Marvelous Compass

Not much is known about the Marvelous Compass. In fact, it may not even exist. However, Luigi claims he collected the seven pieces of the Marvelous Compass during his adventure in the Waffle Kingdom in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

According to Luigi, the Marvelous Compass was originally used by the ancient Luff empire. The compass had the power to see into the future, and the Luffs used this ability to conquer many lands. However, the empire became corrupt under its increasing power and eventually collapsed. To prevent the artifact from being misused again, the compass was split into seven pieces to be scattered across the world. Cranberry, the last of the Luffs, was charged with protecting one piece of the compass and would only give it to one pure of heart.

Luigi had to collect the seven pieces of the Marvelous Compass to locate Princess Éclair, who had been kidnapped by the Chestnut King. Each piece of the compass would point to where the next piece could be located. Since a piece of the compass was embedded in Éclair's crown, Luigi could use to compass to locate her.

Eventually, Luigi collects six of the seven compass pieces, and travels to Hatesong Tower, the location of Princess Éclair and the last compass piece. Upon entering, Luigi was attacked by the monstrous Chestnut King. The two fought a tremendous battle. However, the fight was interrupted by Princess Éclair. As it turns out, the Chestnut King and Éclair were lovers. Minister Crepe, the minister of the Waffle Kingdom who summoned Luigi to find the princess, was, in fact, the true villain. He had orchestrated events so that Luigi would retrieve the Magical Compass on his behalf. Crepe wanted to use the compass's precognitive power to see into the future so that he could conquer the Waffle Kingdom and resurrect the Luff empire. However, Crepe was defeated by Luigi, who used the compass to predict Crepe's attacks.

The Marvelous Compass is a reference to the storyline of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door in that he was meant to gather the compass pieces (or the Crystal Stars in Mario's case), but in the end he was tricked. The way the compass pieces all point to the next parallels the Crystal Stars pointing to the next one via the magical map.