 | A) Description
Towers are distributed throughout Lyoko's Sectors and the Cortex. We don't know of their exact number. At the beginning, there was only one Tower in Sector 5 but others appeared at the time of XANA's return. Each tower resembles a giant rectangular pillar. They are black and a light white halo seeps out from the grooves on the Tower. When a tower is activated, several pieces at its top become detached. The blocks which are detached float around the Tower and a luminous halo emerges, its colour depends on the activator of the Tower.
- When XANA activates a tower to attack our world, it is red.
- When Jeremy activates a tower, it is blue. One is unaware of whether Aelita still activates Towers for him or if she only acts as Jeremy's relay.
- When Tyron activates a tower, it is purple.
Inside of the tower is still the same, independently of who is using them. The walls are covered with lines of binary data. There are two platforms, decorated with the eye of XANA: one at ground level, and one higher up. It gives access to an interface which makes it possible for anyone to reach the real world. The interface is also the tower's heart and it is through this that the tower can change owner or that the special programs, such as the injection of false codes in Ulrich (episode 09 “How to Fool XANA”), are launched.
B) Function
The towers are data banks which indefatigably excavate Earth's networks in search of information and energy. As they are connected to these networks, they can act on them and thus represent, with the scanners, the only bridge between Lyoko/the Cortex and Earth. The person in control of the Tower can act on the electrical communications and computer network and start various phenomena ranging from a shower of sparks (episode 1 “XANA 2.0”) to the appearance of an electromagnetic spectre.
The towers are used to create a link with Earth, but also to carry out data-processing actions requiring a lot of energy or particular authorisations like giving Odd some source codes back (episode 19 “The Trap”)!
Access to towers is strictly regulated.
XANA's monsters do not have access to them. The Tower represents, on this side, a sanctuary. The spectre from episode 19 however succeeded in clearing a passage.
Aelita is the theoretically the only one to have access inside the Towers. It is her status as Guardian of Lyoko which gave her this right, when Aelita's father created Lyoko. Nevertheless, thanks to the source codes that XANA injected into the heroes, the carriers of codes are from now on also capable of entering Towers...except if they lose all their codes. Yumi, Ulrich and Odd thus could enter towers. Not William.
Let us note an exception: the codeless can enter the Way Towers.
Then what is a Way Tower...
The Towers are, theoretically, a way of navigation in Lyoko, but that was not reaffirmed in Code Lyoko Evolution. Thus read the Towers of Code Lyoko page for more information. In short, the simple Towers are supposed to communicate between each other through data flows, which one hitches a ride on by jumping into the vacuum inside the Tower. And each Sector had a Way Tower which carried data towards a neighbouring Sector.
As the concept of Code Lyoko Evolution evolved, no certainty on this subject, therefore...
The concept of the Way Towers was however preserved since they are mentioned in episode 19... and the idea that even the codeless can enter inside is justified since without that, that means that they could never have surfed between the Sectors... However! With the disappearance of the Forest and Ice Sectors, the communication system of the Sectors between them is found completely cut off. Does a hero who surfs from the Mountain Way Tower end up in the digital void, where one of the two Sectors that disappeared used to be? Indeed, the Mountain and the Desert are opposite each other on the Holomap.
Failure...
However, this approximation of the displacement system inside Lyoko does not really have any more importance in Evolution... Quite simply because Jeremy can teleport/transfer his virtualised friends from one Sector to the other, with a simple computing operation. The Towers thus lose all their interest in this aspect...
As for Carthage and its news towers...no information here either. Is there a Way Tower? If so, where does it take people to? In short, nothing truly precise. Identical uncertainties & ignorance with regard to the Cortex's towers.
C) The Towers' challenge
The towers are at the heart of all the episodes. Through them occur:
- The deactivation and thus the stopping of XANA's attack on Earth.
- The programs about which we have already spoken.
Without the towers, Lyoko would be only one beautiful panorama. These very powerful towers are right in the middle of the series and the destructive conflict that crosses it. Thus, their control is a paramount challenge in almost all of the episodes in the series.
In the original series, the users of the virtual world sometimes fought for the control of the Towers (XANA stole the control of some Towers from Jeremy...or Hopper with XANA). This point is not approached in Code Lyoko Evolution, even if obviously, the Code Lyoko always makes it possible to stop control that XANA exerts on a Tower. However, it is noted that the only time Jeremy activated a Tower in Evolution, XANA spied on what he was doing, without being noticed (Episode 09 “How to Fool XANA”). Moreover, on this occasion, the Tower activated by Jeremy, which would have been blue, appeared red, which is presented by Jeremy as a “bug” in the Tower.
The concept of the Towers remains, in spite of everything, unexploited in Evolution.
Lastly, Tower activations by Tyron remain mysterious. First of all because he only did it once (episode 24 “Temporal Paradox”). And also because of the rather particular usage. The heroes did not succeed in penetrating the Tower to enter the Code Lyoko there... Would this famous code have worked with a Tower activated by Tyron? Or is its only function to counter XANA?
Moreover, the Tower Tyron used to create a virtual phenomenon (the appearance of a bubble generating a temporal loop) disappears completely from the Cortex after having generated its attack...which is relatively new.
Is that owing to the fact that the time loop consumes so much energy that the whole Tower was consumed? No answer.
Note:
This last paragraph is less complete than the first and very summarised because the Locations section does not aim to recall the story and the conflicts of the virtual war, but to quickly present the battlegrounds and their challenges. For more information, consult the topic History, possibly, but the XANA topic especially indicates much more concerning how XANA makes use of towers and their challenges in the heroes' conflict against the Artificial Intelligence (including their defence, the heroes' offensives and more still). | |
