Toffee #40

So, MChr 10 just dropped! You know how it goes. I'm gonna start rambling.

HEAVY SPOILERS FOR MEDIEVAL CHRONICLES 10, AS WELL AS SOME PREVIOUS EPISODES

Click the button below to see a sketch dump and a lot of theories. Be warned: this one is seriously long. Like the theories post on Mcop 10-1, this one takes some leaps in logic that probably don't really make sense. Best of luck! (a side note: sometimes the button doesn't work if you're on the home page. Try opening the post in another tab; the button will work then.)

MChr 10 seemed like a standard Chronicles murder mystery at first, but it had a helluva twist at the end. It’s…hm. We peek into another timeline in this installment. Anyway, I’m going to start rambling. As usual, this will be chock full of spoilers.

Let’s get the intro over with first, and what we can immediately deduce from that. The game opens up with Dr. Dregg questioning Dreggerina why she’s a lady, even though all the other Dreggs are male, given that their timelines diverged only after Arc died.

In Dreggerina’s explanation, she (back then a he) somehow ended up in this space called the “Void Realm,” which is your classic White Room (black room?) with no time flow. Arc appears in her crystalized form, and offers to restart the universe. Dreggerina somehow “logs in” as an admin. She’s got full control. Whatever Dregg’s role is, he has the capability to do that. Mm. Dreggerina hastily agrees, and she drops an interesting line – that restarting the universe can mean there will be “kids again.”

This means that Dreggerina’s original universe had no new births, similar to Mental Dregg’s. But while Mental Dregg got stuck in an asylum for the rest of his days, Dreggerina appears to have had a far more successful career as a cop (based on the clothes and the telltale orange cape). Granted, part of this is undoubtedly because Mental Dregg kept getting flashes of OG Dregg’s timeline while Dreggerina had no such affliction, but I digress. When Dreggerina entered the Void Realm, he/she looked like a grown up cop. The “no new births” thing had been going on for several years, and I’m pretty sure that would have been that universe’s “apocalypse” had the universe not been reset. Instead, there are now multiple wars going on in her ‘verse. The other Dreggs do have kids in their worlds, since their reaction to Mental Dregg’s dilemma of “no new births apocalypse” with “Hm, that one’s new.” As for the Void Realm itself, it’s still unclear

To summarize, Dreggerina’s timeline and Mental Dregg’s timeline are similar in that both had to deal with a “no new births” thing that screwed up the world. However, Dreggerina was able to leave the asylum, become a cop, and go on wacky cop adventures which I presume ultimately dumped her into the Void Realm. Dregggerina then reset the universe, which caused a genderswap due to an unknown error.

The error was that there was a prerequisite missing. What it was? Dunno. The existence of Amber? The existence of the medallions? The existence of Dimensional Debate? The point is it caused a screw-up. Instead of an actual reset, Arc pulled up a “backup file,” which ended up being the point where Arc died. Obviously, that point is pretty pivotal. And the events following Arc’s death vary greatly from timeline to timeline.

Let’s start with OG Dregg’s, since he’s the “correct” timeline by the looks of things. (I mean, Death was like “all of the other timelines will disappear eventually before the return of Arcana” source: MChr 8-2). Following Arc’s death, he was visited by Death, then offered a choice between two medallions. The medallion of life keeps the universe going, new births and all, even with Arc absent. The medallion of Death is a universe reset, with a new iteration of Arc. OG Dregg chooses both, and keeps them on a headband that he wears, like, all the time. It hasn’t been explicitly confirmed what that did exactly, but OG Dregg’s ‘verse seems to be doing okay. There are still new births, and Arc’s still alive, albeit stuck in a crystal prison and slowly transforming into Arcana. Dregg goes on to defeat Ziel (inadvertently creating Draziel) and the rest is history. The closest thing that could be called an “apocalypse” the whole Draziel mind control business.

Dr. Dregg’s and Critic Dregg’s universes had Arc die, but there seems to be new life. None of the Dreggs we met in Mcop 10-1 had the headband with medallions, so Death didn’t visit them after Arc’s death. This raises the question – why is it that in some timelines, Arc’s death stops new births, but in other timelines, everything functions normally? It’s not because of the medallions. We assumed that only Mental Dregg’s timeline was special for some reason, but Dreggerina’s timeline went through something similar before the reset.

If Dreggerina’s world originally also had a “no new births” rule, then in that original timeline, Pari would still be alive (Ada’s status is unknown) because she cannot give birth to Sarah. Therefore, by resetting the universe, Dreggerina inadvertently caused the death of Pari (or rather, Pari’s genderflipped counterpart). As far as we know, genderflip!Pari died of unknown causes, but the important thing is that as long as there are new births, Pari Angelheart will die. Dreggerina’s apocalypse switched over to a war.

Arc drops some pretty interesting stuff. She’s acting like a computer, for one, and first says that the Arc.ana file is missing, then corrupted. When she asks if Dreggerina wants to reset the universe, she calls it “Universe 2.0.” There was a previous universe. We don’t know when the first reset was, but it was there. I’m not quite sure how the whole universe reset” thing works here – if one timeline resets the universe, does that affect all the timelines, or just the one? I’m going to assume universe resets are self-contained to the timeline they’re in for now, for clarity. What matters is that there was a previous universe reset that none of us are aware of.

In version 1.9.0.1:

·   1: Major revision (new UI, lots of new features, conceptual change, etc.)

