I still do think that there are plenty of reasons that folks can have (including myself) to critique chapter 5 but one that I saw a lot was that the Gerson/Hammer of Justice fight talks about a field of pink and gold being charred in an inferno of jealousy and that we got some of that but very little - mostly Ralsei's beef with Flowery. Rather than think of this as a bait and switch, I think it's more interesting to look at what Gerson says that aligns with each chapter so far and how it differs because Chapter 5 is not the only one that doesn't align perfectly with what Gerson says during his fight with Susie. So I want to look at each Lord of the Hammer chapter summary and ask some questions about each Chapter and their differences as we understand them:
Here's what he says about Chapter 1: The March of the Dark King
Okay- this one seems pretty cut and dry so far and matches Chapter 1 events fairly closely. Susie is the dragon that was stopped and the Fun Gang defeated King.
There are 2 differences I can think of- relatively minor but worth pointing out imo:
1. Depending on what route you're on, the Fun Gang does not ultimately defeat King- Lancer and the Card Kingdom Darkners do after his battle ending fake out.
2. Is Susie the Girl With Love Crossed on Her Heart or is she the Dragon? Gerson says she's the dragon but Lord of the Hammer is also based on the prophecy. BUT we don't know if Susie really is The Girl at this point so okay, let's move on for now.
Chapter 2: The City of the Shining:
This one seems more of a deviation than Chapter 1 since notably in Chapter 2 we did do battle in chariots (aka the roller coaster cars during Berdly's Smart Race Battle) but we were actually stopping the Queen, not saving her. Another two notes that are mildly different.
1. We can debate whether or not stopping Queen ultimately saved her, which it did to some degree. She's safely b-balling with us in Castle Town instead of being abandoned when her fountain closed.
2. The fun gang didn't do battle against Queen in chariots (plural) but one single chariot/fighting machine. Kind of pedantic, I know, but you never know when this stuff will come up again.
Chapter 3: The Isles of Northernlight
Now here's where we start to have a few more questions. Notably, the Isles of Northernlight, aka the islands that Tenna overwrote with his own quiz board, Kodakoda Island, is an extremely small and completely missable part of the entirety of Chapter 3.
Either you see a glimpse of them when going too far up on the rafts before Tenna resets your progress during board 2, or you just straight up go to Northernlight- not look at it from afar in the SWORD route. Hell, if you try to go into other caves/areas during the SWORD route they will all just tell you to go to Northernlight.
Considering that this is the board that you get the Ice Mage and start to replicate the events of the Weird Route, it's interesting that this is where we start to deviate. I don't know exactly what this implies but I think it's worth pointing out. Tenna's not mentioned at all despite having a prophecy about him (The Lord of Screens cleaved red by blade), but hey King wasn't in any part of the prophecy that we could see so maybe it doesn't matter as much as we think. Or maybe the "lost land" we see isn't even what we thought it was and we never actually reached it? Who knows.
Chapter 4: The Trials of the Holy Hammer
This one in my opinion is the most different from all of the other Lord of the Hammer chapters thus far, or at the very least raises the most questions:
1. Why a smith? Gerson isn't a blacksmith in Undertale or Deltarune. However he is a wordsmith. So maybe that's what it's referring to.
2. What are the trials of the Holy Hammer? I guess the things we have to do in order to reach Gerson's fight could be considered Trials, or maybe it's referring to Gerson testing Susie throughout the chapter and during the battle. Specific trials are never mentioned here but the argument can be made.
3. What is the great and terrible weapon? Is it the Justice Axe? It seems to be referring to the Holy Hammer but we never get the Holy Hammer, we get the axe, even though the version that Gerson uses before he gives it to Susie when she wins certainly looks like a Hammer. Did he switch it out on us? Did it even exist how we thought it did?
4. Why is the weapon considered terrible? The Justice Axe, as far as we know right now, has high attack but is pretty clear in telling us that it has no additional powers besides what Susie learned when trying to earn it. Its another instance that we see of something being called "holy" that instead of being revered is seen as terrifying and dangerous, much like how Gerson in Undertale tells us that the angel in the prophecy is being called "The Angel of Death" to some, and the Titan having obvious angelic motifs despite being seen as a chaotic and destructive force.
5. Lastly, why is the Hammer pointed out in particular? I mean, it's the name of the dang book Gerson wrote, but in our Chapter 4, it's another skippable fight that is easy to miss. If the book is based on the prophecy, isn't it a little odd that the titular Hammer is nowhere to be seen in the prophecy panels we see?
EDIT- I did forget about the unused prophecy panel that says "AXE CARVED BY THE TORTOISE'S GREAT HAMMER". But again, Gerson gives no indication of being a blacksmith in Undertale or Deltarune, nor is it alluded to by Alvin or Ms Boom at any point or any Undertale characters that know Gerson as far as I know. I actually think it's even MORE interesting that the panel exists but that it was cut at some point.
Finally, Chapter 5: The Field of Pink and Gold
Funnily enough, this chapter seems to be the most aptly named, if not the most specific in its description. The Garden of Hope and Dreams at the beginning of the Flower Kingdom dark world is Very Pink, although we don't see the field of gold at the same time, it's up on the mountain, either referring to the fields of wheat that are about halfway up the climb, or simply the sunset light that is bathing the cliffs in golden light.
1. The most pedantic thing I can point out here is that the garden is not pink and gold, the golden areas and the pink areas are within the same Dark World but in separate zones.
2. Now we get to the more interesting stuff- I think almost everyone has picked up on the fact that the primary dynamic of jealousy in Chapter 5 is between Flowery who gleefully breaks the rules, and Ralsei, who has decided, likely based on past negative experiences that they can't. But that's not the only ones we could point to- we could see Kris' quiet sidelining from Susie as a kind of jealousy. We could see the flowers themselves as jealous of real humans without the limitations that their plant bodies have, there's a few ways we could interpret that. But let's stick to Ralsei here.
3. Unless it is purely in the metaphorical sense, there is no charring, nor inferno that we see happen in Chapter 5. Unless we are interpreting the sunlight present on the Flower Kingdom itself as the inferno, I think this is one of the most important differences between our experiences in the game and the chapters of Lord of the Hammer. Interestingly enough, it seems we're back in mandatory cutscene territory again and out of missable content areas like we were with chapters 3 and 4.
4. What DOES happen, however, is that we see Ralsei cast fire magic for the first time, and implies that if they weren't being careful, they could do something really dangerous and uncontrollable. Maybe create something like, oh I don't know, an inferno perhaps?
I listed these all out because I think that it raises some interesting questions:
- If the Lord of the Hammer is based on the prophecy, why don't we see many connections to the chapters and to the prophecy panels that we see in the rest of Chapter 4?
- Do our own experiences and their deviations from the Lord of the Hammer show something besides the ability for the prophecy to be broken? Do they describe a save file or a timeline that we didn't experience but that someone else did?
- With how connected Ralsei is to the Chapter 5 Lord of the Hammer summary, does this imply that they have experienced a version of events that more closely resembles that of the book?
- Are these variations the result of one timeline difference or many?
My personal theory is that this is one of several things pointing us to the implication that our experience of Deltarune is one of many, a deviation that gets slightly more different than the last until it will be unrecognizable from its source material.
What that means at this point? I have no idea, we're in uncharted territory and fresh out of Lord of the Hammer chapters to reference. Maybe there are hints to what chapter 6 will look like but I haven't seen any so far! I'll be curious to see what other folks pick up on in the months to come.
