#rockhead

A Summary on The Mines at Falun

The story begins with a sailor named Elis who has returned from operations with the (British) East India Company. He had made substantial profit and had intended to take care of his aging mother only to find that she had passed away three months prior while he was out at sea. He is alone in the world and is ready to spend his entire life as a sailor when an old man approaches him and convinces him to become a miner instead. He tells him fantastic tales of the mines at Falun, and spurred by dreams of grandeur, Elis heads to Falun to seek out these mines. As the only sailor in a town of rich miners, he appeals to the owner of the mine named Pehrson to be a pitman. Pehrson agrees to hire and train him as well as gives Elis shelter. In living with Pehrson almost like a son, Elis develops a mutual love for his daughter Ulla. Over months, Elis proves that he is extremely well-suited to the miner life as well as the best suitor for Ulla, but implicitly Elis becomes torn between the allure of the treasures in the mine and his love for Ulla. One day, he sees the apparition of an old miner who had dedicated his life to mining named Torbern, and his appearance is accompanied by the hollow tapping of his pickaxe inside the mine. Pehrson tells Elis that Torbern was a miner so skilled at the work that he had become an urban legend in which his ghost would direct them to veins overflowing with ore. Torbern, however, had accused Elis of coming to the mine for anything but to the mining life, which Pehrson says is part of intrigue of the legend. A few nights later, when it becomes evident that Elis wants to marry Ulla but cannot bring himself to propose, Pehrson sets up a test to encourage him. He arranges a fake proposal by a colleague to try and spur Elis to intervene and ask for her hand, but it backfires and Elis runs into the mines in heartbreak. Alarmed, Pehrson reassures that Elis that Ulla wants him and him alone. On the day of the wedding, St. John's Day; Elis approaches Ulla and tells her of a mystic crystal in the mines that, if he procures it and brings it to her on that day, they would for sure have a happy and strong marriage. Elis runs into the mines but never returns. Fifty years pass, Pehrson dies and Ulla vanishes from Falun only to return every year on St. John's Day to weep in front of the mine. Young miners finally retrieve a petrified body from the mines, but no one in the town recognizes it. Ulla bursts from the crowd with tears; finally, Elis has been rescued from the mine. And as she cries over his body, which disintegrates into ash, she also dies. She is buried at the cathedral she was to marry in, with Elis's ashes placed alongside her.

The Spider Cave Mystery

Krat Mysteries: The Spider Cave Puppet is a book found in the Ergo Mining Site detailing the fate of a "misfit miner" who gave puppets horrible names to make fun of them. He picked on a puppet he named Rockhead specifically , and people were sure that if Rockhead were human, he would have held a deep resentment for the miner. One day, Rockhead rushed into a tunnel after the miner, and the cave collapsed and was completely sealed. Investigations and search parties were eventually called off after weeks. The miner was believed to have died at the hands of the puppet, and the hollow tapping of Rockhead's pickaxe still echoed in the cave. If the puppet ever escaped, he would exact revenge on other humans, resulting in only puppets in the mines.

After defeating a large drilling puppet that has gone haywire in the mines, P finds the Corroded Cipher Machine. The Tracker uses a key on it and reveals a picture of a slab of rock where the tapping can be heard (right next to Alexander Goodman's broken Crusher Puppet). If P investigates this wall before deciphering the machine, he will only note the tapping noises coming from behind it. After the machine is deciphered, the wall becomes breakable and P can destroy it to reveal a miner puppet that shut downs just as he is freed. Inside the small cave is a skeleton and The Misfit's Diary. This document details what exactly happened:

The Misfit Miner was indeed terrible to Rockhead.

He had bought a dress for his wife and had it with him when he got trapped.

The Alchemists had caused an explosion and trapped him inside the cave, and Rockhead had dashed in to try to save him.

Rockhead did his best to keep the miner alive.

In his final hours, the miner reflected on how he treated Rockhead and decided that he would adopt him into his family and give him a cooler name if they escaped.

Rockhead's final words as his Ergo runs out were expressing relief, he had finally broken free and he could save his friend the miner.

The Loose Connections Between the Stories

While both of these stories take place in mines, and it's not uncommon that people would be trapped inside them for one reason or another, a specific tragedy can be felt from both stories. Despite the Misfit Miner being terrible---the very opposite of hardworking to the point of delusion Elis---his death evokes pity. After all, he had a lover that he was happy with who likely was told that he had been killed either by a puppet or that the cave collapsed on him. The latter also happens to Elis, who had gone into the mines on a delirious mission to retrieve a crystal for his bride. He, however, had no one in the mines with him. He died alone and not entirely aware of what was going on, leaving Ulla to wonder what had happened to him.

There is another detail that, possibly by a stretch, feels very close to the side quest: Torbern's tapping functions the same as Rockhead's tapping---it beckons one to deeper into the cave, whether Elis or P. Rockhead is also thought to be something of a ghost in the cave, too, a vengeful spirit as a result of the miner's bullying. How strange it is, then, that when I finished reading the story, I could see that Rockhead was a little like Ulla, too, in a way. He wasn't a romantic partner for the miner but a soul that departed once they were both "freed". Ulla never faulted Elis and his delusions and stayed near the mines for the day that his body would be pulled out of the depths; likewise, Rockhead seemed not to be bothered by the Misfit Miner's antics and regarded him as a friend. The Misfit Miner probably made him feel "human" in a way enough that Rockhead believed him to be a friend.

The final macabre detail is the state of the corpse upon discovery. Elis's body is petrified---turned to stone---after fifty years of being trapped in the mine. Consider the victims of the eruption of Vesuvius and Herculaneum: organic materials carbonized from the ash falling on them. This similarly happened to Elis, where iron and sulfur deposits from within the mine filled his pores and over time, his soft tissues were replaced with minerals. When he's pulled out of the mine, his body reduces to dust and ash because the insides have rotted away. The Misfit Miner, had he been buried in the mine alone, likely would have had this happen (if the Player didn't also need to be able to walk in and investigate his tomb). But being petrified in Lies of P has a different meaning, so naturally the Misfit Miner couldn't be petrified. He had to starve to death despite Rockhead's efforts to help him. What's left is a skeleton that instead becomes discolored from the minerals inside the mine.

Conclusion