#pearlkarn

We begin with Pearl, attending university with her small, tight-knit group of friends. Until one thread frays, and the whole tapestry falls apart.

She ties herself to a new string, unknowing that she’ll be the one to be shorn away next.

--o0O0o--

We begin with Karn, who’s been working a dead-end, soul-crushing job for years. He was financially stable, sure, but he just couldn’t keep doing this. So, he did something drastic. He let his nostalgia for his family’s old farm — sold to the company he now works for in exchange for promises and stability — guide him through the purchase of an old farm down by the coast. 

It was certainly a fixer-upper, but it was exactly what he wanted. Small farm, small town, loads of nature, the world’s inherent magic still flowing strong through every leaf and breath and stone. He’d certainly missed it during his time in the city, and the fact that the town had an honest-to-goodness wizard was just the cherry on top. 

So, just as the nights were starting to warm at the end of spring, he moved in. The people in town were more than happy to help with anything and everything, from the building’s failing plumbing to repairing a set of tools, from guiding him through the general store’s seed catalogues to delivering the contents of his shipping bin back to town. Though… that last point still gave him some pause.

It was midsummer already, and yet he’d never seen hide-nor-hair of the town’s supposed postal lady. Heard of her, certainly, but she must’ve been in and out of his farm at the oddest times of night to avoid both his late returns from the fishing dock and his early mornings tending to the crops. The closest he’d ever come to seeing a sign of her was in early summer, when her dog sprinted into his field with a late delivery while he was tending to the last of his cauliflowers. 

Early summer also brought with it his new friendship with the town’s wizard, Scar. The man had stopped by briefly to welcome Karn to the town, and the two got along like wildfire. Scar was just as passionate about his work as Karn was about magic, and they quickly worked out a deal for Scar to take Karn on as an unofficial apprentice and introduce him to the world of magic. 

Karn began spending all of his free time in the Cindersap Forest, either studying in Scar’s tower or meditating in a clearing to familiarize himself with the valley’s lush inherent magic. It’s on one of these excursions that he’s suddenly ambushed by a monster, something that he thought only spawned in specific, highly cautioned areas, like the mines up in the mountains. Just as he’s certain he’s done for, a dog runs into the clearing and knocks the skeleton away, right into the swing of a stranger’s axe. 

It’s cleaved apart in one quick motion; dry, splintered bones falling to the ground as the magic holding it together dissipates. 

The stranger stares at him. He doesn’t recognize them, a feeling he’d gradually grown unused to as his time in the valley continued. It didn’t necessarily help that they’re taller than him, or that they’re still holding the axe as if ready to strike. It takes finally noticing the golden apple-shaped charm on the dog’s collar to realize that this must be the postal worker. 

He tries to lighten the mood by introducing himself goofily — which, surprisingly, seems to work. She introduces herself as Pearl before asking why he was wandering so far from town without a way to protect himself. At his confusion, she explains that monsters can manifest anywhere with enough ambient magic — which the valley has an abundance of, as did the rest of the world before the industrial revolution. As she walks him back to his farm she notes that she’s explored the forested areas of his property fairly thoroughly back when it was abandoned, and he agrees to meet with her sometime in the future so that she can show him things she'd found.

They do so later that week, and as she leads him through his own farm he asks about why he hadn’t seen any monsters form nearby, seeing as they were apparently a typical problem. Pearl explains that, as with all structures, the house has enchantments formed into the stones of its foundation, which ward against malicious entities taking shape nearby. She offhandedly comments that Scar should’ve mentioned this when he’d come by to refresh the wards, and notes that forgetting to do so does seem like a Scar thing to do when Karn confirms that he hadn’t. 

They both agree to drop the topic, and as Pearl finishes her tour she agrees to meet up with Karn again sometime to show him more interesting areas of the valley. While she’d seemed wary of him when they first met, she’d quickly warmed up to him and became an incredibly goofy, friendly person in the time they spent together.

