You know, the majority of this thread should really be split into another topic, as it goes massively off-topic for at least a good 8 pages right after the first 10 posts or so.
I find it necessary to necro this topic because I noticed that the Compendium's encyclopedia has
two articles on Bekkler that both only give one possible explanation as to his identity when clearly there are more.
Before even finding this site, I personally had always assumed that Norstein Bekkler was Belthasar's ghost wandering throughout time. Even though Belthasar copied his memory into the nu before dying, this is to say nothing about his actual soul, which presumably still has the original set of his memories. That's always the problem with trying to remain immortal by copying your memories into clones; from your clone's perspective and from the rest of the world's perspective, you're still "alive," but from your (the original's) perspective, you're dead. Given that Belthasar spent so much of his life trying to overcome the laws of time, it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to say that his spirit would be able to transcend it to a degree. The fact that Bekkler is a tad on the nutty side completely fits in with Belthasar's self-diagnosed declining sanity towards the time of his death, and also explains why he took on the alternate name and ego. As for how the nu copy knew of Bekkler, the ghost could have easily appeared before him himself at some point. Same with how Gaspar knew of him, though Gaspar presumably could have also learned just by spying throughout time.
Kyronea in particular gave another very interesting alternative explanation in
this topic. In summary, it suggested that every guru had their own dream entity(ies); Melchior: Masa/Mune/Doreen(?), Gaspar: Spekkio, Belthasar: Norstein Bekkler. Melchior's dream entities are already well established, and Spekkio being Gaspar's dream entity is at least suggested by
Chrono'99 in the
Spekkio origin encyclopedia article, but there is no such mention in the articles for Bekkler. I actually like this idea better than my own; it unifies the gurus in yet another aspect. Bekkler is totally whimsical and transcendent enough in nature to be a dream entity, and again makes a good alter-ego for Belthasar who was starting to go crazy.
