From an Archeologist's Perspective

[Schala]

Looking at the before-and-after for the Boiler Room in the Stardew Valley Community Center makes me wonder: What the hell went on down there? Mushrooms under the floors and smashed coal bins are one thing, but the release valve and the pressure gauge are blown clear off their hinges.

 

[LRangerR]

Looking at the before-and-after for the Boiler Room in the Stardew Valley Community Center makes me wonder: What the hell went on down there? Mushrooms under the floors and smashed coal bins are one thing, but the release valve and the pressure gauge are blown clear off their hinges.

It was part of the great Junimo/slime wars, egged on and perpetrated by extension of the bitter rivalry between the Dwarves and the Shadow People, who see it as only a game, and do not care of the sanctity of the boiler room.

 

[Schala]

There is an empty lot behind Jodi's house, where it looks like there should be a house, but there isn't. We did some digging, and the floor collapsed, and we nearly fell in. We've asked the townsfolk about it, but none of them seem to remember anything about there being a house there. This warrants further investigation.

 

[Schala]

One of the townsfolk, Gunther, gave us a Rusty Key; it seems to open the hatch to the Tunnels from the Unmentionable Times. To our astonishment, we discovered things still living down there: There were live, albiet sickly, carp in the sewage, and a Shadow Person that calls himself Krobus seems to be living down there.

The smell was atrocious, and we went straight to the spa after for a long shower and a soak in clean water.

Perhaps the most perplexing detail: One of the force fields was still functioning. It's been thousands of years since the Calamity. Most, if not all, of the townsfolk are too young, by generations, to remember. Has it been active this entire time?

 

[PoppyForPenny]

The townsfolk only appear young. Abigail, for instance, is old enough that she had flutes made of animal bone which are now fossilized, a process which takes 10,000-100,000 years.

 

[LRangerR]

There is an empty lot behind Jodi's house, where it looks like there should be a house, but there isn't. We did some digging, and the floor collapsed, and we nearly fell in. We've asked the townsfolk about it, but none of them seem to remember anything about there being a house there. This warrants further investigation.

Is that perhaps where sandy used to live before Rasmodius put a memory charm on her? Have you spoken to the wizard yet regarding the situation? There's also a plot of land just north of the blacksmith that's all fenced off. I'm not sure if Joja owns that land but, perhaps the JojaMart is built on top of something as well.

 

[Sigrah]

There is an empty lot behind Jodi's house, where it looks like there should be a house, but there isn't. We did some digging, and the floor collapsed, and we nearly fell in. We've asked the townsfolk about it, but none of them seem to remember anything about there being a house there. This warrants further investigation.

I hear there used to be a small white house there, one that could only be entered through the back window of the kitchen. Inside, it is said, was some sort of trophy case and a trap door leading down into some great, mythical underground empire. Legend has it that the inhabitants, after decades of being taxed at the grueling rate of 98% by a dynasty of kings known as the Flatheads, suddenly decided to wander off and live somewhere else, leaving it to its eventual fate of being taken over by the shadow people and their distant cousins, the grues, prior to the arrival of the dwarves.

 

[Schala]

I hear there used to be a small white house there, one that could only be entered through the back window of the kitchen. Inside, it is said, was some sort of trophy case and a trap door leading down into some great, mythical underground empire. Legend has it that the inhabitants, after decades of being taxed at the grueling rate of 98% by a dynasty of kings known as the Flatheads, suddenly decided to wander off and live somewhere else, leaving it to its eventual fate of being taken over by the shadow people and their distant cousins, the grues, prior to the arrival of the dwarves.

We found an old photo in the Museum archives! It looks like the house was made of limestone, and, at your behest, we examined the grounds again; there is(!) evidence of there having been an aperture where the hole we fell in was. There's also evidence that the foundation was dug up, and presumably relocated, and charcoal deposits around the grounds suggest there was a fire...!;

We also found the release valve for the Community Center Boiler Room; it seems that it was relocated after whatever cataclism happened there, but i've taken it on good confidence not to disclose the identities of the person(s) involved;

 

[Sigrah]

We found an old photo in the Museum archives! It looks like the house was made of limestone, and, at your behest, we examined the grounds again; there is(!) evidence of there having been an aperture where the hole we fell in was. There's also evidence that the foundation was dug up, and presumably relocated, and charcoal deposits around the grounds suggest there was a fire...!;

We also found the release valve for the Community Center Boiler Room; it seems that it was relocated after whatever cataclism happened there, but i've taken it on good confidence not to disclose the identities of the person(s) involved;

Awww. I was hoping you’d get the reference to Zork. That’s ok, it is a really, REALLY old game from the 80’s, so my age is showing I guess.

