Will the solarium GOOD ending ever be cleared?

[Silvercloud29]

I was looking for that video that was posted on this post a few days a go of SoL just FREAKING OUT. (I was going to watch it at work, but it creeped me out to much since I sit alone in a dimly lit gatehouse at night.)
And came across this...

I've heard that the stranger wall actually doesn't lead anywhere because it's an unfinished area. But I mean I dunno.

I've heard in the past that it was finished at a certain point.

Something something where did I put my keys.

Then in Bane's new post

I found a BYOND page listing all of the medals in the game, and the name for the medal supposedly given to those who achieve the good ending of Solarium is called "Master of Unlocking". In the telescience areas, you can acquire both a skeleton key and a literal skeleton key. The skeleton key is a common theme across multipke stories, and is basically a key that unlocks everything.

Normally the Badmins like to fuck with us. However I think bane might be on to something.

[pizzatiger]

After communing with some individuals and putting together some knowledge (including one bit that we apparently weren't supposed to know, sorry) about Solarium, we've uncovered a few more points.

For all of the below information, it's pretty important to have read the gargantuan essay I wrote earlier, as it calls back to those points frequently and you may be a bit lost otherwise.

First off, on pizzatiger's quote from Shitty Bill: Due to his multiple sayings about telesci areas, the fact that we have absolutely no idea what his deal even is, and one of the randomly spawning keys that actually bears his name, we've come to the conclusion that Shitty Bill is most likely a former member of the cult, or maybe a current one that has been rendered mostly useless due to rampant alcoholism and drug abuse. This may not be strictly necessary for the solving of Solarium, but it is definitely a bit of background knowledge that is good to have.

Now then, there are a few logs and bits of information that others have told me during a meeting we had on a depopulated server the other day that reveal some very interesting data. Apparently, someone double-checked all of the Sumerian translations, and it revealed that the Darkness creatures make repeated mention of "luminous ones". This suggests that the Darkness, while members of the cult I described before, have not actually transcended: Instead, they tried and FAILED to transcend. These "luminous ones" are, most likely, successful transcendants.

Now, the admins have said that there are two telesci areas we actually haven't been able to find yet, supposedly called The Vault and The Tower. Call it a red herring if you wish, but multiple details match up: First off, a while back, someone (presumably an admin) was talking in deadchat about "star children" in a secret area, but was subsequently told off by another admin for spilling secrets. The descriptions of "star children" and "luminous ones" seem to match up, which furthers evidence of a potential area that we haven't been able to find yet. Furthermore, when granted temporary powers of an admin, someone found data for two skulls we haven't found yet: A golden skull and a faceless skull. Given that skulls are probably important to the Solarium in some way, this furthers the notion that there's somewhere we haven't been yet.

On that subject, I wanted to bring something up: The stranger wall. Multiple people have said that there's nothing behind it and that it probably leads to an unfinished area and so on and so forth, but that may not be the case. There might be further areas behind the area immediately through the wall that we aren't looking into. Furthermore, there's another area in the game that's hidden deep in a telesci area that has segments of wall with different names that are actually doors: The Precusor ruins at ice moon. This suggests that the stranger wall may require that we use one of the myriad of keys, perhaps even the key one can find in another, separate branch of biodome.

Now, own the topic of the star children, some of the Meat Station logs (supposedly, I'm going off of other peopl's info here) talk about someone on the Meat Station team who was, supposedly, able to "see angels". Seems awful similar to those transcendants we mentioned before. Another log mentions something about a person who was wearing a telecrystal for a hat, which doesn't seem to make any sense...until you take the obsidian crown into consideration.

You see, the good folks at Hemera were cexperimenting with telecrystals. At Hemera, you can also find the obsidian crown. The obsidian crown, if worn and passed through the telecrystal beam, zaps you straight to the void. This demonstrates a clear connection with the obsidian crown and the telecrystals, and therefore links Hemera to the whole cult. Now, keep in mind a few things: Transposed particle fields, which the biosuit shamblers that are present in the room containing the crown spawn when destroyed, look an awful lot like the Darkness, only vague and cloud-like. When wearing the crown, transposed particle fields actually become passive and do not attempt to hunt you down. When you die while wearing the obsidian crown, a transposed particle field spawns. And finally, the most small and yet possibly the most telling piece of information: Hemera, the name of the ship and possibly the program, is the name of the greek personification of daylight.

