• they/them

plural system in Seattle, WA (b. 1974)
lots of fictives from lots of media, some horses, some dragons, I dunno. the Pnictogen Wing is poorly mapped.

host: Mx. Kris Dreemurr (they/them)

chief messenger and usual front: Mx. Chara or Χαρά (they/them)

other members:
Mx. Frisk, historian (they/them)
Monophylos Fortikos, unicorn (he/him)
Kel the Purple, smol derg (xe/xem)
Pim the Dragon, Kel's sister (she/her)


  1. Obviously there's no reason to assume that the Deltarune game maps for Hometown are complete. It seems reasonable to assume that if Hometown could enjoy a "real life" existence, it'd be bigger than the few buildings and streets we see. The picture or map of Hometown glimpsed in Town Hall suggests at least there's more houses than the game bothers with drawing. There's another good on-screen reason for assuming the town is bigger than shown: Hometown is capable of hosting a traffic jam.

  2. "Maybe Hometown lies on a highway," you might say. "Maybe it's outside traffic." But as depicted, there can be no outside traffic: Hometown has only one road leading off the map, and so far that one road has always been blocked. Hence it's clearly implied that the traffic jam is internal to Hometown—there must be many more drivers than you'd expect, given how few buildings are seen in the game graphics.

  3. I feel like emphasizing: there's apparently only one road out of town. One other road leads off the map, but it's to the mayor's house, so presumably that's a dead end private road.

  4. Almost no external entities or places have been mentioned so far in Deltarune dialogue. The unnamed "college" which Asriel is said to be attending—which may or may not be the same college where Rudy and Asgore were pals—is, I think, the only outside place clearly indicated. There's no mention of other towns or cities, no mention of any government aside from the local mayor, no talk of a state or district or country...strictly speaking, we can't even really be sure that Deltarune takes place on Earth. None of the schoolrooms contain something I'd expect to find in a school somewhere: a map of the whole nation or the world.

  5. Hometown's chief links to anything external to the town are through entertainment. The kids play games that are clearly analogous to big-name franchise games from our Earth, e.g. "Super Smashing Fighters". The games must come from somewhere; same with the anime and the TV broadcasts. Presumably the Internet worked at some point and was capable of connecting to some sort of outside world.

  6. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's NO citation of a year or calendar date in Deltarune dialogue. The closest thing I can remember to the mention of a date—aside from the numerous references to December and Christmas—is the notice for a "Sadie Hawkman" dance. "Sadie Hawkins Day" is 13 November in the United States, but it should be mentioned that a "Sadie Hawkins dance" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadie_Hawkins_dance) doesn't need to occur any particular day.

  7. The only professional establishments seen in Hometown comprise the following: two restaurants, a grocery store, a schoolhouse, a library, a hospital, a church and churchyard, the police station, Town Hall, and Asgore's dismal flower shop. The flower shop is the only specialty store to be seen. There's no movie theater, office buildings, hardware store, bookshop, clothing store, no place to get games or electronics; there's no public transport, no buses or trains; no electrical infrastructure visible; and Officer Undyne isn't sure there's a bank.

  8. The mysterious bunker is almost as far away from the south edge of Hometown as the Dreemurrs' house, which defines the visible north edge of Hometown.

  9. The abandoned schoolroom full of toys is, I think, vaguely suggestive of decay or decline. Why was the room abandoned? There's perhaps a hint that the room has been water-damaged—the upper walls are discolored in a manner suggestive of leaks through the ceiling. The school isn't very big and yet feels it can do without an entire room...perhaps Hometown's population is falling, or the town is too impoverished to permit the room's renovation.

  10. The winged-orb "Delta Rune" symbol is seen three places in Hometown: the Church (which goes unnamed), the door to the schoolhouse, and the Dreemurrs' home.

  11. The Monsters of Hometown, quite unlike those of Undertale, seem to be unaware of magic—Noelle seems quite taken when she learns about the possibility of healing spells in the Dark World, which only makes sense if the Deltarune Monsters aren't used to magic. This leaves the Monsters' physiology somewhat mysterious. If they're flesh and blood after the fashion of ordinary animals then why would any Monster regard human physiology as weird? ("Does it hurt to be made of blood?") And why would there be ghosts like Napstablook or Monsters like the green fire elemental in QC's Diner?