Karn goes to the wizard’s tower the next day to ask Scar about the enchantments he’d neglected to mention, which seems to frazzle the man. He assures Karn that he did refresh them and must’ve just forgotten to mention it, and oh, hey, don’t ya know that there’s been rumors of something spooky happening at the abandoned community center? Karn’s doing so well with his magic studies, maybe he should go check it out!

Karn takes the distraction for what it is, and leaves.

He encounters Pearl again by chance later that morning when he goes to visit the general store, the woman an unexpected face to see behind the front counter. She explains that she’s doing a favor for the usual shopkeeper while he’s out with the store’s other owner, but that they should be back soon if he needs anything. Karn assures her that he was just stopping by for a brief social visit on his way up to the community center. She perks up at this, and asks to join him for the visit. It’s the one spot in town that she hadn’t explored yet, but she’d also heard the rumors of strange noises being heard from within the building. He agrees.

They leave that afternoon, and, once they’ve managed to break away a rusted padlock on the front door with Pearl’s axe, they quickly encounter a strange golden tablet covered in even stranger writing. Karn manages to read it using the enchantments he’s learned so far, and they discover that small nature spirits — which Karn can see but are seemingly invisible to Pearl — are requesting various bounties of the valley. The only set they’re able to access is for various wild plants found around the valley during summer, which Pearl decides to collect during her postal route the next morning. They go their separate ways soon after.

As Karn leaves his house the next day, he’s surprised to see Pearl playing fetch with Tilly near his fields. After explaining that she’d reversed her route to end at Karn’s home and helping him with the morning's chores, they head out into town to make — as Pearl jokingly calls it — the final delivery on her route. As she places her small bundle of fruits and flowers on the tablet in the community center, a small burst of golden fireworks engulfs the bag and faint wisps of light trail throughout the room and into the hallway, guiding the pair to new tablets scattered throughout the building.

Upon returning to the craft room, they find it… cleaner. Nicer, somehow. Less dust, less mildew, fewer broken floorboards and tears in the wallpaper. Neither Karn nor Pearl had ever seen this building in its prime, but the promise of something more, of something greater… it convinces them. They agree to work together to collect the rest of the spirits’ requests, with Karn covering what he could produce on his farm and Pearl taking charge of whatever she could collect on her travels through the valley. 

They reconvene often, sometimes to discuss their project but even more frequently to just hang out. Karn finds ways to split his time between Pearl’s odd schedule, his work around the farm, and his advancing lessons with Scar, unwilling to give up any part of his life.  

It works, they’re happy, and life goes on. 

Summer turns to fall and winter, festivals passing like the tides. 

They realize the spirits will accept items only touched by the pair’s magic –

– attend the late-summer jellyfish viewing together, Pearl walking him home before setting off on her route –

– create a display together for the Valley Fair, winning the whole event – 

– keep each other company during Pearl’s usual walks through the valley over the winter, Karn’s farm no longer a worry and her treks taking longer through the snow – 

– begin basic combat lessons for Karn just as Scar starts teaching him more intensive enchantments –

– attend the flower dance together, Karn having arrived too late to see it the previous year, and get teased for it the entire time –

– and it all wraps over again into a new year of knowing each other. 

By the following summer Karn is quite certain that he and Pearl have reciprocated feelings towards each other. She seems to understand the same, but they’re quite happy to keep going as they are without putting a name to things. The community center’s progressed nicely, slowed only by the slow construction of new buildings on his farm and Pearl’s slow but steady descent through the valley’s old mines. Some rooms are in a better condition than others, the crafts room in particular being so well-cleaned that they each agree to bring in cushions and blankets of their own. 

They spend so much of their free time together that other residents of the valley begin saying that to find one is to find both, which neither seem to mind.

Time carries on, and they’re happy.

…

But something… changes, a few months later. It was fine, but things were… different. 

