The Starbound Iceberg

Hey everyone,

I was supposed to share this here months ago but I kept forgetting. I've been compiling points to create what I would like to imagine may end up as a definitive Starbound iceberg, covering points ranging from in-game details, to beta content, to theorycrafting and lore. Below I've posted every point I have so far. Note that these are in alphabetical order and have not yet been properly sorted into tiers of obscurity:

Agarans are a threat to the universe
Agaran boss
All-Seeing Cape
Anodynes
Artifact names (Bone Trophy/Mirror of Wisdom/Wheel of Kluex/Genesis Coil/Regal Medallion/Master Manipulator)
Asra - Esther reconciliation
Avali
Beautiful Attempt!
Big Ape
Bone Dragon isn't made of bone
Brian
Chest Trapper
ChuckTheFish
Cosmic Intruders outside of Cyberspace
Drysap created the Agarans
Drysap is a super soldier drug
Floran/Hylotl racism
"Gather 8 Mangy Wolf Pelts"
Glitch animals
Glitch hivemind
Greenfinger
Heartforge/Toymaker's Table
Heck Biome
Hiraki Corale
Humans and penguins trapped in crystal
Insidious mask
Kluex is real
Letheia Corporation
Minibosses
"monument to removed felin fur colors RIP"
Mysterious Armor
Numi
Old fuel (uranium/plutonium)
Old battle music
Old bosses (Jelly Boss, Fatal Circuit, Tentacomet)
Old materials (Cerulium, Rubium, Impervium)
Old racial openings
Old tech system
On the Beach at Night
Perfectly Generic Item
Project Parasprite
Racial weapons
Red Panda
Sectors
Some indescribable horror
Starbound is a story about breaking the cycle of hatred
Tentacle biome
The Cultivator
The bunny
The Dantalion
The eighth race
The Starbound Chronicle
Thornwing
USCM abandoned their convicts
Unidentified Fossil
Warmth (+ Frost Legion armor)
Waz(?)
Why the Novakids didn't recieve an artifact

If you would like to add to this list, or if you need an explanation for any of these, please feel free to chip in. I understand this is already a lot of points to fit on an iceberg, so I'm not expecting to see it finished any time soon.

 

This is great, but some of these are a bit weird (to me personally) but then again I am not too much still aware of this iceberg fad that is going on in full detail so maybe these topics make sense to be included or not, I am not one to judge on that.

But can't help and still be weirded out by WAZ, Waz was a nickname of one dev. Wiki quote: "Waz" is a reference to former Chucklefish developer Rhopunzel, who used the phrase often.

The weirdest thing is that she kept saying that even tho there were few horror movies with this name WAZ stylized as WΔZ. Which to be honest is quite in poor taste at that, quite morbid, so why she chose to say that over and over is beyond me and odd when you connect to these things. It's kinda off putting. Maybe that is why it was removed too at one point. At least I don't remember being displayed in new games (it's still in the game files tho).

It use to be displayed at random then more over in nasty places like the colony prison.

Also WΔZ is related to a price's equation or Price's theorem which describes how a trait or allele changes in frequency over time. The equation uses a covariance between a trait and fitness, to give a mathematical description of evolution and natural selection. It provides a way to understand the effects that gene transmission and natural selection have on the frequency of alleles within each new generation of a population. The Price equation was derived by George R. Price, working in London to re-derive W.D. Hamilton's work on kin selection. Examples of the Price equation have been constructed for various evolutionary cases. The Price equation also has applications in economics.
The expression "survival of the fittest" which is actually self-evident, given the mathematical definitions of "survival" and "fittest".

But the symbol itself left a bad taste after was more known to be used by satanists and some extremists thruout the history. Hence why it was also used in said movies since it covers the same thematics.

The same movies were banned all over the place by now I doubt you will casually find it and even then you will probably find one that is also heavily cut.

So there, those are my two cents on that topic alone.

 

It's still present in the USCM penal colonies, rather fitting for such dark places if you ask me.

