I feel like Gaster got his twink ass blown through time and space cuz he was like
“Okay so what if I extract determination from a human-monster soul fusion?”
No, in all seriousness, I do believe this is possibly how/why Gaster was scattered across time and space. How? I’ll tell you…
My search started by accident, when I was looking around at articles on THE CORE for things on Gaster. Turns out that many of its aspects, such as its design and how the music keeps going during combat, is based on The Ocean Palace from Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger appears to be one of the big inspirations to Undertale. I decided to look further, and I found that this may be what fills the gaps in what seemed to be a bunch of dead ends in Undertale. First we need to establish an important story about three magical/technological geniuses that were also scattered across time.
These are the Gurus from Chrono Trigger, what I do believe heavily contributed to the story of Gaster and his demise.
They are (from left to right), Belthasar, the Guru of Reason, Melchior, the Guru of Life…and most interesting of all…Gaspar, the Guru of Time. Gaspar’s name and role are probably inspiration towards Gaster’s name, but what happened to all of them is what’s truly important.
They were royal Advisors/Scientists for their kingdom. Deep beneath the world was Lavos, an immense power source that they believed could be a source of immortality. In order to extract this power, they built The Mammon Machine.
As their work continued, it became apparent that activating the machine would mess with time itself if activated, but they were ordered to activate it nonetheless. As pretty much expected, the activation went horribly wrong, and all three of the Gurus ended up scattered across time.
Yes, a very similar story, but how does this fit into Undertale in any way? Well, we must look into the evidence and parallels.
First off, The DT Extractor
This machine has most likely been around since Gaster was alive. The main reason is due to Alphys’s fifth entry in the true labs, which states that she had to find blueprints in order to figure out how to operate the DT Extractor. This leads us to believe this had been in the lab before she was the current royal scientist.
But, what is the parallel to Lavos? Some sort of world destroying force that can serve as the source of immense power?
The Fusion Soul of Chara and Asriel. First off, there’s no word on what happened to this soul after the fused two perished. Both entities also ended up persisting after death without a soul. Where is their soul? Now this may be a big ball of hunches based on Chrono Trigger, but I feel that the following is a strong, possible explanation of what had become of Gaster.
[ahem…]
What I’m seeing is that the soul of the fused two was taken/given to Gaster. It was likely that the power of this one fused soul could’ve been a way to either shatter the barrier, or creating synthetic souls, which was the thing that Alphys lied about doing that landed her the position of next royal scientist in the first place.
Now, playing with souls is a pretty big real, especially a red soul, absolutely swelling with a ton of determination, which directly relates with the ability to SAVE, aka mess around with time a bunch (as Flowey said to Chara while monologuing at NEW HOME). So, attempting to extract from the fused soul did what it did best, mess with time itself. Gaster was caught in the midst of this, an experiment gone horribly wrong. He had fallen into his creation, and was scattered across time.
That my dear people, is, from what I can scrape together so far, The Tale of Gaster’s Demise.
(Sorry there’s no page break, I don’t know how to do that on mobile, also the image of the fusion soul is from Dreemur Reborn, go check them out I guess.)
Context: My players had just washed up on the shores of an island inhabited by a strange cult, who were there to capture them as they arrived. The party killed the cultists, and took their leader to interrogate. The knight (Battlemaster fighter) decided to helm the interrogation attempt.
Fighter: Who are you working for?
DM: Roll intimidation
Fighter: *Rolls Nat 5*
DM: The cultist leader spits in your face and laughs, saying he will tell you nothing.
Fighter: I cut off a finger.
DM: Roll intimidation with advantage.
Fighter: Nat 4 and Nat 3.
DM: The man screams, but eventually grits his teeth and tells you nothing.
Fighter: I cut off another finger.
DM: You can’t chop off all of his limbs until you get a good check.
Fighter: Technically they’re appendages. Can I cut off his hand?
DM: I wouldn’t give you another roll for it.
Fighter: We’re on the ocean right?
DM: Yes?
Fighter: I’d like to waterboard him with his own robes.
DM: Jesus. Alright, roll intimidation for waterboarding.
Fighter: Rolls Nat 1.
DM: So this poor man’s hands get loose from about the ten minutes of waterboarding, and he stabs himself with a dagger to end the pain, so you can’t find new ways to fail intimidation checks.
me the 3rd time I’ve gone up to this guys hotel room to ask him to stop vaping because it’s setting off the fire alarm because the clouds are so thick it’s disrupting the sensors and he answers the door all freaked out and jumpy and I have to go in and look around and make sure there isn’t actually a fire only to find that the curtain rod is broken and the closet shelf is broken and the sheets are tied into ropes and when I asked him about it he admitted to me that he did a lil meth and decided to try autoerotic asphyxiation but nothing was sturdy enough and to please not tell his boss because he was in town for job training and they’re paying for his room:
Finnish soldier gets separated from the rest of his unit but he’s the only one carrying the emergency amphetamines for the unit, takes too many and goes on a one man rampage for like 2 weeks straight giving the opposing Soviet soldiers nightmares for decades. Oh and he did it all on skis.
Did he survive?
Yes, during his methed up 2-3 week rampage he got injured by a land mine, travelled 400km on skis, and only ate pine buds and a Siberian Jay that he caught which he ate raw. When he made it back to Finnish lines he was taken to a hospital where it was found his heart rate was nearly 200 beats per minute and his weight had dropped to 43kg (94.7lbs).
The Meth Head and his Pet Wolf
So this meth head stumbled into my mother’s work (A Sprint Store) from an Uber today. He had no money and was asking for a phone charger. He brought his dog, a wolf-hybrid kinda dog, too (its name is “Wolfy”).
He kept saying he wanted to do lewd things to people and gave my mother his phone number. He openly admitted to spending all his money on meth and blamed the reason all his cards were declined on buying meth (which is pretty much impossible).
Later on, the meth head’s girlfriend called up from Florida (we are in Cleveland Ohio) asking where he was. Turned out the dude came up here to visit his kids, had a panic attack at the airport, and didn’t go pack to Florida (currently getting hit by a major hurricane).
You get stuck in Cleveland with your pet wolf…and your first thought is to blow all your money on meth… That’s Cleveland Baby!
Flamingsalyut Safehaven 