Sheexy's Theory : The SoM-LoM connection

[Dr. Sheexy]

WARNING:
This is a giant text heavy read that requires lots of thinking to fully comprehend. It will hurt your brain!

Proceed with caution!

Ok, before you read my theory you need to watch the LoM intro sequence to understand where I am coming from here. I'll make references to this film a few times, so maybe have it open and ready to view.

Plus the music is great.


Ok the things we need to know:
-- The main characters in LoM are Sprites
-- There are statues of Popoie everywhere.
-- LoM is flippin' weird and overflowing with Mana.
-- The Mana Tree appears in scary floating ghost form thing in LoM
-- There are very few humans in LoM, most are fantasy type creatures

With these things laid out here is what I have.


Notice at the 45 second mark when that bright light comes at all the sproutlings. Right after that a magical flying thingy comes or something, and then the Mana Tree starts smoking and lets out a crazy evil energy looking thing around it while a yellow light streams down on it?

Hmm, look at the vantage point you've got there. Remind anyone of this scene from Secret of Mana? Does that place maybe look like the Pureland a bit?
http://secretofmana.planets.gamespy.com ... een121.jpg
Remember what happened right after that scene? The Mana tree got ripped to pieces by the Mana Fortress shooting it with a yellow laser. It even smoked and everything when hit (or rather, when the laser struck next to it, they didn't really line it up right in SoM)

But my point here is, this is the Mana Tree getting nailed by a laser! That energy stuff floating around before the laser comes is the Mana Fortress gathering power, and then the Mana Tree starts getting flippin' destroyed by that laser and is letting off all kinds of energy and stuff.

Ok, so the Mana Tree is destroyed, and it's giant tree spirit starts getting sucked into another dimension. That's why when you go down and talk to it it stops talking to you and Randi starts being all sad. Mommy's spirit went to another place.
That place is where LoM takes place.
Ok, there is one point in my theory.

The next involves the scene right after when the tree is destroyed. At about a 1:30 in the film all those lands and stuff start getting sucked up and turned into artifacts.

What is really happening here is that the Mana Fortress as well as the Mana Beast are sucking the Mana out of the world. When the Mana is sucked away it condenses down into an artifact like that. Kind of like how the "Veedios" in Mandala must have been artifacts created when the first Mana Beast came.

Please notice that most of the "Veedios" talk about Mana being used up or the Mana Beast coming. A few others talk about Abe Lincoln, or have some music, and that is because even though they've got important stuff to be saying on T.V. you can always find something dumb to watch.
So the "Veedios" are artifacts from when the world was pretty much destroyed the first time, they never left the world though.

The artifacts shown being lifted out of the world in LoM followed the Mana Tree into that other dimension, the place where LoM takes place.

So why didn't any other places go into another dimension when the Mana Beast came the first time? (referenced in the "Veedios") Well some did. Remember the Moon Palace? Why is there that giant gap to another dimension there?
Makes sense doesn't it?


So all of the places that got sucked into LoM are some of the most Mana filled places in the world of SoM. The Mana got sucked away by the Mana Fortress and Mana Beast, and thrown into the other dimension (LoM).
This would explain why there are only eight of each elemental in SoM, and like, millions in other SD games. In SoM the Mana Beast had come and gone once before, so the world already had everything tons of stuff sucked away that first time.
In SoM the power of Mana is dwindling, because of the first time.

So the over-abundance of Mana in LoM explains why the place is so flippin' weird. All the magical stuff got thrown there, and keeps pouring in everytime something like that happens.

Your main characters in LoM are sprites, because Sprites got thrown into the other dimension. Popoie appears on the statues because he was thrown into the LoM dimension and was regarded as an awesome hero because he was the only person who knew what flippin' just happened.
The Mana Tree is a giant floaty tree because it is a spirit now.

Also, one more big thing, this is a quote from a lot of LoM stuff:

"This is the world of Fa'Diel, floating on waves of Mana. It is a world within worlds, the Spirit World, the Faerie World, the Other World, and the Divine World. But it is the World of Man from which Humankind cannot leave."