·   9: Minor revision (maybe a change to a search box, 1 feature added, collection of bug fixes)

·   0: Bug fix release

·   1: Build number (if used)

 

This is, um, something I copied from Stack Overflow (sue me). Arc’s acting like a computer, so I thought it might fit with the theory.

Based on this, there’s a major change between Universe 1.0 and Universe 2.0, and no minor changes. Cool. Identifying what this major change is and the significance of that change depends on when the reset happened, and whether “Universe 2.0” applies to just Dreggerina’s world, or all of theirs.

To be honest, most of this episode isn’t really relevant to the main story. MChr 10 seems to look at another example of a “glitched” timeline, one that isn't Dreggerina's. I say this because Dreggerina is wondering if there are any other glitched timelines. Her glitch has already been defined for us - an entire universe has been genderswapped. MChr Dregg can't be Dreggerina, because these glitches only happen after resets. MChr10 Dregg is post-reset because he is glitched. Because MChr10 Dregg is glitched and a gentleman, while Dreggerina is glitched and a lady, MChr10 Dregg and Dreggerina are seperate people from seperate timelines. Futhermore, MChr 10 cannot be past Dreggerina. Since Dreggerina’s past universe had the same “no new births” issue as Mental Dregg currently, hence no children, MChr 10 can’t be past Dreggerina, because we see children under 18 years old in MChr 10.

I guess MChr 10 Dregg went through the same Void Realm thing as Dreggerina? Who knows, the fact that MChr 10 Dregg is glitched means he went through a reset. However, some glitches, it seems, are more malicious than others. I’ll get to that a bit later.

Honestly, most of the episode isn’t that relevant to the overarching story, as expected of a Chronicles entry. We get to know some things – the MChr 10 world does have children (Ash is under 18, for example), and Draziel doesn’t exist, since Ziel committed suicide instead of getting arrested. Polly is married, but we don’t know if he has kids. The episode itself is about solving one murder so they can get information on a serial killer, dubbed “Heartless.” The twist, of course, lies at the end.

The twist this time is that Dregg is our mysterious serial killer. Dregg’s got a garden, see, and uses it to plant flowers who represent people he hates. I thought it was a one-off joke at first, but uh…nope. Heartless gouges out the hearts of his victims (hence the name) and Dregg uses them as fertilizer for his garden. That kinda reminds me of that Halloween special I wrote, haha.

Heartless Dregg is one hell of a glitch. In Dreggerina’s case, the glitch genderbent the entire timeline. Which, honestly, is probably quite the shock factor. Suddenly waking up at age 10 and of the opposite gender against your will? Having to go through puberty again, but as the opposite gender? That sounds…that sounds awful. Speaking of awful, the glitch behind Heartless Dregg is pretty screwy. It has no effect on his personality (he’s still the snarky nihilist we all know) but it’s like he threw everything he learned from Arc out the window. Her “life lessons” (1. Hear out both sides, 2. Don’t be selfish and bratty, 3. Be empathetic) have been, ah, corrupted *jazz hands* when Heartless Dregg goes on a killing spree to those who think themselves above the law. His headband is different; the medallions are cracked and broken. More of that corruption theme, I guess. He’s justifying his murders as “ridding the ugliness of the world” for “fertilizing the flowers of hope.” We could interpret this statement in a few different ways.

The first part is self-explanatory. There are people who think themselves above the law, and Heartless Dregg kills them for their transgressions. He’s acting as judge, jury, and executioner. The second part about fertilizer is more interesting. The most direct interpretation is that the hearts are literally just fertilizer, and that the flowers symbolize hope for him. (Disclaimer: Human hearts will not sprout into rafflesia stink flowers. Speaking of which, rafflesia flowers are parasitic. They also smell like rotting flesh, but for the sake of the citizens of Rightia I’m gonna retcon that to something more pleasant.) The other interpretation is more complicated. There’s been quite a few “hope” and “heart” and “universe” words thrown around lately. The universe, at one point, lost its heart. And when both the periods of song and silence come to pass, the hope of the heart will come. The so-called “flowers of hope” Heartless Dregg is planting are growing because of human hearts. It’s as if it’s a misguided attempt to summon or support the “Hope” when it eventually comes around. Like he’s harvesting human hearts for the universe who had lost its heart, or for the computer-like Arc who was also acting as if she had no heart.

Heartless Dregg has the medallions, meaning he was also visited by Death following Arc’s death, and he also chose both medallions. But he’s also glitched, meaning that he also went through the Void Realm thing. If he reset and glitched first, maybe the glitch also manifested in the damaged medallions to add to the corruption motif. If he chose from Death first, maybe the medallions got damaged during the reset. I vote for the latter. Arc, meanwhile, was also acting as if she lacked a heart. No, Arc isn’t the universe, Arc is the entity “Deathless,” who is in fact the soul of the universe. I don’t even know if the Universe has a representative here. (Arc says “Father’s creations are interesting” at one point, which…maybe that dude?? Don’t ask me.)

So…yeah! MChr 10 gave us a peek at a setting where Dregg is a serial killer. (Doesn’t that mean Dregg is more physically fit, then? I can’t imagine all his victims gave up without a struggle. It takes effort to kill people, who knew.) While I don’t think this universe in particular will be of much consequence to the main story, it gives Dregg an extra incentive to figure out the true root of the mystery surrounding Arc, Arcana, and the Universe in general. 

Thank you so much for reading through this; I know it’s a lot. I am the physical embodiment of word salad, and I cannot emphasize how grateful I am to you for putting up with me. Until next time!

- Toffee

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