Chrono Series: Cosmology and Dreams Explanation

Introduction and Credits

Hello everyone. StrymULTRA here again, and after almost an year, here I come with another blog about a videogame series which I finished recently and I really, really liked, which is the Chrono one (or Chronoverse if you want).

This blog will explain the cosmology and different parts of it, and will get in detail about what are the Dreams in this series.

All the information that can be found on this verse is in the following sources, from which this blog (and the verse profiles next) will take info:

• Chrono Trigger
• Radical Dreamers
• Chrono Cross
• Chrono Trigger - Official Strategy Guide
• Chrono Trigger - Nintendo Player's Guide
• Chrono Trigger - Instruction Booklet
• Chrono Trigger Ultimania
• Chrono Cross - Missing Piece
• Chrono Cross Ultimania (Full Translation)
• Chrono Cross - Official Strategy Guide
• Chrono Cross Demo
• Full Script of Chrono Trigger and Literal Retranslation (Up to SNES version)
• Full Script of Chrono Cross

An immense big thanks to Qliphoth Bacikal for translating all the untranslated materials I needed. Credits also to the Chrono Compendium website as it's the source of a lot of scans and translations I'll be using here.

Main Cosmology

Space-Time

The first and most important part of what's being discussed here are the timelines.

It's necessary to know that in the Chrono series, each possibility and alternate event is its own timeline.

Starting with one of the endings of Chrono Trigger, especially the most recent ports which started from the DS version, Magus of another timeline said that there are as many world as potentialities.

Next evidence is the Reptite timeline, which is a race which would have existed instead of humans if it wasn't for Lavos destroying them. Given the possibilities, it was speculated the existence of a timeline where Reptites survived and humans didn't. It's even said that the world is stabilized from the viewpoint of who perceives it and that there's a world for each observer, different for anyone who observes it.

And is been confirmed to be true. Terra Tower, originally called "Dinopolis", is the main city of the Reptites, where they have existed instead of humans, and said city has been brought in the main timeline.

This was also a thing in Chrono Trigger, where in an ending Crono and anyone else was a Reptite instead of a human.

And this scene is just the altered version of the first cutscene of Chrono Trigger.

On top of this, in the Post-Game of Chrono Trigger, there's a gate which leads to a future where only Reptites exist, and humans are completely unknown to them.

Passing to Radical Dreamers, the events happened there were pretty much canon in the Chrono Cross events, given that their existence is acknowledged there (the two worlds are Home World and Another World, which are different timelines respectively, generated from Serge dying in a timeline, but surviving in another):

With the line being proven true as is said in the Radical Dreamers opening:

So these points are proofs that in the verse each possibility is its own universe, but how many possibilities?

For first we need to go back at Radical Dreamers, where Serge, after using the Time Egg, sees countless versions of himself, the beginning and end of time itself, and infinite dreams in a "sea of dreams" still in the "Kid ~ Le Tresor Interdit" Ending, which is the Ending the player gets the first time they clear the game.

However, in the Raw Japanese version, only countless of those were mentioned.

Yes... Where could this be...? I'm drifting alone, having lost everything. The flow of the World, the dissolving of time, and strange sea that filled up everything. That was once the peace of life: the beginning of time, and the end.

The infant me is crying next to my mother, who has a proud smile on her tired face. I watch intently as i grow old and how myself dies with a smile upon my face... Many of me are passing through the hallways of time as if they're ghosts... I saw the countless folded worlds, where countless lives were dreaming...

Ah, forever I will rest.

For everything, I leave all behind. Here, in this Mother Sea.

Next is in Chrono Cross, where there are actually two infinite statements.

The first one is Glenn saying there are infinite possibilities:

But in the Raw Japanese version, he instead just says that the world is vast:

Yeah, the world's pretty vast.

I'm sure there's a tower we can climb up to somewhere beyond the sky in the world we can see from.

The next is with Orlha's sister, who could see infinite possibilities in her dream. Dreams in this context are really important, but they'll be explained in their own section.

Which is even said in the Raw Japanese:

Orlha: Ti...Tia?

Tia: My long dream is over at last. I'm glad... to have finally meet you, my sister...

The colors of your eyes and hair are the same as mines... We are indeed twin sisters, born on the same planet...

Orlha: Oh, Tia...how could this be... but, I...

Tia: It's alright, sis. I know. I've been dreaming about everything.

Yes... this world is not one. ...Just like our own thoughts, sister, so are the infinite possibilities. Same for this reality...

