Thirty years later, in Shin Megami Tensei II, the world had taken a darker turn. The Messians had risen to power over the rest of the world, and revolts from the Gaians had been suppressed. To once more prepare the world for the Thousand Year Kingdom, a being named Aleph was created by them to be the new Messiah. Aleph, however, suffered from amnesia after a demon attack and was taken in by a man named Okamoto, who named him Hawk and took him in. He trained him as a tournament fighter.
However, that was to change when a virtual version of STEVEN surfaced to give him the Demon Summoning Program, warning him that their home – Tokyo Millenium – would soon be overrun by demons. Soon afterwards, a rogue scientist opened a portal to the Abyss, allowing demons to flow out of it, but was killed in the process. Mere moments later, a visitor from the Center arrived to tell Aleph who he truly was and bring him to the Center – the safe haven from which all of the world was controlled by the Messians. As the new Messiah, Aleph was sent out into the world to stop the invading demons from claiming areas owned by them – and also, by proxy, to manipulate the citizens of the world into believing he was a true saviour. This would bring them to the Messians’ side.
Soon enough, Aleph noticed an odd trait among the inhabitants of the Center; most of them appeared to have been brainwashed into living for nothing save their work, and following the Messians’ laws. During an attack on the Center, a false Messiah made his existence known. While tracking him down, Aleph ran into Louis Cyphre in a bar. After defeating the false Messiah, however, Aleph discovered from one of the Center’s Temple Knights that Valhalla had been swallowed by a demon, summoned by the Center – and that the Center had created Millenium in order to weed out those they did not find “worthy” of living in the Thousand Year Kingdom.
While Aleph attempted to find out the truth, Louis Cyphre appeared to him again and again to offer him advice, showing off an unnatural amount of knowledge about the actions of demons and humans alike. Before long he discovered that the Center had been using demons to control the minds of humans – and their Thousand Year Kingdom was a virtual reality that would manipulate their minds into thinking it was Heaven. Aleph proceeded to destroy the “Saviour” who was controlling it.
Upon confronting the Elders behind the Center, they were revealed to be angels – including Michael, who had not died in the previous game after all. However soon after a demon’s tail rose up on Earth, from the Abyss, and Aleph went down to it to stop it, discovering that Lucifer had given him the order to collect Magnetite, the source of demon powers, with it (Magnetite would later be named Magutsuchi in the third game). Showing his confidence in Aleph, Louis told the demons there not to hold back on him, and they challenged him as a test of his power.
Soon afterwards, a Gemory appeared, claiming to be under the command of Lucifer, and forcibly brought them to his palace – where Louis Cyphre was at first pleased and then annoyed that they were dragged there. He revealed his identity to Aleph at last and exposited on the nature of Tokyo Millenium – that the angels had gone against God’s will by making it and that he had simply intended to wait for God to wipe them out in retaliation. He initially believed that Aleph was Satan, a servant of God, but by now he is convinced otherwise.
Satan was a being of destruction that would annihilate everything living on the earth or in the Abyss. Knowing he might well die despite all of his power, Lucifer asked Aleph for his assistance against him. Before a decision was made, Astaroth masqueraded as Louis to get close and attack Aleph, but was defeated. After this battle, Louis asked Aleph for the final decision. To assist him or not?
Regardless of answer, the ending would become the same; Satan would be defeated, and Aleph would destroy YHVH but because of this sin would be forced into a cycle of eternal reincarnation and torment.
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, unlike the previous two games, was set in a different earth or time. Among the inhabitants of the earth, the Gaea Cult and the Order of Messiah still existed, only in much fewer numbers and with no power. Dismissed as meaningless cults, they became the subjects of occult magazines and nothing more. However, among the Gaea Cult was a man who became a heretic even to them. This man, Hikawa, was shown the way to send the world into the stage of Conception – to destroy it and place it into a temporary state so that it could be remade anew. Intending to create a world where all minds were linked, where nothing so much as breathed, he and his “Maiden” Yuko Takao destroyed the previous world, sending them into a temporary place known as the Vortex World, that was based loosely on the previous world.
Hikawa’s plans needed only three steps - to gather magutsuchi, to use it to summon a God and to use that God to smite anyone who attempted to stop him. However, when the Conception had occurred, a tiny handful of humans had survived...
