Spoiler Alert/002

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Hey folks. Sorry for the delay since the last issue. I'm still trying to find the right balance between offline and online. Anyways, welcome to issue two.

The Kingdom of Zeal aka What happened to Chronos?

Issue 002: November 18th, 2015

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We left off with the question of what has happened to the planet of Chronos. In character things progressed closer and closer to the 1005 war and we needed something to cram in before the actual war, or at least something that could be confused for it. Over the past year we had been implying more and more that there was another world where the Kingdom of Zeal hadn't fallen. Where Lavos hadn't awakened and the Queen continued to amass more and more power.

Let me pause here and discuss something slightly off topic: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Originally Johnny was a character I picked up a few GAMES prior to Chronos/Twisted. His plot has become... convoluted, to say the least. Somewhere down the road we had decided that he and another too-powerful character Emi, would be thrown out the door and left in a place that seemed promising. A scene that ended with them planting the first trees on a barren world. At the time we left them seemingly without the ability to grow old or die, and the two set out to fill this world and see where it would lead.

While putting Chronos together we were constantly having to address, for lack of a better term, the guardian. All throughout the Chrono series there is a guardian spirit that is never shown who influences the cast. It's usually just written off as Fate or Chrono Cross's tongue-in-cheek FATE. An entity that watches over the cast and pushes them along without ever getting directly involved.... hmmm...

Always going to the side of irony, we decided that the world Emi and Johnny 'grew' became Chronos as we (those involved with their plotlines) had literally built this world as a MUCK. We decided Emi continued to exist as a Goddess-type character, staying out of sight and blessing people who worshiped the light. Johnny on the other hand, well, it was decided to create a cave just north of the Guardia Fairgrounds and start a few rumors of a shadow that would appear there from time to time watching people. Calling him simply Shadow Wraith (Not to be confused with Wraithshadow), Johnny would appear to characters who wandered alone in the hills and give them advice before vanishing into thin air. It was fun, it filled a number of holes, and it made a good connection to what had inspired us creating the world everyone was interacting with.

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Back on topic. The Alternate Kingdom of Zeal was based on Chrono Cross's Another World. We couldn't really push the time travel aspect easily - but portals to a parallel world? Easy. But what would we use as a catalyst to allow them to travel back and forth? At some point it occurred to us that if we created a timeline where Johnny and Emi existed, they would also exist in the alternate one. Running off of this, we created a scenario where the Kingdom of Zeal discovered Johnny lurking in one of the caves beneath the palace and captured him. Using a shard of Lavos's shell they enslaved him into their service and kept his Dread Daggers to cut the fabric of reality between worlds to increase their power by destroying and enslaving each world they came upon.

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Thus came about the final major TP of ChronoMUCK - the invasion of the Kingdom of Zeal. A plotline that took the better part of the next year and a half to finish. Destruction caused by the chaos broke up our map and allowed us to implant icons from various timelines such as Zeal's Palace that replaced Guardia Castle and became a seat of power for Magus. It was a vast and impressive plotline that ended with the heroes putting an end to a more corrupt and evil version of Lavos. The cast was deposited on the shores of Choras where they learned about the war and knew from what they'd learned that the Kingdom of Guardia was destined to fall without them. There they remained until the end of days on Chronos with one last visit from the mad Queen Zeal, removed from Lavos's influence, who died feeling the burden of the sins she'd committed.

It was a sad way to end things, but it was a fitting one - and it was a plotline no one has ever gone back to. There would be no aftermath. It wasn't needed. Chronos was, for all intents and purposes, done and the timeline remained in a state that allowed Chrono Cross to take place without complication.

But was this really the end of Chronos? In the eyes of our staff these characters have continued to live on - the hero Crono himself STILL occasionally makes appearances on Twisted. Without explanation both the Truce Inn Waitress and Cook entered Happosai's tournament just after we rebooted Twisted. So is this the end of them? No. Have we really seen the last of the Queen of Zeal? Absolutely not. In fact, those with keen eyes may notice that Diablo's timeline of Twisted mentions an invasion that never occurred. An interesting throwback to an event he wasn't apart of...

The concept of the Alternate Kingdom of Zeal hasn't been completely retired. Much like the Black Omen in Chrono Trigger it could just as easily come back as long as it was taken from an earlier period of time - a strategy knowledgeable players have long abused for farming experience points for their characters. It is very likely that the Kingdom will come back. The only question is when? As they say, it's just a matter of time...

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