This proves that the amount of timelines in the Chrono series cosmology is infinite due to infinite possibilities existing and universes existing for each of them, giving a reason on why endings in Chrono Trigger exist as alternate timelines, and this reflects on Radical Dreamers and Chrono Cross various endings for the same reason as result.

Additional information on the space-time nature of the Chrono series is that multiple temporal dimensions were mentioned in the Raw Japanese, with the Black Omen flowing across them and different time periods, existing also outside time itself. This explains why the Black Omen can be accessed from the 1000 A.C., 12000 B.C., 2300 A.C. and 600 A.C through time travel, with the Black Omen always remaining at the same position. It doesn't appear in the prehistory, which is 65'000'000 B.C., as it's when Lavos has first approached the Earth, thus the Black Omen can't access said era. As additional evidence of this, Lavos is even said to be capable of distorting multiple time axes.

Source in Chapter 25 (Part 3)

The End of Time

The End of Time is a place which is accessed when more than three people originated from different eras try to time travel together, causing an instability in the fabric of time which leads them to this place instead of the designed era they planned to come in. In this place, people can access to different periods of time, being able to travel in those whenever they wish to. Other than the regular gates, there's also a bucket which leads to the day of Lavos, which happens in 1999 AC. On the list of the eras which is possible to see on the Epoch, a time machine, the End of Time has literally "∞" as the date of it.

In both the Chrono Trigger guides, this is pretty much repeated. Is worth noting that is also said being a place where different time periods intersect.

Arena of Ages

The Arena of Ages is a coliseum where time travelers can breed monsters and make them against each other to win special prizes. It's a place which is possible to access in any point of the game, and is not necessary to complete the story. Is a place which is beyond the flow of time, thus time passes differently there, and if someone doesn't access it from the End of Time, all the progress made there are erased the moment they leave. Because of this, the Arena of Ages can perfectly be called a whole different dimension.

Bend of Time

The Bend of Time is a place where monsters travel across dimensions to gather. There is possible to fight any kind of monster that is possible to fight in the game.

Is also reffered as a "Dimensional Gap":

Dimensional Gap: One of the few Dimensional Gaps in the World, from which you may fight various monsters there.

Temporal Vortex

The Temporal Vortex is a place which is outside reality. Lynx has sent Serge there after forcefully swapping bodies with him. In this place, there usally aren't physical beings, but rather spirits.

As said before, this realm is noted to be outside of reality as it is an unreality between the two worlds, reffered as being a painted world. There are also completely flat beings.

In the realm there's also no substance at all, where air and water are different.

Dimensional Vortex

These are places which are created after the ending of Chrono Trigger in different eras, and characters entering those notice that is a great instability of both space and time, where time streams are crossed.

Entering these places makes one enter random places, like Sunken Desert, Guardia Forest, Abandoned Sewers, and other places, which are of each from a different era.

Now that we're done with the main cosmology, let's pass to the deeper levels of it.

Dreams

Another important part of the Series are the Dreams. At the end of Chrono Cross, Schala, after being freed from Lavos, explains that perhaps everything in existence is essentially nothing more than a dream, and that everything will return to Zurvan, the sea of dreams, making dreams essentially the concepts which make up reality, as everything is just the dream of the planet, and everything will eventually return to Zurvan, the Sea of Dreams.

The same is said in the Raw Japanese version.

How long I have waited... For this very moment...

To hurt one another without meaning, of loves that have been lost... The words that have been drowned out... The thoughts that are buried... The sea of cells that have scattered... The echoes of consciousness that have faded away...

From love to hate... From hate to love... For what reason are we alive? What reason do we die? Evolution... Survival of the Fittest... What is there to gain by maiming and killing one another...?

The "eggs" that we call as planets, and the innumerable "seeds" of lifeforms that gather around them... When one of the innumerable seeds make contact with a planet, a new universe is born. Hundreds of millions of years, and countless lives born and dying lead to this.

All of it was for this very moment. All for the universe's evolution into the next dimension.

Was all of us just nothing more than a stepping stone? That each and every one of our life and death was for one chosen life-form to connect to a planet and be born?

No, that was not it! All life-forms have a chance to live. Each and every lifeform can connect to a planet. Yes, that can even be "you".

Genes and environment...each of us tries to do their best in living life with the limited conditions they got. Each life-form that tries to eke out a decent lifestyle forms a link to the golden chain leading to a new universe. If a link is missing, there will be no "future". In this World, there is no such thing as a useless life-form or a stepping stone!

Perhaps all things in nature just dreams of a dream about "life". And perhaps, all of it is nothing more than a dream dreamt by the planet even before its birth.

