Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
|
"Who designed this campaign setting? Why would you include four points of such catastrophic weakness that tampering with any of them results in the destruction of the global ecosystem? It makes no sense! A kind and loving creator would never have done this, and a cruel one would simply have made the air out of acid. And it wouldn't have evolved on its own, as there's no advantage to living in a world poised on the brink of annihilation!"
-- Red Mage, 8-Bit Theater, A Deal with the Devil
Oh no! The world is in danger! Happiness, sunshine, puppies and ice cream will cease to exist! Why, you ask? Well, it seems that the villains have stolen, corrupted, or destroyed the Four Orbs of Fate, the Pillars of Reality, or The Lifestream. The loss of even one of these is enough to make the world spiral into a hellscape of torment that would make Satan weep molten tears of envy and pride. It seems that for some unfathomable reason the Powers That Be or Crystal Dragon Jesus who created the universe saw fit to make its continued healthy existence contingent on these poorly guarded, easily found, delicate, carry-on-luggage sized objects. Obviously they never heard of redundant systems and failsafes. These are also poorly designed, allowing less than scrupulous individuals to abuse them for personal gain.
If the villain ever gets the cosmic keystone, expect him to try and use it to destroy and/or remake the world in his own twisted image to rule over. If he even realizes the reality-central nature of the item. Sometimes the villain has a smaller goal in mind for its power; he just doesn't believe it'll destroy everything if something goes wrong, or else has an overinflated opinion on his ability to prevent that from happening. If he doesn't have it he'll tail the hero, let him do the hard work of finding it, and snatch it from the heroes' grasp at just the last second, only to fly away cackling. One would think they'd know better than to tamper with the underpinnings of reality, but villains aren't the sanest lot.
Examples:
Animated Series
- Pirates Of Dark Water had thirteen treasures which kept the evil, omnivorous Dark Water from escaping. The show's central premise is recovering them before it's unsealable.
- The Thunder Cats had scads of these. Most of the second season was taken up recovering the sacred treasures of Thundera in order to restore and stabilize said planet after it was originally destroyed.
- In the X-Men animated series, people with Psychic Powers proved to be Cosmic Keystones when brought together, as killing them all at once would have allowed the Big Bad to remake the universe in his image.
- In Code Lyoko entering Code XANA into a Way Tower will destroy the sector it's in furthermore Lyoko can be deleted all at once by destroying the "core of Lyoko".
- In Avatar The Last Airbender, the spirits of the moon and ocean, bored with existence in the spirit world, came to live in the mortal world in the form of koi fish. If they are killed, the part of nature they represent will be gone forever.
- One episode of Futurama featured a box containing the universe. Played for laughs, as even with warnings that it had to be treated as dearly as life itself, the box is shaken to listen for anything rattling inside (causing a small earthquake) and sat on (stretching out the picture horizontally).
- Transformers Cybertron revolved around the characters attempting to recover the Cyber Planet Keys and the Omega Lock - Optimus Prime needed them to save Cybertron, Starscream wanted to become a god, and Megatron wanted to destroy the universe and remake it in his image.
Anime
- In Digimon Adventure 02, the Digital World has seven Destiny Stones which maintain the barriers between realities. Each universe seems to have equivalents, our world's being Kyoto shrines. If all of any one universe's set of seven are destroyed, all dimensions will collide, destroying the multiverse. You'd think The Four Gods would have thought twice about leaving them all in plain sight and in the same city.
- In X, the world will essentially end if seven buildings in Tokyo are destroyed. Naturally, the Dragons of Earth tend to challenge the Dragons of Heaven to massive, destructive battles at these places.
Video Games
- The Pillars of Nosgoth in Blood Omen: Legacy Of Kain, though there it's subverted because the Anti Hero protagonist decides to destroy the pillars completely and rule as an evil vampire king.
- The Pillars are technically more of a representation of the state of Nosgoth as a whole, and they are maintained by their nine guardians, whose states of mind the pillars reflect. Alternatively, the player can choose to save the pillars by killing himself (him being, unknowlingly, the last pillar guardian), but canon says that he chose not to, condemning the pillars to eternal ruination.
- The Final Fantasy series has many of these.
- The original has the Four Orbs, one for each classical element. Their loss is what's slowly destroying the world.
- Which were only called "Orbs" because "Crystals" wouldn't fit in the space allotted. They're the Four Crystals, just like in the later Final Fantasy games. And for the record? The Fiend of Fire isn't Kary, it's Marilith.
