dragonmaster for a bad guy

[ilovemyguitar]

I actually was in a debate over this on one of the Gamefaqs Lunar boards once upon a time. I've always believed that Zophar sent Lucia the distress call at the beginning of Lunar 2 so she would come to Lunar, and he could manipulate her into enabling him to take Althena's power.

I really wish I'd thought of that particular plot point, as it would have made great ammo for my debating.

[segaboy7]

yeah, thats pretty much exactly what i was thinking. I wonder if ghaleon had knowlegde of Lucia during the TSS/SSS time period.

[Alunissage]

Also, Ghaleon's capture of Althena didn't threaten the Blue Star, at least not directly. If Lucia couldn't sense that Althena had become human previous to that she probably wasn't attuned to Althena's existence over that span of space -- she does sense her, or rather the lack of her, when she's on Lunar but she doesn't know Althena's missing while still on the Blue Star. On the other hand, Zophar was a presence she clearly was on the guard for; she says somewhere that Althena was to oppose him on Lunar as she, Lucia, was to oppose him on the Blue Star. Or maybe that's in the 30 Questions with Kei Shigema. I'm starting to forget where I read what. In either case, though, she knows Zophar directly, and might well have her mental alarm clock set to his presence but not to Althena's absence because she'd assume Althena would take care of herself.

Although I think it's pretty clear in the SegaCD game that Zophar sent the dream. She awakens from a nightmare of Lunar being crushed in a burst of blood and sees it as a threat to Lunar, not the Blue Star. And since she's surprised at the world still being winter...she walks out naked, after all, and clearly shivers...she wasn't supposed to awaken until the Blue Star was at the very least warmer. I think there's a flashback later of the dream during a conversation with/about Zophar, too.

Re Ghaleon knowing about her in Lunar 1, it's not impossible. One of the books in the Vane Library in SSSC says that a single girl was left on the Blue Star. I hadn't played EB or even known it existed when I read that and was very surprised.

Edit: I wonder what she was planning to DO when she got to Althena's presence on Lunar. She has to find Althena immediately, but why? To tell her she had a bad dream? (Actually, I think Bad Dream is one of Zophar's attacks.) Were they to join power to destroy Zophar? She prioritizes finding Althena over defeating Zophar, so she doesn't expect to be enough to handle Zophar herself, and indeed doesn't challenge him until after taking Althena's power. Another indication that she's weaker than Althena, if that were in doubt.

[Monde Luna]

Edit: I wonder what she was planning to DO when she got to Althena's presence on Lunar. She has to find Althena immediately, but why? To tell her she had a bad dream? (Actually, I think Bad Dream is one of Zophar's attacks.) Were they to join power to destroy Zophar? She prioritizes finding Althena over defeating Zophar, so she doesn't expect to be enough to handle Zophar herself, and indeed doesn't challenge him until after taking Althena's power. Another indication that she's weaker than Althena, if that were in doubt.

I'm going to agree 100% I remember Lucia saying a number of times just how powerful Zophar is, and she seems to have a large fear of his power. Even towards the end of the game in Zophars keep she doesn't seem to even have faith in Althena's plan of letting the humans faith, love an companionship save Lunar.

[Angelalex242]

Lucia's faith in humanity tends to be lacking most of the time. Except for her speech in the final battle.

And even then, I'm not entirely sure she doesn't revert to form in the Blue Spire when she leaves. The greatest power of all in her heart may be love, according to her, and she's sad to go, but she doesn't let her emotions rule her, and off she goes.

And before she takes Althena's power, she goes, "...There's nothing humans can do." And the next thing she does is claim the Power.

[phyco126]

Well, I think the fact that Zophar whooped Lucia's butt before you even left the Blue Spire has to say something about her being weaker in power than Althena. Even Althena couldn't defeat Zophar without using all her power (which in turn destroyed the blue star), but even then he wasn't totally defeated. However, even with Althena's power, Lucia is still captured, so either she was still weaker, or just let her heart cloud her judgement, giving Zophar the time he needed to capture her. (The fact she broke free later on supports theory number 2 for me.)

I'm pretty sure Ghaleon knew about Lucia too, after all, he did read all the books in Vane's Libary.

