Magus Vs Lavos

[Swordmaster]

[Belthasar]
   To those who opened the door...
   
   I am Belthasar, the Guru of Reason.
   I once lived in the kingdom of Zeal.
   
   A great disaster in Zeal somehow
   threw me into this era.
   
   To my surprise, Lavos exists here, and,
   I suspect, in other periods as well.
   Aeons ago, Lavos descended from the
   heavens.

   Burrowing deep into the the world's
   core, he began to consume our planet's
   energy, and grow stronger.

   Lavos disappeared briefly when he
   was summoned away by a mighty
   wizard who lived in Guardia, in the
   year 600.

   In 1999, Lavos claims this area, and
   reigns from high atop Death Peak.

   Lavos continues to replicate......
   like a giant parasite, he is consuming
   our world.
   ...

If i understand well, the bold text say that Lavos disappeared when summoned by Magus ,so it can bring an idea that Magus was victorious , at least for some time.
But this bring some question:
1. Does this happens because Crono interference in Magus's castle or happens in the Lavos Time line too?

2. What happened to Lavos in reality?

What the Compendium think about this?

[Radical_Dreamer]

Belthasar's scanning for Lavos was probably done where he knew to look: underground. Magus summons Lavos to his castle, so he wouldn't have been at his usual resting point at that time, nor would there have been an obvious physical motion from his hole.

[Symmetry]

From what I can remember:

In the natural Pre-CT timeline, Magus attempts to summon Lavos to his castle just like he is doing when Chrono & crew find him when they storm it.

In the natural timeline, he is successful and we assume he has his chance to fight Lavos. However, just as he does in the Ocean Palace, he loses - and here there is no one to save him. In all probability, he dies.

In the CT timeline, the party interrupts Magus before he has the chance to fight Lavos. However, he is already in the process of summoning and the interference results in the party being thrown back to the Prehistoric Ages while Magus finds himself thrown back to the Dark Ages. Something in Magus' text right after you defeat him suggested to me that he was successful in the process of calling forth Lavos, but due to Chrono, Frog, and whoever standing around, he is caught off-guard and merely pushed aside by Lavos rather than being defeated outright.

In either timeline, Belthasar's claims stand - or at least, that's the way it appears to me.

[ZeaLitY]

I'd just like to add a note I remembered today; though the incantation might have been incomplete, Magus's 'Risking a spell' throughout the ensuing battle might have contributed to the problem. Keyword: risk.

[GrayLensman]

If the Pocket Dimension theory is considered, Belthasar's statement has even deeper meaning.

It is possible that when Magus summoned Lavos, he physically transported it from the pocket dimension to his castle, in normal space-time.  Because Lavos would be absent from the pocket dimension, it would appear have vanished for all time.  After Magus failed to defeat Lavos, it would return to the pocket and reappear for all time.

[V_Translanka]

I'd just like to add that in the Regular timeline, where Magus presumably succeeds in summoning Lavos, it's still possible that Lavos still creates a gate and sends Magus off to who-knows-where. Not entirely relevant, but still just as likely.

[Radical_Dreamer]

More likely, Lavos just killed him and went back to sleep.

[GrayLensman]

I'd just like to add that in the Regular timeline, where Magus presumably succeeds in summoning Lavos, it's still possible that Lavos still creates a gate and sends Magus off to who-knows-where. Not entirely relevant, but still just as likely.

If this were to occur, and Time Bastard applies, the "new" Magus would be sent into the DBT instead of 12,000 BC.

[Leebot]

I'd just like to add that in the Regular timeline, where Magus presumably succeeds in summoning Lavos, it's still possible that Lavos still creates a gate and sends Magus off to who-knows-where. Not entirely relevant, but still just as likely.

If this were to occur, and Time Bastard applies, the "new" Magus would be sent into the DBT instead of 12,000 BC.

Time Bastard only protects travelers against their own interventions. Assuming the initial time travel of Crono & Co. is unrelated to Magus' travel (a pretty safe assumption), the "new" Magus may be preserved.

[GrayLensman]

Time Bastard only protects travelers against their own interventions. Assuming the initial time travel of Crono & Co. is unrelated to Magus' travel (a pretty safe assumption), the "new" Magus may be preserved.

