Pearl

Pearls, referred to in-code as Data Pearls, are small, shiny spheres found throughout the game. Their primary use early-game is for trading with, who value them highly. Most pearls are white in color.

Colored Pearls, referred to in-code as Unique Data Pearls, are special non-white pearls that can only be found at their specific locations. These colored pearls have a special use later in the game related to the history and lore of the world, but they are not required to complete the game and do not give any sort of mechanical advantage to the player.

Trading
Scavengers value pearls higher than any other object, save for King Vulture Masks, allowing the player to increase their reputation by giving pearls as gifts. Scavengers will drop and allow you to take items held when given pearls or other valuable objects. s typically carry many valuable weapons and items, which makes trading with them more worthwhile. Pearls can also be used as payment for passing through a.

Giving pearls to scavengers is the most effective strategy for getting the Chieftain achievement, and colored pearls will give one pip each towards the Scholar achievement when slept with.

Colored pearls are worth the same amount to Scavengers as white pearls, and any colored pearl given to Scavengers will be lost forever.

Colored Pearls
Colored pearls that have been either moved from their original location and left in the rain or taken by Scavengers will be lost and will never reappear. Because of this, it is recommended that new players interested in uncovering lore either leave colored pearls where they are or store them in a secure shelter until their use is found. Items stored in shelters will persist even if the player sleeps in a different shelter or closes the game.

Colored pearls are replaced by "blank" gray or black pearls on when playing

Pearl Lore (Vanilla Slugcats + Gourmand)
Pearls appear to have been created by the Ancients as a data storage medium. Although some have degraded over time, many contain intact records of conversations, plans and personal thoughts of their creators.

Pearls can be read by once the player has received the Mark of Communication from. Moon is able to read pearls as long as she has any amount of left; if all of her neurons have been eaten, she will be unresponsive.

Colored pearls spawn in set locations around the world, and always have the same dialogue (with the exception of the two colored pearls from Sky Islands, which have a dialogue pool of 5 texts from which one is chosen for each pearl per playthrough). Due to the Sky Islands pearls, multiple playthroughs are needed to have all dialogue options read by Moon. (This is not true in Downpour, with all 5 pearls present on all saves) Colored pearls contain important lore, either because there's a lot of information in the pearl or it prompts Moon to address the topic in the pearl.

White pearls are spawned in set locations throughout the world, but can also be found semi-randomly in scavenger stashes, and on scavenger totems. Common pearls have a large dialogue pool to draw from, so repeat readings are extremely rare. They contain minor tidbits of lore, but most are useless or humorous information.

Blank/grey pearls are exclusive to the Monk character. They replace colored pearls and certain white pearls in the world, and a few blank pearls appear in new locations. Moon simply tells you they are empty or blank when read.

Pearls from Pebbles' chamber have a separate, smaller pool of dialogues to pick from. Contained in Five Pebbles' pearls are memories, processes, ciphers, and images he was likely using.

Colored Pearl Lore
When referring to the Slugcat, the name Looks to the Moon uses may change depending on various parameters (see the full explanation [|here]). Each time " " is written in the dialogue, it means that other names can appear instead of the default one.

White Pearl Lore

 * This is a movement acceptance invoice from one of the Dual Celia living blocks, as requested by Eight Bogs of the House of Eight during the Tan hegemonic architectural dynasty. All very standard stuff. I can't imagine that you'd be interested.
 * This is an official decree of cultivation sent from the twenty-second Subsistence Council ordering the eastern spoke Farm Array administration to "immediately harvest and process all viable crops, despite whatever misgivings they might have." A short-sighted endeavor for sure. I would assume this was sent sometime during the final cycles leading up to final public ascension, when interest in biosphere sustainability was at an all-time low.
 * "We, of the Five-hundred-and-ninety-second High Convocation of the True Anointed Citadel, do hereby demand, with full force of Law and Religious doctrine, an Immediate end to construction of the Apostate Superstructure Abomination. To place shadow upon the Divine Body of the True Anointed Citadel is outrageous blasphemy and cannot be tolerated, no matter the circumstances..." Clearly this was ignored.
 * I see a vague memory of a family portrait, painted in the High Classical manner that was famous during the Yellow hegemonic literary dynasty. The portrait is likely a fake, as this style was quite fashionable for aspirational lower caste aristocrats to impress each-other with. This one does not impress, I assure you.
 * It's a catalog of bolts and screws for sky-sail joinery. We iterators were built for pragmatism, so it is an understatement to say that we were not known for our appreciation of beauty... but the sky-sails in flight during the big festivals always filled my soul with emotion.
 * A small portion is still legible: "and Thus we Conclude, that Gold and Water shall..." Some sort of metaphysical or alchemical treatise perhaps.
 * This one I don't know... It could be an old text, but some parts don't add up. Might be a re-imagination of a classic text that I'm not familiar with.