Now, this brings another question. Since human's clearly defeated, if not flat out killed, Zophar, and the fact that Althena needed a Dragonmaster to protect her, is it safe to assume that while they are immortale in terms of aging, they are still mortal in terms of still being able to be killed? (Think Tolkien's Elves)

[ilovemyguitar]

As far as Lucia's movites in coming to Lunar, I've interpreted two different possibilities.

1) Lucia has her "bad dream." It's a premonition that something bad is going to happen to Lunar. She travels to Lunar, intending to warn Althena of her premonition.

2) Lucia has her "bad dream." It's a distress call, she thinks from Althena (but it's actually from Zophar). She doesn't know what it means, exactly, so she travels to Lunar to investigate.

[Angelalex242]

I don't think they're necessarily killable.

Consider what Ghaleon did to Dark Althena. Even if Althena was immortal in the true sense, having one's mind raped is still something to be protected from. And Alex did protect her.

Also, I don't think Zophar says 'you killed me'. I think he's more like 'I'll be baaaaaaaaaaaack!' Of course, that could be meaningless boasting, but.

And I'm definitely in favor of 'Lucia got outsmarted, not overpowered.' Zophar set his plan up very nicely. By weakening Lucia as much he could...(Either he couldn't kill her outright, or didn't wanna try because it'd screw his plan up.) he let her experience all that the Silver Star had to offer.

Note that if Lucia had just claimed Althena's power right away instead of going through that journey, she wouldn't have hesitated, and she'd have just pulled the Trigger of Althena's Light on Zophar. (Zophar keeps taunting her. Come on. You can defeat me. Go for it. Comeon, Defeat me! I wanna see you do my job for me and destroy this world!)

[GhaleonOne]

I think Kiz has said the Japanese games didn't have the "You can never defeat me." At least, I think it was Kiz. Maybe it was elsewhere I heard that.

[Alunissage]

It was certainly said, whether by Kiz or JWL I'm not sure. Then again, the latter doesn't understand Japanese, as far as I know. On that note, consider that he was defeated by Humanity (gah, I really hate that theme in these games) which is more powerful than Althena's power, so he may well have been permanently defeated there. Althena didn't have that resource when she destroyed the Blue Star to confine him.

I don't know that outsmarted and outpowered are mutually exclusive here. I'm inclined to agree that she didn't have enough power to face him herself -- it was Althena, not Lucia, who defeated Zophar on the Blue Star -- and when she did take that power she was too weakened emotionally to use it.

Lucia's realization of Humanity's power is after she takes Althena's power, not before, so you can't use her line when she does it as indication that she doubts throughout. I would venture to say it's her own human power, such as it is, which allows her to break free of him, as she's sharing in the same power that Hiro and the others have.

Her departure isn't a sign that she doesn't believe in Humanity enough, although she does say that she didn't previously and thus failed Hiro, or something like that. Rather, it's the same choice Luna makes while in the Fortress -- to leave the one she loves to protect the future of many more people. If Lucia made the same choice as Luna ultimately did and stayed on Lunar as a human, presumably the Blue Star would not be able to be revived. It doesn't occur to her to invite Hiro along, especially since she just expects to go back into stasis until things are ready.

That's another interesting question...why exactly would Luna have to stay in the Fortress? How does Alex being there make a difference? Need to think about that one some more. Insert standard grumblings about SSSC's screwups here.

[Angelalex242]

That last point's simple enough.

Luna/Althena flat out says 'If I don't stay, the power will come back too rapidly, and the planet will be destroyed.'

Naturally, that's not good.

However, Alex wants nothing more from life then to be like Dyne. Which he even says out loud as he steps in the aura and loses his armor. "Come on, we can do this, just like Dyne did."

So apparently, the Dragonmaster can, by sacrificing his powers, serve as a safetynet for his Goddess when she's doing something over her head normally. And releasing the power rapidly and safely apparently would've been over her head.

I do not believe, however, that Lucia did (or even can) embrace humanity's power. Further more, I don't believe Ruby and Nall can truly embrace it either. Unlike Dragons and Goddesses, beastmen are similar enough to humanity to be able to tap into it. ...Which makes me wonder about the Vile Tribe. Ghaleon retains some power even after Althena's power is claimed. Which means he's either purely channeling Zophar's power at the time, or he's running on different batteries. Then again, the Vile Tribe was never touched by the goddess, so why would they rely on her for magic anyway?

...Did the vile tribe discover the 'Power of Humanity' first? Boy, that'd be funny. Considering.

