via Gaming With God: How Zeal Almost Destroyed The World
Today’s world is full of information, technology and wealth. Everyday people are coming out of poverty and gaining power over their own lives, instead of relying on others. Majority of people still live in extreme hardship though, but every year that number is getting smaller. With that, comes the belittling of God and not wanting to look to Him as our source, instead looking inside ourselves for answers.
This reminded me of an ancient kingdom called Zeal, in the famed RPG Chrono Trigger. This was the first game I wrote about here at Beneath The Tangles, and the main character Crono is even my avatar for my writings. If you’ve never played it, I will give you some background on the Kingdom of Zeal in particular. When you make it to this era in the game (you use a flying machine called an Epoch to time travel) you see nothing but a cold, barren wasteland. Upon using a teleporter, you are taken to a beautiful floating island in the sky, full of magnificent structures, magic, libraries and people who think they are the wisest beings on the Earth. Not only do they believe they are the most powerful, but they look down on anyone else that is not part of their elite country.
As you visit each room and talk to more people, you find out about the Mammon Machine. This contraption was created to gain the life force of Lavos, the main enemy of the game, and use it to conquer the world. Lavos is nothing but a parasitic life form that came from space and burrowed into the ground, slowly draining the planet of energy to one day emerge and destroy most of humanity. Queen Zeal, ruler of the Kingdom of Zeal, is the head of this plot and she will not allow anyone to stop her, even Crono and his party. Interestingly enough, there is even a mysterious Prophet who shows up with great power to assist her, when in fact he’s just waiting for the right moment to strike her down.