Daylight. The thing that happens when the sun comes out. When a STAR comes out.

Fill in the dots and you realize that the researchers at Hemera were, in all likelihood, modern-day followers of the cult, and attempted to replicate the ancient transcendance process using science. However, they seem to have fucked up so hard that the researchers became a foggy facsimile of the people who ORIGINALLY fucked up; the cultists now known as the Darkness.

Going back to Meat Station, it's implied that the person who was reportedly able to see angels was the dude with a telecrystal on his head. It's easy to write the person off as a lunatic, but while correlation does not necessarily equal causation, the fact that another item associated with both telecrystals and the cult exists and is intended to be worn on the head raises a big question mark over this person's behavior. Meat Station was also researchkng with telecrystals, and while the information we have to go off of is much more unclear, it's fairly safe to assume that they might have been cult followers as well, or else other people interested in its power. As shown by the fact that it's now...well, Meat Station, they seem to have fucked up on a legendary scale.

Another interesting tidbit: Look at the automaton. More specifically, look at the coloration of its face in proportion to the rest of its body. It's awfully pale. In addition, if you wrangle Marty (the tour robot at the void) and bring him to the Solarium, he talks about the automaton makes specific mention about the paleness of its face. Either the automaton is somehow the guy with the pallid mask mentioned in the King in Yellow, or perhaps more broadly, the pallid mask is a symbol of some sort for the cult as a whole. Also, if you bring Wally (the future robuddy) to the Solarium, he mentions something about the automaton yelling at him in a strange language. This is not heard by anyone else, but can possibly be picked up by other robots...or possibly even with the myriad of wireless signals found on Solarium, which can be tapped into using ThinkDOS.

Something else that's interesting to note is that the transposed particle fields (could've been the darkness, can't remember which one) state "our king has returned" if you walk around with the obsidian crown on. Furthermore, the darkness have a few extra bits of dialogue that I haven't gotten around to translating that they purportedly start saying if you have the crown. Now, the darkness and therefore the cult is clearly linked to ancient Sumeria, and there's one big part about Sumeria that involves kings: The epic of Gilgamesh.

You see, Gilgamesh supposedly went down into the underworld (which we've already said is possibly the pit found at the very end of ice moon) to find...something. No one's really sure what exactly he went down there to find, but we do know that he found it and took it as a treasure. Something important to note about the ancient Sumerian underworld is that you could get in without being dead. Matter of fact, there were said to be some cities that had entrances to it, which points to the Precursor ruins actually being...an old cultist city. There are also a whole lot of rules that people in the underworld had to follow, or else they would be stuck there forever with no chance of escape save for the intervention of a god. Gilgamesh, during his little stint into the underworld, broke pretty much all of these laws at once, but managed to escape the underworld anyways because he was just that badass.

It's possible that the onyx key wasn't the only artifact that the cult decided to send down into the underworld, and they very well could have kept the obsidian crown down there as well. That could've been the very thing that Gilgamesh went down there to find, because he sure as hell seems like the type that would venture into the land of the dead for a sweet-ass crown. The crown, after his death, was probably kicking around as an old ancient artifact...but very well could've been uncovered by the folks at Hemera, and then brought to the ship for testing and as a potential catalyst for their transcendence.

There are just a few pieces I'd like to share, and they're probably some of the most important bits. According to one of the people I talked with, you can actually make a sun bee in a normal, non-disaster round. All you need to do is write "sun larva" on a moon bee egg. The person whk told me this was dead fucking serious, and I have no reason that they'd lie about something like this. Anyways, the sun bee can then be hatched and proceeds to cough up the sol key which kills the automaton, yadda yadda same shit different round type. But there's something else that happens: If you give the supposedly-dead automaton the crystal skull, you get a special message upon examining the sun, which goes something like this: "Huh... It seems to look better."