But... Yes, all dreams will come return... To Zurvan...to the Sea of Dreams...

And this is basically proven true from several factors.

The Chrono Cross Demo has 2 Introduction Screens, with the first one essentially confirming what Schala has said in a way more explicit way:

The dream of the planet repelled the darkness and birthed a new future. However, that was also the beginning of a new nightmare… The time-transcending final battle between dragons, humans, and destiny that surrounding the legendary treasure, the Frozen Flame, had begun… The dream of the planet is not yet over…

Going back to Chrono Trigger, Earth is confirmed to be indeed alive, as it was the one sending the aforementioned Dinopolis back in time to counter Chronopolis. The Dreamstone holds dreams, and has created concepts such as love and hate. It should be noted that the Dreamstone has existed before mankind, as it doesn't exist anymore in any era which isn't the prehistoric one, with Ayla describing it as a powerful object, other than it being known already from the ancestors of men.

Other proofs are that truth (or even the universe as said in the Japanese version) is contained in dreams, Nightmares are monsters without substance which can't be interacted with and viceversa and that the Dreamseeker, the strongest weapon Crono can get in the game, is forged out of dreams.

Turnip, a dream being, after Schala's speech about dreams, says about "seeing you back in Dreamland", which quite of leads as well that the whole of Chrono Cross was always just in a dream.

As already said in the "Space-Time" section of this blog, in the part where is talked about the size of the cosmology and its infinite timelines, you would have noticed that Orlha's sister has seen all the timelines in her dream, and that Radical Dreams Serge has seen all the timelines, all the dreams and the beginning and end of time itself in a huge sea, which would obviously be Zurvan.

Last proof is the Dream Devourer being said to be able to destroy all the existence, and its first attack is literally of devouring dreams, enforcing once again dreams being what makes existence.

So in short, dreams are the basis of reality itself, from where all timelines, time itself and even concepts as love and hate originate from, and destroying them essentially means ending existence.

Darkness Beyond Time

I have originally planned to insert this in the Main Cosmology section, but given how complex this part is, I've decided to put it at the end, after explaining what the Cosmology and Dreams are.

The Darkness Beyond Time is the void beyond time and existence themselves. To explain it's needed to introduce what the Nonexistent Timelines are.

After crossing a space-time distortion, Serge (who was in Lynx's body) and his friends enter in a space-time distorion and get in a weird dimension. There, they talk to Miguel, who's been there from a lot of time and explains that said dimension is a future which has been erased, thus essentially a Nonexistent Timeline. Miguel invites the cast to stay with him in said timeline forever, but they refuse, so he fights them to prevent them from restoring the distortion.

After Miguel's defeat, he explains what this erased future actually is. Is a future which was supposed to be the timeline where Lavos has emerged and destroyed the world, reducing it to an apocalyptic state. Crono and his friends at the end of the game defeat Lavos, saving the future from preventing its destruction from Lavos, essentially changing history and overwriting the timeline. Thus the previous timeline where Lavos succeded in destroying the world has been completely erased due to the paradox. However, said timeline was about to return, overwriting the one that Crono and his friends have fought to "create", if it wasn't from FATE sending this timeline back to the void from where it belongs, killing Miguel and whoever was still inside it.

Said dimensional void will be explored more. In fact, is the place where Lavos has arisen after its first defeat, and there it merged from Schala, who got there from being sucked in a dimensional vortex, while also corrupting her mind, evolving first in the Dream Devourer, as after the fight against it Schala says herself that Lavos is devouring her awareness, and then the Time Devourer.

Other than being the place where the Time Devourer completes its evolution, it's said that is needed to travel beyond space and time in order to access it. The Time Devourer is straight up said to be also the True Form of the Dragon God, who is an entity that uses a Quasi-Existence to interact with the dimensions and that has been consumed and intergrated from it. This is why the Dragon God is called as "TimeDevourer" in its fight.

Additional infos are that said void is beyond the borders of time, doesn't have neither a beginning nor an end, and all things get reduced to nothing in this place.

If we look again at the Dream Devourer, given that the Dream Devourer is said to be able to destroy all the existence, and its first attack is literally of devouring dreams, the Darkness Beyond Time is not just the void beyond the multiverse, but also beyond dreams and Zurvan themselves as well.

Conclusion

The Chrono Series is one of the most weird video-game series ever, which has many complex elements given the heavy use of the time travel and changes of history due to these. Hopefully this gives complete information and a better understanding of the verse's setting to who's already in the series, or makes people who still didn't get in the series.