I'm going to leave here my theories, random thoughts and predictions of how Deltarune Chapter 5-7 will go before Chapter 5 releases
This is literally just barely focused rambling and it has tons of blocks of text, so don't click read more if you're on mobile and you're not interested
Theories this is based on and are reccomended before reading:
I believe that Asgore was involved in Dess' dissapearance, which is also the "roots incident" (lost where the forest would grow, the children followed the pointed tail, the poor children) by being somewhat neglectful and letting the kids (Dess and Kris, maybe Noelle and Asriel too) wander off onto "where the forest would grow" or be there, but not managing to stop whatever caused Dess' disappearance, which would also would cause Kris enough trauma to have to go to the art therapy sessions shown in Ch4's egg room, the egg man being someone "beyond this world", similar to other people, like Gaster, Dess and possibly Friend, that is helping Kris cope with the trauma, Idk certainly why he would be considered an "issue" to Gaster though, maybe because there's a memory in Kris' past that they shouldn't remember, (probably due to something I'm going to go into further ahead) or maybe the existance and contact of the egg man with the universe of Deltarune itself is the "issue", since he appears in places that shouldn't exist, for all we know the Egg Man is Mystery Man and not Gaster, but I'm not going to lean too hard onto that, either way
Dess would be lost onto the code due to the incident of "the children following the pointed tail", which, following the "Cat & Mouse Theory" and the theory it is built on, "Device/Program Theory", the "pointed tail"/"tail of hell" would not be friend, but rather Gaster, the "coder" of the world of Deltarune using a computer cursor to "lead" them somewhere, probably related to the dark worlds or the abyss, (maybe the bunker) to probably build the story of Deltarune, making/mutilating Dess' soul/body or whatever of the like into the "villain", the Roaring Knight, with Dess' consciousness being trapped in the code (as the identity of the person trapped in the code), maybe this incident was caused in the first place by Gaster, using the pointed tail (cursor) to show Dess or Asriel how to make a dark fountain, which would end up in them creating one in the bunker with Kris and Noelle, which would be the incident that ends up in Dess' disappearance
Asgore, who should have been there with them, would get fired from the Police force and divorced by Toriel, with the children being too scared to tell about it, but he would either find out about the dark worlds by being there in the incident or investigating it later and making connections to the prophecy, either way he would look like a sad madman to everyone that is following a cold trail, but Carol would still trust them, by either just knowing more of the dark worlds and the prophecy or being told by Noelle of the incident and knowing Dess well enough, so they would be working in the shadows to find Dess, eventually making the "plan" to make more dark fountains and eventually be the ones to cause the Roaring to follow the prophecy, but on their own terms, to know more of what happened, risking the fate of the world in a chance to find out what world moving stuff happened there, maybe the Knight is already around and allied with them since the most probable origin point for it is right at the incident, so Dess would get lost and her body would become the knight or something like that, with enough cognitive capacity to still to try to help them, but still separated from the part of Dess trapped in the code (heck, maybe the Egg Man follows a similar logic and is a separately conscious part of Gaster that wants to guide Kris through their memories in spite of what the main part of Gaster wants, but this is just a thought), so Carol's "team" would be trying to stop whatever turned Dess into the Knight so that it won't harm anyone again while also trying to find a "cure" for Dess, since she's probably not that cool edgy knight in the light world but rather something more "hurt", maybe her body is now made of darkness and can't be exposed to sunlight or something, idk
This would end up in them eventually following the prophecy and involving Kris by making them into "the cage" of the player, the "Angel", which Kris would agree to, choosing to help in finding a way to get Dess back to normal/back in general, but would eventually backfire for Kris since they would befriend Susie and Ralsei, which would end up in the dichotomy of "following their friends and fighting the knight who is threatening to end the world" or "risking the world to save Dess", since the Roaring is literally an apocaliptic scenario that could very well kill everyone
As for Noelle's relevance, I think she would be involved by the whole "Cat Petterz"/"Spamton's Sweepstakes" thing, before the "roots" incident happened and Dess was still around, with Spamton "being driven to greatness" by Gaster, going by the pseudonym of "Mike" in exchange of giving a "file/mod" to Noelle's PC, in reality just being Gaster using Spamton's Spam E-mail system for that, which would develop into his "shrinking" and his backstory when he was given life and form by the dark fountains, Gaster would do so to try to guide Noelle to become "The girl" of the prophecy, by appealing to her mystery seeking side, with this being another part of "Cat & Mouse" theory, FRIEND would be "Gaster's program's eyes", being an equivalent to the Concagnate command on Linux but given life by the Dark Fountains into what we now know as FRIEND, this could be a part of the mod, or maybe Gaster is using it as an excuse to entice Noelle into the mysteries of the world by having her game glitch the cats into FRIEND's form in the dark world, or maybe since FRIEND is part of Gaster's program, FRIEND could just straight up show up inside her computer
Either way, Spamton would be the messenger, the mod would be the package, maybe FRIEND themselves or a creation of Gaster that gave FRIEND a it's dark world form by melting the in game cats together, and Noelle would be the reciever, with Tenna and Spamton's meeting being after Gaster made Spamton "successful" (just having more people read the spam mails) when Kris brought Queen (the PC) to their house to play pretend, which would cause their relationship on complete incidence to the plan, Gaster would then send the mod, which would also give Spamton the knowledge of the prophecy (or something, this whole section is the iffiest part, but I'm trying to connect a lot of loose plot points that will probably make more sense and be more connected when the next chapters cone out)
Now, onto the actual plot of the chapters
Chapter 5: Flower King, parallel to Snowdin, probably due to being based on a forest, (all chapters until now have paralelled sections of Undertale but in reverse order, this would be the time for Snowdin) this chapter will have Asgore create a dark fountain as a part of the plan, I feel like the 7 Flower King flowers, will be part of Asgore's boss fight or the main boss, similar to Omega Flowey and the Knight, having Asgore be a "fake out"/phase 1 again, or maybe it's backwards and Asgore fakes out the flower here, which, if Chess theory is true, would make Asgore or his flowers into the Bishop, which would still make some sense either way since Asgore would be following the prophecy and the Bishop is in the original language of Chess meant to be a war elephant, so if the flowers become a war beast then the theory is alive
Asgore's TV would be the secret boss and probably a solo Ralsei fight (a friend inside me like boss fight has an actual chance here, mostly because I don't have any better candidate for this chapter since I'm saving the actual FRIEND boss fight for later)
This chapter will end with Asgore fleeing and making a dark fountain outside in the evening of the festival, with the sky turning black as Carol and the Knight open more dark fountains at once to "show everyone he was right" and cause...