We've had it all wrong. We're not supposed to put ALL of those keys into the keyholes, we're not supposed to activate the Solarium, we're not supposed to start disaster rounds; but those cultist bastards knew that we'd do it. They knew that we'd think to put all of those keys into the receptacle for keys because...well, why wouldn't we? Putting keys into keyholes connotates unlocking a secret, which is what we've been trying to do this whole time. But blindly putting the keys into the holes with no context, no background knowledge, no proper understanding of what the hell you're even DOING aside from putting keys into holes because keys go into holes is exactly why those Darkness creatures are telling us that we're gonna end the goddamn world. There's no fixing the doomsday device once it's already started, you need to fix it before it even has the chance to activate at all...or, perhaps, we're meant to control it and harness it, unlocking its power without dooming everything.

I found a BYOND page listing all of the medals in the game, and the name for the medal supposedly given to those who achieve the good ending of Solarium is called "Master of Unlocking". In the telescience areas, you can acquire both a skeleton key and a literal skeleton key. The skeleton key is a common theme across multipke stories, and is basically a key that unlocks everything. Perhaps that is what we're meant to use, somehow, to properly unlock this good ending that we've been trying to figure out...but equally possible is the idea that a true master of unlocking knows what should remain locked, even when they have the ability to unlock it.

Make of all of this information, and the information I posted previously, as you will.

I noticed something. Alot of the clues for the good ending such as the skeletons and skulls stuff have to do with DEATH. Give a skull to the automatron and he say's a famouse line about death, you find the skeleton key in a coffin hidden beneath a graveyard, Skulls are know are symbols of death and giving a skull to a dead automatron makes the sun look better which should be about to die? Wally can hear unknown chanting but if you think about it, Buddy's were never alive, they are the closest things to living death possible. The void is filled with people trapped in a state of half death and inside it is a box that unleashes ghosts and even can send a person to the ghostly realm only to later return them.The shield of souls which looks likes it has glitter/STARS attached to it brings you back to life if you die!!!


Here's another question for you all, What is the one tele-location that doesn't contain a key? What is the one of two tele-locations (the other is the void) that has a tiny bit of back story but not enough to even get close to figuring it out unlike the other locations, What is the one tele-location that whose reward is found in a VAULT.

If you guessed mars your RIGHT! Why was mars abandoned? The only clues we get is a crashed rover with some kind of thing in it (i am guessing this is important but i have not figured it out) and a recording of the last few moments before the rocket launched except on of the people was injured, What would cause people to be so hasty to leave that they don't even bother waiting for everyone to enter the ship? Why would the captain place a kill bot in a vault that just contains gold if he doesn't even bother taking it with him. Most importantly why does the one prison cell contain the only part of all the telescience maps where the VR box is showing?


Last thing to note is that there is a hidden room on the meatstation inside the crazy person cell. One of the walls can open up if you click on it enough except there is nothing in there. An admin has confimed that it does something but why would a man who talks to angels bother to make a special room to nowhere unless he had a plan

[Abinmorth]

Now, the admins have said that there are two telesci areas we actually haven't been able to find yet, supposedly called The Vault and The Tower. Call it a red herring if you wish, but multiple details match up: First off, a while back, someone (presumably an admin) was talking in deadchat about "star children" in a secret area, but was subsequently told off by another admin for spilling secrets. The descriptions of "star children" and "luminous ones" seem to match up, which furthers evidence of a potential area that we haven't been able to find yet. Furthermore, when granted temporary powers of an admin, someone found data for two skulls we haven't found yet: A golden skull and a faceless skull. Given that skulls are probably important to the Solarium in some way, this furthers the notion that there's somewhere we haven't been yet.

The gold skull was probably a midas touched one.
As of the origins of the Faceless skull i think the examine description of the Lost Cosmonauts might give a hint here:
This is Lost Cosmonaut.
"Soviet presence near NT stations is rarely overt. For good reasons, as this fellow probably learned too late. Seriously, where is his face? Grody."
So maybe the faceless skull belongs to a cosmonaut? Is there a way to remove his skull? Or we can figure out how he became faceless in the first place?