 * This is a blueprint for a support beam used for the construction of early industrial areas. You can see these in use not too far from here.
 * Here we have a schematic for a refuse reclamation automaton. It's an early design, but the long tubular body and single eye-mouth are quite similar to the later models.
 * A schematic of a bunch of gas pipes. I don't know the purpose for this machine, but it doesn't look particularly well crafted.
 * This is the genome of a sulfur-processing microbe. In my opinion these were used far too late to have any effect.
 * It's the blueprint for a small incense purification filter. Life on the superstructure archologies.
 * It's a design for a machine that makes bolts.
 * A model of a pipe section.


 * Unfortunately I can't read this as it isn't a memory construct pearl. This is just a simple diamond sphere, as worthless as the carbon it's printed from.
 * This one has a small crack and has been pretty badly corrupted. There is a slight impression of the shape of a wing on it, but I can't get a clear image.
 * I am sorry, this pearl is damaged and cannot be read. I suggest you use it for trade with the scavengers, as they won't know the difference.
 * This one seems to have an image on it, but the pearl has been exposed to sunlight and it's very faded. I see a tall structure with banners unfurled.
 * There might be something on here, but the pearl has been lying in the sun and it's all very pale. I'm too tired to look any deeper, I apologize.
 * I can't make anything out of this pearl, it's just too faded. But there might have been something on it once.
 * I am sorry, all of that work for nothing! This pearl is completely blank.
 * Can't make out anything legible on this one, sorry.
 * There's nothing on this one, unfortunately.
 * I'm sorry, this one has nothing on it.
 * This one has nothing on it.
 * This one is all blank, sorry.
 * There's nothing on this one.


 * Oh? This contains an image of another pearl just like it. Let me look... yes, as I thought, the image also contains an image of a pearl in it, and so on. Some comedian playing recursion games, I would guess.
 * "...through the mists of memory, your image dances, like the motes of dust, in a ray of sunlight, that pierces a dark room." A line of verse from the ancient farmer-poet Pel. Very dreary if you ask me.
 * "Fifteen stems of sun bark, hydrolyzed. Twelve to nineteen bushels of atomized chalk powder. Assorted Root vegetation..." It goes on and on. A shopping list, or perhaps a recipe.
 * It's a... recipe of some kind? "Two parts rot bar extract, one part bone ash." Nothing I recognize.
 * An image... of five bottles, standing on a surface made of... plants? I have no idea what this is.
 * It's an image of a hand drawn document. The calligraphy is quite beautiful, but the text itself is a very dull classical poem.
 * A list of someone's lucky numbers. There are no less than 71 of them.
 * No. I don't want to talk about the content of this pearl.
 * It's a song, or hymn rather. Very repetitive.
 * "Dear diary..." and that's it.


 * Oh, interesting. This is a diary entry of a pre-Iterator era laborer during the construction of the subterranean transit system south of here. In it they describe restless nights filled with disturbing dreams, where millions glowing stars move menacingly in the distance.
 * There isn't much to the data here, it's just basic theory for karmic transform of n-dimensional geometries. But the pearl itself is quite interesting. You can see the crude holes burned through the center that the scavengers use to tie these pearls onto their totems or to carry. I honestly can't fathom how they achieve this with their primitive level of technology! Fascinating.
 * It has been written to, but then scrambled, and then scrambled again. Suspicious behavior to be sure.
 * This one has been purposefully scrambled, it's completely illegible. Business documents perhaps.
 * This is a growing instruction for the skeleton of a creature, but I don't recognize the creature. It was small, about your size.