Outsmarted and outpowered are never mutally exclusive. That said, Zophar didn't just attack Lucia directly. He attacked the mortals...which, in his mind, were no threat to him. He didn't...and possibly couldn't...capture Lucia till she blocked his shot like that. If he fired AT her, she'd likely have dodged/teleported out of the way.

If he was capable of overpowering her directly, he'd have done so. Getting a free hit on her by attacking the mortals is how he got the job done.

[Alunissage]

Once again, no true basis for assuming Nall and Ruby can't, or that Ghaleon can't, or even that Lucia can't. Do you really think the Mazoku are more different from humans than the beastmen are? Possibly in their lifespan and magical abilities. But they can relate to humans (and interbreed with them, incidentally). One of the major themes is, in fact, how people can transcend differences with this power. Nall surely gained something in his long association with humans. The Vile Tribe mixes with humans through the years. The Goddess Althena becomes human, and likely that had something to do with how Lunar was saved. (Incidentally, the power seems to return to Lunar pretty darn fast as it is, going by how rapidly the land becomes green again...much faster than it dried out.) And I don't know whether you go by the manga or not, but the same power is present in one of the stories and led, in fact, by Ghaleon. He probably doesn't realize it's that and not divine intervention, though.

The differences, biological and otherwise, are irrelevant when the emotional similarity is there. At the end Ghaleon not only knows of that power but consciously works to evoke it...and his personal realization of that power may be seen in his exit, as it nullifies Zophar's hold on him and releases him from his unwanted second life.

You're reading too much into the Vile Tribe's estrangement from Althena. They were confined and/or banished, but that's not to say they are not her children too. I believe Phacia says something of the sort when she gives Alex the password into Ruid. They rejoin humans and blend into them. Do you think that the power of humanity which has replaced Althena will selectively ignore a significant part of the population? What about their mixed descendants?

I think your partisanship for Lucia is again making you certain of things you can't be certain of. I suspect a bloody good case for her partaking of this stupid Power of Humanity is that she fell in love...that love is, in fact, a manifestation of that power. Like many people in love, she didn't realize or admit it to herself.

[Angelalex242]

Read up, you got it backwards.

I questioned if the Vile Tribe actually discovered the Power of Humanity first.

If the Vile Tribe's going 'screw you, Althena!' then they're the ones that are going to start looking for alternative sources of magic. Even if by screw you Althena they're like teenagers going screw you mom, they're still searching for a seperate path. It seems plausible that, since they've been at it much longer then humans and beastmen have, that they'd have discovered the Power of Humanity first.

Ghaleon's another case entirely. Despite what he tells Hiro, one gets the idea that his whole executioner speech was more designed to get Hiro to quit moping, get off his hind end, and go save his girlfriend. He was aware of the power of humanity...very likely ever since Alex killed him the first time.

Anyways, I was trying to say that if the Dragons and Deities have power independant of humanity, they're never truly RELIANT on humanity. A human (or beastman, or vile tribe) has humanity's power and nothing else. Nall and Ruby have always got Dragon Power they can depend on. Likewise, Lucia's always got Divine Power she can depend on.

Also, immortality is a barrier. It absolutely KILLED Nall to watch his human friends grow old and die. It's tough to claim humanity's power when it's just a flash in the pan to you. Likewise, with Lucia...similarly immortal, she's gonna have to watch Hiro (and Ronfar, and Jean, and Lemina, and Leo, assuming she ever visits the Silver Star again...) grow old and kick the bucket, just like Nall did with Alex and Luna. I mean, really...how much claiming of the power of humanity will Lucia be doing when Hiro looks like Grandpa Gwyn? Or when she has to magically create a grave for him?

And Luna's death had to be particularly painful for Nall cause he knew it should've been impossible for her to die.

[Kizyr]

I think Kiz has said the Japanese games didn't have the "You can never defeat me." At least, I think it was Kiz. Maybe it was elsewhere I heard that.

Wasn't me, and it wasn't JWL. He doesn't understand Japanese, and it's been years and years since I replayed EB for the Saturn.

I believe it was Temzin, in fact, who pointed that out. KF

[phyco126]

Insert standard grumblings about SSSC's screwups here.