Divine World - Where the Mana Tree, Mana Goddess and elementals can go to party. Linked with all other worlds.
Other World - LoM world, where all the weird stuff goes on.
Spirit World - Where people go when they die.
Faerie World - World of the Faeries, linked with LoM world.
World of Man- The world of SoM

Makes sense right?


Here is the whole thing summed up for you:

The Mana Tree is shown being destroyed by the Mana Fortress in the LoM opening song.
Mana and places rich with Mana are thrown into another dimension along with the Mana Tree's spirit when the Mana Fortress and Beast use them up.
LoM is so flippin' weird because it is overflowing with Mana.
Popoie was regarded as an awesome hero in LoM land, and that is why he has statues there.


Now, I haven't taken into mind the world history supplied by LoM, but maybe I'll take a look at deciphering how that plays in with my theory later.
My brain hurts

[Kassidy]

Makes sense. I remember making a couple of links when I saw that intro from LoM, and I could see where you were going with the idea. All plausible. As you say, Popoie being regarded as sacred in the LoM world makes sense as he was the one to see it all happen. Aside from his grandfather he was the last sprite survivor in the SoM world.

As for the world history in LoM, that world wasn't created the instance the Mana Tree was transferred, so it would be logical for it to have history before hand. Also if there is a Mana Tree prior to the ghostly figure in LoM, this could be explained as the Tree co-existing on the two planes, however it requires a physical presence in the SoM world, whereas in LoM it can exist merely in spirit.

[Magus_Melchior]

Rather mercilessly cut & quoted:

-- The main characters in LoM are Sprites

Um... Wha? I don't remember this at all. In fact, I seem to remember a couple of places where the hero/heroine is called "human".

Notice at the 45 second mark when that bright light comes at all the sproutlings. Right after that a magical flying thingy comes or something, and then the Mana Tree starts smoking and lets out a crazy evil energy looking thing around it while a yellow light streams down on it?

Hmm, look at the vantage point you've got there. Remind anyone of this scene from Secret of Mana? Does that place maybe look like the Pureland a bit?

The "Pureland" was also in SD3, under a different name. Basically a haven for the Mana Tree.

The rest of your theory would work if it weren't for the huge backstory of LoM and the fact that the artifacts become places found nowhere in SoM. You'd also have to account for folks like Nunuzac, Pokhiel, the Dragons, and the Jumi.

[Danny]

Isn't the Pureland from SoM called the Mana Holy Land in SD3? I think that's it. You're right about the music though Sheexy, it's kind of cool! I know a lot about SoM, SD3 and SwoM, but a only a little about FFA, Lom, Hom and CoM so I can't say a lot here except that it's kind of strange not to have that many Humans in these games. There are tons of Humans in the other mana games. This is pretty strange indeed.

[Dr. Sheexy]

MAGUS! Where've you been? Good to see you back around the board!

-- The main characters in LoM are Sprites

Um... Wha? I don't remember this at all. In fact, I seem to remember a couple of places where the hero/heroine is called "human".

I really wish I could find where I read this, but I've read it before online. But yeah, without that reference that whole part of my arguement is debunked.



The tree in SD3 never got nuked though, so that's why I'm linking this to SoM.
I'm really wondering where SD3 fits into all of this, cause there was an item named "Popoie's Rags" so I dunno if that is just the game designers throwing a reference to SoM or linking backwards in time to it.
Personally I think SD3 occurs before SoM... possibly before the time of the first Mana Beast. This is just what I'm imaginging though.

And with the Nunuzac and people I'm gonna go with LoM being a dimension of it's own with its own history, but stuff from SoM gets dumped there from time to time or something.

We didn't get to go to every place in SoM, so maybe just the places we didn't visit got stolen...


I agree that the whole LoM history thing really throws a wrench in this idea I made up.
I'm gonna have to sit and read that through a bit to try to link my idea.

