Headscratchers / Deltarune

• I keep hearing this bit of theorizing about how "Your choices don't matter, but other people's choices do". Yeah, but it's still our choices that prompt them to take the choices they do. So how is this whole line of thought supposed to be meaningful, anything other than semantics?
  • As noted in the Fridge Brilliance page, if the message was actually more of a message to Kris and not the player then this would probably make more sense.
  • Heard this somewhere while watching Shayy, but it's not an absolute, final statement. It's like Flowey's "It's kill or be killed!"—your choices mattering is something you PROVE to be true or false. You can prove that your choices do matter... by going on the Snowgrave route, for example.
• IF Kris is being "possessed" by the player via SOUL, then it explains why and how we are able to control them. Ralsei gets "controlled" by us as well, but the flavour text always points out that Kris asks him to do something (e.g. "You asked Ralsei to compliment all enemies"). But when Kris and Ralsei are locked into a prison cell, the player receives the option to tell Susie where to go to. She will react confused, believing to have heard Kris and ignore the input. But if the player's control is within the SOUL that is inside Kris...how could Susie receive the order?
  • The way the Susie control scene plays out actually seems a lot like the player is essentially sending their SOUL out without anyone being the wiser and helping subconsciously direct Susie. This is particularly notable in that you still have no control over Susie in pathing or while she fights Lancer, instead only evading attacks to prevent Susie from being damaged.
  • I think Kris just shouted it from a distance, and Susie could hear Kris was saying something, but not what it was.
  • The biggest mystery is what actually happens. First, Ralsei tells Kris to imagine what Susie is doing, then you actually gain partial control of Susie (your choices don't matter), but when you go back to Kris, Ralsei is just finishing a conversation with them. What was Ralsei saying during the time Susie and Lancer were fighting? Was he talking to the real Kris, who wouldn't be controlled during that period? Can you gain partial control of anyone if you just imagine what they are doing hard enough?
    • And if this is the case, how would Ralsei even know that you can gain control this way?
    • Well, Flowey/Asriel seems to know a lot about SOULs…
• If Ralsei wants to seal the other fountain in order to restore balance, why doesn't he ask Kris to seal the one in his own palace? No one is there, and the function of the fountain doesn't appear to be any different. Doing so seems like it would be the easiest way to resolve the situation without any extra effort.
  • The dialogue seems to imply that fountain is natural and supposed to exist, and there's a similar one in the Light World somewhere that balances it out. The extra fountains opening up seem to be what will throw off the balance of the world without a light-counterpart extra fountain to keep it stable.
    • Yes, but my point is, if there's just one Dark Fountain too many, wouldn't it do to close either of them? In other words, the entire story could be subverted by closing Ralsei's fountain.
    • If Ralsei closed his, then that still wouldn't solve the problem of the King, who would just open up another one before the heroes would have a chance to respond; better to go to the source of the problem and stop it in its tracks than to go for a temporary solution that only delays the issue.
    • It's possible it's not simply the number of fountains that needs to be equal, maybe the light and dark fountains must be linked to balance out, or the fountains are of different strength, so while the natural ones are equal, the unnatural ones would either be too strong or too weak, leaving an imbalance either way.
    • Ralsei's also just a kid, with all the forethought and decision-making skills that would imply, who's grown up thinking about the heroes and the legend. It's very likely the thought of sealing his own fountain just never occurred to him, since that's not a "heroic adventure", especially compared to trekking throughout the world and sealing the others. Additionally, "his" fountain has been there much, much longer. Why should he choose to close his, instead of the usurper's?
    • There is also the case of what Ralsei's manual says, about the dark fountain (likely referring to the one in his castle) giving him form. Which could mean that sealing the fountain in his castle would kill him.
    • There is also the implication that the Dark World is in some form, a game of make-believe. Therefore it's possible that none of the consequences are actually serious, and maybe Ralsei didn't put too much thought into making his "game" make sense. It's more like a highly-immersive roleplay scenario with a little Alice in Wonderland magic thrown in there.
  • Made a bit more clear in Chapter 2, where Ralsei explains that the central fountain in his kingdom is made of "pure" darkness. It's a natural fountain that's supposed to exist; the others are unbalanced and impure, and that's potentially what makes them so dangerous.
• Ralsei tells the legend of three heroes appearing as the Earth draws its final breath... but the world hardly seems to be at that point yet. In other words, Kris and Susie seem to have arrived far too soon to save the world.