Another interesting tidbit: Look at the automaton. More specifically, look at the coloration of its face in proportion to the rest of its body. It's awfully pale. In addition, if you wrangle Marty (the tour robot at the void) and bring him to the Solarium, he talks about the automaton makes specific mention about the paleness of its face. Either the automaton is somehow the guy with the pallid mask mentioned in the King in Yellow, or perhaps more broadly, the pallid mask is a symbol of some sort for the cult as a whole. Also, if you bring Wally (the future robuddy) to the Solarium, he mentions something about the automaton yelling at him in a strange language. This is not heard by anyone else, but can possibly be picked up by other robots...or possibly even with the myriad of wireless signals found on Solarium, which can be tapped into using ThinkDOS.

Yea I was thinking that too, that the automaton might have some relation to the king in yellow, but how do you explain that the automaton seems to be afraid of the king? (he freezes when he sees the king after reading the book)

We can hear some strange noises the automaton is making, maybe Wally is referring to those?

It's possible that the onyx key wasn't the only artifact that the cult decided to send down into the underworld, and they very well could have kept the obsidian crown down there as well. That could've been the very thing that Gilgamesh went down there to find, because he sure as hell seems like the type that would venture into the land of the dead for a sweet-ass crown. The crown, after his death, was probably kicking around as an old ancient artifact...but very well could've been uncovered by the folks at Hemera, and then brought to the ship for testing and as a potential catalyst for their transcendence.

Its possible that Gilgamesh went to find the crown - but he is buried in biodome (where he died when trying to get the armour?)
Whether or not he was successful with finding the crown, for some reason he did not wear it - if he did wear it then the crown wouldn have left any remains to bury, since the crown gibs you and only leaves a black spirit behind. There is also no evidence that he obtained both crown and armour and became a lich.

I do believe that there is more to the underworld/hellpit than we know....for very practical reasons...if we are missing some pieces of the puzzle what better place would there be to hide things than a dark pit which also has walls that rotate if you move further? Maybe we have to lighten up the darkness and/or traverse the pit on a certain path to get an item thats been hidden behind some of those walls?

There are just a few pieces I'd like to share, and they're probably some of the most important bits. According to one of the people I talked with, you can actually make a sun bee in a normal, non-disaster round. All you need to do is write "sun larva" on a moon bee egg. The person whk told me this was dead fucking serious, and I have no reason that they'd lie about something like this. Anyways, the sun bee can then be hatched and proceeds to cough up the sol key which kills the automaton, yadda yadda same shit different round type. But there's something else that happens: If you give the supposedly-dead automaton the crystal skull, you get a special message upon examining the sun, which goes something like this: "Huh... It seems to look better."

I can confirm that you can hatch the sun bee in a normal round. You don't have to give the automaton the crystal skull. The sun will change description right after you insert the sun key.
To be honest Im not quite sure what to make of the sun key.
First I have never seen the server spawn without the MOON bee present and you can only have one of the bees - unless there is a way to make another moon egg?!
But maybe thats just because the lunar keys is one of the easier keys to get, once you know how to do it.
What are the exact conditions for spawning the server? Is the moon bee and/or its key really needed or is there an alternative way?
Even if we are not to supposed to spawn the server and start the disaster round - we still have to understand the mechanics which trigger it.
What bothers me is why would the key make the sun look better if didnt go bad before.
So Im not sure if the sun egg is really supposed to be used before the disaster round.

We've had it all wrong. We're not supposed to put ALL of those keys into the keyholes, we're not supposed to activate the Solarium, we're not supposed to start disaster rounds; but those cultist bastards knew that we'd do it. They knew that we'd think to put all of those keys into the receptacle for keys because...well, why wouldn't we? Putting keys into keyholes connotates unlocking a secret, which is what we've been trying to do this whole time. But blindly putting the keys into the holes with no context, no background knowledge, no proper understanding of what the hell you're even DOING aside from putting keys into holes because keys go into holes is exactly why those Darkness creatures are telling us that we're gonna end the goddamn world. There's no fixing the doomsday device once it's already started, you need to fix it before it even has the chance to activate at all...or, perhaps, we're meant to control it and harness it, unlocking its power without dooming everything.

