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A weird thought regarding deity in Lunar

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 1:55 pm
by Lord Yggdrasill
Well I was wondering what the origins of the god Zophar and goddess Althena could be. It seems that Althena could give up her power as goddess, while this was not a possibility among almost all games and myths. Its also worth noting that any mortal beings could claim Althena's power by manipulating certain tricks to become gods/goddesses. The existence of Lucia made it an even more intriguing question, she was referred to as the princess of the blue star... Is Lucia a goddess, and if so gods/goddesses actually have ranks considering Lucia is not as powerful a goddess as Althena? Why is Lucia able to claim Althena's power? And was Althena already the beloved goddess prior to the crisis of blue star? All those mysteries can be explained with the following hypothesis.

The idea is that gods/goddesses were initially mortal beings. Not necessarily human, they were not born as gods/goddess but became deity following certain events. My theory is that Althena was originally a human but acquired the power of creation after completing a mysterious quest that turned her into a goddess. She used this power to fight against Zophar and sealed the evil god, while destroying the blue star in the meantime. It was also this power that Althena granted Princess Lucia eternal life, which effectively turned her into somewhat a celestial being. The power of creation, on the other hand, could be transferred from one to another by performing certain tricks unknown to the majority of people. If, on the other hand, the goddess decides to give up such power, she will become mortal again and the power dissipate. Nonetheless, the dissipated power could be gathered by another mortal being if he/she wishes to claim him/herself deity. This hypothesis could explain the following phenomena:

1. Eiphel and Ghaleon were able to manipulate Goddess Althena, making themselves gods(You do not see how a human capturing a Greek, Roman, Norse God/Goddess could turn a mortal into deity, do you?).
2. Althena could appear in many reincarnations at will, and also eventually gave up her power as Goddess(Hard to imagine if she was born a Goddess and could still give/lend her power easily).
3. Ghaleon waited 10+ years until a few months prior to the story began to take his first action as magic emperor(he was searching for the way to transfer Goddess' power into his).
4. Lucia was able to claim Althena's power after knowing the goddess no longer existed on Lunar, the power of Althena still existed despite the demise of Althena/Luna herself).
5. The fact that no one mentioned Althena's history prior to the Blue star's destruction, there's a possibility that goddess Althena did not exist back then and that the previous God/Goddess failed his/her people.

Please lemme know if you have any thoughts regarding this topic, Id be glad to hear.

Re: A weird thought regarding deity in Lunar

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 3:57 am
by Sonic#
I don't have time to write out a detailed reply, but I would revisit this statement: "It seems that Althena could give up her power as goddess, while this was not a possibility among almost all games and myths," as well as this one, "(You do not see how a human capturing a Greek, Roman, Norse God/Goddess could turn a mortal into deity, do you?)."

It's not that drawing off of Roman, Greek, or Norse gods as a model is a problem, necessarily. It is that you're ignoring whole pantheons, as well as whole systems of thought about how supernatural beings (like gods and goddesses) work. To give a few examples, there is Shintoism, Hinduism, Islam/Judaism/Christianity, the belief systems of Native Americans or Aboriginals, Celtic deities, neopagan interpretations... I have a hunch that in at least some of these systems, gods and goddesses could and did give up their power.

Re: A weird thought regarding deity in Lunar

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 1:06 am
by Shiva Indis
Since the games are sketchy about the origin of Althena, there are a lot of ways to approach this. Take this amusing Wild Mass Guessing entry from the Lunar TV Tropes page for instance - it suggests that Lunar is the far future of the Marvel Universe, with Althena and Lucia both as "super mutant on the level of Apocalypse or beyond."
she was referred to as the princess of the blue star...

I'll be a little more serious about this one, because I remember the equivalent line from the Japanese versions of the game. There, Zophar refers to Lucia as a "nemuri-hime," literally "sleeping princess," but that's also the Japanese title of Sleeping Beauty. Adding in the fact that "hime" is used more broadly in Japanese than "princess" is in English, I'd call this a translation misstep that draws the reader's attention in ways that weren't originally intended.

Re: A weird thought regarding deity in Lunar

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 10:39 am
by Angelalex242
It's interesting about the power, but it's also the law of physics. If energy cannot be created nor destroyed, then Althena couldn'd destroy her power when she became mortal. She could only leave it throughout the world as magic. So Lucia comes along...and takes it.

Re: A weird thought regarding deity in Lunar

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 5:12 pm
by Arlia
Well, in general god/goddess (or even demon or etc) mythology, those beings could do pretty much whatever they wanted. But it'd take a pretty powerful individual to mess with the big guys.
Sealing powers in horcruxes (debatable; that's usually a soul-transfer thing) or other items, gods/goddesses losing power or more importantly their immortality when becoming human, giving and taking gifts or other things from humans or animals, are all common transactions regarding power in most mythology and stories.

Lunar-wise, Ghaleon wasn't just anyone, and Lucia was a goddess. Often in mythology, trickery is demonstrated to be able to steal just about anything, so if a human or other being as endowed enough, they could easily lynch it.

There are many kinds of "Power" in Lunar, and they're often taken and given. The DragonMaster powers, the Dragon's powers (including their Essences, which were taken that one time by Ghaleon, and that they seem to gain them as they mature,) the power of magic in the Lunar world in general. The list goes on; it's just one of those things. It happens in pretty much every story there is with gods/goddesses.

Also, Luna was "the singing princess of Burg", but she wasn't really a princess. They're probably just being poetic in stating Lucia's position. Because bad guys have go out of their way to do that.

Other games?
The Mana series had the Mana goddess/Tree that was always being raped
Final Fantasy 6 had the 3 goddess' power lynched by Kefka
Zelda had Ganon and probably a million other people and their 3rd cousin twice removed taking advantage of the Triforce, which the 3 goddesses pretty much put all their power in
Plenty of others, I'm sure.

Stories about the deity giving their powers for mortality isn't uncommon, either. Especially for love, so Lunar isn't entirely original. It happens a handful of times, so I can't give an example, but search Wikipedia for "Mythology", especially Greek, and you should find some fairly quickly.

At the end of the day: the deities were just there, and they can do whatever they feel like. Lunar doesn't give any explanation, but nor does any valid religion.

Re: A weird thought regarding deity in Lunar

Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 11:30 am
by Enclave
My view regarding deity is that "Althena's powers" could, in theory, be transferred to anyone, but it takes a certain type of deity to naturally claim it. In SSSC, it seems it took a bit to prep Ghaleon to actually claim Althena's powers, since Alex stops him right before he transfer's Luna's powers to himself, and that's after a while Ghaleon unlocked Luna's true powers. Zophar has to wait for Lucia to claim the power before he could get his hands on it by kidnapping Lucia. However, Lucia simply raised her hand and claimed it when it was time.

The way I look at it is that there's something special in Lunar's "good" deities that makes them able to claim Althena's powers with ease, kinda like receptors tuned to a specific frequency. As shown with pre-curse Lucia, deities already have special powers, but it take's Althena's powers to push you to become extremely powerful.