Lore Bits: Mushroom Rocks Part 1

[Shyruni 41]

So today I'm doing a little bit of an environmental lore study of Mushroom Rocks.  Obviously without any translation there's a limit to what we can understand about the region, but there is a lot one can gather through simple observation and curiosity.  I am focusing primarily on the East portion of Mushroom Rocks since it's the most interesting to me at the moment and has the most interesting bits to look at.

So what is Mushroom Rocks?  Well, it's a largely rural area where everything is mushrooms.  Trees, plants, structures, even some of the enemies are based around mushrooms.  It has a heavy autumn feel to it with a lot of red and yellow-ish green along with a sky that seems to look like a constant sunrise.  It's probably one of my favorite places in the game, although that's not saying much about since I am very fond of DBO's general environments.  There's some rather...colorful characters hanging around as well.

However, a closer look at the environment begins to reveal...something very strange about this mushroom jungle, and no, not just the bikini-wearing beetle.  Metal pipes can be found embedded in the sides of hills, strange water-tower-like structures with "FUEL" written on them can be found, construction robots consist of a fairly decent portion of the enemies in the East, and there's piles of junk and toxic waste just lying around.  What exactly is going on here?

After searching the area and stumbling upon a factory, I have deduced that for some unknown reason, the mushrooms of the region seem to be a valuable resource.  Crates of "processed mushrooms" can be found lying around, silos with mushroom images plastered on them, and whatever is going on here seems to be a full scale factory operation.  While there are old vehicles lying around, there are almost no people to be seen, the factory seemingly entire run by robots without any form of insignia on them.  Many of them look terribly rusted and moss-covered, and others are labelled in the current odd translation as "overworked", implying that these robots have been running this place for quite some time and seem to have little to no personal maintenance.  Even the factory itself is poorly maintained, but it seems to be running pretty much nonstop regardless.

What appears to be going on here is some form of deforestation operation, where the mushrooms are being taken from the environment and used as some important resource for some company.  It's hard to judge exactly how devastating it has been to the environment as the forest seems to remain pretty large for the most part, but there's definitely still a fair bit of waste, fences, and other things around, suggesting that whoever is running this operation cares very little for how it affects the region. 

The obvious question this begs is...who is running this operation?  An easy answer would seem to be Capsule Corp, due to the ships with their name sort of on it as well as having a Capsule Museum somewhere nearby.  It might be that the mushrooms have something to do with the development of Capsules themselves, which would explain why these mushrooms are such a valuable and highly sought after resource.  The mushrooms could also be some kind of fuel, due to the silos labelled "FUEL" found around the area, or perhaps some form of fast food delicacy.  That being said, there is little DIRECT proof of Capsule Corp's involvement outside of name on the ships, would could honestly just mean it's a ship made by Capsule Corp and not used by them since...Capsule Corp makes pretty much everything.

What is REALLY strange and interesting of what I found was that there are SOME signs of the Red Pants army either having been stationed here or actively being stationed here.  The only main source I could find was an abandoned tent, but it is a really weird thing considering that the Red Pants generally aren't found around this area, and the base is on the literal other side of the world map?  Were they here at some point and then kicked out?  Is this their factory run from afar to help support the main base and thus that's why the mushrooms are shipped by sea?   While it doesn't explain everything, this as well makes some sense and imo is about as equally likely as Capsule Corp being directly involved themselves.

As for other possibilities?  There's always Mira but I...highly doubt it.  Mira uses very futuristic and alien-looking tech, so a rundown factory run by regular construction robots doesn't really seem like the work of his army, although I can't really disprove of it either.  It could also just be some standalone human-run factory, but given the importance of the commodity it's unlikely that it's just a small-time business...but once again, it's still possible. 

Overall the romp through this part of Mushroom Rocks was interesting, and it was fun to see what I could piece together.  I hope you all enjoyed reading, and maybe learned a thing or two. DBO has a lot of details you might miss if you don't take a closer look sometimes, and you can find some truly interesting details the creators threw in.  They were passionate about Dragon Ball after all.

[B4D4SS 120]

The Detail this game holds can be truly marvelous. It's so sad that it doesn't get the love it deserves.

 

Awesome topic, well deserved like as well. Thank you for sharing.

 

Have fun,

B4D4SS