The Celestial Events: Why and How

[delete this account_65433]

Why do the celestial events happen the way they do? Who is the Lunatic Cultist?
After Extensive research, years of experience, and rewriting this post three times, I think I have the answer.
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First, let's summarize the lunar events, to get our premises right.

1. You kill the Cultists.
2. The Lunatic Cultist absorbs the power of the mysterious tablet and fights you.
3. Upon Defeat, The message appears, "Celestial Creatures are Invading!", and then "Lunatic Cultist has been Defeated!".
4. The four Celestial Pillars appear, heavily shielded.
5. After the defeat of 100 or 150 Enemies at any given pillar, the shield drops and you may defeat it rather easily.
6. After defeating each pillar, you receive a message about your mind numbing or whatever.
7. After defeating all the pillars, A minute is waited and then the Moon lord spawns.
8. If the moon lord kills you, he immediately teleports away.
9. You may try again using the Celestial Sigil.
10. If the moon lord is defeated, he explodes into a skeleton with a flash, leaving his drops behind.

So that's what we've got to start with.

I don't know how to introduce this subtly, so the basis of my theory is this:
The Moon Lord is in space prison.

I know that sounds strange at first, but hear me out. Let's look at this through the lens of my theory.

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The Cultists are attempting to free the Moon Lord. The Mysterious Tablet their ritual is centered around is their attempt at a celestial sigil, with no fragments.

Somewhere in space, there's a man in blue robes and a mask, disguised as a cultist. He is a space sheriff. He's preparing to teleport down and assassinate the cultist leader as soon as the rest of the cult leaves. When you kill the cultists, he sees that four less powerful beings disappeared, and one powerful being remained. Assuming you're the cultist leader, he teleports down and attacks you as the lunatic cultist. Occasionally during this battle, you hear a deep, distorted voice say, "How do you know?". This isn't him talking to you, it's the space warden talking to him, making sure that he's attacking the right person. When you defeat him, two messages will appear: "Celestial Creatures are Invading!", and then, "Lunatic Cultist has been Defeated!" Notice the order here. This is because the Sheriff is called for backup. They automatically sent the default reinforcements: the Celestial Pillars.

These Pillars aren't really meant to stop you; they're more of a hold-over, to keep you occupied until they can send more powerful backup. Look at how many enemies you have to kill to take down the shields of the pillars: 100 and 150. Very nice, round numbers, aren't they? They're standards, used to determine how powerful you are. However, there are unexpected consequences of using the Pillars expendably like that. When one pillar is destroyed, corresponding pillars are affected negatively; weakened. You see, the Pillars are also being used to stabilize the dimension used as a prison for the Moon Lord. When You destroy a pillar, it weakens the pillars used to keep the Moon Lord in his little pocket dimension. When you receive those status messages about your mind going numb or being overwhelmed with pain or whatever, it's because of lunar energy leaking into your dimension. When All the pillars are destroyed, the space government gets ready to send proper reinforcements, but finds itself with a slightly more important problem.

With all the stabilizing Pillars weakened, the Moon Lord is ready to attempt an escape. For the minute after the last pillar is defeated, you experience vibrations and headache. This is the Moon Lord using the Phantasmal Deathray Attack on the boundaries of his prison. After the minute, he succeeds and, with the flash characteristic of dimensional travel, crosses dimensions, to yours. He wants to destroy everything in existence, but needs to vanquish you first; you are the biggest threat to him. Normally, the space police could zap him back to his prison with an extra set of pillars, but they can't do so right now without possibly taking you with him.

If he defeats you, they do so immediately, and with that bright flash, he's gone again instantly. If you succeed, he isn't quite dead yet; a part of him still lives in his pocket dimension. However, He is damaged enough that the space government can send an interdimensional energy pulse, causing the bright flash. This is powerful enough to make him to disintegrate into a skeleton, leaving a few remnants that could be used in a ranged wormhole fabricator, some metal bars, and a special weapon. If one shows special skill in their battle, there may be enough left to also create a gravity reversal object, or obtain a DNA sample for a pet, if one desires such a thing.