  12. The morphology of Deltarune's Monsters seems more constrained and less wildly varied than in Undertale. There's no talking rocks or dancing mushrooms, no Froggits or Vegetoids or cute little volcanoes. There's creatures who seem to be based on inanimate objects (cf. Woshua or Tsundereplane) such as are common in the Underground, but they're only to be found in the Dark Worlds. Almost all of the Hometown Monsters we see are humanoid.

  13. There's a curious hint that Hometown is aware of Christianity, even though their Church of the Angel seems to be distinct. Just what the Church practices is very thinly sketched indeed—there's an Angel, said to have "power" and implied to have the ability to furnish guidance, and that's about it. The mention of "sick Fruit Juice" might imply some teetotaling version of Holy Communion but it's not even clear that the Fruit Juice is part of the liturgy; maybe they just serve it on the side, like the free coffee after Mass from my Catholic churchgoing days. But somehow Asriel learns of the concepts of sin and confession—now, sin and confession are perhaps not unique to Christianity, but "Christian" is what those words connote to a Western audience. So, where did Asriel learn about these things?

  14. "God" and "Hell" are both commonplace expletives, it would seem.

  15. Oh, I've forgotten one important place implied to exist outside the boundaries of Hometown: the Sea, of which Onionsan makes a strange mention. ("The beach" also comes up in dialogue but it might simply refer to the shore of the lake at the east edge of Hometown.)

So, what does all that add up to? Heck if I know.

~Chara of Pnictogen


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in reply to @pnictogen-wing's post:

my favourite observation someone made re: magic not being a Thing for deltarune monsters is the flavour text you get when interacting with toriel's stove

in undertale:
toriel's stove flavour text in undertale. "The stovetop is very clean. Toriel must use fire magic instead."

in deltarune:
toriel's stove flavour text in deltarune. "There's some cinnamony batter caked on the stovetop."

..........toriel uses magic to cook in undertale but not in deltaruneeeee

that said, monsters are probably still at least made of magic.
if they were made mostly of water like humans, then they shouldn't turn to dust upon their death and instead remain a body to be buried.
Dialogue from Gerson's daughter at his grave. "As per the ritual, a hammer is buried in the earth here."

yet the undertale tradition of honouring the dead persists in deltarune (i.e., spreading the monster's dust onto their favourite item), which implies that they're made of magic (which is further supported by kris's base magic stat of 0 yet a base magic stat of at least 1 in all monster playable/commandable characters — would be VERY surprised if we ever get a monster pc with a base magic stat of 0).
interestingly, i don't think that burying the item is part of the tradition in undertale, is it?
it would make sense that the maybe-christian influence of the surface spread into monster culture, causing them to merge their death rituals in deltarune.

so it seems to me that, while magic still is very much a thing for the monsters of deltarune, i'd imagine that they'd feel similarly to magic as we do about proteins.
that is, we could understand that the body is made up of these macromolecules/magic, and we could study it further if we wanted to....... but they're just not relevant to the day-to-day lives of everyday humans and monsters.
monsters aren't expressing themselves with bullet patterns in deltarune the way that they do in undertale.
whether it's because they can't or whether because it's forgotten remains unclear.

related to your calendar question is the more foundational question about Hometown is WHEN is deltarune?????
in undertale, we know that asriel was probably born in the 2000s if chara fell in 201X.
but then undyne, alphys, etc. etc. were born WAY later..... long enough for no monster (excluding gerson + boss monsters) to have seen a human in their lifetime even after 6 more humans fell since 201X.
but in deltarune, asriel is college-aged while living at the same time as undyne etc.
different universes, so different continuity, i suppose???
but i'm guessing that deltarune doesn't take place in the far future like in undertale, since analogs like Super Smashing Fighters would line up better for a more recent date.