[Demiforce]

Interesting theory, but you missed one thing. The "World History" of LoM.... the whole creation process, the Mana Tree burning down, Mana wars, Wisdoms.... there is a really complex historical background, documented in the World History Encyclopedia, unlocked while completing the game. If you ask me, the scene from the intro was taking place long before the action of the Legend of Mana. This is the fragment of World History, which, I believe, describe the scene:

"Cracks appeared in the Mana Tree. Waves of chaos from other worlds came and
tried to envelop all of Fa'Diel. Each Moon God chose a Flammy and gave it a
stone. The Flammies rode into the sky. They were born of the earth to ride in
the sky and return to the earth. They became a flying river of Mana"

I would quote some more fragments, but I don't have time at the moment hehe...

Nevertheless, theory is quite intriguing, escpecially the multiple dimensions of Fa'Diel.

[Hero of Spirits]

The tree in SD3 never got nuked though, so that's why I'm linking this to SoM.
I'm really wondering where SD3 fits into all of this, cause there was an item named "Popoie's Rags" so I dunno if that is just the game designers throwing a reference to SoM or linking backwards in time to it.
Personally I think SD3 occurs before SoM... possibly before the time of the first Mana Beast. This is just what I'm imaginging though.

Negative, ever looked at the statues in the art gallery in Geo? notice anything about them?

THEY ARE THE HEROES FROM SD3!!!!!!!!!!

so from that I belive that these mana games were made in chronological order, but I don't see any probs with the theories not yet debunked, but c'mon shexxy, you've never seen those statues before? I thought seeing Duran Immortalized as a statue was the coolest thing ever! If you can't find those, I can probably take a screenshot for you.

[Dr. Sheexy]

Negative, ever looked at the statues in the art gallery in Geo? notice anything about them?

THEY ARE THE HEROES FROM SD3!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, I have seen them. Forgot to add that part to my theory.

See, since I think SD3 came before SoM then all the SD3 stuff got transported over to LoM land, and that is why it is hard to link SoM to SD3.


*cough*I am making this stuff up as I go along*cough*

[The J Person]

Without actually quoting anything, I'll mention that this is very similar to an old theory I posed on the old board.

I, too, recall the heroes of LoM being referred to as Sprites - if nothing else, their style of clothing certainly would indicate such, or at least a Sprite/Human heritage of some sort.

This also kind of explains Popoie's existence as a Statue in LoM, and in addition to that explains Popoie's Notebook (that mystical, magical, freak-tastic item in SwoM that serves as sort of an index for the entire game - which strangely enough comes to you from Niccolo; how'd he get his hands on that, otherwise?).

I have a few additions to this, which involves Mavoles, Isabella, The Underworld in general in all the games, LoM's in-game backstory (in the form of World History), the Yggdrasil Tree legend from real-world mythology (which I believe was somewhat of the inspiration for all interpretations of the Mana Tree - a theory I would very much like to ask Koichi Ishii about in person ), and just assumptions I've made over the years.
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Legend of Mana's "World History", as I would describe it, is full of errors - if nothing else, the general explanations given seem very stereotypical to me, of a bad JP->EN translation. Probably, this was caused by it being a translation from a very complex Japanese version of the game - it certainly explains why Ultimania never made it into English publication; I have my suspicions that, like SoM, LoM had issues with meeting its release date. I would at least presume that the characters mentioned (such as "The Great Witch Anise") and dealings with the magical artifacts (i.e., Eye of Flame) are in fact mostly correct.

Quote from page 4 of 72, World History
"Tryne, merciful god of water.
Zea, passionate god of fire.
Barlen, selfish god of gold.
Libleyt, hopeful god of wood.
Morphes, wealthy god of earth.
Ghazel, whimsical god of wind.
The Moon Gods rejoiced, and the Mana Goddess returned to her slumber, becoming the great Mana Tree. Fa'Diel was left to the whims of the Moon Gods."
end quote

It goes on to say in the following pages that the Moon Gods (seemingly benevolent versions of the God-Beasts that appeared in SD3, perhaps?) created the Elemental Spirits.