It started in the winter, just before the festival. Karn had gotten gifts for all his friends, Pearl and Scar and everyone else, but when he arrived in town things seemed… off. Scar and Grian were nowhere to be seen, and Pearl was lingering in the background just like she used to when they first met. But, when asked if something’s wrong, she just smiles shakily. Tells him not to worry about it -- to have a good holiday season and put his mind off such things. 

That it wouldn’t matter for long.

She was wrong.

Scar’s absence from the event was just a taste of what was to come. He’d always been a flighty man, somewhat forgetful but deeply passionate about what mattered. But now it seemed… off. At the start it was difficult to see anything different, but as the weather warmed it became clearer and clearer that something about his intense focus was manic, desperate. Like he couldn’t stand to let his goals remain out of his grasp, come hell or high water. 

He was neglecting every other part of his life for whatever this new research was, not that he’d tell anyone about it. Karn’s lessons were the first things to take a hit, which was fine -- Karn could deal with it, thanks to the wizard’s sizeable library of journals and tomes. But soon after came forgetting to maintain the town’s enchantments, convene with the valley’s spirits, even food and water.

Karn tried to help, but there was only so much he could do. The man all but ignored everyone else most days, save for longingly staring at Grian during his brief visits and a few conflicted glances at Pearl whenever she passed the tower. 

He’d questioned her again, more and more frequently as time passed with no signs of improvement, but she would only ever reiterate that he’d be fine. That it sucked now, but Scar would get through it and there wasn’t any need to intervene more.

In his least charitable moments, Karn wondered if Pearl hated the man. 

But, no. Pearl was goofy and outgoing and creative, and she might be quiet about her past but she was kind above all else. She wouldn’t hate someone just for going through a rough time, no matter the cause.

…though she did seem to know more about the cause than anyone else. She was clearly familiar with the state Scar was in, but it almost certainly wasn’t possible for her to have seen this before. She’d only arrived in the valley a few seasons before Karn did. He would’ve seen the signs of this type of breakdown if it’d happened before. 

Ultimately, there wasn’t anything more for him to do. He’d make sure Scar didn’t waste away, continue his self-study in the forest, and tend to his fields and his newly acquired animals while hanging out with Pearl. It’d be okay.

--o0O0o--

He was wrong.

The day was like any other. He’d found an interesting enchantment in one of Scar’s books while bringing the man some fresh food. The notes surrounding it were vague, but it was something about the ability to reveal the truth as magic sees it. Karn had run into a bit of a wall without Scar’s help, the lack of guidance leaving him at looser ends than he’d expected, so if there was any chance that this spell would show him something new, something he could build off of? He’d take it.

He went off into the forest later that afternoon as usual, taking the notebook and his reading glasses with him. The clearing he'd come to consider his own was dim, far more shadow than sun being allowed past the clouds and canopy, but there was more than enough lighting to read by. He settled on his usual rocky outcrop by the tree line before excitedly opening to his marked page and readying his glasses for the enchantment.

With the sacrifice of few small gems Pearl had gifted him from the mines and a brief incantation, the spell was complete. But the glasses felt no different from before. There was no weighty feeling of importance, not even the shower of sparks and fanfare that he’d come to expect from Scar’s spell books. Just a pair of glasses and a newly exhausted body.

He put them on.

Still nothing.

The trees were just trees, the sky just as overcast as it was that morning, the dewy grass lacking any mysterious shimmer. Just… the forest, as it was.

Karn sighed, slumping backwards onto the rock. He felt like a newbie to magic again, casting spells that do nothing but tire him. So much for his hopes of a breakthrough. He'd just have to… find something else. Apparently. But that would have to come later, considering the static suddenly filling his mind.

Something was in the clearing with him. Flecks of purple floated through the air, glowing against the dark backdrop of the canopy. Karn attempted to sit back up, but his exhausted body betrayed him as he slipped to the ground.