based on the timing for undertale, my guess is either a later part of 201X or now 202X.
.....but, like, noelle's blog (which, tragically, is devoid of dates despite those being pretty typical for blogs iirc)... looks pretty retro by modern standards.
how long before deltarune were her blog posts?
because they give off pretty strong 2000s energy.
so if the blog is recent, then could it be that deltarune takes place in the 2000s??
..or, could it be that these blog posts were like when they were junior-high–aged (by our standards), and deltarune is then taking place in 201X?
could the events of deltarune be taking place at the same time as when chara fell in undertale???
just that now everyone's a little older during this 201X instead of being little kids (in the case of asriel and chara) in undertale's 201X?
this is personally the when i lean most toward, especially if toby fox is basing these teenagers on his own teenaged experiences (which would make kris and susie and etc. born in the 90s?? (maybe late 1980s))...... but there's nothing explicit enough for me to fully defend this.

you remind me there's all sorts of ancillary material that's considered canonical, that we haven't gone through yet. is there some sort of catalogue of what all the canonical sources are, and where to find them? the fact that Noelle's blog (where to read?) has no dates seems indicative that Fox wants ambiguity of time.

Hometown feels quite old-fashioned to me, but I have no RL experience of living in a small town, and I've been told that there can be a substantial lag in technology. the Dreemurr's TV has a rabbit ears antenna. the library computer lab has all CRT monitors. and there's also the curiously old-timey music that goes with Hometown. but Queenie's able to shock Berdly with her "I only play mobile games" comment, and that feels like a post-2010 sort of joke to pull.

as to the Monster funerals...in Undertale we're taught that the practice is to scatter dust on some item cherished by the Monster. what we see in Deltarune clearly hints at a similar practice, but the thing is...if you look at how the churchyard is drawn, there's plainly enough room for a body. and there's nothing in the Deltarune dialogue that hints either at "falling down" or turning to dust. so I consider the question open of whether the Deltarune Monsters die the same way as in Undertale. but I agree that the DR Monsters could still well be "magical" in some sense that they don't fully understand, any more than we really understand what organic life is even though we've meticulously studied it. there's some "Promethean heat" that eludes us still.

I feel like adding that in my own tentative interpretation, Undertale and Deltarune are parallel but independent universes, and the bridge between the two is akin to the connection between dreams and "real life"—people are talking about dreams constantly in Deltarune, and the way the game opens, deliberately mirroring Frisk going to sleep at the end of Undertale, suggests that Kris may be haunted by Undertale the way that one can be haunted by an unusually vivid dream. I don't expect Fox is going to give us a better-explained connection between the two games, honestly...hasn't Fox said that they consider the games separate?

~Chara

i was around while the spamton sweepstakes were going on, and i explored the website and shared findings with my friend in such (.....who actually shared way more things with me than the other way around).
but i know that i haven't exhaustively found everything yet, especially since i occasionally see fan works referencing things that i realize must be from the sweepstakes easter eggs but which i haven't found myself yet.
i've seen people trying to archive every easter egg in case they're ever taken off of deltarune.com, but so far.... they were never taken off.
an exhaustive guide on where to find each easter egg (or even a simple list of links to click) almost certainly exists somewhere.... i just haven't looked into it myself yet (definitely my next step now that i've completed the alt route and really boosted my appreciation for noelle).
if you haven't looked through deltarune.com/sweepstakes yet for easter eggs and you enjoy that sort of thing, i'd encourage you to first dig through it yourself before looking up the rest.
otherwise you'll have an easier time googling things like ”deltarune sweepstake easter eggs“ or ”deltarune noelle blog“ and such.

that ”I only play mobile games“ comment... is definitely a strong point.
depending on how serious we want to take that joke, it definitely rules out 2000s.

and while Hometown may be slow to grow technologically with bigger societies, would that apply to internet culture?
would Hometown residents be using old-fashioned styles of blogging because their town is old-fashioned?
alternatively, it wouldn't be inconsistent with the setting in deltarune if, despite not being banished, monsters still are societally segregated from humans?
could it be that the internet in turn has sort of been segregated as well —not even necessarily through enforced restrictions— but just because humans tend to use websites used by other humans, and monsters tend to use websites used by other monsters, and so they would essentially form two massive internet subcultures that then move at different rates?
so, like, noelle could have made a blog using more contemporary formatting, but she stuck with what she knew, which would just be whatever other monsters were already using??
like, i can imagine a monster clicking a link before being put off by how sterile human websites feel before returning to the coziness of monster websites.
(and ofc, terminally online neurodivergent humans and the nd equivalent for monsters won't care as much about the distinction between human and monster websites, but they're still enough in the minority in probably 20XX when deltarune takes place to not influence the general trend of bifurcating self-segregating subcultures yet)
......this, of course, is a stretch, but it at least suggests that deltarune taking place in 202X isn't absurd as a possibility.