You mean, grumbling about the fact that an obvious nuclear explosion occured in SSSC, destorying the Goddess Tower, yet in EBC, a thousand years later, the only damage was part of the bottom piece was missing, only to be eaten by Zophar? (Obviously, it'll be in Lunar 3, this time with part of the top missing )

Edit: Actually Alunissage, on your comment of why Luna couldn't leave without the power destroying Lunar, I believe it could be true. Think about when Althena destoryed the blue star. She had reclaimed all of her magic and used it to "destory" Zophar, and when that magic was released, it kind of caused a nasty explosion. Perhapes, for all we know, if Alex didn't use his power to, errr, I guess equalize the goddesses power, then maybe the released of magic really could have caused the same affect as what we saw on the Blue Star. Like you said, the return of the magic happened fairly quickly anyway, so perhapes without Alex, it would have returned all too fast.

Though, the next question in plot holes, how the heck did Luna know about Lucia? She must have known that Zophar was to be reborn, and that Lucia herself would come try to find her, since she left that magical recording. Maybe when she was Dark Althena, part of her memory was retained from Althena.... but she never did say anything in SSSC....

[Alunissage]

I mean that in TSS there was no fortress and Alex's power wasn't needed for anything except reminding Luna who she is. No dragonmasters were harmed in either of Althena's two transformations into Luna...Dyne lost his powers doing something else (though it's not clear whether it was before or after Luna was "born") and Alex is still wearing the dragonmaster armor in the last scene when he's holding Luna while she babbles about being scared and not doubting him.

I wouldn't call it an obvious nuclear explosion at all, by the way. Certainly I never thought of it as such. However, regardless of the nature of it, it seems rather unlikely that the fortress would escape mostly unscathed.

For your last question, my guess is that she retained at least some of her memories as a goddess after that awakening as such, even after returning to just being Luna. Whenever someone talks about magic or the goddess at the end of SSSC she just looks sad and says "...". It's clearly not a blank to her, and of course in that scene when Alex is convincing her that something can be done she's flashing back to Dyne, so she remembers it. The Luna personality is clearly dominant, though; I rather doubt Althena as herself would be crying and wailing about the need to stay put, any more than she wept over having to destroy the Blue Star -- which must have been as much or more painful. Although being trapped in a tower by humanity's need of her may have been part of what she was trying to escape by becoming Luna in the first place. Being simply human, with her memories, must've been something like what Lucia was feeling as she watched seagulls instead of thought about the weight of her mission and the survival of the population, only more so.

[phyco126]

I never played TSS, but maybe did he lose his power sealing the black dragon?

As for SSSC, when I meant nuclear explosion, I didn't mean mushroom clouds and radiation, I meant more in terms of the magnitude of the explosion.

As for her retaining her memory, I never thought of it like that. I was always under the impression that she just had bad memories of having her mind raped like that. I never thought of it as her seeing the future or anything like that. Or maybe even it's a combination of both.

Though as for crying, you could see Althena's eyes look like they where about to tear up when Dyne was about to forfeit his powers to help her. As a matter of fact, back to the subjuct of whether he did it for love or something else, he did mention that Dyne died because of love. Maybe it wasn't love like Alex and Luna had, but more of a love of a different sort. Who knows. Ugh, I'm re-discovering too many things tonight from screens and movies....

[Alunissage]

Yeah, she tears up. It's different from Luna's tears, though. Althena is more likely moved by Dyne's willingness to help her and make that sacrifice, and perhaps at the thought of what she feels she's doing for her people. (I'd say Dyne did it for love...both of Althena as a goddess and of people.) Luna's crying out of sadness and desperation, while I feel that Althena, as the person who had made many other hard decisions, would have sucked it up, albeit soberly.

True, she probably did have bad memories of Ghaleon using her. But they weren't necessarily her worst memories. I mean, if you'd been living your life and suddenly you unlock all these memories of millennia in the past, even if they're dim they'd be food for thought. Although you're probably right about some of the sadness being from what just happened. When I first played I figured it was regret at losing her power for at least the time being (since the screen shows Alex and Luna as having 0 MP in green as the max they could have), but I didn't know there was a sequel and figured that she'd just return to being a goddess after living her human life with Alex. Which I still think should have happened.