 

[Schala]

Awww. I was hoping you’d get the reference to Zork. That’s ok, it is a really, REALLY old game from the 80’s, so my age is showing I guess.

That's one of those games that's playable on those old Dwarf Gadgets, like Winter Games or Bof or Pitfall, ne?

 

[Odin]

I really like the theories and building on open mysteries of the game people are discussing here! I just want to mention this type of discussion is best suited for the Fan Works section, for anyone that wants to create similar threads in the future.

 

[LRangerR]

I found a couple of excerpts from a researcher's journal. The journal is damaged and aged, but there's a small handful of pages that are interesting. Most of it is just research logs or day-to-day updates.

...in their attempts to reanimate fallen warriors from both sides have proven to be a disastrous enterprise at best. They had intended to use them as weapons against us, but it is clear that their research is incomplete. We have conducted experiments using captured... {here it is written in the margins "I cannot call those which have lost their humanity 'people'"} ...specimens, which have provided mixed results. It appears that they are still capable of learning, however they can not learn of their own free will. What i mean by this is that they are no longer passive learners, but active ones. {the next few lines are damaged and unreadable, but then the text continues...} However, they have learned to say "please" and "thank you", but this is merely reactionary. It is my suspicion that they feel no gratitude at all, and have simply learned that this is a way for them to get what they want, as when "fed" they act ravenously, and even fight each other for the smallest of scraps without a second thought. While the project showed great promise at first, I am now very skeptical regarding its chances of success.

Current Evaluation of Project: FAILURE

A few pages later the author of the journal seems to be excitedly scribbling this next entry. Here it is:

...on the topic, but we don't know too much yet. The Shadow Researcher, by the name of {REDACTED}, has shown great progress with the project which he is calling Slimancy, but i believe his work goes far beyond the simple "manching" of things. What he has done is taken slimes from the local populations and has been...raising them. Some might say that they've been ranching slimes for ages, but he is going many steps beyond them. He has given them tasks and been teaching them manners, much in the same way one raises their own young. As slimes they were previously thought to have no conscious thought but just a mere force of nature, but we are having to look at things again from different perspectives now. {here the damage continues through the book again} They're quite evolved for what they are, and even have evolved that ability to extend appendages and show rudimentary facial expressions by morphing their outer layer. He won't share how he was able to get them to do that just yet, but this is still a major jump in slime research. He still refuses on naming them, but another researcher has suggested using the month of their creation as an inspiration. I don't know if it will catch on, but these things that were "manced" in June are now referred to as "Junimos" in our small circle of colleagues.

I don't know everything that they're talking about, but I hope you can make some sense out of it.

 

[Schala]

Hm, i don't know about that: There does seem to be distinguished differences between the Slimes' ectoplasmic constitutions and the Junimos' spectral morphologies, and there are clear taxonomic differences between them. Wherever the aforementioned journals cane from, they may have been the rantings of a madman as opposed to genuine research;

However:

Recently we managed to get the bus back to Calico Desert up and running again, and the Calico has proven to be an exciting opportunity for archeology: For one, there are untouched(!) fossils simply bleaching in the desert sun(!), and study shows that the salt flats of the Calico were likely a flood basin ages before they were a roaming ground for what appears to be dinosaurs; considering that the dinosaurs went extinct in the Xichulub Meteor Extinction sixty-five million (65,000,000) years ago, that would make some of the ruins here exceedingly ancient!

Additionally, we found another key on the bottom floor of the mines, one hundred and twenty (120)(!) stories(!) below the surface, and somehow, the Skull Key fit perfectly into a lock built into a door in a cave in the middle of the flood basin(!): Inside we found clear evidence of humanoid occupation, up to and including preserved undead humanoids; we attempted to speak peace to them, but the shambling horrors attacked us relentlessly; similar adventurers had encountered similar monstrosities and lived to write about it, and advice to use small explosive ordinances against their unrelenting remains proved effective;

The real gold, however, came not just from the incredibly mineral-rich deposits within the caves, but on the cave walls themselves: Whoever built the tomb-like enclosures recorded things on the walls, and the writings seem to consist of an eight (8)-bit language, consisting of two-by-two (2x2) square characters written in light or dark bits; these caves were exceedingly dangerous, but there seems to be clear evidence that intelligent life once occupied the Calico Desert.