  • Actually, it was a Prophecy Twist. If you quit the game, THEN THE WORLD WAS COVERED IN DARKNESS.
  • With Chapter 2 explaining what will happen if the balance between light and dark gets thrown off, it seems like "as the Earth draws its final breath" is just the legend being flowery and not something that would literally happen as a sign of the apocalypse drawing near.
• How did Ralsei know Kris's and Susie's names?
  • It's possible they were somewhere in the prophecy, or maybe he'd been watching them for a while and had orchestrated events early on to make sure they arrive. Not that that has any proof, but still…
    • Then it begs the same question as every prophecy: where does it come from? Prophecies can't be "just there". They, too, have to come from somewhere/someone.
  • Since Ralsei is highly implied to be Asriel's counterpart, and Lancer is likely Sans' counterpart, Ralsei could be friends with Kris' and Susie's counterpart and figured out their names by rearranging the letters in their names and took note of their visual similarities. This still opens up many more questions, though.
  • Ralsei does seem to have some amount of awareness of the Light World and game mechanics, so he might have some acknowledgement about the player characters.
• Why is there a monster graveyard? That's not how monsters work. In Undertale, it's stated that a dead monster's dust is sprinkled on their favorite object so their essence would infuse it. Are the two timelines that different?
  • Each grave has an item etched onto it that most likely holds emotional value to the deceased. It could be that human funeral rites, that often involve burying important items with the dead, also apply to monsters in this world. Even though there are no humans but Kris in town, the culture could still remain. So the graves don't contain monster bodies, but the dusted objects.
    • Well, there are no humans shown or mentioned in town because Kris is the only human living in Hometown. This doesn't mean non-exist, though.
    • Kris generally seems to be a bit of a curiosity as "the human" to some of the younger monsters, which would support that they are unique and the only human in town.
  • It's possible that monsters just die like humans do in this world. If that's the case, then humans might die like monsters do in this world as well, which would explain why their roles as dominant species have switched. This is also implied, if not outright confirmed when Toriel mentioned that her son is at the age to go to college, and that she herself is slowly aging away.
    • Somewhat Jossed, Boss monsters are implied to age only if they have direct living descendants; as Asriel is a living direct descendant, Toriel and Asgore should be expected to age normally.
    • You misunderstood my entry. The point of that entry is that monsters may work like humans do in this world in an attempt to explain the graves, and the seemingly dominant role switch between humans and monsters. Therefore, the same rules wouldn't apply. Besides that, this is Deltarune, not Undertale. Things obviously work differently here.
    • Possibly confirmed by Chapter 2's Weird Route, as it's heavily implied Berdly is dead at the end (he doesn't wake up at his alarm and examining him only says "He's not awake") and has a visible corpse.
    • Chapter 2 also seems to imply that the gravestones are just memorial markers, with no bodies buried under them. Alvin Boom says his father's hammer is buried there, but doesn't say that his father himself is buried there.
  • Monsters in Deltarune seem to follow a non-specific religion where they prescribe a particular way to live, and follow customs regarding disposal of the dead. Monsters bury their dust no differently than humans bury their cremated remains.
• So Kris' pencil became a sword? What was Susie carrying that became an ax?
  • A tiny ax?
  • She was eating chalk beforehand… maybe it was the crumbs of chalk she hadn't eaten yet?
  • It's called the Mane Ax, and its description says it's made from the hair of a dragon. Susie could be considered sort of dragon-ish, being a dinosaur and all. So a clump of her hair, or a comb?
  • Maybe it was Maybellene. Maybe it was Axe shampoo.
  • A weapon Susie can get in Chapter 2 called the 'Auto Axe' says it needs to be charged by plugging it into the wall, which seems to imply it's an automatic set of hairclippers, so a comb for her base weapon is probably a very close idea if nothing else.
  • Which raises another question; what were electric clippers doing in the computer lab?
• If Kris did indeed toss out other SOULs into the birdcage, then should we really be worried about that Slasher Smile of theirs? If they've done it before, then clearly nothing bad has happened as a result of it… at least as far as we're aware.
  • Answered in Chapter 2. From the looks of things, Kris opened the Dark World fountain in the library after the Chapter 1 ending.
• Since Kris is implied to be soulless after removing our SOUL from their body, yet appears to still be able to move, doesn't this mean that they're a ZOMBIE!?