...

And there's my complete theory. What do you like? what do you not like? Tell me, I'd love some feedback!

 

[DeathBringer Puppy]

it's a pretty good theory 100/10

 

[Juno Brier]

I like the idea of the Moon Lord being imprisoned and the cultists are trying to free him, but I'm not quite liking the idea of the Lunatic Cultist being a separate entity from the rest of the cultists, or the idea of some space police being involved. It's really trying to make a little too much sense of stuff like the Portal Gun.

Instead, I prefer the more grounded theory that the Lunatic Cultist is the leader of the cultists, and absorbed the power of the sigil to try to salvage the ritual, not realizing that destroying the sigil and releasing its power is what completes the ritual in the first place, which is why killing him summons the pillars. Of course, the cultists did not quite get what they wanted: They expected to directly get the Moon Lord, and not just summon up the "door" to it. They also expected to get an actual eldritch elder god to bring about the end of the world. What they actually would get is a bit different. Pin this one to a lack of sufficient information about what they were trying to do.

Now, in my less-than-grounded part of the theory: The Celestial Pillars were, of course, constructed by some ancient magic space civilization. In fact, the Moon Lord was a biological weapon created by said civilization, modeled after some eldritch elder god. It worked a little too well, and had to be sealed away (along with some other artifacts they made, such as a device that creates portal, a magical laser crystal, and a machine gun shaped like a dolphin). The minions for the pillars are their defense systems. The reason why defeating such a rounded numbers of them to drop the shields is because they wanted the dimension where these dangerous weapons were sealed away to be able to be re-opened in a time of need.

As for why you can do the whole sequence multiple times....that's just gameplay mechanics.



Next up: Thinking of a reason as to why one particular plant monster can drop a grenade launcher, a pistol, and a guitar.

 

[Gotcha!]

I've posted this in 2 other threads already, but no matter, this is what I think about it:

Terraria is a planet filled with millions of small islands on which we all play.
The world is suffering from forces of darkness and it's all over the place. The forces of light are asleep and are not aware of this.

The Guide is somehow connected to the forces of this planet. Some ancient catalyst, the key to more chaos, a demi-god.

The player is not a tool, no pawn of prophecy, he or she is just someone that mucks about. Goes about his everyday life.

Eventually, instead of helping the planet, he makes the problem worse by smashing the hearts and orbs in the dark forces' domain, out of curiousity or stupidity, and darkness retaliates with horrifying worms and pulls in meteorites as an ultimate wrath and warning: Leave this place. The goblins are none too happy about this and will hunt you down for causing all this crap.

Then, when the player fools around in hell (where he shouldn't be in the first place) he accidentally unleashes the greatest force of darkness this planet knows, up to this point: The Wall of Flesh. Unleashed with the catalyst, the key, the guide.

After the Wall of Flesh is defeated things get climactic. Darkness is furious and lashes out with all its strength while the forces of light sense this sudden change in balance, wake up and strike out as well.

After this it's really just a battle between darkness and light as both capture territory before their enemy can get their hands on it.
The player is again a person mucking about, the idiot who caused all this. Light doesn't care about the player, heck, it probably knows the player is the cause of all this, and will send its minions to kill you if you thread the Hallow.

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The bosses: All bosses are there to keep the player away from something. They are in areas where the player isn't meant to be because it isn't safe, evil lurks there or tools are hidden there that aren't meant for mortals to handle.

Eye of Cthulhu: Comes to visit you after you've been poking your nose in deep caves where no man should wander, consuming the life force of crystal hearts. I imagine these crystals weren't meant to be used by puny humans and the Eye is there to set things straight.

Eater of Worlds/Brain of Cthulhu: Are there to keep you from destroying their habitat.

Skeletron: Is there to keep you out of the Dungeon, where evil is strong, another place you have no business of being.