He looked up. A figure was indeed in the clearing with him, tall and lanky and pitch-black, with more particles slowly flaking away from its body. Its eyes met his, bright purple and hypnotic, before its jaw suddenly unhinged as it screamed. Karn backed away as well as he could, but he didn't have far to go before his back pressed up against the stone. The monster dropped into a hunched crouch, eyes still fixed on him.

Maybe he never really learned, back when Pearl first told him to protect himself in the forest. If he had more energy in him, or more time to prepare, maybe he could've managed it. But as it was… well. There wasn't much he could do but cower and wait.

He could see cold fog slowly creeping across the ground out of the corner of his eye, slowly advancing from behind him, as the air was filled with the sound of the creature's wet growls. The land itself seemed to shake with its intensity, but he hardly had time to consider it before a sudden surge of slush came crashing into the clearing. The stone at his back kept the worst of the impact from hitting him, just soaking his body and clothes with freezing, muddied water that flooded past.

Bright red cords wrapped around the monster, seeming to erupt out from somewhere behind him. They went taut as a large figure flung itself into the clearing, an immense blade of darkened metal trailing behind them. It was unlike anything he'd ever seen before, nothing like Pearl’s utilitarian tool. This was a weapon. Like some strange amalgamation between an axe and a sickle, the massive blade curved back around itself and nearly cleaved into its wielder’s form with every reckless swing. Said wielder latched itself to the monster with a tightened grip on the rope, shredding through both the strings and the monster’s flesh, quickly staining the influx of slush a pinkish-red.

The monster didn’t stand a chance against the newcomer’s ferocity. Karn didn’t think he would, either. But there was nowhere for him to go, backed against a rock and half buried in snow.

The figure’s assault on the monster suddenly stopped with a thick squelch of a blade through slush. It hunched over the disintegrating corpse, heaving great, ghastly pants as dirtied snow slipped off its weapon before traveling up the handle and disappearing under its ragged sleeve.

It wasn’t human, whatever it – no, they – were. A humanoid body, sure, but one that trailed into blackened, wrinkled flesh at the extremities and spattered blood with every movement. Part of a face poked out of what he could now see was a hooded cloak, only a mouth forced up into a grimacing, pointed grin and an open slash gouged across one cheek visible beneath the shadow cast by heavy fabric.

A second body was molded onto its back, one that wasn't there before, wolf-like and formed from packed snow. Spots of bloodied snowmelt dripped from a slowly swaying tail behind the creature, spattering its footsteps as it slowly crept towards him.

His back was firmly against the rock now, soil slick with slush and blood, as he begged for it to stop. The creature just kept advancing, blade dragging through the ground behind it, a menacing figure of darkened flesh and scarlet hues. The only other color on it was a collar binding the throat of the second body, a glimmering gold with an apple charm, and… familiar, actually.

The second body was Tilly's. Somehow, Pearl's dog had found its way to him with this… thing. Looking at it now, it was more gaunt than he realized, its ribs seeming to rattle under the thick cloak with every inhale. And its legs were rather human, now that he looked at it -- the hands too, just frostbitten and crossed with lines and lines of twisted rope burns. The weapon was no longer a wicked blade after Tilly slipped away from it, instead resembling…

Pearl’s axe. A perfect match, in every chip and blemish.

The new thing in front of him was Pearl, no doubt about it. She always carried around her axe in all the time that he knew her, and there was no way that Tilly would be with anyone else.

The creature stilled, even the sounds of its breathing halting suddenly. He voiced his thoughts, that this must be Pearl and she came to save him, and… hold on. Monsters don't often bleed, and if they do they don't bleed red. But she was covered in it, bright crimson reds and rusty browns mottled together on her cloak and skin alike.

Pearl let out a raspy exhale, stumbling backwards. Tilly whimpered from her shoulder, her slushy tail tucking itself between Pearl’s legs. Her mouth moved into a grimace, an attempted frown against the grin forced onto her face, but all it managed to do was bare her teeth.

