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The Wizard Ran 1

The first chapters of the adventures of the wizard! · By Adrien Dittrick

theories and spoilers Sticky

A topic by Adrien Dittrick created Dec 01, 2022 Views: 777 Replies: 9
Viewing posts 1 to 5
Developer(+1)

post your hints/tips/theories here

(2 edits) (+2)

So the story so far is:

This 25 Y.O. wizard 'RAN', who lives in Castleton, did some big marketing trick, which made him super rich, but town folk got angry with him, so he left.

He gets possessed by an Outer God (the player) and goes unconscious and loses his memory. He is found in this state by some men who work for a secret organisation. This organisation has a scientist by the name of CUEBALL, who theorizes that when someone is possessed by an outer god, they lose their memory, and RAN fulfills this criteria, so CUEBALL asks to keep him as a test subject. Also, he suspects that Outer Gods can time travel.

CUEBALL sets up some other subjects there, and lets RAN get familiar with them. He feeds the other subjects some specific information (MIKE, 21, PLANT13). To test his theory, he wipes RAN's memories, and does the interview before letting him inside the facility, so that he has no way of getting that specific information beforehand, unless the time travel thing is true. This can have two outcomes: 1. He does not know that info => nothing found this time,  2. he knows that info => the theory is true. (And an unexpected outcome, which messes with the experiment completely)

The organisation is trying to find out more about Outer Gods, and eventually to gain control over them/rule over them.

When RAN runs away to go back to his village, he regains control, and gets possessed again upon reaching his village. He is still being chased by the org, and Shades and Sharp get some weapons and Shades buys a cursed ringtone from Adrien. Shades kills Grandma and disguises himself as her. RAN manages to run away again. After that, Shades gets a call from his boss (with the same ringtone maybe).

Ran reaches a cursed forest, which has a lot of monsters and is under the effect of a Decay spell. The Decay spell was put in effect by the ADVERSARY (from the game 'There Is Something Here') to destroy everything in the world. This effect is kept under control by a local god. Ran had studied the spell for a long time before the events of the game to let himself create shortcuts and run away quickly whenever needed, and left notes in the forest. This time, under the possession of the outer god, he rediscovers his own notes, since his own memories are wiped when possessed.

Shades and Sharp follow him there and Shades gets known as 'the KNIGHT' (since he is armed with a powerful sword, which can kill those monsters). Ran again escapes from the forest. Then someone (presumably Ran) gets an invitation from an organisation (presumably the same which is chasing him) for Christmas dinner.

Theories:

  • Since RAN's grandma is not a normal human/wizard, so must be RAN. Which means he must be some cosmic being, making him a special host for the Outer Gods to try to possess.
  • The organisation might know Universal Thief, and might be the same one who made him do everything in the The Deepest Heist
  • The monsters in the cursed forest may be the same as the ones we see in parts 1 and 2, which represent the number of restarts.
  • The mosters might be appearing due to the Outer Gods' intervention in this world, or, they might be the reason they are intervening, and our final goal may be to finally solve whatever problem is at the root of this, to stop these monsters from destroying everything.
  • The cursed ringtone might be what gave Shades and his blade the power to kill the monsters.
Developer

:o

Most of this checks out with what I found, although the monsters appearing in part 3 are separate from the rainbow ghost entities who can be found appearing for a short time in the trees so you may want to change that theory.  Also I do believe that time travel refers to the player restarting.

Let's see how much of this turned out to be correct:

The organisation 'Outer Energies' is not trying to rule over the outer gods, but simply wants to exploit their rewind ability to gain energy

Shades buying his 'ringtone' is actually him buying his own main theme

The monsters in the cursed forest were not same as the afterimage

Our final goal was not to find the root cause of it, just to run away

(+1)

So as Kanomus has pointed out, there are some obvious connections between this series and your other games. Is this project a part of the BTNverse (perhaps a culmination of sorts) or are the references simply Easter eggs? I would normally assume it is part of that collection of games, but there is a noticeable lack of the signature [BTNverse] stamp as a precursor in the title, making me a little wary to making assumptions. It would be very helpful to piecing together the lore and it would let me know if I need to play through the BTNverse series if you wouldn't mind giving the community this particular sliver of information. As exciting your games are, The Sky is Lava in particular is not a task that I'm prepared to partake in unless I'm certain there's a correlation (that game simply is a nightmare to play- I've made it to the point where  EEv is separated from Adma in the autoscroller but lost my progress after getting stuck there).  Thank you for your time, still waiting most anticipatedly for Jan 18!

Developer

yeah it is part of the BTNverse, I just forgot to add the BTNverse tag, haha

Developer

you also don't HAVE to play THE SKY IS LAVA yourself, you can just watch the recorded video or something.

(1 edit)

Alright, the series is complete, and we got a lot of information, (like why there was the weird death conveyor with respawn point in twr1) but still there's a lot of unsolved mysteries, can you please elaborate on these points?

RAN's mom calls him RAN, so that must be his real name, but Outer Energies knows him as Mark, and the weird thing is, he writes back a letter to Outer Energies for the christmas party invitation, but it says it's from 'crazymrbread', and at the end, he signs it "Ma... I mean, Run", what's going on there?

Why does that bomberman change appearance when descending to hell? Ran doesn't undergo that change. Is he really the ADVERSARY?