Maybe not all keys, but a certain combination/order of them? Of course there are too many possible combinations to figure out a good order with brute forcing so we will need more info to figure this out.

Since you mentioned the medal... its description is worded that you do the steps to "unlock" the good ending.
I was thinking that maybe you dont get the award for doing the good ending itself but for doing some preparational steps (thus "unlocking" the ending)

[Ali0en]

That medal has been in forever. Also admins lie stop taking them seriously.

[pizzatiger]

That medal has been in forever. Also admins lie stop taking them seriously.

The admins would NEVER lie!!!

[BaneOfGiygas]

Admins have the capability and willingness to lie, but to completely ignore everything they say just because they're admins and are CLEARLY messing with us is arrogant and could lead us to completely ignore something really important. I view all of the admin information as potentially true until proven false, and there's no reason why you should assume that it's false without knowing that it's false. That's dumb.

[Twoflower]

the vault is probably the biodome dark pit and isnt done yet, the tower is a wizard tower and also isnt done yet

[Aesculus]

Considering I saw a message stating that someone had gotten master of unlocking on 4 and then deduced that that message was an admin fake message I'm not sure I'd trust the admins in the solarium quest stuff stuff to really be not fucking with us. It's probably a good idea to listen to what they're saying but understand most of the time it'll be just fuckin' with us and being cryptic.

Sun bee is likely just a subclass of moon bee from the testing I did and such, the message from eating the sun bee egg is the same as eating the moon bee egg.

BaneOfGigyas I think you've put more thought into the whole lore and backstory and background of the solarium and the other things than the entire admins themselves at this point, but, to be quite frank, I'm just not seeing just how helpful that'll be. Words are nice, but... I dunno. *shrug

Do we have a main source/storage of things we know and what does what in regards to the solarium? I don't play much but if I have some info I might be able to puzzle some things out.

I guess IRC channel #sol? I set it up a while ago and then it kinda died but now it's sort of revitalized and people are talking it again!

[A4Brogan]

My plan now is to go ahead and treat the keys as artifacts: Get their readings, then go test them in the material scanners and whatnot. It may be a long-shot, but maybe we can glean slight information out of their composition.

[BaneOfGiygas]

lBaneOfGigyas I think you've put more thought into the whole lore and backstory and background of the solarium and the other things than the entire admins themselves at this point, but, to be quite frank, I'm just not seeing just how helpful that'll be. Words are nice, but... I dunno. *shrug

I myself concede this, but I'm doing this for three reasons:

1. Knowing why the puzzle exists and the backstory behind a puzzle can be integral into being able to comprehensively understand it, and it might reveal important pieces that we might be unable to discover otherwise.

2. I'm throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks. Being able to figure out what is lore and what is important to the puzzle is why I'm tossing around so much pure STUFF. Most of it will likely be useless, but hopefully, at least one of the myriad of things I'm talking about will be important.

3. I find all of this to be really cool and I suck at puzzles so this is my way to feel like I'm helping.

[popecrunch]

Three

[BaneOfGiygas]

God dammit popecrunch what are you counting down to.

[Xeram]

Pope if you're counting down by day as it seems you should be on two now.

[A4Brogan]

Last thing to note is that there is a hidden room on the meatstation inside the crazy person cell. One of the walls can open up if you click on it enough except there is nothing in there. An admin has confimed that it does something but why would a man who talks to angels bother to make a special room to nowhere unless he had a plan

Get the Picks and Slag Shovels men. We are going on a dig.

[Silvercloud29]

The void has a few new things added to it.... Like this WEIRD complicated contraption which I NEVER seen before till today. I don't know when it was added actually. Then there is a space with a bed that used to be a rusted airlock, now its open. There is pen writing everywhere. One of the pen marks says 'imcoder" like the Jan 05 update about medals I ASSUME from a new admin (Since I never seen the name before)
Anyway, picture of the contraption...