts: 43

(02/11/09 9:11 PM)

Oh really, it does, Cronoboy?? I won't have money for a long time and don't plan to buy a DS just to play a game I've already played countless times, so would you mind explaining that ending for me, or pointing me in the right direction? I'd really like to know more about that video.

Okay, good points... I guess Belthasar can't really be the entity, if there even is one, that is, at least not if the entity is the only one that has control over gates. But there's something else to consider yet... Maybe there is no entity. Maybe Lavos saw the Gurus as a threat and split them up so they couldn't combine their intelligence and find a way to stop him... Wait, no, scratch that... He would have simply destroyed them. Hmm...

I dunno then, but Belthasar definitely seems to know a lot more than he should. Some of the things he has and does are very specific. Unless he knew what was going to happen before it happened(which is very possible, considering he has a time machine), why would he just randomly have information on how to use the Chrono Trigger and where to find a clone? How could he possibly know? What are the chances that he would just randomly go to the Millenial Fair and meet Norstein Bekkler, find that interesting, and program information about it into his Nu to be repeated later to random people who might not even show up? It just seems way too coincidental... So if there really is an entity, and it has power over the gates, then he's clearly not the entity. However, he could just as easily be the entity's... "sidekick."

Schala still seems like the most likely visible character to be the entity given what we know she can do... but there is still a problem with that. If I remember correctly, Schala got stuck in the ocean palace because she used the last of her pendant's power to send the party away. Supposedly she got thrown into the tesserect(a place where things go when they are erased from existence). For one reason or another, when Lavos was also sent to the tesserect after being defeated, he and Schala fused, forming the time devourer. I'm guessing that fusing with Lavos gave her new powers, like the ability to clone herself and send that clone to a different time. So then logically, Schala could not be the entity, because the events that occur in Chrono Trigger occur BECAUSE the gates are there. If Schala were the entity, the gates wouldn't exist until after you defeated Lavos. But without the gates, you wouldn't know about Lavos. And also, the time devourer isn't created until the game is over...

So we're right back where we started... Hooray!

"Oh, how dreadful. Say, can you hear that? It's the sound of the Reaper..."

ctnovelist

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Posts: 2586

(02/23/09 12:01 AM)

CT Novelist/Project Leader

Haha, good job taking us full circle! You may have to email CTboy to get the answer out of him about the ending. I'm not sure he'll post it here.

I revert to what I said before, that Belthasar is probably not the Entity but is definitely a tool of the Entity's. You bring up an interesting point, though, which is that of Norstein Bekkler. He's an often glazed-over part of this whole thing, a seemingly pointless non-playable character. However, that's obviously not the case, due to his role in the revival of Crono and the fact that Belthasar knows about him. This leads me to think that Bekkler probably has some ties to Zeal as opposed to Belthasar having ever traveled to 1000. We already have evidence that beings besides the gurus were also set apart from Zeal in the example of Spekkio. Bekkler could be a similar case. Any other reasons or explanations for his existence and knowledge are simply not provided to us by the existing CT storyline.

Otherwise, you don't get to be the Guru of Reason just for having a good resume. Belthasar's just THAT good.

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Ultimate Artist

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Posts: 15

(08/01/09 1:19 AM)

Like I've said before, I firmly believe the entity is the anti-Lavos puppet master, putting everything in a proper place to lead to Lavos' destruction. So it wouldn't be much of a stretch to believe that the entity imparted a vast amount of wisdom to anyone it pleased to achieve its purpose.

And I'm sorry but its been a LONG time since I've played the game, so can someone tell me whats all this about the time devourer/ Lavos/ schala????? Oh, and I've never played CC either.... And I'd like to know aboot that cut scene too.

ctnovelist

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Posts: 2612

(08/08/09 7:55 PM)

CT Novelist/Project Leader

Well, if you haven't played CC, then that would explain your confusion. In short, the Time Devourer is an infusion of Lavos and Schala. This happened when Schala was cast into the Darkness Beyond Time following the Ocean Palace incident. The best place for you to get the details on this, aside from playing the game, is probably the Chrono Compendium. I'm not sure which cut scene you're referring to, but those are all part of the PSX and DS versions of Chrono Trigger. You can also download the full collection of PSX cut scenes from ChronoTrigger.info (just follow the Videos link in the menu).

Chrono Trigger Novel Project: Serving the Chrono and literary communities through the meticulous and ambitious creation of a CT novel for all to enjoy.

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Ultimate Artist

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Posts: 19

(08/11/09 2:59 PM)

Yeah since I posted that response I've read up a lot on the Compendium. I didn't even know about that site until I got involved in this one. Thats some cool stuff. I get it now.

ctnovelist

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Posts: 2620

(08/11/09 6:10 PM)

CT Novelist/Project Leader

Yep, they've got a...well...compendium of information over there.

Chrono Trigger Novel Project: Serving the Chrono and literary communities through the meticulous and ambitious creation of a CT novel for all to enjoy.

Main Site
Forum
Operation Ultimate Victory (Novel Petition)

Ultimate Artist

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Posts: 24

(08/12/09 6:33 PM)

lol

Yuku free message boards

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