  • While lacking a soul would certainly mean a human or monster is dead by normal understanding in the world of Undertale, the existence of Flowey proves that sufficient amounts of determination will grant consciousness to living but soulless objects, such as flowers. It is entirely possible that Humans in the world of Deltarune can live without souls, similar to a person in a comatose state, lacking a personality or the willpower required to achieve anything. Add an infusion of sufficient willpower, and you get an active soulless body. As red souls are associated with an abnormal excess of determination, it's possible that by possessing Kris, the player infuses them with the willpower necessary to "live" without a soul.
    • You gave me the thought of Kris just lying motionlessly as a corpse on the ground and the idea of that is… Creepy.
  • As a chilling thought, what if Kris still moving without their(?) SOUL is because there's something else manipulating them that the SOUL keeps in check…?
    • An even more chilling thought, the SOUL in Chapter 2 (especially in the Weird Route) is heavily implied to be what lets you control Kris. The whole school zombie line takes on a whole new meaning when they literally tear out their strings (soul), by how they walk. You might control Kris to do good, or as evidenced by how it seems the Weird Route affected them, a deliberate evil that horrifies them.
• So, two students go missing for an entire school day. One of them is notorious as a troublemaker, everyone is uncomfortable around her, and she is capable of extreme violence.^note Even if she was never actually considering biting Kris's face off, the fact that she would even imply it is frightening. When Kris comes back, Toriel has Anger Born of Worry. Okay, that makes sense. But why weren't more of the citizens worried about this? You'd think there would be a search party or something.
  • Considering they went missing at the start of the school day, the only people who really knew they were missing the whole day were their class, who probably thought Susie beat Kris up and then left and that Kris probably decided to not come back to class afterwards. Concerning, but nothing so worrying that they'd need to call a search warrant about. Meanwhile, to Toriel, Kris had only been gone for maybe an hour or two at most. While a little worrying, it's certainly not a long enough length of time for her to call the cops about.
• Why was there a scuffle in the King's throne room?
  • The King fought with The Roaring Knight and lost, leading to the king swearing fealty to them.
    • Which becomes a headscratcher of its own once the identity of the Roaring Knight is revealed in Chapter 2…
    • The Roaring Knight's identity is not confirmed.
    • At the vary least, the identity of the Roaring Knight is highly implied, given the evidence and the Queen's story, to be Kris acting without the SOUL. They may even take on a different form without the Player in the Dark Worlds. Thus the King wouldn't recognize them. Or, like with some things in the Cyber World. Things that happened in their past are just simple things happening in real life. Like maybe the Knight simply put the King of Spades card on the top of the cabinet while placing the other kings in the bottom, which translated to imprisoning the other Kings.
• To move to different Dark Worlds, you need to exit the Dark World, only achievable by Lightners, then enter a different Dark World's entry point. Lancer and Rouxls could theoretically have gotten to the Cyber World by hitching a ride in Kris's pocket, but it still leaves the question of how Ralsei got there.
  • They don't discuss Ralsei showing up either. Kris and Susie meet Queen, and then immediately afterwards Ralsei appears from offscreen, with both Kris and Susie dismissing this.
• If all Darkners turn to stone if they leave their world, why was Ralsei fine? Shouldn't he have begun to petrify as well?
  • Maybe since he is from the pure fountain of darkness, he's immune to the effect. Or maybe he's not really a Darkner.
  • On that note, how did Ralsei get from the dark world in the school to the one in the library? Darkners are supposed to turn into items like playing cards and computers in the light world, which would make travel without aid from a Lightner impossible. So either Ralsei is a Darkner with a means of traversing between Dark Worlds without entering the light world or he's not a Darkner.
    • The entire party had done that before in the dark world. By going past the great doors, the party left Ralsei's kingdom and ended up in the Card Kingdom. it's likely a similar method was used this time as well.
  • Ralsei says that it would happen if a Darkner wasn't "compatible" with the Dark World they entered, and that Ralsei's kingdom (being made of "pure" darkness) is compatible with Darkners from any other Dark World. Since Ralsei is from a kingdom of pure darkness, it's possible that means it also works in reverse, making Ralsei compatible with any other Dark World.
    • Lancer is also from said kingdom with the pure fountain, which means he should have been immune too.
    • Wait, isn't Lancer from the kingdom with the impure fountain?