Enter Naoki Kashima. A young student who had been visiting his teacher, Yuko Takao, he was saved from death by a small blond boy, who held him down and forced a wriggling insect into his eye. This insect – a magatama – gave him demonic powers, turning him into the demi-fiend. This figure of legend had been the cause of many rumors in the vortex world, for his support was believed to be all that was needed to create a new world. With him, anyone was unstoppable.
As Naoki sought to unravel the truth behind these strange events, several paths were opened to him. As a half-demon, he was unable to create his own world. However, he could support the worlds of others, return the world to normal, or follow a path that had been opened for him at the start. Upon awakening after his transformation, Naokihad briefly been brought into a pulsating red zone, where a mysterious old man had asked him to “show [him] your power”. This old man opened up an option for him. He gave him a candelabra and told him to track down those who held the others and return them to him. As he gained each one, Naoki gained the ability to go further down into Hell – here named Amala.
The old man and the young boy both occasionally surfaced to exposit, but otherwise remained behind the scenes – watching. It was not until near the end that the truth could be known. A prophecy had been made that the one who could lead the demons against God would be the one who could make it to the bottom of Amala and accept power from Lucifer. While their roles in the main storyline remained minimal, if the bottom of Amala was reached before the Tower of Kagutsuchi opened, then the ending would be locked into True Demon.
This ending led Naoki to the top of the tower to destroy the avatar of God, Kagutsuchi. Following this, the old man and the young boy revealed their identities. They were one and the same. Lucifer, once more, had been pivotal in this affair. He challenged Naoki and, upon losing, accepted him as the one that would lead their forces against Heaven.
But clearly, success was not to be...
In another world, another time, humanity had reached a point where their waste had brought the world’s wrath upon them. To protect itself, the world created the Schwartzwelt, a massive dirac sea of sorts that contained many demons. As the Schwartzwelt expanded, humans were sent in to investigate – only to find that inside of it was a series of shifted planes intended to replicate the outside world. And demons. Lots and lots of demons.
To survive, outside sources sent them the demon summoning program in order for them to either find a way to destroy the Schwartzwelt – or to let it continue to flood the world with demons and create a world where only the strong could survive alongside the stronger beings. While they were in the dark about this reasoning, however, they were simply trying to find a way out by progressing through plane after plane.
As the main character fought his way through traps and enemies, he noticed an unfamiliar figure in the main area of their ship, the Red Sprite. The young woman, introducing herself as Louisa Ferre, spouted curious dialogue to him before disappearing. However nobody but he had even noticed her, and there were no records of demonic intrusion upon the ship. It was not until several planes later that her presence would resurface again.
Over the course of the previous few planes, the Red Sprite had regained contact with the outside world and were told of a plan to destroy the Schwartzwelt with the use of nuclear weapons. They intended to escape beforehand via a possible exit but were stopped by the Three Wise Men, who knocked them off course and forced them to remain inside. Meanwhile the attempt to nuke the Schwartzwelt failed, and the Three Wise Men attempted to persuade the people within the Red Sprite to pursue items held by the four strongest demons in the Schwartzwelt – Exotic Matter. By gathering those, they believed that the ability to change the fate of the world could come to pass. During the hunt, Louisa Ferre appeared once more to exposit on the nature of the demons that the main character would face, and hinted that she was stalking him to see how he did against them.
In the meantime, however, events were becoming problematic for the crew of the Red Sprite. Not only was morale failing, many lives had been lost, Zelenin had become an angel and another of their number – Jiminez - had become fused with a demon. The Three Wise Men appeared once more to tell the crew that they were not the first race to be destroyed by the Schwartzwelt for spoiling the Earth. They told the crew that the only way to survive, the path they should take, was to destroy all evil in their souls and become a unified spirit – similar in nature to the law path of the previous game. However, they were interrupted by Louisa Ferre.
Louisa scoffed at their ideas, telling them that they were talking about a world without life. She gave a long speech about freedom that caught the attention of Jiminez and some others, and the group would soon divide as a result. Zelenin took those that followed law, while Jiminez returned to the ship to reclaim those remaining as followers of chaos. In essence, the war between the angels of law and the demons of chaos had begun to reach a boiling point.
Depending on the MC's actions, the world may have become a world of united souls, minds melded into one, returned to its old state or reverted to a state of anarchy and freedom, ruled over by demons...
