Case 8 (Trails of old)

As I’ve hit another roadblock with my investigation I decided to explore this unknown land. Normally this would be Klecksers Job, but I haven’t heard any interesting details from him. The existence of the Statue aka the Temple of Whispers leads me to believe, that there might be other structures of importance. For my first Trip I would go north, as this was the opposite direction of where the temple was located. I decided to dedicate one segment to each structure that I passed on my journey. I also decided to document those structures I already knew of, if they were interesting enough. Library This building still perplexes me. While I can understand that a Village can have its own library, there are several things that stand out as weird to me. 1. While Polaris seems to be brimming with live, Lumiere seems to be a little bit more on the abandoned side of things. Which is weird to me, because why would the less populated village be the one that needs/has the giant library? Did something happen in the past? s 2. Why does it have such a high contrast to everything else in the village. While the village is mostly brown-tones the library is a high contrast black & white. But I feel like this is just to make it stand out among its environments. 3. Why is there a whole part just barricaded? I mean you can’t even see through the windows. Maybe he’s renovating, or something got destroyed in that part? That theory would coincide with my idea that something might have happened in the past, so it’s currently the best offer on the table. 4. As a note for myself I need to ask Professor Adler what he gives his plants that they grow so beautifully. 5. On my way to the library, I also saw the giant tree that apparently belong to Iatros. I need to investigate that one another time. White & Brown House Further south I found a small house that only uses a white and brown color scheme. With this it nearly stands out as much as the library. The only real difference is that the house is way smaller. Only about 1/14 of the library to be precise. From what I can tell it doesn’t seem like this house always used to be here. My current theory is that this belongs to Timmy, as the lack of color variation would fit right in with her look. There’s also all the rabbit hide around the house and as far as I know, only Timmy likes to kill rabbits. I decided not to look into any chest to confirm my theory, so I’ll have to ask her about that the next time we meet. Snowy Mountain Next up was a giant snowy mountain, which seems weirdly out of place since the other biomes around it are pretty warm. I tried to get closer, but as soon as I started to walk on the snow, the temperature dropped immediately. It got so bad, that parts of my body just started freezing, which tells me that no human can survive this cold. After a few seconds of trying to get my body to adept to these harsh environments and failing I decided to get away from the mountain for now. Looking at the way my left hand currently looks this seems to have been the right idea, as the cold not only froze it, but even turned part of it from my usual green into a light blue color. After realizing that getting closer to the mountain isn’t an option, I decided to at least take a peek with my spyglass. It seems that at the mountains summit is some kind of shrine with a giant blue crystal adorning the structure. If I ever find a way to either raise the temperature or to endure the crystal, closer investigation will be needed. Scorching Peaks My last stop was similar to the other mountain. The difference is, that this one is flatter and has two summits if you can even call them that. As I had already experienced the freezing cold, I was a little bit more careful about my decisions. And that was a good call. It seems that the temperature on the mountain is high enough to melt me. I just put my arm into its biome and it nearly instantly started boiling and melting. While I had to sacrifice my hand to get any results here, they’re still quite fascinating. Apparently, the mountain is so hot that in mere seconds my hand just evaporated. I decided that this would be the last experiment for now, as it hurts quite a lot and takes some time to recover. Now one of its peaks seems to also house a shrine like the other one. The only difference is that this one is adorned by a fiery red crystal. Same as the other one, I either need to change the temperature or somehow withstand it for further investigations. Portal to the Unknown In between the mountains I found one more structure. Now I kept this for my last report, as it’s the most important one in my eyes. Perfectly between both mountains was a portal. While I have no idea what it’s made of, I have multiple theories on this. 1. There was an old civilization once, as this portal seems older than anything I’ve encountered. Even older than the statue! And considering that there’s no other ruins close to it that either means that this civilization was swept clean from this world, or that this structure was of such an importance that no one was even allowed to build near it. 2. Wanda and the other villagers haven’t told us about this portal yet, so they either don’t know about it, or they’re keeping this information from us. In my eyes the first one might me more plausible, as they should know that we would explore this place. But there might be more to this than I currently know. 3. Where does this thing lead? Does it lead to another universe or another dimension? And if it leads somewhere, is the destination always the same, or can it be changed? How do you even activate it and if you can activate it, could we “calibrate” it to get everybody back home? This thing only brings questions, but no leads to answer them. This will be the end of my exploration for now. In a few days I might start another investigation going either east or west. Also, as a little side note, the one called Wanderer hasn’t showed his face these last few weeks. What happened to that fellow? I’ll have to update his status to missing/presumed death. E2 to E4