  • It's possible Ralsei wasn't turned because he really IS the foretold prince from the legend, and not Lancer like what others speculate. Perhaps the reason why a PRINCE FROM THE DARK is part of the legend to begin with is his compatibility with any Dark World being necessary for the end goal. Seems like a shoddy propehcy if one third of the heroes is dead weight outside their home.
• Tasque Manager's dialogue when you fight her while using either of Jevil's equipment heavily implies her and him know each other, but considering Darkners turn to stone outside their dark world, how could they?
  • It's possible that the Jevilstail and Devilsknife just give off some sense or aura of chaos, chaos. She never actually references Jevil if you have his item equipped, she just brings up her distaste for chaos.
    • The Jevilstail could be that, but she refers to the Devilsknife by name, without any of the party saying it beforehand.
  • The King and Jevil also knew the Queen.
• Maybe they were going for a 'better left unsaid' sort of vibe, but how did nobody at any point take one look at the Queen and say 'hm, she's probably Lancer's mom'? Susie is best buds with Lancer, surely she would've thought about it.
  • To be fair, in the cutscene with the King and Queen during the epilogue, it's implied she isn't his true mother, given the King's "When was that decided!?" response to her saying she is.
    • Given this reaction from King, who exactly is Lancer's biological mother? Does he even have one? Or did King and Lancer simultaneously spawn from their Fountain's creation as inherently father and son without a mother coming into play?
  • Also, she's explicitly mechanical. She even introduces herself with a "serial number" rather than a name.
    • Both are fair points, but I was more curious about none of the characters made a comment on her resemblance.
• Just what shocked Kris so much during Spamton NEO's fight that Ralsei and even Susie notice how shaken they are and try their best to comfort them? Do they have some link to the Shadow Crystals or their bearers? Or are they the only one in the party starting to realize their madness is the result of Gaster's meddling and thus going mad from the revelation?
  • Could be they see themselves in Spamton. They're both just puppets on strings, and cutting Spamton's strings brings Kris to a horrible realisation that they might also be unable to truly escape the Player's control over their soul.
  • Don't forget that, before Susie and Ralsei showed up, Spamton had Kris backed into a corner and was full-on threatening to steal Kris' soul. Though given the soul represents the player's influence, and there are hints that it's Kris themself who's shaken rather than the soul, this carries some interesting implications. Either giving up the soul (willingly or otherwise) would be outright fatal (or worse), or else Kris' hidden personality has some reason to object to having the player's influence over them forcefully removed. If it's the latter, then either Kris' hidden objectives require the player's continued influence for something, or else it could be a sign that the real Kris isn't 100% opposed to the player's manipulations. In fact, if the Roaring Knight persona is actually a second influence over Kris rather than Kris' real personality, then the player's influence might be seen as the lesser evil.
• Whenever Spamton makes this face◊, what are the black parts of his eyes? Is he suddenly gaining pupils, or are his eyes supposed to be tilted upwards in an attempt at a friendly Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes face?
  • I reckon they're supposed to be his pupils, given that another one of his sprites has him look directly forward.
• How come it took longer for Rouxls to turn into stone in the Normal Route than in the Weird Route? His location in the Weird Route implies that he turned into stone as soon as he got kicked out of the Color Cafe. In the Normal Route, not only did his body turn into stone way after he got kicked out, his head didn't turn into stone long enough for him to help the Fun Gang defeat the Queen with the Thrash Machine.
  • It's possibly connected to the Dark Fountains. As stated, multiple Dark Fountains are popping up unnaturally and are impure. It's possible these unnatural Dark Fountains get stronger with discourse, which means any Darkners not connected with them would be affected more strongly. Furthermore, Ralsei states in the same chapter that as the Dark Fountains spread into the Light World, more Darkners would turn into stone. Also, it could be just a way to keep the player from being distracted.
• Why does Berdly have a creepy and bizarre obsession with wanting to have a muscular, statuesque body complete with nipples? ...Is he really THAT narcissistic and insecure about himself?
  • …Yes. Chapter 2 already revealed he has self-confidence issues, especially when Noelle isn't with him. He wants to stand out and be praised. Generally, strong, muscular bodies are usually attached to manliness, something he would probably desire a lot. For the nipples... either for humor's sake or suggesting he wants to "get it on" with the ladies.