She stumbled back another step, then another, before turning and dashing out between the trees. Karn tried to lift himself and follow after her, but the adrenaline quickly leaving his body left him abandoned on the slick ground.

--o0O0o--

We begin with Pearl attending university, majoring in the arts department. Her friend group, the members of Evo, have highly scattered ages and graduation dates with Pearl the youngest of them all. Grian graduates first, but they all stay in contact… until something seems to happen to him. Nobody knows what triggered it, but he suddenly started seeming… erratic. Started carrying around a blade, constantly glancing over his shoulder, seeming intensely uncomfortable in groups, desperately asking for someone named Scar — who nobody can identify — whenever he becomes lost within his mind. 

He all but disappears not long after, moving in with an old friend out in some old, rural town. The rest of their group splits up soon after that, unsettled by what happened. Pearl bounces between new friend groups for a while, until a few months later a classmate comes up to her determined to become her friend.

She’d never spoken to Scott before, hardly ever noticed him in class past his unique hair color, but they get along like wildfire. Although he always seemed to keep others at arm’s length, he and Pearl wind up tied at the hip. They know everything about each other — though, admittedly, it seemed like Scott somehow had a head start on that.

Once again, the months go by. Pearl’s able to put what happened with her old friend group out of her mind, and makes it all the way past graduation. It’s only a few months later, right as she’s almost done setting up her own independent art studio, that she remembers. 

The sting of abandonment, hushed whispers behind her back quickly turning to bold declarations to her face, the chill of frostbite, the slick of blood on an axe, the warmth of her only companion, the beat of her closest betrayer’s heart behind her ribs and acrid smell of his ashes. 

Days, weeks, months of memories suddenly return to her, overlapping times when she knows she was here, at home, with her friends. But the memories are no less real. Her newly scarred body, ragged bursts across her front and a faint gash crossing her eye, speak to that. Tilly’s returned to her in the real world, not that she can say how, and she’s the only one Pearl can trust. Evidently her friends couldn’t be. So she isolates herself, spends her time in her home with only a dog for company.

Scott is devastated. He does everything he can think of to help his friend. Tries to get her to open the door, leaves groceries on the front step, brings over their other friends for aid, asks professionals for help—

It’s all to no avail. The door remains firmly closed.

Eventually, his recent friend Jimmy hears about the matter. Recognizing Pearl’s name and her eerily familiar condition, he reaches back out… and it works.

Nobody’s sure why she’s willing to talk with him and not Scott, not anyone else, but Jimmy tries his best to make the most of it. Helps her register Tilly as an emotional support animal, makes sure she’s actually eating, spends time with her closer than anyone else has managed to get for too long. But after weeks with no signs of improvement, he reaches out to the only one who might know what’s going on.

Much like Jimmy, Grian also recognizes the condition Pearl’s in immediately, and offers his spare bedroom to her. She agrees to the move, hours and hours away from the city, to hopefully find the same recovery that Grian did. If nothing else, it would be nice to get away from so many people scarred in her memory.

Ironically, she only meets more once she moves to Pelican Town. People that were strangers to her in the death game of her dreams are suddenly right here in front of her, as electricians and bartenders and farmers instead of accusers and betrayers. But they’re the minority of the town, and Pearl’s able to leave her room much more than she ever could back in the city.

Eventually she picks up a new job from the town’s mayor, Xisuma. A postal carrier, tasked with delivering mail before dawn every morning and picking up the delivery of all the town’s packages from the train station once per week. This is great for her. The excuse to spend time outside with no one to see her, along with the fact that the packages are always delivered with Mumbo and Grian’s order to stock the general store, mean that she’s doing better than ever. She’s even returned to her usual goofy self when speaking with the other villagers, even if she still tries to avoid some of them at all costs. 

