Was there ever a timeline that Lavos never appeared on Earth?

[V_Translanka]

I'm curious to know why you would put meaningless in italic form...

I use quotes as a form of emphasis to a point.

I'm not sorry to have a different ideal and/or mindset as you on what you would think 'What's fact/fiction/what ifs in the Chrono Universe'.

It's not that you're wrong, it's just that there's no basis holding up your "ideals". So there was certainly no apology necessary. I mean, if this were for a fanfic or something, then perhaps I could see the reasoning behind the thought...but to just so wildly suppose for no other real reason than to create this wild what if scenario...I just don't understand.

I should mention that my 'what if' scenario is if SE should decide that Lavos is still existant in some shape or form/still a threat to Earth in a (hopeful) future sequel.

I...don't see how...

Lavos just seems to be a persistent character after playing Chrono Cross, after knowing that it had developped emotions(you just know it from dialogue in the game), negative emotions to be precise, you can't help but feel that it'll be not just persistent, but VERY persistent, it wants REVENGE, and that emotion is a bitch and can't be calmed just by getting beat up(twice) by a few schmucks on an adventure(forgive me Crono & Serge, just making a point lol).

Lavos did what now...? I don't even know if you could really say that Lavos was trying to do (sorry if you don't understand the usage of italics again) anything in Cross, really, but survive. The threat that occurs is from the Devourer of Time merely coming into existence...With the Chrono Cross, you effectively erase Lavos from said existence before it really has a chance to fully merge with Schala...that one would certainly be quite a bitch to come back from...and I think we learned from Radical Dreamers that Lavos is not the be-all, end-all, must-have end boss in the Chronoverse...

[Eske]

Now this is the timeline after Marle gets sent back in time;

Everything up until 600AD - Remains the same.

600AD - Leene is at one point captured by mystics and a search party is sent. Search party finds Marle whom they mistakenly take for Queen Leene of Guardia.

600AD~1000AD - No idea what happens here, Marle might act tomboy and eventually leave Guardia for a way back home and never realizing that she's in the past; The real Leene might eventually be found; both, one or the other, none, or something entirely different might happen; We just don't know. Looking at a Chrono Cross angle, the rest of original timeline would get dumped into the Darkness Beyond Time.

1000AD - This era should now be different, then having a Marle existing in this time period, since the one from the original timeline lived and died of old age(realistically saying) nearly 400 years ago.

1000AD~End of Time - Unknown what happens.
 

Hmm.  If Marle goes back in time she changes history so Crono and Lucca and everyone should immediately recall that the Queen was found in Truce Canyon instead of the Cathedral.  But wait, Marle threatens her own life and ends up being sent to the DBT because the real Queen dies. Which means that Marle never went to the fair in the first place.    Isn't this what Time Error is for? Because Queen Leene had not died "yet" (yay 5D construct) it doesn't threaten Marle's existence at the fair before the Telepod incident.   right?  maybe?

[chrono eric]

I always assumed that the Reptite timeline was a timeline in which Lavos never fell, and I could have sworn that I remembered hearing exactly that in Chrono Cross, but when I checked the script:

   

   But the fall of Lavos to the
   planet, and the resulting
   Ice Age this brought about,
   rang the death knell for the
   Reptites and their civilization.
   After that the Reptites
   slowly disappeared from
   the stage of history.
   However, in the distant past
   humans could have been defeated
   in the contest of evolution,
   and the Reptites could have
   continued to develop...
   It is not unthinkable that
   such a time line could exist
   in other dimensions.

It does not explicitly say that Lavos never fell in the Reptite timeline. But I think it definitely heavily implies that. In CT, the humans were on the verge of becoming extinct because the Reptites were superior. This quote shows that the Reptites were indeed wiped out because of Lavos' fall, which is important. Obviously the Reptites would have won out if Lavos never came, which is what is implied in the game, even though it's not directly stated.

Here's an interesting plot-twist: Lavos presumably originated from another planet, where it was the spawn of a previous Lavos that had fallen to that planet, manipulated that planet's history and evolution, and then trashed it and reproduced. Now, suppose some time travellers from that planet succeeded in defeating Lavos in that dimension? Then the Lavos we all know and love would never have fallen to earth and the Reptites would have defeated the humans. This would be a possible scenario for the Reptite dimension.

[Fireseal]

I guess we should just wait until Chrono Brake/Break to say that there is a timeline that Lavos never showed up. Until then, I would still think that all timelines in the chrono universe originated with Lavos crashing on the Earth.