Oh, and yeah, Dyne loses his power sealing the Black Dragon, no question about that. The interesting question is whether this happened before or after Althena became baby Luna. Noah, Alex's father, says that Dyne showed up with a baby and a kitten. Does that mean that Dyne took them to Noah and then went off to fulfill his last mission to seal the dragon? Or does it mean that after he lost his power and became Laike he returned to Althena and took her and Nall (who presumably came into existence about the same time) to Noah, who still recognized him? I'm inclined toward the latter since Ghaleon doesn't know for sure who Luna is but did accompany Dyne to the Frontier (where the Black Dragon was), but it doesn't explain how Laike even got up there. Airship from Myght, presumably.

[drumlord]

lucia fan: I think (like some other things you've mentioned), you are taking the "power of humanity" too literally. I don't think precisely what that "power" is was ever qualified in the games. And I always thought the implication was that the "power" humanity has is never giving up for something they believe in. It's the "power" of the human heart. It isn't some form of magic they can tap into. The reason Lucia and Zophar never saw the power of humanity as something of great worth is because they thought in terms of the special god/goddess powers. Hiro and his friends are able to succeed because they wouldn't give up. You'll note that there doesn't appear a special magic power "Power of Humanity" in their arsenal (and if there does, it's been WAY too long since I've played these games...)

Also, I submit for all of your approval. Everybody here seems to be taking the migration back to the Blue Star as guaranteed. But nobody is considering the alternative. You now have thousands of years of history on Lunar and so long as no magic emperor, crazy dragons, and essences of evil are around, life is GOOD for the people of Lunar. Why because some chick in a red robe came along would they up and leave their homes? Personally, I don't think it's likely. And it's actually a very effective storytelling technique used in literature. Where people are destined to do something because it has been set up that way, but they choose not to because they are happy with their current way of life.

And not so much submitted for your approval, but just my personal rantings. The "Power of Althena" is another power that is shaky, but in a different way than the power of humanity. For one, Althena in TSS/SSSC seems to have quite different powers than what Lucia and Zophar describe. In fact, it seems quite like Ghaleon was interested in world domination, not world destruction and rebirth. If the latter was the case, why wouldn't set his plans in motion as soon as he brainwashes Althena? In addition, why would getting the power of Althena do anything at all to Zophar? Sure, making him look all froo froo is funny, but why would having the power of Althena do anything for his ability to fight in battle? I personally disliked what was done with the power of Althena in EB/EBC. It's limiting to what Althena is actually for in the Lunar mythos. Why would Althena need dragons and a dragonmaster to protect her if she serves no real purpose other than the destroy everything and create something new?

It's just silly and was done for the sake of moving the plot in the direction they wanted it to go. What you might logically expect to happen is when Lucia claims Althena's power, she ends up singing like crazy and battling Zophar with her powers. I mean, even if you take it purely at face value, that Althena has the ability to destroy/recreate things and for some reason to lift ancient ruins out of the water. She could at least lift some kind of ancient ruin and toss it at Zophar, no? It'd probably at least be as effective as a few Poe Swords ;P k, enough rambling for me...

[Angelalex242]

On when Dyne loses his powers:
I find it unlikely he would've gone to restrain the Black Dragon as anything less then the Dragonmaster. It would've been needlessly endangering his comrades, and he's too responsible for that.
The true point when his armor disappears is shown on screen...when Althena becomes Luna.

...And yeah, that 0 MP seems to be a theme. Laike has 0 MP too, recall, on those two occasions he joins your party as a level 99 badass. It's likely a pattern, one might surmise, that a Dragonmaster who gives up the power instead of being KIA is doomed to 0 MP for the rest of his life...even if he previously had MP for other purposes. Like Alex's Sword Techniques. I think it likely, then, that Alex will go through the rest of his life without ever using Sword Dance (Or fire magic, for that matter, in TSS) again, and never again will Luna use a healing song. That loss is meant to be a permanent loss so thorough that they can never again reclaim their powers. And therefore...Luna may not have had as much a choice as she implied to Lucia about whether or not she wanted to die. Luna may have been doomed to die permanently from the time she sacrificed her powers on. 0MP, ya know.

As for the migration back...assuming it happens within Hiro's lifetime...and the lifetime of the other heros who fought Zophar...well, the migration has a much better chance of succeeding. "Yeah, and if you don't come with me, Zophar might come back." "Eeeeeeeeek! Get the kids!" People do tend to submit to authority.

And it would've been kinda cool to see Lucia throwing an ancient ruins at Zophar. Maybe the nearby ruins where you find the Gale Crest, for example. "...Mmm, ruins to the head!" "Owww! You Ancient Ruined me in the head!"