I'll mention again that in SD3, a large amount of the game was devoted to opening the Holyland Gate - in other words, accessing a passage between the world the Mana Tree exists in, and the world of SD3. In LoM, similarly, the Mana Tree broke across dimensions and returned to Fa'Diel - a place in which it had formerly been burnt to the ground during the battle between Anise and the Faeries.

Here's another quote (from page 8 of 72, World History), with some omissions on my part:
"The land of Fa'Diel was scarred, and pits to other worlds opened in the wounds. The Moon Gods peeked into the other world, and came to know fear, envy, and desire."
end quote

These wounds were later "healed", according to the World History, however, additional holes were later opened by the "King of Dragons", Argot, who used them to summon monsters into Fa'Diel (it implies that Argot was one of the Faeries, since he - like Aion, the former ruler of the Faeries - was banished by them). This is the origin of that huge corpse-beast, Lucemia.
The Faeries also summoned another wyrm, Geimaswald, to fight against Anuella (Anise's daughter). It was also killed.

Later on, Gato Grottoes was Fa'Diel's point of defense against attacks from other dimensions - the third time, at least, that these other dimensions are mentioned. Nunuzac summoned Freymold, the wyrm of Fire, as well as a number of other monsters, and eventually wound up trapping himself in the dimension he had been summoning creatures from. That makes four times so far that other dimensions were involved in battles in Fa'Diel - quite different, in some ways, from the rest of the games in the series, but still, there's something they have in common here, which I'm getting to.

Finally, the long, drawn-out war that had begun over the Eyes of Flame resulted in Zuf'ben (the last mentioned leader of the Faeries) praying to higher beings for help in their battle against the humans. The answer came in the form of seven - typically invisible - "Angels" and their airship, Janna. These angels had some rather complicated dealings with both sides in the war - they wound up reincarnating themselves as Humans and Faeries, and, with their memories erased, were divided into factions in the battle to control the ship they had once piloted themselves. Eventually, six of them had their memories restored, and they came to fight for the Jumi - who at the time were being hunted by both Humans and Faeries, for their cores - mainly because the seventh angel had reincarnated as a Jumi, and had not yet regained his memories. The end result of this was that they took down Zuf'ben (yes, the guy who'd called them to help), as well as the leader of the Humans, and sealed their own ship into a dimensional gap, to end the battle. This is the last reference to an alternate dimension in the World History.

Finally, the Dragons. I'm sure everyone recalls the Dragon Emperor from SD3, no? Well, for a quick recap, Duran's father fought against him. The Dragon Emperor was in fact a Dragon - much like the ones in the final quest of the Dragoons in LoM, and had a Human as his servant - a Dragoon, for all intents and purposes. Unlike the villain in LoM's storyline, however - who ventured out from the Underworld after the hero released him from it - The Dragon Emperor had come into SD3's world through Dragon's Hole - think, hole... hole... what holes are mentioned in LoM? Why, holes into other dimensions!
There's a short inferrence there, which may be mistaken, but I think I'm pretty close to being on the money here.

And now for more explanation!
Irzoile Enaanshalc - the fifteenth Emperor, according to the World History book in LoM - otherwise known as The Deathbringer, died, and then became the Dragoon of the Bone Dragon, Jajara (a boss in LoM who was also part of the Dragoon quest). Deathbringer, as I'm sure everyone will recall, was also a boss in LoM, whom you had to fight just before Jajara - both were found in the Bone Fortress. This calls to mind Sierra and Larc, and the Dragons they served, as well, just on principle. At any rate, this stuff is tied to LoM's Empire - which very closely resembles Vandole's Empire in SoM, in every other way... and probably also to the Dragons found in the Pure Land (though there was never really much discussion of that in this context in SoM; I am inferring this connection by what seems reasonable to me) - quite closely.

