so! deltarune chapters 3 and 4 are out and i think they're just great. i might actually write another post about some stuff i really like about the game mechanically (and a couple things i don't) but for now i wanted a place to collect some thoughts about where the game's story is going, with regards to a particular character, and some stuff about the way its world works that i want to speculate on.
as you could probably guess, this post will contain big big big spoilers for all four chapters of deltarune. consider this your warning.
okay. when it comes to deltarune speculation and theories post-chapter 4, i've seen a lot of people talking about the knight, dess, and asgore, and very reasonably so. one thing that i really wanted to dig into though was some new things we've learned about the mechanics of dark worlds, and what that could mean for a character that still has quite a lot of mystery surrounding him: ralsei.
we've known for a long time that ralsei is different from all the other darkners, and as the chapters have gone on we've only learned more things that don't seem to line up with him. this post was initially sparked by a discussion with a friend of mine, where he mentioned that it felt wrong to call the "old man" we meet in chapter 4 gerson, "because it is techincally not him but a darkner version in the same way ralsei is like asriel's darkner". this felt like a weird and unsatisfying answer to ralsei's strangeness, so i decided i really wanted to try and come to a conclusion based on what info we have now about why this guy's so different from every other darkner.
before i delve into the actual theory i have, here's a rundown of all the
rules of darkners that ralsei breaks:
• he shows up in every single dark world, seemingly independently of
anything in the room or anything kris has on them. (we see at the start of
chapter 2 that if you bring something with you into the dark world, it'll
specifically be with you when you get there, with lancer staying in the
pocket and rouxls specifically jumping out of it)
• he's able to seemingly move between dark worlds on his own (we see him
come to kris and susie's aid at the start of several chapters, saying that
he "hurried over")
• he doesn't get petrified in any dark world, no matter how long he stays
there. he's also seemingly the only darkner native to the castle town dark
world, whose "fountain of pure darkness" is able to sustain darkners from
any world, which may be related.
• he looks like another real person, but seemingly is not that person. i
feel pretty confident in saying that ralsei is not actually just asriel in
the dark world, that doesn't really line up with anything we've seen so
far, which means there has to be something else going on here.
beyond any ways ralsei "works" differently from the other darkners, he's also just incredibly knowledgable about the prophecy and the way that dark worlds work, in a way that isn't true of anyone else. we learn from him in chapter 4 that he "didn't ask" to know these things, it's a curse of knowledge that he's forced to bear, for some reason. this immediately strikes me as important. in chapter 3 and 4 we see a lot more darkners that very explicitly mention the fact that they're inanimate objects (after ralsei explains to us that that's the case) but a lot of darkners either don't care about their fates as not being "real" or lash out when being forced to confront this fact (tenna being the biggest example). ralsei, meanwhile, has clearly put a lot of thought into his fate as part of the fantasy of dark worlds, and acts as a figure of authority when it comes to the subject, for example explaining to tenna after his boss fight that he needs to accept not being real.
this is what really got the gears of my brain turning, and is what led me to the theory that i want to discuss here: i think that the person we know as ralsei is some sort of overseer of the dark worlds. rather than a specific object that the dark worlds give form, influenced by their creator, he's someone who can exist beyond anyone or anything else's influence. i don't want to say a "god" because to me that reads as more powerful that we know ralsei to be, but something in that vein.
someone who can travel freely between dark worlds, exist in any dark world at any time, and know everything about not only the way the dark worlds work but the prophecy that related to them, to me that reads as someone who has some sort of supernatural authority beyond that of a normal darkner. ralsei being described as a "prince of the dark" to me is also compelling evidence for something like this being true, he has a title suggesting power over darkness because he actually does have some amount of power over all dark worlds.
the dark world he (presumably) comes from, the castle town dark world with its fountain of "pure darkness", i think could also play into this. we've never gotten a real answer as to what "pure darkness" actually means, and it seems to contradict what ralsei told us about how dark fountains work (taking away light that's no longer there after everything is completely dark). maybe i'm taking that too literally, but i think that could have interesting implications for what a "fountain of pure darkness" even means.
we see at the end of chapter 3 that it seems like even darkners that are native to the dark world they currently reside in are becoming petrified. this coincides with the structure of the dark world falling apart, with all of tenna's staff quitting and the halls and rooms of tv world becoming dark and empty. the operative word there for my money is "dark": when bad things happen and the world becomes darker, more darkners become petrified. (in the roaring prophecy ralsei reads at the end of chapter 2, there's a line that reads "the surviving darkners, crushed by the darkness, will slowly, one by one, turn into statues..." which supports this further in a way. here it was referring to more dark fountains being created, but that's still "more darkness"). maybe there's some sort of equilibrium that a dark world needs to operate under in order to sustain its own inhabitants? this is where i think that fountain of "pure darkness" could come back: if "pure darkness" means something that's perfectly at zero, maybe that means nobody gets petrified?
the other interesting thing we saw in chapter 3 is another example of a darkner who was able to travel to another dark world without fear of petrification: spamton, in the form of the item in kris's inventory. in the secret scene with spamton and tenna, we see that spamton is fully conscious while in the form of the dealmaker (or the weapon whose name i forget), and is able to turn back into his normal darkner self at any time (or as normal as spamton can be, anyways). beyond that, we also learn that tenna and spamton had some sort of direct working relationship in the past from tenna's dialogue, and from the way he describes picking up the phone that spamton left behind heavily implies they were in the same room. edit: i do remember tenna mentioning that the lightners brought home the laptop and it's implied that's how he met spamton, but their working relationship to me seemed like something longer-term than just one visit. maybe that's just wrong though. i think most of the point still stands either way.