Queen Bee: Probably the least evil boss of all, after all, you killed one of her kids!

King Slime: Okay, this one is an arse.

Wall of Flesh: The entity that keeps fools from making the planet a worse place to live. Not that evil if you think about it. Afterall, as long as it is alive then the current balance of the planet remains in check.

The Twins/The Destroyer/Skeletron Prime: Are there to get revenge for slaying the Eye/EoW/Skeletron and for making a mess of the planet.

Plantera is the jungle's last form of defense against the corruption but fails to protect its home. It doesn't help at all whenever the foolish player walks through the jungle and destroys her 'children', the bulbs, which pisses her off. If those were left alone then the jungle could grow more Planteras and maybe have a chance.

Golem is safely hidden away in a temple. An evil temple where the lihzahrds are kept inside due to past crimes against nature or whatever. They're locked in there for a reason, that's for sure.
Plantera keeps the key safe... until again the idiot player comes along, gets the key and manages to wake up the Golem, also leaving the door wide open for lihzahrds to get out. (There really should be a lihzahrd invasion.)

The Duke is also not that evil. It's yet again the player who wakes him, annoying him with glowing worms. Is it an allergy? Doesn't he like the glow? Does the worm smell horrible to him? I dunno. But whatever the reason, it's the player who goes out of his way to capture a glowing worm and decides to drown it in the ocean.

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TL;DR: We, the players, are the worst thing to happen to Terraria.

To add to my earlier post: (1.3 spoilers)

About hell: Ancient beings once lived there, most likely being the cause of the corruption on this planet. All the houses are empty now, furniture still around like people once sat at tables and read books from their bookcases.
Were they undone by their own hands? Did they just pack up and leave or have they been punished and turned into demons?
Or did they see what they've done and tried to undo the damage by turning their entire people into a last line of defense, the Wall of Flesh?
Whatever the case, Terraria is in a weakened state, a perfect entryway for something not of this world to use as a way into our galaxy...



- So the Golem was safely locked inside this temple until the player releases him, killing him but the damage has been done. The seal has been broken, the way is open for an even greater evil to arrive, one that threatens not only Terraria but the very galaxy. Which leads to...

- Pissed off Martians! The player has done so much damage so far, but at least only Terraria was in danger, not other planets. This changes now. The Martians arrive, looking for you, trying to destroy you in order to stop things from going critical mass.

- Meanwhile, in order to contain the damage, a few cultists from an unknown race travel to the Dungeon to try to reseal this evil presence that's threatening the world and galaxy, the Moon Lord.
Why the Dungeon? Good question. Maybe it's here where everything began. Maybe it's a place where the ether is weak and evil can pass through.
Maybe it's a place where evil is strong to begin with, feeding the Moon Lord.

It's pretty clear the cultists mean no harm at all. You can walk by them and they will leave you alone. But ofcourse the idiot player had to kill them.
Which pisses off their boss, and rightfully so! You've thwarted their tries to repair the damage that YOU have caused! The insolence!

- Their leader killed, there's yet another safety measure keeping the Moon Lord from reaching the planet and/or galaxy.
Having followed the events on this planet OR simply feeling that something's amiss here and it needs to be stopped, 4 ancient species arrive, bringing 4 powerful shielded pillars with them to set up a barrier that'll stop the Moon Lord from entering this world.
They give everything trying to kill you when you get near one because they know what the stakes are. Otherwise they leave you alone, they're not hunting you down all over the map. They're like a universal police force, protecting the galaxy from things that weren't meant to be in our reality.

- The player manages to weaken the pillars and destroy them, because he is stupid, not having a clue about what's coming next.
With Golem's seal broken, the cultists' inability to repair the damage and with the pillars gone nothing stands in the Moon Lord's way to enter this world, destroying it and move on to other worlds.

TL;DR:
You and me, the players, are complete idiots!

 

[Terrariaman]

I like the idea. It seams quite plausible and really interesting

 

[Wizfan]

Good read, I enjoyed it and well thought out!