  • Birds do not have ...uh... nipples in real life for boring evolution reasons so the whole thing with Berdly wanting them is likely a reference to his insecurities aimed at nerds who know their avian biology.
• Why does Kris, if they can break free of your control and apparently hates the idea of being a puppet, choose to put the SOUL back into their body not once, but twice?
  • All the signs seem to point strongly towards a form of schizophrenia: There is a deeper, unnamed evil intent residing within Kris that asserts control by removing the SOUL from the body before committing themselves to the current task at hand and then returning the SOUL back into the body after finishing their business. They can override the player and create more Dark Fountains, but allow the player to assume control and seal the Dark Fountains as part of some long-term plan to awaken the Titans. This fighting between Kris and the player implies that Kris is the Roaring Knight or being controlled by the Roaring Knight. The schizo theory is further enforced by the fact that the game discards your customized vessel despite having given you the option to create one.
  • Alternatively, Kris is the one in control during these moments but needs the SOUL for some as-of-yet unexplained reason. Judging from how they move, they might not work quite right without a soul, either outright slowly dying or finding it much harder to control their body.
• Can monsters use magic in the Light World or not? There are some things that imply they can't use magic (like Toriel using her stove, unlike her Undertale counterpart who uses fire magic to cook instead), but in the Weird Route, Noelle singles out Snowgrave as the only spell that she doesn't know, implying she's already known how to use her other spells before entering the Dark World.
  • Keep in mind that despite the fact that monsters gain magical abilities upon entering the Dark World, humans don't have access to such powers, so monsters probably possess a certain degree of magical properties even in the Light World. Plus, there's the fact that Kris has been searching how to use magic…
• Spamton NEO's appearance in the Weird route begins with him seemingly replying to the narration; how? Even if he knows he's in a game like Jevil does (which is implied to be the case, through his dialogue in the normal route hinting that he wants to escape the confines of the game itself), it isn't exactly established that either character can physically see more meta elements like HP and the narration, just that they know they exist.
  • In Undertale, it's heavily implied that characters can see meta elements due to the part in the Asgore battle where he destroys the Mercy button and the part in the Asriel Dreemurr battle where he destroys everything except for the Save Button. It's likely the same in Deltarune.
• Why is Susie kept in the dark about how Darkners turn into objects when brought to the Light World?
  • Susie is kind of oblivious to a lot of things, so it's not that she's being kept in the dark and more she's not noticing the obvious. However, I have a feeling if someone told her the basic fact, she either wouldn't care, or think that everything they're doing is pointless and revert back to being a scary jerk.
• When a Darkner is recruited to join Castle Town, Kris still has to physically bring them to the supply closet. If a Darkner is not recruited, does Kris bring them to the closet anyway? If they don't show up in Castle Town, where do they go?
• Since card games are your most standard pre-installed app on your computer, wouldn't it make a lot more sense for Lancer and Rouxls to NOT be turned into stone? Or is this just Irony?
  • It's possible that because they were cards, it took them LONGER to turn to stone that it would be for some totally unrelated Darkner.
• Roaring aside, what would have happened had Berdly and Noelle opened a new Dark Fountain? What happens if you try to create a new Dark World inside an existing Dark World?
  • That seems like an experiment Alphys would do, but the problem is Alphys experiments don't always go so well, so I assume it's best not to make a nested Dark World.
• How does the Snowgrave Route cause Spamton to take over Queen's Mansion? He explicitly says that he got to take over thanks to the player's actions, and in the regular route Swatch implies that Spamton wants to break into the basement with his Key Gen to become NEO and all-powerful (but Queen's bodyguards, the Swatchlings and Swatch, kick him out when he tries to trespass into the mansion). But according to the lobby NPC on the Snowgrave Route, the only change was that Rouxls turned to stone in front of the cafe with all the bodyguards trapped inside, leaving no one to stop Spamton from becoming NEO. How is Rouxls turning to stone at a precise place and time caused by the player's Snowgrave actions? You might be able to handwave a couple of things like "Queen would normally kick out Spamton too but she's distracted by Noelle's condition" and "the player gave Spamton a lot of money, enough for him to do (something?)", but the majority of it still feels too coincidental.
• So what happens to everything that was in the room while it's a Dark World entrance? And what happens to organic material? What happens to any humans and monsters that happened to be in the room? Do they die? Are they in some form of stasis until Kris, Susie, and/or any passerby saves the world?

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