Her days are filled with walking through the valley, sketching her memories out onto papers hidden away in the branches of trees outside town, chatting with members of the Adventurers’ Guild and slaying the occasional monster that appears in the shady, unprotected forest. 

Life goes on like this for a while. Pearl’s fine, Tilly’s fine, her friends are fine. The town’s fine, except for a large, shady corporation looking to start building out on the east side of town, but Pearl’s got plenty of ideas to start being a general nuisance and getting in the way of their plans.

Until eventually, the abandoned farm out west isn’t abandoned anymore. She’d explored its grounds more than a few times when finding new sketching spots, but it had never seemed like an area that someone might want to settle in. Didn’t matter to her much, just meant another stop on her postal route and — at Xisuma’s request — transporting the farm’s produce from the shipping bin to the general store every so often.

Life got a bit better, after that. 

Not fixed—

—not perfect—

—but better.

But it all falls apart eventually, doesn’t it? It certainly seems to, at least for her.

--o0O0o--

It was only several hours later that Karn finally managed to get back to his home. He’d tried to follow after Pearl’s trail, but the flecks of residual snow melted by the time he could get up. He didn’t know anywhere on the mountain that she might’ve gone; she’d always avoided going any farther than the Adventurers’ Guild in the time that he’d known her, something about bad memories with a mountain. He'd never put much thought to it before, always just assumed that she got lost while hiking once or something, but… could that form of hers been related?

He’d never seen anything like it. It was obviously magic, at least considering whatever was going on with Tilly. As for Pearl herself… he’d never seen that cloak before. It looked entirely too warm for the season, and he’d certainly never seen it even in her closet. Past that, while that might've been Pearl, it certainly wasn't her body. She kept herself covered up most of the time, but he's seen her dressed down, seen the compression sleeves hugging her limbs, even gotten to hug her himself a few times. He knows her form, knows that it's not the gaunt limbs and rattling ribs she had in the forest.

Maybe the enchantment… worked. Somehow. Shows people as… something, rather than themselves. Maybe she saw him as something different, too. Maybe she ran because she was afraid of what she'd seen, rather than what he had. There was no way to prove it, but he certainly wanted to hope that it was the case.

And… that's that, really. I want to take this further, into reconnection and a real conclusion and solving what's been going on. But I just don't know what that looks like yet. I'm equally drawn to both happy and tragic endings with this, and I haven't figured out how to split the difference in a satisfying way.

Perhaps Pearl falls back into the habits of her memories, where no one is to be trusted no matter how much she desperately wishes for connection, and she retreats back into the frigid mountains alone. Perhaps Karn works to find her, to meet her where she's at, to bring together the community for the woman no one could imagine betraying. Perhaps nothing happens at all and the story remains unresolved, waiting for the next person to remember the highs and lows of an unwilling game of death, again and again and again. Who's to say?

For some extra little tidbits of things that I couldn't fit in smoothly, or things that wouldn't get revealed until later (if ever):

I desperately want to include Joja. My original draft for this involved Pearl realizing that Joja is attempting to build a store in the area and sabotaging their efforts, which Karn then recognizes and joins in on thanks to his previous experiences with the company. They were supposed to use that as their catalyst for bonding, but I just couldn't figure out how Pearl could sabotage a corporation without going against the ethics of being a postal carrier (which I don't think she would ever willingly do).

The enchantment Karn used did work. It creates an area of effect where people are forced into a manifestation of their innate magic. For most people, particularly those who've spent a lot of time in relatively magic-less (urban) areas, there isn't much difference from their mundane selves. For people who've spent a decent amount of time tapping into their magic, there's some difference but it can be easy to miss. Karn's magic in particular is autumnal in nature, very gleeful feeling. For people that have been inundated with magic, their forms can grow much closer to those of nature spirits rather than human spirits. This is what happened in Pearl's case.