as best i can tell, the only other time we hear a darkner from one dark world directly reference a darkner from another one is when spamton mentions a "clown around town", who we assume to be jevil. we never see jevil return from his form as an item, but we are able to carry and use those items just like normal, and if the rules work anything like they did for spamton, he'd be able to turn back into his normal darkner body if he wanted to.
there's another arguable example of this as well: seam mentions the shadow mantle in chapter 2, and that he used to have it, but misplaced it. we then of course find the shadow mantle again in chapter 3, as part of the video game that tenna modified. interestingly, even in the version of the game we play with tenna, we can see the old title screen for the game during the bootup sequence, and it seems to be called "mantle". this to me implies that this game is the origin of the shadow mantle, and that if seam had the mantle at one point, he would've had to have interacted with the video game.
there's a pattern here: spamton, jevil, and the shadow mantle are all associated with shadow crystals. in chapter 3 we learn that it seems like the shadow crystals come directly from the roaring knight, and they're primarily associated with the idea of "freedom" and breaking away from the dark world's layer of facade. spamton believes he'll be able to "see past the dark" and "break his strings", but he needs a human soul to do it. perhaps the shadow crystal itself is what granted him a glimpse at what's possible, what lies beyond the veil, by allowing him to travel to other dark worlds.
now, i don't think ralsei is using the power of a shadow crystal. i think everything we've learned about him at the end of chapter 4 soundly puts to bed any "ralsei is secretly evil" speculation, and beyond that, if i was making this game i would not hide an important lore reveal like "why is ralsei like that" beyond a bunch of optional boss fights most casual players are going to miss. what i do think is, assuming the power of a shadow crystal comes from the knight as its original source, that the powers the knight has and the powers ralsei has are somehow connected. some sort of power to "manipulate darkness".
we of course see that the knight is able to not only create dark fountains, but create what seems to be multiple at once, with the way it summoned the titan by plunging several swords into the ground at once. when the titan is created, we see the fountain erupt with great power, but then quickly petrify, with the same visual and sound effect that happens when a darkner petrifies from being in the wrong dark world. from this stone pillar, the titan is born. if ralsei is able to create darkness at pure equilibium, "pure darkness" that prevents everyone from becoming petrified, and the knight is able to create fountains that are so dark that it immediately itself becomes petrified and births a world-ending power, it makes sense that they could be foils to each other. two entities with powers over darkness, struggling against each other.
the last big question about ralsei is why he looks like asriel. going along with the "primordial overseer of all dark worlds" thought process, i don't think ralsei is this character's "true form" so to speak. when we first meet ralsei, he's wearing a cloak with a hood that completely obscures his body, and he only took it off after he introduced himself to kris and susie. even in the first prophecy cutscene and the glass prophecies in chapter 4, we only see ralsei as this "hooded" form. this could mean nothing, but i think his might mean that ralsei chose his form specifically as something that would be comforting to kris, the hero with the power to seal the fountains, after meeting them. ralsei is at least aware of the structure of the school building from how he tells kris to gather up the things from the classroom at the start of chapter 2, so it's not a stretch to assume he would know who asriel was and would know his relationship to kris. we know ralsei, especially during the first two chapters, saw himself as a servant to kris and susie and no more. someone who could not have any "selfish" desires of his own, since he wasn't "real." him choosing to only reveal himself to the party as someone they would be the most comfortable around, rather than the form that feels the most right to himself, fits perfectly into that characterization.
now, why would he choose a form that's comfortable to kris and not to susie? for one, we know susie is at least somewhat new in town, so it's possible if ralsei is only familiar with hometown and the school, that he just wouldn't know as much about her. beyond that though, there's a lot of hints after chapter 4 that susie is not in fact the second hero mentioned by the prophecy. the images we see of the "girl, with hope crossed on her heart" in chapter 4 don't really bear any resemblance to susie: they don't even have axes, they have swords. maybe ralsei secretly knows this, and is withholding this information from the party like he has for so many other things? maybe this is why he felt so caught up in susie's "infectious" hope to change the prophecy, because he saw how far she'd come in the quest without being the true hero? this is pretty blind speculation at this point, but it makes sense in my head and hopefully it's made sense when i wrote it out here.
most things in deltarune related to the mechanics of the dark worlds are part of a larger allegory for fiction and escapism. if ralsei is the overseer of the dark worlds, what does that make him? honestly, i would've thought the "authors" would be the creators of the dark worlds, since they're shaped by those peoples' own experiences. maybe it has something to do with what gerson talked about, with how "stories can be changed and retold". when anyone else makes a dark fountain they might just be "retelling" ralsei's story of the original "grand fountain", with their own influences? that's the best i can think of right now, but i'd love to hear if anyone else has any theories about how this theory of ralsei could factor into the game's larger themes.
i hope any of this made sense to anyone. this has been rattling around in my brain since i played chapter 4 and i really wanted to just jot it down, if for no other reason than to see how wrong i'll be once the full game finally releases lol.