Also to further prove that Reptites can survive even with Lavos in the scene.. CT:DS's Lost Sanctum, but then again Magus(I had him in the lead at the time) said that it was a portal to another dimension... I'll look around to see if there is a topic about the Lost Sanctum.

[Xenterex]

Huh, that is an interesting implication. If there was a timeline in which Lavos never appeared on earth, then that would require that the timelime must have been altered so that Lavos would appear on earth. That implies that Lavos falling to earth was itself the result of a time traveler.

Either Lavos existed on early in earth's most original timeline, or he came into existence on earth as the result of some unknown force manipulating time.

Or it was a previous attempt as a means to saving the planet  (having Lavos not land) that then produced an unwanted future of some sort.  In dealing with megalomaniac schemes, I think that various alternatives were not pursued for a reason.  If I remember right (and I suspect I do so I'm not going to look it up)  Azala knew the fate of the reptites was sealed when Lavos would hit the planet.  That's why  (she?)  was willing to do a final battle despite having advantages in simply delaying it (as they were superior.)  In order for their to be a reptite timeline, Lavos would need not hit the planet at that early a stage in evolutionary development (or even at all.)  My impression from Cross is that their are infinite possibilities corresponding to time and dimensions, so because there are infinite possibilities that 'could be' then one possibility would be "what if lavos didn't...."  and thus there 'can be' a reptite timeline to be pulled into the Lavos one.

[ZeaLitY]

The fulcrum for saying quasi-conclusively that Lavos wasn't around for the Reptite Dimension is the fact that Dragonian civilization still existed in the 2400 A.D. (presumably) of their timeline. They had created the Dragon God and established their own advanced society, and yet, Lavos hadn't destroyed them as he did humanity, which probably was becoming a threat due to new advents in technology and science. All the Dragonian literature seems to treat Lavos and humanity in the same foreign breath.

[Zergplex]

Huh, that is an interesting implication. If there was a timeline in which Lavos never appeared on earth, then that would require that the timelime must have been altered so that Lavos would appear on earth. That implies that Lavos falling to earth was itself the result of a time traveler.

Either Lavos existed on early in earth's most original timeline, or he came into existence on earth as the result of some unknown force manipulating time.

There is another implication that makes a lot more sense to me. That Lavos himself is a time traveler, and the world seperated because of his arrival on the planet. He already know Lavos has great powers over time, so I don't see it as much of a stretch.

Or the arrival of a creature of his power can itself fracture the dimensions...

My first thought following this line of thought is 'Could the dimensions (keystone and reptite) be combined into an ideal dimension, and what would that world be...

[placidchap]

There is another implication that makes a lot more sense to me. That Lavos himself is a time traveler, and the world seperated because of his arrival on the planet. He already know Lavos has great powers over time, so I don't see it as much of a stretch.

Or a dimension traveler...or even a time-dimension traveler.

[Fireseal]

The way I always imagined it, Earth had one dimension.. Until Lavos crashed on the planet, resulting in countless dimensions being formed. But now I think that new dimensions were only starting to be formed when Marle was first transported into 600AD, because she had made a change in the past. Further into the adventure, more and more dimensions are being formed, but all have the history of Lavos crashing on Earth, regardless of what occurs in that dimension, like the reptites having their own dimension, who knows they could have survived the Ice Age on their own had Crono and Co. not interfered.

[chrono eric]

The way I always imagined it, Earth had one dimension.. Until Lavos crashed on the planet, resulting in countless dimensions being formed. But now I think that new dimensions were only starting to be formed when Marle was first transported into 600AD, because she had made a change in the past. Further into the adventure, more and more dimensions are being formed, but all have the history of Lavos crashing on Earth, regardless of what occurs in that dimension, like the reptites having their own dimension, who knows they could have survived the Ice Age on their own had Crono and Co. not interfered.

This is actually how I used to think time travel worked in the Chronoverse, but we know from the script of Cross that this is not so - a new dimension is not formed every time someone goes back in time and alters the future.

[Fireseal]

Sorry to necropost(if that is even the correct term), but I was trying to look for a map of 65000000BC(as I am writing a prehistoric CT fanfic) I came to notice where it says the Chronology for each dimension, that it says;

"Reptite Timeline
-History of this dimension is largely unknown; Lavos is not present.
-Reptites presumably conquer the early humans."