Louis Cyphre | Shin Megami Tensei | Not Reserved - 2/?
Thirty years later, in Shin Megami Tensei II, the world had taken a darker turn. The Messians had risen to power over the rest of the world, and revolts from the Gaians had been suppressed. To once more prepare the world for the Thousand Year Kingdom, a being named Aleph was created by them to be the new Messiah. Aleph, however, suffered from amnesia after a demon attack and was taken in by a man named Okamoto, who named him Hawk and took him in. He trained him as a tournament fighter.
However, that was to change when a virtual version of STEVEN surfaced to give him the Demon Summoning Program, warning him that their home – Tokyo Millenium – would soon be overrun by demons. Soon afterwards, a rogue scientist opened a portal to the Abyss, allowing demons to flow out of it, but was killed in the process. Mere moments later, a visitor from the Center arrived to tell Aleph who he truly was and bring him to the Center – the safe haven from which all of the world was controlled by the Messians. As the new Messiah, Aleph was sent out into the world to stop the invading demons from claiming areas owned by them – and also, by proxy, to manipulate the citizens of the world into believing he was a true saviour. This would bring them to the Messians’ side.
Soon enough, Aleph noticed an odd trait among the inhabitants of the Center; most of them appeared to have been brainwashed into living for nothing save their work, and following the Messians’ laws. During an attack on the Center, a false Messiah made his existence known. While tracking him down, Aleph ran into Louis Cyphre in a bar. After defeating the false Messiah, however, Aleph discovered from one of the Center’s Temple Knights that Valhalla had been swallowed by a demon, summoned by the Center – and that the Center had created Millenium in order to weed out those they did not find “worthy” of living in the Thousand Year Kingdom.
While Aleph attempted to find out the truth, Louis Cyphre appeared to him again and again to offer him advice, showing off an unnatural amount of knowledge about the actions of demons and humans alike. Before long he discovered that the Center had been using demons to control the minds of humans – and their Thousand Year Kingdom was a virtual reality that would manipulate their minds into thinking it was Heaven. Aleph proceeded to destroy the “Saviour” who was controlling it.
Upon confronting the Elders behind the Center, they were revealed to be angels – including Michael, who had not died in the previous game after all. However soon after a demon’s tail rose up on Earth, from the Abyss, and Aleph went down to it to stop it, discovering that Lucifer had given him the order to collect Magnetite, the source of demon powers, with it (Magnetite would later be named Magutsuchi in the third game). Showing his confidence in Aleph, Louis told the demons there not to hold back on him, and they challenged him as a test of his power.
Soon afterwards, a Gemory appeared, claiming to be under the command of Lucifer, and forcibly brought them to his palace – where Louis Cyphre was at first pleased and then annoyed that they were dragged there. He revealed his identity to Aleph at last and exposited on the nature of Tokyo Millenium – that the angels had gone against God’s will by making it and that he had simply intended to wait for God to wipe them out in retaliation. He initially believed that Aleph was Satan, a servant of God, but by now he is convinced otherwise.
Satan was a being of destruction that would annihilate everything living on the earth or in the Abyss. Knowing he might well die despite all of his power, Lucifer asked Aleph for his assistance against him. Before a decision was made, Astaroth masqueraded as Louis to get close and attack Aleph, but was defeated. After this battle, Louis asked Aleph for the final decision. To assist him or not?
Regardless of answer, the ending would become the same; Satan would be defeated, and Aleph would destroy YHVH but because of this sin would be forced into a cycle of eternal reincarnation and torment.
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, unlike the previous two games, was set in a different earth or time. Among the inhabitants of the earth, the Gaea Cult and the Order of Messiah still existed, only in much fewer numbers and with no power. Dismissed as meaningless cults, they became the subjects of occult magazines and nothing more. However, among the Gaea Cult was a man who became a heretic even to them. This man, Hikawa, was shown the way to send the world into the stage of Conception – to destroy it and place it into a temporary state so that it could be remade anew. Intending to create a world where all minds were linked, where nothing so much as breathed, he and his “Maiden” Yuko Takao destroyed the previous world, sending them into a temporary place known as the Vortex World, that was based loosely on the previous world.
Hikawa’s plans needed only three steps - to gather magutsuchi, to use it to summon a God and to use that God to smite anyone who attempted to stop him. However, when the Conception had occurred, a tiny handful of humans had survived...
