Do the inhabitants of Twinsun live in Anarchy?

[XXStranger]

That question is something I have thought since playing the LBA2 when I was much younger. And is that in LBA2 you do not see any police or military while you are on Twinsun Planet. In addition, there is no trace of any kind of mayor, president, king or governor in every dialogue you have with the inhabitants of Twinsun Planet. It is as if they had no rulers, police or military.

On Planet Zeelich you see police, military and you have the Emperor as ruler. But he is a tyrant dictator. But on Twinsun Planet there seems to be none of that since Twinsen defeated Funfrock in the first game.

In LBA1, the ruler was Funfrock, and the police and military was made of its Clones. But since Funfrock was defeated the inhabitants of Twinsun do not seem to have sought a substitute in the government of the Planet. Or at least they never talk about it.

The closest thing they had as army was The Army of the Rebellion, from the first game, instead of Funfrok's Clones. But these looked more like guerrillas doing parody to Che Guevara. But these do not appear in the second game.

What do you think about?.

[Reek]

Hmm, I think that after living under Funrock's rule, the population was tired/wary of rulers. Perhaps they figured they could manage without a central government, since there are about 50 people on the planet anyway.

[XXStranger]

Yes, that could be a good reason. After Funfrock, they would no longer trust another ruler to power. The people of Twinsun may not need rulers, and they will manage on their own.

[Battler]

Actually, to me it seems like the School of Magic is the de facto executive council of Twinsun, with its Dean being basically the planet's leader. Notice how whenever something bad happens, the Wizards, the School, or the Dean are asked to intervene.
When the Wizards are taken to Zeelich, the School of Magic basically charges Twinsun with investigating;
When the children are taken to Zeelich and the Esmers have invaded Twinsun, it's again the School of Magic that handles the situation.
It seems to me like the School of Magic is the executive council, and each island's governor so to say is a Wizard - Ker'a'ooc (healing wizard) for Desert Island, Bersimon (weather wizard) for Citadel Island, etc.
And obviously, Twinsen as The Heir is the leader of the whole planet so to say, there's even somewhat a cult of personality around him.

A further clue to this is in LBA 1 where, if I recall correctly, FunFrock banned magic as well as the religion of Sendell (which is also prominent in LBA 2). This hints to me that magic, and those practicing it, were in a position of power before FunFrock took over.

[XXStranger]

The idea of the Wizards as Council of Sages is good. Although I do not see them as rulers in the strict definition. I see them more as counselors as you say. Although people should turn to the Wizards for advice on problems they do not know how to solve. As a Council of People's Sages.

In the invasion of the Esmers basically the only that they do is accept the invitation to travel to Planet Zeelich with the promise of greater knowledge. Then they ask for help from the Esmers to prevent the Moon from crashing against Planet Twinsun at the end of the game because they are the ones who are there to do so.

But basically the only ones who do something to solve the problem are Twinsen and Baldino.

I do not see Twinsen as the governor, he does not act as such nor treat him as such. He is the hero of Twinsun.

Funfrock had banned the magic and religion Sendell for fear of the prophecy and because the hero of the prophecy was supposed to be the descendant of a Wizard.

But the idea of the Wizards as an executive council is not bad and they do make decisions or give advice to others on what should be done.

[Kroll]

There are also an umbrella thief in LBA2.
Victim didn't call a police or any kind, she ask Twinsen to help her instead. And it looks like she asked Twinsen just because he was a first man she was able to talk to.

So yep, there is no police on Twinsun.

[Battler]

- Kroll: Or police would have to be dispatched from another island (Principal Island?) which was not possible during the storm.
And after the storm is over, it seems that the Esmers became the de facto police, at least on Desert Island.

[XXStranger]

That would be very rare for there to be only one police force on one island and not others. It is something that we will not know for sure anyway.

[Battler]

What I suspect is, that Citadel Island is a special no police zone due to the fact Twinsen and his family live there so he can always personally intervene if something is done. And it might also be that normally, there is some sort of police force on the island but due to the storm and then the landing of the Esmers, we don't see any.
Remember that even Citadel Island ends up having Esmer police forces after the storm is over (the bright green guys with dogs everywhere).

There's a few pointers pointing at something here:
- When the Esmers land, they say the storm prevented them from landing from where it IMHO follows that it likely covered the whole planet;
- After they land, they install their guys with dogs as well as their trash can guys everywhere.

Which to me points to a few things:
1. The storm likely covered the whole planet;
2. Police never had a permanent presence everywhere but was most likely dispatched from the central location (Principal Island for the southern hemisphere, I suspect former Fortress Island for the northern, and Hamalayi for the entire planet) in case the civilian watch (I suspect appointed by the locals) was having trouble;
3. The storm prevented the police from dispatching;
4. After the storm, the Esmers took advantage of a complete lack of police in most places to install their own, basically meaning that they occupied Twinsun, even though they were posing as mere visitors - this is further proven by the fact they built their (also military) base in the Temple of Bù (and I suspect also other locations not disclosed in the game);
5. The abduction of the wizards, and later Twinsen's first departure for Zeelich, weekened Twinsen to the point that the Esmers were able to switch from disguised civilian occupation to outright military invasion, which also facilitated the abduction of the children to be used as the bargain chip to force the wizards to cooperate.