I don't believe at any point in Chrono Cross, that it hinted that Lavos was not present in a specific dimension. I think I would remember if it said so, since it is a important thing to remember. But I could have forgotten it.. Anyway, I'm currently reading the entire Chrono Cross script at work(fun time) to see if I overlooked something. But if someone knows for sure that Lavos never crashed on Earth in the Reptite timeline, please quote it from the game and not the compendium. Thanks.

[FaustWolf]

Wow, this issue has been bugging me for a few months and I didn't even know there was a thread on it until now.

As ZeaLitY said, the best we can probably do is infer that Lavos was never present in the Dragonian dimension based on the factors he mentioned. If we go with this, it opens up a great discussion on the factors that would determine whether Lavos impacted the Chrono world in the first place.

Was the Dragonian dimension just the result of random chance, with Lavos' path from a distant world deflected by a bit of space dust it had a probability of encountering during a long journey?

Or, if Lavos should have a 100% chance of striking the Chrono world, could Lavos actually be the result of the Dragonian Dimension? Sort of like, how in the Terminator series, there should have been an original dimension in which John Connor defeated Skynet and nobody was sent back in time, but Skynet sent a Terminator back in time to kill him, thus creating a new John Connor + Ahnold dimension. If the Dragonians got into a war with a space faring civilization in the future, one side or the other may have created Lavos as a big, spiny Terminator.

A third theory that strikes me as having a hint of plausibility is that Azala used her telekinesis to deflect Lavos' path toward the planet in the Keystone dimensions, but decided not to do so in the Dragonian dimension. Faced with defeat, Azala may have adopted the Hitlerian attitude: "My people were defeated, so they don't even deserve to live," and subsequently she used the nuclear option. Either that, or it would be like Hitler having a nuclear bomb in his bunker and decided to use it to take out as many enemies as possible in a last, desperate show of force.

[Fireseal]

Hey FaustWolf, I never thought about it that way, how Lavos might be the result because the Dragonian Dimension exists.. I do understand your Terminator reference, although I'm not very familiar with that series(as I have only watched the 3rd one), but nonetheless I do understand it and I like it.
But the typical player can't help but think that the entire Chrono Universe is because of Lavos, therefore anything that exists in that universe must have the influence of Lavos, even the Reptite dimension.

[Thought]

Was the Dragonian dimension just the result of random chance, with Lavos' path from a distant world deflected by a bit of space dust it had a probability of encountering during a long journey?

The incredible difficulty of hitting something the size of earth on an intergalactic scale makes me think that Lavos must have intentionally been heading for earth. The statistical probability of blinding firing an object from one planet and having it hit another planet in another solar system is too astronomical, to my mind, to suppose that a species could propagate that way.

So while I have no evidence for that, I would say that the Dragonian Dimension couldn't have been the result of random chance.

Or, if Lavos should have a 100% chance of striking the Chrono world, could Lavos actually be the result of the Dragonian Dimension?

I really like that idea. If Kato had been more active in creating characters (like Starky), I would even suppose that Starky was included for this very reason. And, if there was ever a timeline in which Lavos did not fall, the very fact that there is now a timeline in which he did fall implies that history was changed between the two. That is, a time traveler would have had to have been involved. And unless we assume that time is predetermined (which is, admittedly, hinted at in the game), then that couldn't have been Crono & Co.

A third theory that strikes me as having a hint of plausibility is that Azala used her telekinesis to deflect Lavos' path toward the planet in the Keystone dimensions, but decided not to do so in the Dragonian dimension.

Meh... Azala seems to take it as fate that her people were going to die out:

   Though it may be our fate to
   perish, we will not simply hand this
   world over to you!

   No...It can't be...!
   Could the heavens truly have sided
   with the apes?

Ayla: Come!
   Azala!
   Come!

AZALA: Absolutely not!
   The powers that be have spoken.

While it certainly appears that Azala would rather no one live if the Reptites are to die, the doom that came to Sarnath -- I mean, to the Reptites -- seems to be something out of his and "the apes" control.

The Reptites weren't defeated when Azala was telling the "Star" to fall and stain the earth "Red." So why summon it?

Mutually assured destruction only really works when one's own destruction is assured.

[FaustWolf]

Starky's people were interested in possibly taking over the Chrono world IIRC, at least as presented in an alternate ending in CC (I think it was the one where Dark Serge visited the bar in Termina).

Sounds like the Dragonians and Starky's peeps may have gotten into it in a previous timeline.