Lavos
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Lavos (ラヴォス Ravosu?) is the main antagonist in the console role-playing game Chrono Trigger.
Lavos is a parasitic alien who fell from the skies in 65,000,000 B.C., its impact resulting in an ice age and its eventual resurfacing, in 1999 A.D. resulted in the apocalypse. In the North American version of the game, it is claimed once in the series that Lavos directly influenced all technology and life on the planet, evolving the planet's life forms to cultivate it, and make itself stronger (as Magus puts it, "We were created only to be harvested. All people... and all living things..."). However, the line is absent in the Japanese version. Prior to Lavos' arrival on the planet, the natural "dreamstone" was a substance responsible for the first evolution of the human beings, from animal apes to sentient creatures. In Chrono Cross, Lavos is given credit for the creation and advancement of the actual modern human species.
Not much is known about Lavos's origins. Upon hitting the planet, it burrows into the depths of the planet so as to slowly gain strength over millions of years. Additionally, upon impact, a splinter of Lavos's shell broke off. This becomes the focal point of Chrono Cross, the Frozen Flame.
Its name is coined by Ayla in 65,000,000 B.C., roughly meaning "Big Fire" ("la" meaning fire, and "vos" meaning "big"). By 12,000 B.C., a magical kingdom known as the Kingdom of Zeal comes into power by harnessing the power of Lavos with a machine known as the Mammon Machine to keep the kingdom prosperous and afloat above the frozen wastes of the world below. This proves to be the kingdom's undoing as Lavos becomes irritated when the Mammon Machine is moved to a power plant on the bottom of the ocean and arises to destroy Zeal and most of the planet (although not as severely as in 1999 A.D.). Lavos then once again burrows deep into the earth eventually becoming forgotten by humanity.
In 1999 A.D. on the Day of Lavos, it surfaces, rains fire down upon the world and produces on the Death Peak mountain offspring that seek to colonize other planets. This time it devastates the futuristic human society, and by 2300 A.D., humans lived in scattered colonies, trying to survive against the burned out atmosphere.
After a party of adventurers discover time travel and the fate of humanity, they travel through time and eventually defeat Lavos, leading to the events of Radical Dreamers/Chrono Cross.
In the final battle between the heroes and Lavos in Chrono Trigger, Lavos has three different forms. The first form is the outer shell. It combines the attack patterns of nine different bosses from the game: Dragon Tank, Guardian and the Bits, Heckran, Zombor, Masamune, Nizbel, Magus, Azala and the Black Tyrano, and Giga Gaia. After Lavos emulates these bosses, the player must fight the Outer Shell on its own. It is possible to skip the entire outer shell by using the Epoch to smash through Lavos's shell, resulting in a different ending.
Once the party defeats the outer shell, the party members go inside to fight the Inner Lavos, which has a body and two arms. Defeating the two arms shuts off the main body defense, allowing the party to defeat it.
The third and final battle of the game is against Lavos Core. Lavos Core consists of three parts: a humanoid center, and two bits. In order to defeat Lavos, the party must defeat the right bit. Its defense is incredibly high, unless any of the other parts is defeated. Then, it temporarily lowers its defense, allowing the player to damage it. Once the Lavos Core is defeated, the game finishes, and one of the multiple ends is shown.
Lavos is also the final boss in the sequel to Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, except in the form of the Devourer of Time, the result of the defeated Lavos assimilating Schala in the darkness beyond time.
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[edit] Lavos's life cycle
[edit] Natural Life Cycle
The following is Lavos's instinctual life process, as it is explained in Chrono Trigger.
- Lavos crashes onto a planet.
- Upon landing on the planet, Lavos buries itself into the planet's core at incredible speed, making a nest in the core.
- While it sleeps in its subterranean nest, it continuously collects DNA from every living thing in the world.
- After it’s finished its collection, and has acquired enough DNA, it wakes up and ravages the planet surface.
- When the armageddon is finished, it produces offspring.
- The offspring grow and leave the planet to continue the cycle.
[edit] Failsafe Plan
At the end of Chrono Cross, the universe is described by Schala metaphoricaly, stating that each planet of the universe is an ovum, and that Lavos is a spermatozoon.
When it was defeated in Chrono Trigger, Lavos assimilated Schala in a time on the other side of the dimensional darkness in an attempt to remain alive. However, the resulting creature became mentally unstable and set on absolute destruction. Its purpose became as follows:
- Complete its maturation. This process was very gradual, as the Time Devourer the heroes fight in Chrono Cross is very small, fetal, and undeveloped.
- When the assimilation is finished, the Time Devourer will devour all time and space.
[edit] Extra information
- Early in Chrono Trigger, the characters believe that Lavos created the time Gates. However, the "Green Dream" event near the end of the game offers an alternate explanation: due to the timing of when the gates appeared and their significance, the gates may have been created by some other entity reliving its life cycle, and flashing back over important memories in its past which were tied to Lavos. Since the existence of one of the gates predated Lavos's arrival on Earth, and all the time periods visited were related in some way to Lavos's effects on the planet, the gates could have appeared as a result of some entity reliving its life before the world perished, the entity most likely being the planet itself (this is suggested far more heavily in the Japanese version, as are all references to the planet being alive). The gates disappeared after Lavos was defeated, suggesting that the entity was at peace or that Lavos's influence no longer affected the space-time continuum.
- Lavos is generally referred to as a male in the series for convenience purposes, and possibly the masculine look of its true form. However, the Time Devourer in 'Chrono Cross' is listed as a female, primarily because of Schala.
- It is not entirely clear what Lavos did to Queen Zeal; some in-game text suggests he possessed her. However if Magus is in the party in the final battle against Zeal he will say that Zeal had been "duped" by Lavos, other text suggests Lavos was manipulating Zeal. In Japanese Magus claims that all beings must die eventually, and says that Lavos enthralled her with the reward of immortality.
- Lavos' life cycle is parallel to that of a parasite. This appearances of "Lavos Spawn" leads to the assumption that Lavos came from a ruined world that a different grown Lavos destroyed. It is also equally presumed that Lavos didn't come from a ruined world that a different grown Lavos destroyed.
- Although Lavos destroys the world in 1999 A.D., in Geno Dome 2300 A.D. it is stated by Mother Brain that the world could still serve for the robots, if humans were wiped out in favor of a country of iron and machinery. This is only said in the Japanese release, as there is a translation error in the American release that implies Mother Brain wanted Lavos Spawn to continue living on Earth.
- There is some debate on weather Lavos is a sentinet being or not.