Enter Naoki Kashima. A young student who had been visiting his teacher, Yuko Takao, he was saved from death by a small blond boy, who held him down and forced a wriggling insect into his eye. This insect – a magatama – gave him demonic powers, turning him into the demi-fiend. This figure of legend had been the cause of many rumors in the vortex world, for his support was believed to be all that was needed to create a new world. With him, anyone was unstoppable.
As Naoki sought to unravel the truth behind these strange events, several paths were opened to him. As a half-demon, he was unable to create his own world. However, he could support the worlds of others, return the world to normal, or follow a path that had been opened for him at the start. Upon awakening after his transformation, Naoki had briefly been brought into a pulsating red zone, where a mysterious old man had asked him to “show [him] your power”. This old man opened up an option for him. He gave him a candelabra and told him to track down those who held the others and return them to him. As he gained each one, Naoki gained the ability to go further down into Hell – here named Amala.
The old man and the young boy both occasionally surfaced to exposit, but otherwise remained behind the scenes – watching. It was not until near the end that the truth could be known. A prophecy had been made that the one who could lead the demons against God would be the one who could make it to the bottom of Amala and accept power from Lucifer. While their roles in the main storyline remained minimal, if the bottom of Amala was reached before the Tower of Kagutsuchi opened, then the ending would be locked into True Demon.
This ending led Naoki to the top of the tower to destroy the avatar of God, Kagutsuchi. Following this, the old man and the young boy revealed their identities. They were one and the same. Lucifer, once more, had been pivotal in this affair. He challenged Naoki and, upon losing, accepted him as the one that would lead their forces against Heaven.
But clearly, success was not to be...
In another world, another time, humanity had reached a point where their waste had brought the world’s wrath upon them. To protect itself, the world created the Schwartzwelt, a massive dirac sea of sorts that contained many demons. As the Schwartzwelt expanded, humans were sent in to investigate – only to find that inside of it was a series of shifted planes intended to replicate the outside world. And demons. Lots and lots of demons.
To survive, outside sources sent them the demon summoning program in order for them to either find a way to destroy the Schwartzwelt – or to let it continue to flood the world with demons and create a world where only the strong could survive alongside the stronger beings. While they were in the dark about this reasoning, however, they were simply trying to find a way out by progressing through plane after plane.
As the main character fought his way through traps and enemies, he noticed an unfamiliar figure in the main area of their ship, the Red Sprite. The young woman, introducing herself as Louisa Ferre, spouted curious dialogue to him before disappearing. However nobody but he had even noticed her, and there were no records of demonic intrusion upon the ship. It was not until several planes later that her presence would resurface again.
Over the course of the previous few planes, the Red Sprite had regained contact with the outside world and were told of a plan to destroy the Schwartzwelt with the use of nuclear weapons. They intended to escape beforehand via a possible exit but were stopped by the Three Wise Men, who knocked them off course and forced them to remain inside. Meanwhile the attempt to nuke the Schwartzwelt failed, and the Three Wise Men attempted to persuade the people within the Red Sprite to pursue items held by the four strongest demons in the Schwartzwelt – Exotic Matter. By gathering those, they believed that the ability to change the fate of the world could come to pass. During the hunt, Louisa Ferre appeared once more to exposit on the nature of the demons that the main character would face, and hinted that she was stalking him to see how he did against them.
In the meantime, however, events were becoming problematic for the crew of the Red Sprite. Not only was morale failing, many lives had been lost, Zelenin had become an angel and another of their number – Jiminez - had become fused with a demon. The Three Wise Men appeared once more to tell the crew that they were not the first race to be destroyed by the Schwartzwelt for spoiling the Earth. They told the crew that the only way to survive, the path they should take, was to destroy all evil in their souls and become a unified spirit – similar in nature to the law path of the previous game. However, they were interrupted by Louisa Ferre.
Louisa scoffed at their ideas, telling them that they were talking about a world without life. She gave a long speech about freedom that caught the attention of Jiminez and some others, and the group would soon divide as a result. Zelenin took those that followed law, while Jiminez returned to the ship to reclaim those remaining as followers of chaos. In essence, the war between the angels of law and the demons of chaos had begun to reach a boiling point.
Depending on the MC's actions, the world may have become a world of united souls, minds melded into one, returned to its old state or reverted to a state of anarchy and freedom, ruled over by demons...