Nature of the Sound

[Veloran]

As most everyone knows, the cause of the Final Days in the unsundered world is a topic of much debate. We have only a very sparse description of the Sound's effects of turning the Ancient's magicks back upon them, as well as it's origin as coming from within the planet itself. Naturally, this has led many to the conclusion that the Sound was something like the planet or Lifestream retaliating against the Ancient's overuse of creation magic and laying them low, a story of the Ancient's own hubris leading to their destruction.

However, I don't think this is accurate for a number of reasons. In terms of the narrative, the Ancient's creating their own downfall is much better encapsulated by Hydaelyn and Zodiark themselves, they quite literally created their own gods that were their undoing.

Beyond that, what we know of the Sound doesn't quite fit the precedent set by prior games of the world seeking to defend itself from a neglectful humanity. Even in the likes of FFVII, where the Lifestream spawns monsters set to attack mankind and (potentially) can wipe them out wholesale through the use of a massive spell, it wasn't destroying itself in the process, while in XIV it was. Of course you can simply chalk this up to differences between the games, but it's still very contradictory for the planet to take action to protect itself which directly leads to it becoming a lifeless wasteland.

However, it's occurred to me that we may in fact have a clear clue of what sort of thing the Sound was, a hint that was quite literally placed right in front of our faces.

Bear with me on this. This boss was intentionally placed in the very room detailing the Ancient's destruction by the Ronkans. It wasn't simply residing there by chance, the Ronkans had it bound there for thousands of years with their magicks, before the Scions unintentionally lead it to break loose from it's shackles.

The question we should then ask is, why? Why should they have put it there? As a defensive mechanism? Considering it nearly brings down the entire cavern, and thus could have destroyed the knowledge the Ronkans worked so hard to protect, this seems somewhat unlikely. To answer this, I think we need only stop to consider just what sort of creature this is, a bat, and what sort of attributes it has.

• Bats are flying creatures
• Bats dwell underground
• Bats are known for an association with sound, and this specific bat releases a particularly terrible sound that can kill
• Bats are associated with being vampiric, parasitic, and spreading illness
• This bat was sealed away with ancient advanced magic

Now, I don't know about anybody else, but to me all of this seems like a clear metaphor for what sort of thing the Sound was. Not a bat literally, but a parasitic being which flew to the earth and came to reside within it, before it one day awoke and nearly destroyed the world with it's keening that spread a sort of illness antithetical to life wherever it resounded, which was eventually locked away by the Ancients. All of this is a perfect fit for what the Ancients describe of the Sound.

Well, what does anyone else think? It seems a little too spot on for this boss to have been placed alongside the ancient murals by pure happenstance, by the Ronkans and the developers both.

[Riastrad]

Buddy, I have have been flailing in my attempts to explain such a scenario to the Lore forums at large for awhile now. I agree whole heartedly with your assessment of the situation. There is something there. Something that twists the laws of reaity and changes them to suit it's own ends. A parasite as you said. I will post something I have posted twice now. Bear with me. Please.

Easy, Chrono Cross deals almost exclusively with alternate realities. Considering we supposedly (I almost doubt it) just altered our own timeline, and it was hand waived that the old timeline in which we died was simply cut off and set adrift, an entity like Lavos being the reason the fracture happened (which let us directly affect time) kind of fits a little too well. The best ending in Trigger leads directly into Cross. Lavos itself latched onto Schala in the Darkness beyond Time and began creating split realities to keep itself alive. Becoming the Dream/Time Devourer, a crystalline monster that had a young blonde woman in a white dress bound to it no less. Big hmm moment for me there when I saw the 3.2 patch art.



I don't trust Hydaelyn or the narrative that the Ascians are pushing. I think a parasite has literally wrapped its claws around the very weapons used to stop it. It's just a matter of time till we need to address that issue.





Forgive me the pictures. I don't like having to add so many, but I really needed the visual aids.

I truly believe something like this is happening in the back ground. Whatever Fandaniel is trying to awaken is underground. "The piles have been driven and the first of the beasts has roared to life" is, in my opinion, not referring to the Lunar variant of Bahamut. But something burried deep below. Eating away at the aether of the world. I don't even think it is Lavos of the Chrono series, but something else that fulfills it's own needs in a similar fashion. The Final Fantasy series as you pointed out carries many of the same tropes throughout its games. Alien interference and a draining of the planets resources by malevolent entities are series staples.

[Anonymoose]

There are several lore channels / severs at this point where every time I rabble-rouse about opportunities to loop back around to the Presence of Silvertear Lake, someone starts shouting about Lavos. (Remedi, if you're reading this, yes, you're still in the lead.)

[Kesey]

This is an interesting theory for sure. But I have equated the Ronkans with Allagans, not the Ancients. As they seem to have happened after the Ancients but before Ardbert and company save the world. I also don't think the Allagans and Ronkans are directly related, but just happen at parallel times.

My reason for this is in the first set of caves, before we go Fanow, shows a brief time line of the first.

The first picture seen here is kind of a mystery, but I'm assuming that it represents post-sundered Azem saving the world, but this is just a guess. Or it could be one of the two sets of Ancients summoning Hydaelyn or Zodiark. But it clearly comes first in the sequence:

The second is clearly the Ronkan Empire, which comes after the first picture:

The last one is clearly Ardbert and company defeating Shadowkeeper. This confirms they are in chronological order because we know Ronkan stuff came before Ardbert and company, because Ardbert explores Ronkan places after they are in ruins:

Now I could have read this wrong, but I'd like to hear how it fits into this theory.