So basically, the weather wizard (Bersimon) messed up, which ended up leading to a chain of disastrous events. That is, unless he did not mess up but had an experiment sabotaged by someone who wanted to cause a police vacuum on the whole planet.
And who was in the position to do that? Who was the only wizard to never leave for Zeelich at all? Yep, that's right, the Dean of the School of Magic.
Consider that he had supreme authority over all the wizards, and therefore likely access to each wizards' laboratory and equipment, therefore the means and likely the opportunity to sabotage Bersimon, and that strangely, he was never taken to Zeelich.
Also consider that he is the one who essentially sends Twinsen to Zeelich to investigate the wizards' disappearance, which I suspect might be to distance him from Twinsun to allow the Esmers to invade.

Here is my current hypothesis as to what happened between LBA 1 and LBA 2:
- FunFrock fakes death at the hand of Twinsen and leaves on a secretly built space ship for the Emerald Moon;
- The School of Magic is reformed and I suspect Bersimon becomes Dean, which enrages the guy who is the Dean in LBA 2;
- Mies van der Rooh (the Architect) dies after rebuilding the Citadel Island sewers and allowing Bersimon to seal Sendell's Ball there;
- The future Dean finds some old communications device from FunFrock and manages to repair it, and one day, using it, he accidentally enters contact with FunFrock, not knowing it's FunFrock;
- Esmers arrive onto the Emerald Moon and FunFrock decides to try use them, even abusing their religion for that (claiming he's Dark Monk reincarnate and all);
- FunFrock uses the future Dean's vendetta against Bersimon to make him sabotage Bersimon, first causing Bersimon to lose his status as Dean which he (the future Dean) then gets and finally sabotaging Bersimon's work to cause a massive storm covering the entire planet - the intention is to cause it for just long enough to cause a police vacuum, but still allow Bersimon to eventually disperse it;
- FunFrock tells the Esmers to wait for the storm to be over and then abuse the police vacuum to do a disguised civilian occupation of Twinsun.

There are probably more motives for our Dean's actions, I need to examine more clues given in the game. I suspect our Dean might actually be Mies van der Rooh in disguise, we know from LBA 1 that Mies seemed to work both for and against FunFrock at the same time (so basically, he was a double agent), and his death might have been faked. If that is true, then I can imagine him getting into contact with FunFrock deliberately - he was certainly trusted enough to have access to the Teleportation Center, and possibly elsewhere, and he might have known of FunFrock's plans.
In fact, this brings me to the conclusion that FunFrock deliberately let Twinsen win against him in LBA 1 in order to bring about a much more sinister plan for the destruction of Twinsun, which leads me to believe, given also the fact LBA 3 was always planned, that his actions in the end of LBA 2 were just as deliberate and deceptive as those in the end of LBA 1, which means he might as well return in LBA 3.
In fact, given LBA 3's subtitle, Genesis of the Stellar Entity, makes me think that FunFrock's end plan has always been to prevent said genesis, even if that meant destroying his own planet.

I'm sorry for this extremely long post, but I just had a stream of ideas I wanted to share.

[Neko]

I think Fred just never thought to include police. Also this way the contrast with lba1 and the clones is more obvious.

[SpaceGuitarist]

Originally Posted by XXStranger

That question is something I have thought since playing the LBA2 when I was much younger. And is that in LBA2 you do not see any police or military while you are on Twinsun Planet. In addition, there is no trace of any kind of mayor, president, king or governor in every dialogue you have with the inhabitants of Twinsun Planet. It is as if they had no rulers, police or military.

On Planet Zeelich you see police, military and you have the Emperor as ruler. But he is a tyrant dictator. But on Twinsun Planet there seems to be none of that since Twinsen defeated Funfrock in the first game.

In LBA1, the ruler was Funfrock, and the police and military was made of its Clones. But since Funfrock was defeated the inhabitants of Twinsun do not seem to have sought a substitute in the government of the Planet. Or at least they never talk about it.

The closest thing they had as army was The Army of the Rebellion, from the first game, instead of Funfrok's Clones. But these looked more like guerrillas doing parody to Che Guevara. But these do not appear in the second game.

What do you think about?.

It's probably some form of anarcho-capitalism / libertarian capitalism.

[XXStranger]

Originally Posted by SpaceGuitarist

It's probably some form of anarcho-capitalism / libertarian capitalism.

I would think more is that it is an anarcho-communism rather than an anarcho-capitalism.

In Twinsun there appear to be no differences of social class. I don't remember seeing rich and poor. They all appeared to be of roughly the same social rank. Which would also appear to be what the last phase of Marx's communism is about. The disappearance of all social class differences, including the political class.

Planet Zeelech does show differences in social class. Showing rich people in a rich club and then other poor and humble ones.

[Polaris]

I thought this would be a gimmick thread, but this is actually very interesting

[ras maxim]

Another thing that always struck me is that they have no toilets. Have they?

Plot twist: Twinsunians are mind-controlled by Sendells and Funfrock was the good guy all along.

Plot twist 2: Sendells don't exist, Twinsun is run by wizards in the manner similar the elders run the cult in the Midsommar movie.

Plot twist 3 (meta level): LBA1 is anti-Funfrockian propaganda made by wizards to recruite spies and rebels to destroy the legitimate government of Twinsun.