Terraria: Slightly hidden lore?

[UNCLEWOKIAN DANEBOT MIND-VIRUS]

Lookadis
https://www.reddit.com/r/Terraria/comments/3csl74/the_morality_behind_killing_the_lunatic_cultist/

He says that the cultists are trying to prevent the moonlord from happening.
Are the cultists good?

Edit:
Hopefully, Terraria Otherworlds or Terraria 2 might give an explanation

[Pokevaati]

look at it this way : you kill them to get cool stuff

but if i was being honest i would think the tablet thing they are worshipping might be stopping him from being summoned but i think that he is using the 4 pillars to move space and time and enter the future because hes in the past and since hes all powerful, he knows the future. so i speculate skeletron is moonlord after he was defeated and skeletron prime is him after he was defeated twice and upgraded himself. so moonlord is first in timeline, skeletron is 2nd and prime is 3rd. but moonlord was planning to come before you even fight skeletron but the cultists stopped him while he was in space so now hes stuck in mid time travel. but when you kill the cultists he comes through the time traveling pillars but you kill them so hes a little off on when he wanted to appear.

i think i just barfed out some unreadable poorly written theory... ugh i dont feel so good.

[Toad Lord]

Think of it this way, you have to defeat three guardians before the cultists appear, the wall of flesh, Plantera, and the Golem. The wall of flesh is a guardian prevents you from being able to so much as harm the Guardian of Nature, Plantera, who in turn prevents you from harming the Guardian from the past, the Golem. The tablet they worship could be inferred to be an item from within the temple that had the Moon Lord sealed within. Along that same train of thought, the pillars on the moon could actually be a way that nature is trying to prevent its return, since until they get destroyed the Moon Lord doesn't appear and once the pillars are broken it gives the Moon Lord enough power to return temporarily, but the pillars are reformed once the champion of the land either succeeds or is defeated. If you include Pokevaati's theory, you could infer that the old man/clothier was the person who actually defeated the moon lord in the past, but was cursed to prevent anyone from entering the dungeon, an attempt to prevent the cultists from worshipping the tablet.

It is a reasonable theory, though there are still some holes.

[Pixel Peeper]

Since there is very little in-game lore, almost any theory will fit. Human brains have evolved to try to find connections, and they will attempt to do so even if there aren't any real ones, making most things seem more believable than they really are. In short, you can make any theory sound somewhat plausible no matter how objectively unlikely it is.

Are the cultists good guys who were just trying to keep the Celestial invasions from happening? It's not impossible, but there just isn't enough evidence to make that hypothesis even plausible.

[Star★Dive]

The player is the hero, the NPC's speak well of them. The hero -may- know something the NPC's do not, or is following an unknown instinct of some sort which drives them towards destiny, this with the the ability to travel between worlds, and to shape the world around them. The player is an incarnated deity, or deity-like entity which though mortal; has been blessed with the ability to have an impact on the future, or perhaps immortal with the ability to reconstitute themselves with a great deal of difficulty (respawning with lessened health). Born either of the planet itself, or from the needs of the realm itself (on a more sentient level), the hero sets fourth to prepare for the arrival of a great and terrbile power (corruption/crimson) which has slowly been leaking into the realm following the death of a great evil from the past.

The guide is the hero's counterpart, and possible spirit-brother (maybe even a previous hero), knowing the hero is destined to face great challenges, helps the hero along, while silently praying that someday the hero will surpass them, and release them from their duty, doing everything they can to hold back the sickness of the land. For little do the people know, the guide was there first, the guide was always there, the guide being the one who defeated the elder beast (Cthulu), and scattered his remains to the winds (eyes, brain, skull, spine). It was all the guide could do, to take the beast and the world's soul into himself, prevening a total apocalypse from destroying the world which he loved, yet unable to achieve a final ultimate victory.

Under the tutelage of the guide, the hero grows strong and finally comes the day when the guide and hero face off. The guide taking on his true form a warped monstrosity resembling an amalgated reflection of the beast which he trapped within himself, and was ale to surpess for so long using the power of light. Now, having a showdown with the hero at the heart of the world (hell, or, the core), where once defeated, the guide is finally released of their title as previous hero, and allows the spirit of the worlds light, and deeper darkness, to finally go free. The guide leaves the hero to be his successor, a new, stronger, more capable individual, who just may be the worlds hope.

In response to the spirits once again gaining their power back, the world begins taking action, creating powerful beasts (new monsters), in attempt to wipe the slate clean, and bring everything back to purity (the hallow and plantera), while the taint does the same, feeding off the world's dying life, and creates it's own monsters from the evil of mankind (The mecha bosses). The hero now caught in the middle, must stop both sides of light and the beastly darkness from devistating the world, to prevent the guide's fears from coming true. The blatantly evil forces are dealt with first, reflections from the past, recreated by those twisted by the darkness into beasts themselves (the lizhards) to end the hero with new devestating powers, the eyes, the skull, and the spine.

After defeating the three evils from the past, the hero travels into the jungle to battle the lizhards themselves, and confront the guardian of nature which the light has devoted all it's attention to creating. The hero confronts plantera, a mighty creature born of the light, and life of the jungle, for the purpose of lashing out at the world as a living weapon, but after the light feels the hero's soul is benevolent, it ceases it's designs to wipe away life. With the "release" of planetera, the light takes the hero's side with what little power it has left, though unable to directly assist the hero, it helps by slowing down the spread of the darkness (the contamination spread rate change after defeating plantera), to give the hero the time they need to confront the true threat behind the lizhards.

Our hero continues onwards to the lizhards ancient lair, the temple, where they do battle with the lizhards themselves,a nd come face to face with the ancient guardian fist constructed by the lizhards long ago, before the recreation of the eyes, skull, and spine. This "prototype" guardian, the golem, designed by crude early magic and arcane engineering, is the lizhard's last line of defense against the hero. But the hero prevails, and vanquishes the golem, forcing the few survivng lizhards to escape to the surface.

The hero follows the lizards, tracking them down to the old ruins of the dungeon where they have a final confrontation (since the cultists don't appear till after the golem), drawing upon an ancient lost artifact from the dungeon, to siphon what power they could from the remnants of the beastly evil of great beyond, which had been controlling the darkness, and slowly poisoning the world. By the time the hero arrives however, the lizhard cultists have already empowered one of their own with the darkness, bending and twisting them to insanity. The hero knows that he cannot let -any- them live, they had become extensions of the evil's will.

Seeing an oppertunity to prevent the evil from fully returning, the hero battles the cultists and overcomes them, destroying their charm in the process, setting the power which had been imbued into their bodies. The cultists now gone, and the conglomorate of evil power no longer under their control, the hero has an oppertunity to strike at the heart of the evil itself. Though the power of the cultists was great, and with their defeat, the evil is able to pull itself from the darkness beyond, and turn the stars themselves against the hero, to delay the hero and give itself time to reconstitute it's body.

The hero, weak and weary does their best to battle the twisted power of the heavens, and recollect what remains of the purity (collecting fragments to turn them into items which the player can use). Using the ray of hope cast from the stars, the hero becomes the champion of the realm, effectivly becoming the only one who can realign the light and darkness against the great beast and bring the chaos to an end. So as it is, when the pillars of the heavens fall, the beast confronts the hero one final time, not as pieces but now in their true form (or what they were able to reconstitue, considering if you look at the moon lord, they are incomplete, and contain fragments from the brain, heart, and eye).

All this, fulfilling the guide's final wish against the ancient evil..



Or at least, that's always been my take on the story...

[Log]

ye s