[Kesey]

Also the dude sitting on the throne in all the Ronkan pictures is Emet right? Granted there is no proof beyond his penchant for nation building, but has to be his creation too.

[Iscah]

Also the dude sitting on the throne in all the Ronkan pictures is Emet right? Granted there is no proof beyond his penchant for nation building, but has to be his creation too.

I don't see any reason to assume that. Even if he had a hand in Ronka (which is not guaranteed when nations are capable of becoming empires without supernatural meddling) that doesn't automatically mean he was the person on the throne at the point depicted in the illustration.

In any case there are other ways to build empires and meddle with rulers. He never took control of Eulmore but was pulling strings from the shadows.

[MoofiaBossVal]

As Riastrad pointed out, the mural bears a very striking resemblance to Lavos. Which has me worried. I would be very disappointed if the Sound turned out to be yet another god monster final boss#4841. I'd prefer for it to be a metaphysical problem resolved through magical knowledge and pooling the resources from all of our friends, with Zenos simply just blocking the way to implementing the fix, because he knows that we would fight at our hardest then.

[FrightfulNight]

When Emet said the sound emanated within the planet one of the first things that came to mind was Lavos. while again I doubt it would be a 1 for 1 recreation it might be a being partially inspired by Lavos or Jenova, a parasite from beyond the stars that wreaked havoc on the planet from beneath it. It also would not be unprecedented in the existing lore as we already came across such a being before, Ultima. She was described as being parasite like and similar to Omega or Midgardsormr, originating from outside the star, either extraterrestrial or even extradimensional. However I do believe if this is the case then this threat will be saved for after 6.0 since that has long been stated as the end of the Hydalyn/Zodiark storyline and it wouldn't make sense to not focus on that and deal with some new threat then.

My best guess for 6.0 is that we go to Sharlyan as our hub city to see how to deal with the rising chaos and then go to Islabard for our exploration zones to put a stop to the tempering towers and Fandaniels and Zenos's threat. This leads to the final confrontation with Zodiark as Zenos tries to absorb him but hopefully fails and Hydalyn is dealt with in some way or another. However even though Zenos and Fandaniel are defeated, their efforts succeeded in rousing the parasite, maybe not fully awakening it so we have some time to build up the threat, and with Hydalyn and Zodiark now gone, it can begin to resume unimpeded as the Season 2 threat.

[Veloran]

Now I could have read this wrong, but I'd like to hear how it fits into this theory.

I wasn't really equating Ronka with the Ancients, merely stating that Ronka clearly understood the gravity of the information they had in their care. As we see through the quests in Rak-tika, the last emperor of Ronka went through great pains to establish the myriad wards, safeguards, and trials which were all designed to protect their great knowledge, which ultimately turns out to be the ancient murals depicting the Final Days. While the creation of the murals clearly predates the Ronkans themselves, the level of import that was placed on them can only be explained by the Ronka knowing what they represented, and wishing to pass that into the future.

As to how they knew, there could be any number of explanations for that. Emet or another Ascian, for one. Alternatively an Echo-user may have seen those events through interacting with the murals, or perhaps there was some sort of oral tradition dating back to their creation that explained the context. We don't know the specifics, but it's clear the Ronkans were aware somehow.

As Riastrad pointed out, the mural bears a very striking resemblance to Lavos. Which has me worried. I would be very disappointed if the Sound turned out to be yet another god monster final boss#4841. I'd prefer for it to be a metaphysical problem resolved through magical knowledge and pooling the resources from all of our friends, with Zenos simply just blocking the way to implementing the fix, because he knows that we would fight at our hardest then.

In the past I've suggested that the Sound may have been created through the collective unconsciousness of all mankind in the days of the Ancients, inadvertently amalgamating over time in the Lifestream through the use of creation magic until it gained awareness and attempted to end all life. And while I think this is at least as likely an explanation as the Lavos/Jenova-type theory, I do think Hydaelyn and Zodiark already sort of fit the niche narratively for being that sort of issue. But whether the Sound came from elsewhere or was a product of the Ancients themselves somehow, I think we can say outright that it's some sort of entity rather than just a metaphysical problem.

[Kesey]

I wasn't really equating Ronka with the Ancients, merely stating that Ronka clearly understood the gravity of the information they had in their care. As we see through the quests in Rak-tika, the last emperor of Ronka went through great pains to establish the myriad wards, safeguards, and trials which were all designed to protect their great knowledge, which ultimately turns out to be the ancient murals depicting the Final Days. While the creation of the murals clearly predates the Ronkans themselves, the level of import that was placed on them can only be explained by the Ronka knowing what they represented, and wishing to pass that into the future.

As to how they knew, there could be any number of explanations for that. Emet or another Ascian, for one. Alternatively an Echo-user may have seen those events through interacting with the murals, or perhaps there was some sort of oral tradition dating back to their creation that explained the context. We don't know the specifics, but it's clear the Ronkans were aware somehow.

The set painted on the walls west of Slitherbough (the ones I posed above) couldn't have been painted by anyone from the Ancients or Ronka because that would require them to have knowledge of Ardbert's adventures and victory over Shadowkeeper.

Furthermore, all of the paintings (including the ones found after the Ravel) are painted in roughly the same style, implying they had the same painter, but what we know about the history doesn't fit with anyone unless they are immortal and that kinda limits who the painters are.

All of this would have been easy to solve if Emet, Lahabrea, or Elidibus claimed to like to paint history, but none of them ever say anything like that. I also got the impression that when Emet sees the paintings after the Ravel, he is either seeing them for the first time or hasn't seen them in such a long time that he forgot until he was reminded by seeing them again.