The Life games are basically a person's spirit getting dragged into a world of pure magic, then returning to the mundane world after their death. How long you live in that world influences how much of an effect the experience has on the spirit, with memories only being retained after a win. The winner only remembers the game that they won, none before or after it. The win also greatly shapes the form the spirit takes on afterwards, often overriding any traits acquired from participation in other games. Pearl in particular has a heftier change to her spiritual form than even other winners, thanks to both her win and her frequent long lifespan in the games.

Tilly was a winter spirit in the world of the Game, and got so much magic pumped into her by Pearl that she was able to manifest herself in the mundane world. The flood of slush that Pearl is able to use is actually just her army of wolves, who are also able to manifest themselves at Pearl's command.

Grian recognized that Pearl regained the memories of a game, hence why he invited her to Pelican Town. Scott couldn't recognize this because his experience was generally positive, and he couldn't imagine that Pearl had that bad of a time -- or that he would abandon her. His abandonment of her at the start of Double Life was due to both the feeling that she abandoned him first by going to the nether, and the fact that this was the first time that he could see Cleo again after his game ended. It was a choice initially based in reactionary, impulsive emotions, which he then doubled down on after things started going sideways (particularly after Tango's death, which reminded him of the severity of the situation).

It took Scar remembering Secret Life for Grian and Pearl to talk about their experiences with the games. Pearl wants to forget her time in the game, and ignores it as much as she can. Grian had been desperate for the constant connection he had in the game right after his ended, but he's managed to move on and get to a healthy place in the years that had passed. Scar latches onto Grian's story of the game, and in the desperation caused by being alone and disdained in his game he begins single-mindedly trying to figure out how to gain the memories of the other games. This is not possible.

The general store is owned by Grian and Mumbo. Mumbo was the original owner, but he far preferred working in the back with inventory and order forms than staffing the front desk. Grian takes care of all the front-facing stuff nowadays!

The saloon is staffed by Cleo, Joe, and Jevin. Jevin runs the kitchen, and Cleo and Joe split the day and night shifts at the bar. Pearl avoids the saloon after mid-afternoon to reduce the chance of encountering Cleo.

Zedaph, Impulse, Tango, and Skizz all live in the mountains and cover basically any construction or maintenance job that the valley needs. Zedaph is something of a scientist/inventor. Impulse works at the blacksmith most of the time, making weapons for the Adventurers' Guild in addition to tools and nails. Tango is primarily an electrician. Skizz is primarily a carpenter. They're all always busy, and always willing to help out on each other's jobs.

The Adventurers' Guild works to keep monster populations low around populated areas and gather resources from areas that can't reduce monster spawn rates. Gem staffs the guild building in the valley, and is basically on-call for any emergencies. Wels is the underground specialist, and is usually holed up in one of the many mines, caverns, and ruins scattered throughout the mountain. Joel is a seasonal worker at the Stardew Valley branch of the guild while his wife is off doing a bigger, more critical mission elsewhere (he doesn't want to be left at home alone). Hypno covers the Calico Desert branch of the guild, and is particularly there to keep an eye on the Skull Cavern. False works many of the same jobs in the guild as Joel, basically just making sure monster counts don't get out of hand and collecting resources from them.

Etho and Bdubs run the library and museum respectively. Doc and Ren both live on Ren's ranch in the Cindersap Forest, but Doc runs the clinic in town (in addition to doing veterinary work, to a lesser extent). Xisuma is the mayor. Keralis specializes in wood carving, he makes stuff like totems and the horse flute in addition to decorations and trinkets. Xb runs the angler's shop on the beach. Beef works as a butcher in town. Cub is like a mirror to Zedaph, doing more ~ominous~ science in the forest (he just likes the aesthetic; his experiments focus on combining magic with machinery).

Pearl went to university for art but most people don't see her drawings post-Life game. Her illustrations seem haunted by the memories, often dark and bloody but therapeutic for her. She draws while out in the forest and keeps her materials stashed away in trees and miscellaneous nooks (this is why she knows Karn's farm so well at the start).