Why do you make this distinction?  A change to the timeline is a change to the timeline, regardless of who caused it.  The principle behind Time Bastard is that duplicate entities may not exist.  If one version of Magus time travels and thus becomes immune to any changes to his past world line, what happens to the new version of Magus created by Crono's time traveling?  Once the new Magus catches up to where the old Magus' world line took off, two versions of Magus would exist on the timeline.

[Symmetry]

Curious -

If Magus had indeed been warped through time AGAIN in the Lavos Timeline, would that not become an immutible fact of history too? We should see him appear somewhere ELSE as well, if that did happen....

If Magus had lived and been thrown elsewhere, I get the impression he'd make a scene there trying to get back at Lavos, but he doesn't. That suggests to me that his death is the most probable answer here.

[Leebot]

First of all, sorry for a bit of confusion there. I used an argument that probably wasn't the most fitting for this case. I'm currently in the process of devising a comprehensive theory governing the laws of time-travel, which would dictate that in this case, the "new" Magus would survive. Let me give an example of how the Time Bastard theory wouldn't quite work out, using a possible instance of CT, and a few extrapolations:

Crono is in 1000 AD, with the charged pendant. He goes to Porre village and sees two black chests. He grabs the treasure in the first chest, but leaves the second alone. He travels back to Porre in 600 AD and sees both chests again. He again grabs the treasure in the first chest, and powers up the treasure in the second chest. He returns to Porre of 1000 AD and sees that only the second chest is there, with the powered-up treasure. Obviously, his actions in 600 AD have affected what he sees before him.

Start Extrapolation: Crono asks a resident who's been watching this room in 1000 AD what happened earlier. The resident looks at him funny, and says, "Well, you came in, looked at the chests, and left." No mention of the fact that he took the treasure previously, as he didn't in this new timeline. He's hearing a tale of what the "new" Crono, created in this timeline, did. What happened to this "new" Crono? When he traveled back to 600 AD, he coincided with the old Crono, and was sent to the DBT.

The point of this comes when one considers all the previous jumps Crono made (or could have made) before he arrived in 1000 AD at the beginning of this narrative. All of these actions would have been rewritten for the "new" Crono once Crono changed something in 600 AD. In this case, the "new" Crono took precedence over the old Crono in all jumps leading up to the "old" Crono's arrival in 600 AD in the middle of this narrative.

[GrayLensman]

What happens if the new version of Crono opened the chest?

[Leebot]

In that case, "old" Crono would arrive in 1000 AD to find both chests gone. What happens to the treasure is less definite. Since it wouldn't come into conflict with an alternate version of itself in the voyage back to 600 AD, it may make it through and appear mysteriously in "old" Crono's inventory. It may not go through whichever time portal is used and stay in 1000 AD. Or it may just be lost to time along with "new" Crono. I'd bet on one of the first two possibilities, as they would maintain a conservation of energy (Granted, the conservation of energy theorem would have to be revised so it operates over 5 dimensions, but that's another issue).

Of course, gameplay evidence shows that "new" Crono didn't/wouldn't open the chest. It's possible a theorem could exist that "new" time travelers mirror the actions of their "old" counterparts as closely as possible.

[GrayLensman]

Remember, the events of Chrono Trigger are guided by a benevolent Entity.  Although it would not violate any laws for Crono to take the chest, he doesn't.  However, the original events are only preserved when it is convenient, as shown in 12,000 BC.

A similar question is how these intermediate versions of Crono would react to the appearance of the Black Omen?  Wouldn't the new version of Magus prior to 600 AD, investigate?  Speculation aside, we know that no significant change occurred.  I wonder whether this phenomenon could have had anything to do with the disappearance of the Moon Stone.

Time traveler immunity and Time Bastard can cause a great deal of weirdness.  Consider this scenario:

Crono and Robo warp to 2300 AD in the Epoch, and Robo disembarks at the Arris Dome.  If Crono travels to the End of Time, leaving Robo in the future, Robo will not experience any change.  However, if Crono proceeds to 1999 AD through the bucket and defeats Lavos, the entire future timeline would be sent into the DBT.  In the new timeline that is created, new versions of Crono and Robo will arrive in 2300 AD from the same point as before because they have time traveler's immunity.  Much to their surprise, the world is restored and Chronopolis is under construction.  At the point in time when Crono originally left, the new Crono and the Epoch would be sent into the DBT.  If Robo warped to the End of Time, he would find the original version of Crono, just returned from defeating Lavos.