What is Ran's Grandma? Ran seemingly is not the kind of being she was

How many times did Ran go through the timeline, and how? He did that neat little marketing trick way before the games, but what about the cursed forest? When did he start planning his escape? All that time, he was under our possession, so when did he leave all those lore notes? He started this plan because he saw the end, but the end came because of his doings, so is this some kind of a paradox he exists in? Did he live to the future and then devised the plan and somehow made his younger self follow it to make himself do those things and leave those notes so that his young possessed self can again live through those things, follow those instructions and escape finally? How many of him do exist in the same world? How did the first one manage to send the plan to the second without knowing about time travel? The second one leaves the notes and paves the way to victory for the third one, and writes that the third one somehow needs to find a way to go back in time, which is something only the Outer Gods can do, so how was he sure he will be able to do that? (So far my understanding is that the first one told the second about the plan, who did all those things to figure out a way to rewind time, but he got stuck in hell so the third one got possessed and was able to execute that plan)

Who is the monster? Why is he guarding some areas in part 6 and 7? In 6 he prevents RAN from passing without password, while in 7, RAN knows the password and calls someone to get him out, is that monster with or against RAN?

How did Ran get stuck in Hell? Did he set up that monster to protect himself? (the "you die in new mexico you die in real life" meme suggests that RAN cannot survive after getting exposed to hell's atmosphere)

Why did RAN need a pirate crew to run around when he had the helicopter?

The ADVERSARY destroys worlds, and the WATCHER creates them? So did the WATCHER create both the surface and hell too? Which world is the ADVERSARY coming to destroy? He is after RAN for knowing Decay, but, he is also destroying Hell? The bomberman doesn't even know RAN though, so does ADVERSARY appear in incarnations, or is the bomberman controlled by him?

Who opened the rift between Hell and surface and how? And who is trying to destroy the worlds really? The WATCHER is the one who is interested in creating and preserving the surface world, and he is trying to kill RAN for messing things up, so it makes sense for him to try and destroy hell, but at the end he gives up the surface world and prepares to create a new one. Why are we trying to kill WATCHER at the end? What will that even do?

Who is the third Ran who finally gets to escape? How does he appear directly in the future, and how and why does he come out of those chests? Has he experienced the past or is he somehow created in the future itself?

And finally... Why did you abandon us in part 7?

Developer

Aight, Imma try replying to this as much as I can.

  • Ran's real name is Ran, I havent decided on a surname. the "Mark" name was just an experiment by Cueball where he tells everyone else in the facility to call you by another name and see  if you just play it cool and pretend you know they're talking to you. It is also a test for him to understand outer god behavior. The crazymrbread letter is just a message I got on newgrounds for the christmas party discord event and I thought it was funny so I added it in. (note: many things in this list will follow that rule of funny)
  • The adversary is just the being who eventually destroys the world. If your world is about to be destroyed, whoever is doing it will probably take that form.
  • Ran's grandma is just a regular demon living in a regular RPG village. She might be a bit racist towards humans. Ran's family is mostly made up of powerful wizards/demons. Except his stepdad who is a cop.
  • Ran was an apprentice wizard who got interested in the study of cryptids and glitch magic, which is something other wizards aren't really interested in because they can already do cool stuff like throw fireballs, weild magical swords, and craft power-enhancing clothing (which Ran can also do, albeit not as well).  He learned about the true nature of his world very early in his studies (that being a videogame world that will one day cease to exist when outer gods stop playing it) and then formed a plan to escape this world one day. To run away. He discovered that outer gods are attracted to entertaining vessels, so he set up an elaborate series of puzzles that can only be, solved by an outer god in order to get possessed and have his body sent through various scenarios and experiments. Like Cueball, Ran is experimenting on you, the player, and manipulating you. However, Ran does not have the kind of budget that Cueball has, so he has to exploit dangerous rules of the universe. What Ran does is not really time travel or precognition, just letting his body be controlled by outer gods who themselves time travel.
  • The monster is THE WATCHER. THE WATCHER represents the borders of the world. He is in a sense the manager of this videogame world (the Boss) and create stuff in it. His goal is to make the world as entertaining as possible so that many outer gods visit and bring energy to the world. Ran's primary means of winning a game is to exit through the borders of the world (to run away) and THE WATCHER really doesn't like that.
  • RAN knows the password because RAN chose the password and setup the locks himself.
  • RAN threw himself in hell in order to get his soul split in multiple pieces that can each be controlled independantly by different outer gods and escape his own physical constraints. The mexico message is something I added in because it was funny but really the main effect of Hell on RAN is splitting his soul even more so he should probably not go outside too much.
  • The WATCHER didn't really create the world itself, he's just the CEO of the world. (The one who created the world is me, the dev, Adrien.) The ADVERSARY justd estroys worlds indiscriminately, hell is a world like any other. He is also an outer god who sometimes possessed various vessels to destroy the worlds he is in. In chapter 3, YOU were the adversary if you chose the "decay" ending"
  • The rift between Hell and the surface was opend by RAN because he thought it was another world to escape to. He eventually realized that this was a mistake bcause HELL is just another part of the TWR world, so instead he decided to use hell's properties as the next step in his plan. RAN isn't really interested in destroying the overworld, he just doesn't care much for it because his plan is to escape the world and reach new ones.
  • We are trying to kill the WATCHER because that's what Shades thought would be cool. It serves no practical purpose. The world where you kill the WATCHER is doomed like all others, but at least people there are happier and there's a cool party where all the wizard runners are invited.
  • There is no third ran who finally gets to escape, all the RANs in chests are just the same body sleeping in the chest (just like you and me) waiting to be woken up by the version of you (the player) who can time travel. The RAN who talks to you in chapter 8 is a piece from the soul of the one who escaped from chapter 7. The body of RAN which manages to escape is the one from the time right after Shades and Sharp captured him to turn him into free energy.
  • Making 1 game every week is hard, I gave up for a while. This is what doomed the world of TWR.