i also suddenly wonder whether the undertale homolog(?) of Hometown is... the human ”"“village”"“ that chara is from??
if it turns out that Hometown is close to a mountain, then......

and......
........................oh shoot.
your point made me boot up deltarune and visit the graveyard again.
.......there's no explicit mention of dust.
so while the possibility exists that burying a monster with their favourite item exists because of the tradition of scattering dust with the object, the possibility that this tradition formed in spite of the lack of turning-into-dust bit also exists.
definitely thrown a wrench into my certainty of monsters being made of mostly magic.
the magic stats of monsters, while gives support, isn't nearly enough to hold the weight of this burden of proof.

if you look at how the churchyard is drawn, there's plainly enough room for a body

......while i agree with this after having taken another look, the flower patch before each grave looks small enough to me that it could have been dug up specifically to bury a single cherished item (..+ flower seeds.... which kind of mirrors the golden flower seeds stuck to chara during their presumed burial in the ruins, but i doubt that this was intentional).
but now this is making interpretations based on the limitations of pixel art.
so my current position is now that full-body burials and single-item burials both seem possible???

in light of all this, i googled some more, and i'm reminded of this line from chapter 1:

"Does it hurt to be made of blood???"

....which doesn't make sense to ask if you aren't made of blood.

susie does say ”Everybody bleeds, right?“, but, like... toriel drips something out of her mouth when you betray/genocide kill her, and ut monster kid says that their ”heart's pounding right out of [their] chest...“ and, like... what's their heart pumping?
i would guess blood... blood that's made of magic, and infused with enough dust to give it some physicality, even if it's nowhere near as messy as human blood.
i doubt that monsters would ordinarily ever see their own blood even as banged up rambunctious children with how i'd presume monster blood would be.
basically, infrequently enough such that suggesting that humans are made of blood and implying that monsters aren't depsite having blood make sense.
blood is that stuff you see monsters give off in violent video games, not something you'd see in everyday life as a monster.

.......but still, nothing distinctly definitive.
i still lean into the idea that monsters' bodies are like how it is in undertale, especially because of the ”made of blood“ question...
..........but the sheer absence of the word ”dust“ is very glaring.
searching ”dust“ in the deltarune dialogue dump REALLY makes clear of that.
the closest thing is when susie says ”Anyone that gets in our way... Gets crushed into dust.“
which.
is a pretty common english expression.

this analysis.... makes no conclusions, but bangs on every point i thought of, and was weirdly relieving to read. 😅

everything, except for
"If humans are made of bones... Where does skeletons come from...?"

I don't expect Fox is going to give us a better-explained connection between the two games, honestly...hasn't Fox said that they consider the games separate?

this is what i remembered, too, but then i went to review exactly what he said, and..!

"It's a different world that might even have different rules. That doesn't mean there will be no connections at all though."

this was after he explains that undertale and deltarune are two different worlds.
but he then pretty explicitly doesn't preclude a connection.
.....which then REALLY makes me lean into the idea that the secrets in sans' bedroom has something to do with deltarune.
if sans ever takes a photo with the fun gang, then it'll be close enough to definitive to my satisfaction.

”different rules“, though.
could be referring to game mechanic rules (e.g., magic + tension system), but it could also be about the rules of nature and magic and how monster bodies behave in death.

so... yeah.
realizing that this whole discussion has reduced a some of my certainty on certain bits that i once considered definitely canon in deltarune...
...but at least i'm pretty certain of this uncertainty.

(also just looked up ”dream“ in both the undertale and deltarune dialogue dumps, and i'm definitely now interested in watching for whether dreams + sleep seem to be a major theme/motif in it!!
currently super into the idea that pirouettes/pirouette-adjacent motions are a motif in deltarune.... so i'll be very sad if no twirling on a single leg shows up in chapter 3, eheh)