Anyways, I'm pretty familiar with the majority of this stuff for the iceberg here (a lot of it falls under beta lore and content pretty much), although I can't say I'm familiar with the Agaran Boss, Kluex is real, the 8th race, and Frost Legion armor, so I'd be interested in hearing about them. I'm surprised that the Avioscale fossil hasn't been included though.

For my own contributions, I know that the outpost scan quest actually enables unique dialogue for human npcs, just like how the other scan quests do so for their own applicable races (said dialogue grants temporary points towards the clues, locked in as permanent if the scanning is completed before moving on to another planet), that there was a codex that was briefly in one of the betas that was basically a preview of an early draft of what's now canon lore (including some familiar concepts such as the Protectorate and Ancients, but also ideas that would be decided against such as having Dreadwing be the name of a pirate faction and there being some sort of generic Federation organization), that the alpha iteration of the game was already quite different to even the beta, with different lore even (check out the "meet the races" posts on the Starbound blog, as well as the Abridged History of the Avians), that there was an older design for the Solus Katana's upgrade as seen here during the 1.2 unstable builds, during the 1.3 unstable builds there was a debug mech arm used for removing the mech after use (as for a time it just despawning when the player would beam away wasn't implemented yet), and in the 1.4 unstable builds there were random events. There's also a fair amount of disabled/unused content in the files as well that might be worth mentioning as well. Oh, also contrary to popular belief, Novakid are hardlight energy being instead of gas bags, at least if the Novakid description of the Ancient Light Platform is to be believed.

There's also a few things that are fan submissions, mostly via contests, the include the Novakid species, Poptops, the virorb, mindworm, and bad goo plushies, 5 codices found within the grand pagoda library (the ones with names in their descriptions), and many of the game's hats. Many other hats and also unique weapons were also designed by backers too, and it'd be a disservice to forget about the three rare backer statues in the game as well. On a somewhat related note, the Defense Turret was originally just a mod, but when its author (Healthire) became a developer, he was able to incorporate his mod into base game.

It's interesting to hear the story be about breaking the cycle of hatred, I've always seen it as one about unity versus fear in the face of disaster, but I suppose that breaking the cycle of violence is another valid interpretation of it (certainly helps give me even more appreciation of it!) On the topic of the storyline actually, it's worth noting that all of the character's allied to the player have names that either relate to the word light or are associated with some positive concept, whereas Asra Nox's is obviously related to darkness, further still Asra Nox is a dark mirror to the player, not just in how she has her own ship, mech, techs, and unique energy blade as well as a faction she calls her own, but in her backstory which mirror's how the player has lost everything from the destruction of Earth as well as having guidance from Esther.

As one last thing, I've got an entire doc of theories and headcanons regarding Starbound's lore here if you'd like to take a look at it! A lot of it is built on extrapolation and speculation, but the artifacts and their abilities (something heavily hinted at by both the Master Manipulator, and the fact that the artifacts are so culturally important), anti-races, and the idea of the Terrene Protectorate being a branch to a larger government (as evidenced by the fact that the human flag is notably not the Protectorate one, and that the Protectorate itself doesn't feel like a fully-fledged government alone) should all be of interest to you.

 

Great mentions and yes I would like to read into it one day. So share away whenever possible.

I will just add to the mod / dev comment, that basically most things pretty much started as mods that later got edited and became canon items etc.
Some were scrapped for the same reason. Drama over content and people's mindsets. Some moders became devs, then didn't got paid etc so some content was cut changed etc so it can be basically legally stated how their content isn't used anymore therefore they can't complain anymore. But there is a lot more then that. The entire development of this game is a rolercoaster ride and rabbit hole on it's own self, all the builds and the final build pretty much proves the same case in point. It boils my brain just thinking about it what happened in 10 years xD

 

Got the doc right here! Do bear in mind that a lot of this is headcanons rather than proper theories, if you're wondering about the inclusion of (implemented) denotations by some of them, it's because I've actually been incorporating many of these into my own mods, particularly Project Redemption!

And yeah, the development of the game was kinda messy (especially in the early years), although I think that's become a bit overstated as of late, especially with some things falling into the telephone game such as the whole contributor situation that led to the 2019 drama.

 

Do you think it might interest the Spanish-speaking fandom?

Maybe Kluex is the cultivator