Lavos
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Lavos (ラヴォス Ravosu?) is a fictional creature and the main antagonist in the console role-playing game Chrono Trigger.
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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 uses the attack patterns of different bosses from the game. 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.
[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
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] Frozen Flame
The Frozen Flame, featured in the Japanese game Chrono Cross, is a mysterious flame shaped stone that acts as a MacGuffin in the storyline. It is said to have mystical powers strong enough to bend the rules of time. The Frozen Flame also appears in the game Radical Dreamers, which Chrono Cross is partly based on.
The Frozen Flame is actually a piece of the alien Lavos's shell, which splintered when he crashed into the planet during the game Chrono Trigger. It is a direct link to Lavos's power, and has become a much-sought item of mythic proportions; legends claim it is capable of granting its bearer eternal life, happiness and "power beyond measure". When primitive humans of a prehistoric age accidentally came into contact with the so-called "Flame", they evolved into modern humans, their DNA having been mutated by its power. Several characters, both major and minor, claim to be seeking it throughout the game. Kid is one of those persons. In the Home World dimension, General Viper and his Dragoons embarked on a quest for the Flame, but because the Sea of Eden only exists in a separate dimension, they unwittingly became lost in the Dead Sea, where they were absorbed into the forgotten timeline and became frozen in a temporal stasis.
In Chrono Cross, the Frozen Flame at first appearances is a legendary relic, the actual existenced of which is uncertain. In reality, it is hidden in the central core of Chronopolis and is the source of power for the supercomputer FATE. Following the events of Chrono Trigger, the future was altered and led to a research facility being built in an isolated location where the Flame was excavated, dedicated to performing experiments on time. An attempt to manipulate the timestream went awry due to Lavos, shifting the facility roughly ten thousand years back into the past. FATE ensured that Chronopolis would never interfere with the past history; Chronopolis is protected by three forcefield-generators, and the Sea of Eden, shrouded in mist, is barred from entry. As a result, it is impossible for anyone to breach Chronopolis to retrieve the Flame. Only Serge could enter the Flame's chamber, following an event in which he was designated as its 'arbiter'. Even then, it can only be entered when certain conditions are met.
When Serge finally makes it to FATE's room at the bottom of the lab, Kid supersedes and tries to touch the Flame, but is overwhelmed by its evil aura and lapses into a coma. The Flame is then stolen by the Dragon God and later reappears at Terra Tower.
[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. Additionally, the fact that Lavos effectively "mates" with its host planet for genetic material in order to give birth to its offspring suggests that all individuals of the Lavos species are female, whereas the planets they visit would be "male". Furthering the insect analogy, the "female" Lavos kills its mate, the planet, after it is done reproducing with it, as some insect species, most notably praying mantises, are known to do.
- 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.
- Lavos resembles a tardigrade in both appearance and in the nature of its hibernation.
- Lavos also bears a literary resemblance to Cthulhu and other beings from the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. Much like those entities, Lavos is a being of incredible size and ability, and slumbers for eons while influencing the development of a planet's most advanced species to its own ends.
- 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.
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