Aside from multiple dimensions (and, to my knowledge, being fairly close to the same thing as another dimension), LoM has visibly made a great deal out of the existence of the Underworld - a place that has been described in every single game so far, but not dealt with directly except in SoM, SD3, and LoM. In SoM, the Underworld's influence, though much less direct, came in the form of Thanatos, Sheex, Geshtar, Fanha, and The Emperor - none of them actually being *from* the Underworld, but borrowing their power from it. As I'm sure everyone else will recall, the Underworld was one of the three main powers vying for the Mana Sword in SD3, and in that game its main goal was to destroy the Mana Tree and usurp the Goddess' "throne".

In LoM, however, the Underworld was ruled by the banished ruler of the Faeries, Aion - who created the Shadoles. Despite this discrepancy, it's quite possible this same entity was the one who became known as the Dark Prince in SD3. Finally, this resolves a bit of the confusion that we've dealt with so long - assuming of course that I'm correct, but it's just speculation. Really.

So, not in terms of direct correlation, but rather in terms of major similarities (that would have otherwise gone unnoticed up till now), we seem to have pretty well figured out just exactly what the commonalities between LoM and the other games are.
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In addition to all of this junk, you still have SD3's Underworld and SwoM's Mavoles. There seems to be some kind of a connection here, though I can't make it clear enough to make sense out of it yet - perhaps Heroes of Mana will reveal some further unnoticed plot connections. I am *QUITE* certain there will be more discussion about this. So let's hope it has some sense to it!
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EDIT!
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You also make a good point about those statues of the heroes from SD3. Still, I'm with Sheexy on SD3 being a sort of trans-dimensional prequel to SoM, with SoM taking place in an alternate dimension. This means that ultimately, BOTH worlds eventually had things from them wind up in LoM, though SD3's method is slightly more esoteric - remember how they kill off the Mana Tree at the very end of SD3, in just about every storyline? Mana disappears from SD3's world around that time - which causes a *HUGE* influx of Mana-powered things slipping through the cracks from SD3 into LoM's world, Fa'Diel.

Is answer question?

[Dr. Sheexy]

J Dude you are my hero.

[Lotus]

Dude, I never noticed the SD3 statues, now I have to go and play and see if I can find them. That means I have to start from scratch though, so it may be a while before I get there, anyone who can take a screeny first would make me happy as well.

[The J Person]

Also, I would like to submit an application for the title of "Seikens Intellect of Epic Nerd Proportions". If nothing else, I'm putting that into my siggy tag.

EDIT: While we're at it, I did have one last thing that was bugging me. Just what is a Sprite, anyway? I mean, you've got Popoie as the only visible represenation, EVER (well, aside from his grandfather, at the Wind Palace, anyway). Carlie may resemble a Sprite, but she's really just a half-breed Elf/Human, which is another thing entirely in the Mana universe. By definition, a Sprite is a pixie-like thing - and in non-Mana context, they're generally evil. Popoie looks nothing like the Faeries of LoM.

Koichi Ishii... what happened here?

EDIT-EDIT: Now that I think about it... The Fairy Child is a song from SoM. Unless it's talking about Randi (the *ahem* son of the Mana Tree, which in SD3 used Faeries as its "seeds" - thus the connection there), wasn't Popoie referred to by the Dwarf Village Elder as a "Sprite Child"? Couldn't that be similar to Carlie's condition - of being a half-breed - and if it is, doesn't that make Popoie part-Faerie (LoM style)?

[Dr. Sheexy]

J Dude, you and I should write a book entitled "Crazed Mana Fans: These are the things we think up."
We could sell at least three.

And Lotus, if you are able to find screens of that room and the basement room in Geo I would love to see them.
Downstairs there are statues of Watts, Tropicallo and many other things!
Also, the Jackal from FFA makes an appearance upstairs.

[racx_00]

These explanations of how the games tie in sounds really good. Unfortunately though I don't have anyway of getting LoM. So I have no idea about the game and can't pitch in ideas.

[The J Person]

Never noticed the Jackal before, but maybe that's because I didn't recognize it. Good eye, Sheexy!

EDIT: Oh, and just while I'm at it... there are places in that game where they call the Pirate Penguins "Human", too. :rolleyes: