#egg route

the rudinns that those cards turned into are also smaller than regular rudinns, implying that kris got the sizing wrong (either because they were small and made those cards to fit their own hands or bc dimensions when photocopying is hard)

but not only did kris used to play with them a lot regardless, only six of those cards got lost in the couch (to end up in mancountry). the last rudinn is found in the dark sanctuary, meaning kris used to bring them everywhere frequently enough to have lost one at church

Image by @jojoton56

So the forgotten man, the semi-official name for the guy who hides behind trees and gives you eggs, is given some pretty interesting context regarding our playable character, Kris. This implies he (the forgotten man) is tied to some repressed trauma (most pronounced in the art therapy room of chapter 4), possibly violent in some nature (as alluded to by a line by the holder of the shadow mantle as well as one of the fellow patients in said art therapy room). While I'll only bring up the specifics here briefly, there's still the ultimate question of what this is all leading towards?

Well, three interesting facts could hint that the forgotten man is key to another alternative route, like the weird route, but in a (possibly?) more positive direction than grooming Noelle into a cryomantic death machine.

As noted in the above image, you don't get the "Chapter X END" achievements if you get the respective eggs of those chapters. Its even required if you want to do a run where you don't get any achivements from chapters 1-4 (promting special dialouge from the Voice). This is odd since said voice never brings up the weird route in a similar way, despite its effects on the plot being more obvious so far.

During chapter 2's weird route, you just cannot get to the egg room for the chapter at all. Which is strange unless the eggs are for their own route or something. Similarly (Edit: at least before 1.0.4, where this isn't the case), if you finish the sword route (which references the weird route) before getting the tripp ticket, you're locked out of the egg room for that chapter (granted, if you get the egg by the time you start board 3 this is a non-issue).

In speaking of chapter 3's sword route, if board 2 is meant to be at least partly taken as a hint towards the weird route (though it might not be its only purpose, as I theorised elsewhere), then there's an obvious parallel to be made with the schedule that the forgotten man gives (which hints at the locations of the other egg rooms of chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5).

Now, what this route entails, I have no idea. With the eggs being deemed "not too important, not too unimportant" and completely lacking any of the interactions we can have with them in chapter 4 that we did in chapters 1 and 2, I suspect the eggs themselves serve more of a counter for how many of the forgotten man rooms you've completed.

However, when talking to Malius in chapter 4, they reveal they have been trying their hand at breadmaking but haven't been very successful due to gluten intolerance, hindering their progress towards new recipes. Since eggs can be used to make bread, i could see us using these 5 eggs to make a cake or some shit for everyone to eat and then start tripping on kris's truamatic memeory lane. More of an out there idea that i'm not commited to.

Now for the general plot beats of the egg route. For one, we are going to discover the root cause of Kris's trauma that they are repressing (either involving Dess and what happened to her, Gaster, Kris's pre-adoption past, or a combination of the three), and we help Kris overcome that trauma. With Noelle likely making her second dark world appearance in chapter 5 (where we will get our last egg), i can also see a scene where we help Noelle overcome her truama.

A very likely consequence of this is Kris coming clean with whatever scheme they've been cooking up to this point, especially if the aforementioned repressed trauma has some connection to Dess and why Kris is working with the knight. At this point, Susie will be aware of Dess's fate and how this ties to Kris working with the knight to bring about the roaring. Whether the knight is Carol and wants to bring her daughter back, or the Knight is Dess and is forced to bring about the roaring for one reason or another, Susie is aware that the knight is more than just some bad guy who wants to bring about Armageddon.

Susie (and probably Noelle) will start crashing about Kris working with the knight (especially if Kris Slash theory is true and you did the sword route by this point), but everyobdy will calm down and the fun gang (and noelle) will have the shared goal of saving Dess or something and will probably have a vague awareness of there being a puppetmaster behind the knight's strings.

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I feel like people tend to mischaracterize Gaster as this evil mysterious god rather than as a man who got stuck in the in-between from his tests as the Royal Scientist. Getting shattered in-between time and space.

I'm more with the theory of Gaster being the "Forgotten man" or the "Man Behind the Tree", it fits with the narrative with him being completely cut out from most of the game. His only appearance in Utdr being in the room between.

The bit about Susie chopping down trees strangely reminds me of this one character from the undertale 10th anniversery stream.

Full dialouge (pre-ending):

"Who are you? I don't usually see many people down here..."

"...Who am i?"

"I'm a lumberjack. I cut down trees."

Why

",,, huh..."

"Probably..."

"...because they look like me..."

"I been cuttin' myself down... thinking it would make me stronger."

"My arms got bigger, but my heart sure didn't."

"..."

"You know, I usually concentrate on my trees."

"I don't really go up there from where you came from."

"... sometimes i forget, there's a whole world where you ain't lookin."

".. A whole world of people you never talked to."

"A whole world of placed you never went."

"...thanks. Feels like you reminded me of something important."

"Even if you went all over it, you'd never go everywhere."

"You'd never be able to talk to everyone."

"...Unless you're our king."

Now the thought process I'm going down here is connecting this to a certain other character associated with Trees in deltarune, the Forgotten man. This post made it, suggesting that Susie would be key to overcoming Kris's trauma that the forgotten man by chopping down his trees, but I'm not sure on that.

So far the game goes out of its way to have only Kris show up in the forgotten man rooms (to the point of quite literary going the opposite way Susie is going if you want to get to the ROOTS room from the second sanctuary), to the point of just kinda teleporting the fun gang around for the hell of it.

So i've been musing on this for quite a bit now, and the more i think of it the more i can't unsee the connections between the weird route and all the forgotten man stuff with the egg rooms. Consider:

They both involve isolating Kris from the fun gang (Kris with Noelle in the weird route, Kris on their own in the egg rooms). This is most noteworthy in ch4, where you have to literally run the other direction susie is going to get to the stained glass room (and thus the ROOTS and therapy rooms) from the second sanctuary.

You need to get to the dog dumpster to continue their respective routes (you need to get in here and back out for chapter 2's egg roo, and spamton hides out here in the weird route and you need to get to him to get the thorn ring.) Also note the graffiti of the scarlet trees the forgotten man hides behind is right next to the dumpster spamton hides in.

The ARG alludes to and hints at both of them (referencing Ice Palace from the mantle minigames of board 2, among other things, and the webpage with a punch of stained-glass windows hinting at how to get to the ch4 egg room).

FRIEND connections to both (mantle minigame for weird route, and its theorized that the special egg Noelle gets in /egg/, that it itself is theorized will hatch into FRIEND if we take into account /rain/, is from the forgotten man, as you get to that page from a web page featuring the familiar scarlet tree, /man',, not to mention its likely FRIEND is tied to whatever trauma Kris is repressing as represented by said egg rooms due to the whole "lost where the forest would grow, the children followed the pointed tail" from the roots room. Also Cats from Cat Petters hatches from eggs).

The Phrase "Aren't you forgetting something" appears in regards to you not getting the previous board's key in the mantle minigames (the full phrase is "aren't you forgetting something importent?"), as well as thrice in the spamton sweepstakes (/d_a_m_n_y_o_u_t_e_n_n_a/, /windows/, and /window/) as text you see on the tab, one of which is a reference to the sword route again (and even leads to /icepalace_glaceir/) while the other two are hints at how to get the chapter 4 ROOTS room (which is how you get the chapter's egg).

CH3 has a guide, or at least something to hint at, both the weird route and the egg rooms (mantle minigames for the former, the forgotten man's schedule for the latter).

They push, but not force, you to go down either a pacifist or violent playstyle (Weird route I don't need to really explain, snowgrave go brrr, and you're locked out of the chapter's egg room if you go down it, and you're locked out of the Nowhere if you fought the Ribbicks earlier in the chapter).

The way to go down them is both hidden and obtuse, often requiring a guide to go down them (Egg route gets it worse than WR, but the latter is still difficult to go down without a guide on hand).

It's also noteworthy that Miss Mizzle refers to love as being made of eggshells, which is interesting to note in the context of LOVE (Levels Of ViolencE) and its ties to one of the prophecy panels in chapter 4 "LOVE FINDS ITS WAY TO THE GIRL". A Rudinn also brings up that Castle Town's LOVE is cracked if you didn't recruit anyone from chapter 3. The philosophers also state that the answer is LOVE, seemingly to the questions that they speaking about, which also feels relevant.

On a thematic level, both the eggs and the weird route as a whole seem tied to the concept of video game secrets, more specificity glitches and exploits (the weird route is very much a creepypasta-esque twisting of the game tied to a character who has a habit of finding secrets in video games, and to get the eggs you literally needs to go to the deltarune equivalent of the backrooms to get them). Its also notable people have compared the eggs from the eggman to the error handler glitches such as bad egg.

Unlike the Shadow Crystals which can be progressed retroactively (i.e., if you played save file 1 up to chapter 4 and got the chapter 2 and 4 crystals, you can go back into chapter 1 and 3 and get their shadow crystals so you can find them in the hole in the wall in castle town), the Weird Route and the Eggs can only be progressed Linearly (i.e. you can play the game up to chapter 3 on save file one, replay chapter 2 for the weird route, and then continue to chapter 4 and now its the weird route now, same for the eggs, in that you can't collect them retroactively).

What does all of this potentially mean. Well i have an idea for awhile now that the Forgotten man and collecting his eggs are key to their own "route" alongside the Weird Route (possibly the "good ending" counterpart to the Weird Route, ala pacifist to genocide). After all, if the PlayStation achievements are to go by, Gaster sees the Eggs as an issue (how or why is not truly relevant here, if i have to quess its completely outside of the knowledge of the prophecy unlike the weird route which, if we use the mantle minigames as a base, is a "forbidden path" or is the original, intended prophecy itself), so clearly they are not too unimportant. But what makes them not too important?

My first though as far as the "not too important" half of the egg's description is that the eggs themselves aren't the important part of the egg route. They essentially a glorified progress counter and nothing else and when you get all five the forgotten man will pop into the plot and do something.

However the Dog Dumpster being a key room for both the Egg Route and Weird Route makes me think back on the Thorn Ring and how it can be made into the Twisted Sword. You see currently the actual purpose of the currently unused Pure Crystal, likely the reward we get from Seam (or whatever other cat in the area) when we get all the Shadow Crystals. The only currently know use for it as an item you combine with the Thorn Ring to create the Twisted Sword.

So what if, instead of the Pure Crystal having a different use than being needed for the Twisted Sword, what if there was a different way to get the Thorn Ring. We Know that from the Forgotten Man's schedule that he will "harvest the wheat" in sunday, Flower King is a very likely (if not a lock) for at least one of the dark worlds, and datamined responses from noelle to the various items in chapters 3 and 4 implies noelle might be a playable party member in chapter 5. So the circumstances are aligning in a way for the reward to getting the Thron Ring via the Egg Route are there.

This is a sequel to another post I made regarding my theory that obtaining the various eggs from the Forgotten Man is key to what amounts to the "True Pacifist" counterpart to the Weird Route's Genocide. I did plan for a while on a sequel post on the specifics of how I think it would go, but i'm not starting on that note. Instead, i'll talk about a theme throughout the game that might provide a key to why the weird route and the egg routes are set up as opposite routes as they are.

I will say upfront that I live a fairly comfortable life and thus have no trauma to speak of, and I am by no means an expert on the subject, and this is just my analysis of how trauma is used and presented in Deltarune. This entire opening bit was inspired by a blog post from No Chocolate in regards of Asriel being a case of abuse by his adoptive sibling Chara.

So onwards to Deltarune, most of the source of this trauma seems to originate when "Lost where the forest would grow, the children follow the pointed tail", as alluded to in the ROOTS room of chapter 4 and the adjoining Art Therapy Room, possibly involving FRIEND and certainly the shelter. This would ultimately lead to Dess disappearing and (almost certainly) later becoming the Roaring Knight.

As a result of this, Toriel and Asgore are divorced (the latter having an entire conspiracy board likely dedicated to Dess's Cold Case), This is likely a catalyst for Asriel leaving town (and maybe going to college?), Noelle is missing her sister and Froze up when just merely spelling her name (and likely went alongside Asriel, Kris, and Dess into the forest where they followed the pointed tail and repressed all memories of it if a line about them exploring a forest in chapter 2 is to go by), Susie is implied to have a negligent if not abusive homelife, and Kris is pinned between us controlling them, and being bound by a promise by the voice on the phone (either Carol or the Knight, it honestly depends).

This is not even going into about what's Dess is doing, as I bet she's probably gonna be scarred for life even if she is restored from being the Knight (and that's assuming it's not weird route exclusive either, which I hope it's not the case). I doubt being trapped in darkness for years and turned into whatever you consider her knight form to be is at all pleasant.

Thus, we enter the three routes the game can take: the normal route (where you don't do the weird route but also don't get all the eggs as well), the Weird Route, and my proposed Egg Route.

The Normal Route represents escapism, shocker that being a big theme in the game after all. Not becoming worse due to what you are experiencing, but not becoming better for it, and overall just ignore the festering wound at the centre of it all.

The weird route is to become worse people for it, manipulating and abusing others. It's said by the shadow mantle holder that Kris enjoyed the events of the weird route from the previous chapter, knowing they can blame it on someone else (either Noelle or, more likely, us). I also heard this could be indicative of us acting on Kris's darker impulses (hell, I made a theory this isn't Kris's first rodeo as far as using Noelle as a cryomantic death machine).

Naturally, this leads us to the Egg Route. Digging through our pile of guilt and trauma till we are at the roots of it. Being open about what hurt us back then, and what it ultimately led to us doing in the present. In Kris's case, working with the knight and carol on some illumaniti-type bullshit (probably involving Gaster if entry 17 being played at -666% speed in the holiday mansion's basement is anything to go by). Helping others heal from their trauma as well as your own.

Trauma is, at least from what I gather from us passing the halfway point, a major theme of Deltarune, and I feel like this would most manifest in the game's various routes.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

The first thing to bring up is something a commenter said regarding the Forgotten man, and that its likely gaster also forgets about him. It's likely from the Voice's perspective, we just kinda blipped out of existance when we get into these egg rooms and good W.D. had separation anxiety or something and deemed it enough of an issue to ding us some playstation achievements.

The second thing is regard to the prophecy, and that the Forgotten Man is basically THE character most free from it. On account of the whole (how the hell can you record a man who everyone forgets) thing. If the Forgotten Man finally pops out of that tree (and honestly by law of checkov's gun, its going to happen at some point), he's basically the most FREE character in the entire game. At this point the prophecy is unlikely to adjust to him fast enough before he does something importent to screw with it, and considering how generally cordial the forgotten man is with Kris he's 100% going to be an importent ally.

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