- Final Fantasy IV had not just four crystals for the elements, but an additional four dark equivalents for the underworld. While these crystals are never threatened within the time-frame of the game (merely used as tools to reach villains' goals), it is strongly implied that they are just as vital to the world as similar crystals other installments in the series.
- Final Fantasy V also had four crystals for the elements, the destruction of each in turn wreaking havoc with the given element.
- Final Fantasy VI had the statues of the three goddesses, which merely moving out of alignment would cause the entire world to fall to pieces. Although they have that effect because they want to destroy the world, or at least don't care if it gets wrecked while they fight amongst themselves.
- Final Fantasy Mystic Quest had four Crystals very similar to the Orbs in the first Final Fantasy. Additionally, there was a Crystal of Light, but its significance to the world was never well-established.
- In something of a reversal, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance had the protagonist going around destroying Ivalice's Cosmic Keystone set to turn the world back to normal. This is subverted when, after all of the keystones are destroyed, nothing changes - the world is still held together by Mewt's desire to live there, and the only way to unravel it is to convince him to give it up.
- The Legend Of Zelda series features the Triforce, which while it can not have such a powerful effect upon the normal world, will turn The Golden Land in which it usually resides into a reflection of the bearer's whim. Since Big Bad Ganondorf is the only confirmed entity to have ever actually gotten a hold of the thing (and the heroes have never managed to wrest it from him), The Golden Land has basically been Mordor whenever we see it.
- Er... so what were those three yellow triangles Link used to awaken Zelda at the end of Zelda II?
- The Zelda series is not known for its continuity. Ocarina of Time confirms that the Triforce of Power is the source of Ganon's magic, which was established in the first game. Oo T also explains why Ganondorf only holds one piece of the Triforce instead of all three.
- To clarify further, when Ganondorf took the Triforce in Ocarina, it split three ways: Ganondorf got Power, Link got Courage, and Zelda got Wisdom. Each subsequent reincarnation of Link and Zelda either kept (in Zelda's case) or acquired (some of the Links) their piece. Since Ganondorf is likely the same entity through it all, he keeps the Triforce of Power through the series.
- Which in turn explains his incessant desire to kill or otherwise "deal with" Link and Zelda, since the death of either will release their part of the Triforce, making it up for grabs...which is exactly what Ganondorf wants, since it's stated in various sources that holding all three would essentially make the wielder a god, able to affect the normal world. Hence why Link dying is universally bad.
- Tales Of Symphonia has the Mana Tree, which in a subversion, has already been destroyed for the past thousand years or so. The entire point of the game is to create a new one.
- Romancing Sa Ga Pulls something more out of this, The legendary Artifacts; Fatestones, if not collected will be used to power up the Final Boss, you can even power him up intentionally for a greater challenge if you wish after clearing the game one time.
- In Star Fox Adventures, General Scales manages to snag the four SpellStones that keep the planet together. Its initial effect is to push four chunks of land away from the planet, but there are concerns that the planet could explode. You don't need to worry about that happening, however; you can Take Your Time.
- In Valkyrie Profile 2, the four worlds of the setting are each stabilized by one of the four treasures. Removing a treasure from its world causes that world to quickly become unstable and eventually cease existing.
- In the Warcraft universe, the creators of Azeroth left the care of the world's various elements in the care of ridiculously powerful dragons called The Aspects, the death of any of whom would cause unspeakable destruction. Not that you could kill them in the first place--when the Aspect of the Green Dragonflight is summoned at the culmination of a ridiculously epic quest chain in World of Warcraft, it takes over a hundred max-level players just to hold him at bay long enough for a plot character to come save your skin (in this editor's experience, the server tends to die before the dragon does).
- That's not even the Aspect itself, just one of her mates and as such not quite as powerful.
- The world of Wizardry VI, VII & VIII are chucked full of these. First theres the Cosmic Forge, a pen and book in which anything written (or erased) affects reality accordingly.
- The four seals in Drakengard fill this role. Partially subverted in that the world was created far differently from how it appears, and the seals hold back the true world by replacing it with one that is user-friendly.
- In Zork Grand Inquisitor, the world will stay a world oppressed by the technological dictator The Grand Inqisitor if the player doesn't find three object with massive magical power: a Cube of Foundation, the Skull of Yoruk, and the Coconut of Quendor.