 * It just has the number "8" written on it, the rest is empty.
 * This one seems to be a number series... Perhaps a key?
 * A number series... I would guess some kind of cipher.
 * It's just the numbers 14, 13, 5, repeated over and over. I have no idea what the purpose for this would be.
 * This one is filled with active working memory - without knowing the surrounding process this information is meaningless.

Five Pebbles' Pearl Lore
'''These pearls can only be found inside Five Pebbles' room. Like common pearls, these do not contain unique text, but are instead randomly selected from a pool (listed below), usually preceded by Moon explaining how they were recently used.'''


 * It's an active working memory - raw data has been dropped here in order to later be pasted to a currently occupied memory conflux. Without context it's just a jumble.
 * It is the impression of being a small creature, like a wall climbing lizard, and looking up into the branches of a big tree. The last third is partly overwritten with a number series I vaguely recognize, but without my memory…
 * A common prayer mantra repeated 7110 times. Each repetition has some slight random variations, which seem to have been written later.
 * It's an image of a single grey cloud, hovering above a surface of white clouds under a deep blue sky.
 * Two... intertwined number series? I don't quite understand the utility of this. Might a key for a cipher processor, customized for some other data which is impossible to infer from this.
 * It's qualia, or a moment - a very short one. Someone is holding a black stone, and twisting it slightly as they drag their finger across the rough surface. The entire sequence is shorter than a heartbeat, but the resolution is extraordinary.
 * An active working memory. Without knowing where this was cut from or where it's to be pasted to, it is not really possible to decipher it. If I had to guess, I would say it has something to do with trance inducing number series. It's just an active working memory, I can't really tell you anything without the context.
 * Without the process surrounding this data there isn't much I can tell you. It might have something to do with Void Fluid simulation…
 * This one is completely blank. Actually, blanker than blank, it must have been deliberately overwritten with repeating negative versions of itself for thousands of iterations.
 * A memory... but not really visual, or even concrete, in its character. It reminds of the feeling of a warm wind, but not the physical feeling but the... inner feeling. I don't think it has much utility unless you are doing some very fringe Regeneraist research.

= Five Pebbles' Pearl Lore =

'''These pearls can only be found inside Five Pebbles' room. Like common pearls, these do not contain unique text, but are instead randomly selected from a pool (listed below), usually preceded by Moon explaining how they were recently used.'''


 * Most of the data on this one is corrupted, but not through age. From the small bit that I can decipher, it appears that it may be a backup of some old conversation logs.
 * I don't understand this one. It is mostly blank, except for a small section at the start which appears to have been unsuccessfully written hundreds of times. Perhaps by faulty machinery?
 * Two... intertwined number series? I don't quite understand the utility of this. It might be a key for a cipher processor, customized for some other data which is impossible to infer from this.
 * The surface of this pearl is pristine, but the internal lattice is fractured beyond repair. Something must have gone terribly wrong in the process of writing the data onto this.
 * Incredible, this is seemingly a complete backup of an iterator's non-volatile core memory, transferred via the General Systems Bus. I don't recall such a thing ever being attempted to be stored in a pearl. It's not even a compatible data format without substantial conversions.
 * Without the process surrounding this data there isn't much I can tell you. It might have something to do with Void FLuid simulation...
 * It is a stored equipment manifest, showing the rapidly deteriorating conditions over time. I suppose any equipment manifest you will find out there will look like this.
 * This contains data that seems abruptly truncated. Whatever machinery was used to write this pearl must have been interrupted or suspended in the middle of its operation.
 * The data on this one repeats itself many times, with a number of redundancy checks in place. The extent of integrity checking is rarely seen, except when pearls have to be stored in highly contaminated environments where data corruption is likely.
 * This one is completely blank. Actually, blanker than blank, it must have been deliberately overwritten with repeating negative versions of itself for thousands of iterations.