#broadly. more general almia meta tbh

[darkestrellar]

Shadows of Almia has this kinda theme going on with darkness and shadows and light, and that's all well and good, but it's not really explored in a very... clear way. Like, man, they put Cresselia and Darkrai both in the game in some kind of semi-prominent role and then did nothing with it. Lorewise they're both really only there to act as bosses for their respective special stones (+ to be the final boss in Darkrai's case).

Similarly the game brings up the themes of the "darkness" in people's hearts, negative emotions (being embodied in the Shadow Crystal, and experienced by the folktale's king), rekindling light that has been submerged in darkness (the JPN-titular "vatonage") and the three stones shining with their own lights to purify the Shadow Crystal...

Which is, again, great, but very vague and nebulous. I mean, the characters in-game don't even know why the three gems work on the Shadow Crystal, why they exist beyond serving to seal the Shadow Crystal's power or what they actually are (or why the Pokémon guarding them are there and are what they are either!). The Ranger gang never figures that out, they're canonically just working with a very desperate plan that was put together on the fly. Supposedly the Altru side knew more considering they already knew about the fact the Gems even existed, which was only discovered on a stroke of luck almost for the Ranger Union, but we never hear anything on the subject from that side, so... it doesn't matter.

(We were this close to not even knowing wtf was up with the Shadow Crystal either but at least Hastings had those few throwaway lines of dialogue about how it's thousands of years old and contains immense negative emotions. That's... about it as far as the lore goes.)

SO, in my very generously headcanon-based Almia lore, a core theme of the Shadow Crystal and the Three Gems is that of balance.

In giving the three Gem Guardians more actual lore relevance, at some point in my disorganised reading I stumbled on the idea of the three primary virtues (in reference to Japanese culture). These being valour, wisdom, and benevolence. These are also speculated to have influenced the Lake Trio, which makes sense; they are about spirit, and Almia's name seems to come from a word meaning soul, so...

I matched Cresselia up with benevolence, Heatran up with valour, and Mew with wisdom (my lore-specific, later in history passing the role on to the in-game Lucario). Together they created the three gems to seal the power of the Shadow Crystal, a long, long time ago. The Shadow Crystal itself is an immense accumulation of negative emotions and is related to the "darkness" in people's hearts, those flaws of character that if unchecked lead to evil and harmful actions; implied to tap into it in some way in the case of Brighton and his son and in my interpretation, even the otherwise-benevolent king of legend. It was never supposed to be within reach of people to start with; it only became so after a disruption of its originator's balance, after - several evil acts caused immense harm to countless souls.

Basically, the idea is that with the three virtues (and the power of the legendaries corresponding with them), a certain balance is achieved that neutralises the out-of-control power of the Shadow Crystal (etc), same as with balance in self to control those "shadows" in the heart. On the other hand, if this balance is lacking and things get out of control, it causes pain for everyone, which can get worse and worse as it exacerbates itself.

Also, you can't neutralise the Crystal with only one Gem. It'll affect it to a degree for a moment, but it recovers. It has to be all three.