- In Nox, the player must find the Halberd of Horrendous, the Heart of Nox, the Weirdling, and finally The Orb.
Film
- The Fifth Element didn't just have cosmic keystones, but a living "perfect" human, the titular fifth element, was the focus and trigger for the only weapon that could fend off the elemental, perfect evil that wanted to destroy the world.
- In the second Pokemon movie, three of the Legendary Birds maintained the balance of the world's climates. Capturing just one quickly threw the whole thing out of whack, turning a tropical area downright arctic. This is a massive change of theme from the Gotta Catch Them All mindset of the games; More like "Catch 'em all... except these three!" It's unknown whether this applies just to those specific three, or whether the capture of ANY Legendary Bird would have the same effect (or whether it would make a difference if the Bird went willingly).
- Presumably just those 3, since an Articuno was used by one of the Battle Frontier guys a while back...
- Which is very odd, considering that part of the definition of a Legendary is that there is only one in existence. I guess that Battle Frontier guy must have used his world's equivalent of online play or a Gameshark. (Hmm... there was that Master of Mirage Pokemon episode which served the same purpose...)
- Actually, several episodes imply that some Legendaries do breed, which a Johto three-parter explicitly shows a mother and baby Lugia duo. Not sure whether this only applies to animated canon, though.
Comic Books
- The Marvel Universe contains several objects capable of severely screwing up time and space, some of which bestow varying degrees of omnipotence on their wielders. These include the Infinity Gems (particularly when brought together and mounted in the Infinity Gauntlet), Cosmic Cubes, the M'Kraan Crystal, and the Ultimate Nullifier.
- In Bone, the Crown of Horns is the balancing point of both the physical world and the dreaming-world.
- In the Lucifer comics God himself is the Cosmic Keystone, and his abdication leads to reality beginning to unravel (Though he planned a Xanatos Gambit to address this).
Live Action TV
- The 1978-1979 series of Doctor Who revolved around the Doctor's needing to gather and assemble the pieces of "The Key to Time", scattered across space and time, before an evil power could get its hands on it.
- Power Rangers Operation Overdrive has the five jewels of the Crown of the Gods, each of which has a complicated series of MacGuffins as clues to its whereabouts.
- In Season 5 of Buffy, we get "The Key" (note the capital K), a device which can destroy the barrier between realities and turn southern California into Hell on Earth. Apparently, it is a known element in the universe. Yet it was left in a Russian monastery, with a gang of monks with no visible fighting skills, for untold millennia, never even located until the modern day. And they say ''good'' is dumb...
- Probably justified because the Key can only be used at a certain time, so there's probably no point in trying to get it thousands of years before you could even use it. Plus it didn't really seem like that much of common knowledge considering no one besides Glory ever tries to get it.
Webcomics
Literature
- White gold in the Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant is a cosmic keystone that is conveniently located outside of the cosmos it affects... until the start of the story anyway. The One Tree is another cosmic keystone, but with protections far surpassing the typical keystone. (Subverts the usual pattern further in that the Dark Lord never got his hands on them -- they were used by the good guys instead.)
- Well, not really The Big Bad DOES get his hands on the white gold at the end of the Second trilogy. At that point, however, the hero has realized the true nature of the power of the white gold, and is able to trick the Big Bad into wasting his one shot at it's use.
- The Dark Tower in the series of the same name. It manifests in all worlds, but only in one does it appear as an actual tower -- which is held up by six radiating Beams that span the sky in twelve directions from it. In most worlds, it takes the form of a rose, though it has also been known to appear as a tiger, a dog, or a talisman. One might question how a structure that is supposed to be the sustainer, or container, of all space-time can be threatened from inside the passage of time, but, you know, whatever.
- In an interesting twist, two entire universes function as Cosmic Keystones for the multiverse. One the world in which the Tower exists as a real tower, and most of the characters' adventures take place. The other is (almost) our world, in which their adventures are described in a series of books by Stephen King -- actually referred to as the "Keystone World", and the only one for which time travel is impossible. Destroying the Tower in either of these universes would lead to all of God's (er, "Gan's") creation being unraveled.
- The Boxes of Orden in the Sword Of Truth series fit the trope, as using them incorrectly can let the Keeper, the local equivalent of Satan, into the world of the living. The Pillars of Creation are living versions.
- The
Holy Grail Lightstone is the Cosmic Keystone of the Ea Cycle. One would think something with that level of potential for abuse would have been guarded better.
|
|