Chapter 6: The Roaring/ROOTS, parallel to the Ruins, (the reasoning is a bit flimsy but digital roots and bit roots look like they are in ruins covered in nature, so a similar vibe to the ruins) I believe chapter 6 will be the Roaring and is also the "Roots" that are talked about in the name of Queen's castle's basement in Chapter 2 (digital roots), the name of the last part of the original game in Chapter 3 (bit roots) and the prophecy in Chapter 4, with this chapter being based on keeping the people of Home Town safe from the inevitable amounts of Titans and Titanspawns that will rise here (this would be Catti's and Jockington's chance to be main plot relevant, maybe even Snowy and Monster Kid, but those two sound like they would just hide throughout most of the chapter)
probably the secret boss here will be the boss fight against FRIEND if you manage to get the pure crystal from Seam and go to the section of the map that the school is at, following ROOTS theory, if you go there and maybe break out of the map to the right, you'll be able to find the secret boss, which I believe could be a dual Boss Fight against both FRIEND and the Tail of Hell, being a game against "Gaster's Eyes" and" Gaster's Hand" (Gaster's computer's visualizer and cursor), being in reality a match between Gaster and you as the Player through the videogame, maybe this fight happens with the whole team in the main route but only with Noelle and Kris in if you fused the Thorn Ring into the Twisted Sword with the Pure Crystal in the weird route or if you aborted the weird route right after getting the Thorn Ring (maybe the weird route dies after Chapter 5 and the game just ends since there's no 6 in the Spamton Sweepstakes page and you have to abort it after getting the Thorn Ring to get this version of the fight)
Maybe this fight is like the Knight's where it's the mandatory final boss, which would also make FRIEND and the Tail of Hell, the "pawns" if Chess theory is right (or maybe it's the titanspawns, since this would be the Roaring and all) and this fight has a set ending, but if you replay it and get the secret item to win it it becomes feasible on your own and you get a secret outcome, but otherwise is a curb stomp, but similar to King and Queen, since in the main variant you'd have all of Home Town helping to fight the Titans, maybe they get to help you in this fight too, with the Dark Crystal holders too if you beat them, leading into Gaster being satisfied/impressed and letting the Fun Gang stop the Roaring and letting you into Chapter 7
but in the weird route variant you'd have only yourself, Kris and Noelle to beat this, since you probably end up going on a massacre across all of home town, with this being what is told to you on the original Boards in Chapter 3 and the lead into chapter 7, being an alternate "evil" path to follow the prophecy from Gaster's part to give you more agency, the reason as to why there's no 6 in the Spamton Sweepstakes page being because from this point on, the Weird route is unabortable, you're too far deep
Chapter 7: The Abyss/The Bunker/The Truth
Following what Alphys said that "maybe what's in there is even worse" about the bunker, I believe this chapter will happen there, finally leading into the more meta stuff and the more Gaster/Dess oriented stuff, but other than that, I don't have that much of a solid theory here, maybe the Fun Gang goes into the bunker and find Dess or even the Vessel, maybe it's revealed that Kris IS the vessel that got adopted by the Dreemurs when Gaster was still setting up Deltarune, maybe the weird route ending is about you trying to kill the avatar the programmer itself
The only thing I think will happen here with some certainty is an encounter with Gaster, that I really want to be the final boss, but I have almost nothing actually concrete on this chapter
I don't know exactly if or how will Rudy, Papyrus and the person that interrupted Gaster in the Goner Maker sequence will be involved here or be further relevant, but I do believe they will in some way
Anyways, this is literally just my thoughts and theories of this game I love strapped together into what I think I can call a draft of a story, but nothing here is 100% confirmed, nothing here is bound to happen and is just what I think will probably happen, but there are still a lot of missing details and connective tissue here and all of this might turn out to be false, I just wanted to put this out before Chapter 5 came out and I hope and thank that you read this all the way didn't have that much of a stroke reading this
amandla
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germansingergirl
dailybridgerton
