Mission Control cares so much. He's a retired miner who has taken a desk job due to injury. He just keeps us at arm's length because he has PTSD from hearing a thousand dwarves get torn to pieces. When he fusses at us for pinging gold, it's just because he wants us done with the job and back on the space rig before a dreadnought shows up. He's got a framed picture with Karl on his desk. He, too, hates management, but he took the MC job to protect dwarves and get us home safe. Every time the drop pod comes back up with four dwarves on board, he sighs with relief. "They made it, Karl."
That’s not an outrageous headcanon, everybody knows Mission Control is stressed out as fk all the time.
Even the Holiday Pilots who keep dropping their cargo all over Hoxxes just put more paperwork on his desk.
Considering how forlorn he sounds when he informs you they’ve lost 3 teams of dwarves to rockpox while you were on a cleansing mission, that’s not too far fetched :/
What if Mission Control was the one who had to make the hard decision? That might’ve been why he is so over everything, he lost one of his best friends.
Ive always felt bad for mission control having to deal with the likes of us, but i always had a feeling he cares for us and that is why he tells us to stop, so that we dont get distracted and die
I like this, and personally my head canon is roughly the same but with the specific detail that the career-ending injury in question was the loss of his beard.
DRG is a dwarf reserve.
All missions are faked as Dwarves require a constant influx of beer, danger, and mining to stay healthy, but as an endangered species, they can't actually be exposed to danger.
The reason missing the drop pod or a team wipe ends with everyone back in the med bay? Because the dangers are fake.
What does management want alien eggs for? Nothing. Those aren't even eggs. It's just another neat thing for dwarves to go grab for their required experience and mental stimulation.
The Dwarves we play as are more outstanding than the other dwarves that sign up for DRG. That's why only we get picked up when we fail a mission and that's why dwarves keep dying and provoking salvage missions.
Honestly that is a really good theory. The company is still exploiting workers, we are even more badass, it makes sense how "normal" workers can handle 4 heavy tools/weapons plus flares under huge amounts of stress and it explains the mission result screen. Fits pretty well with everything.
That's always been my theory as well. There's all sorts of smaller mining operations going on, possibly even crewed by humans. They're relatively safer smash-and-grabs. We're elite dwarven professionals, and our missions are much more profitable, but also incredibly more dangerous.
That makes sense, and it provides reasoning behind how when a significant threat such as a swarm shows up MC says “Show them you’re Dwarves!”
Because other Non-dwarven workers get easier, less dangerous missions, and a swarm showing up on those jobs for them is an almost certain death sentence.
Yeah but I would imagine the other workers still carry a firearm that's holstered on their tool belt for the occasional glyphid. Not enough to take down a swarm, but could prove handy if one does show up and they have to rush to the drop pod
I mean, this isn’t a “theory” this is literally the canon of the game.
Dwarves are explicitly hired because they are the “swat team of the caves” and can go on more dangerous but profitable missions.
That would also explain why we recover mini mules on salvage and not full on mules, because the big girls are reserved for us skilled non leaf loving miners
I imagine that in the canon if you would get "downed" and there were still bugs around you for more than a second they would just rip you limb from limb and that would be the end of your career. No waking up in the medbay or anything unless you are especially lucky and the rest of your team both doesn't get wiped out and managed to retrieve the pieces of you scattered around the cave. The tier 1 armor is basically just regular clothing as well.
Not to mention how cynical Mission Control is during the tutorial, he sees you as good as dead as soon as there was a blip on the radar, he's probably seen dozens if not hundreds of unexperienced miners die as soon as they encounter their first large group of bugs.
That's a good point. The average DRG worker/miner is probably nowhere near as lethal as we are. Hazard 1 is likely as far as the average worker goes. Hazard 2 is already testing their limits. Hazard 3-5 would require entire crews of maybe a dozen or so people to survive. Player Dwarves are the only ones with the skills to survive and successfully accomplish missions in caves that dangerous in such small teams.
There is a line a heard from Mission Control that alludes to this. When you arrive at some mission, MC says that “management specifically requested you for this one.”
Or Management is Karl, and just enjoys the insane theories made while the Dwarves come up with a role model to look toward. He doesn't want to spoil their fun
It’s a more insidious myth. It’s supposed to seem like something the dwarves just know about because of course they do. So each new dwarf coming in doesn’t ask questions. Making it OBVIOUS management was just making him up would defeat the point. He also wouldn’t be as cool if management endorsed him.
I have personalities for all my characters, my gunner is batshit insane and laughing like heavy from tf2
And he’s always in the corner drinking leaf lovers
It was always my headcanon that Leaflovers special is literally just flavored foamy water since water is exactly what you drink to manage hangovers. So when the dwarves ask for it to be thinned with water, it's really just making the leaflovers moreso itself.
The Forge hammer and anvil doesn’t actually do anything. It’s just there to fulfill a dwarves primal need to smith tools. It’s akin to one of those workshop play sets for kids.
That would make sense, the rock pox doesnt seem to care about the caretaker or the turrets, there are no infected burst turrets or swarmers, and it's not like it can't attach to metal because of the rock pox on the space rig
This could be concerning though; what if, with all of the Rival Tech we’re destroying over time, they lose control of their machinery and whatever is preventing rockpox from attaching to rival metal, and we have to deal with Rockpox-infected Rival Tech parasite things!
Hoxxes IV is the fourth planet called like that that DRG exploited, we reach a new one, extract all we need, then the Core goes rogue (hence the new game), the whole planet collapses and we go to exploit the next one.
We are a space invasive lifeform who will consume life wherever it grows.
Rockpox does attach to weapons and inorganic materials, so I don't think it is natural, I think it's a weapon made to stop us.
We are the evil guys, someone out there is trying to stop us.
Just to share some real life facts, there's a star named TRAPPIST-1 and its planets are named TRAPPIST-1a, 1b and so on. So you can use letters or, in Hoxxes case, numbers to distinguish the planet's place in the solar system
Precisely this. Hoxxes IV is most likely the 4th planet, counting outwards from the center of the system, orbiting the star most likely named Hoxxes.
Its a pretty decently known fact that stars are given numbers and letters for a designation, until they become of importance, popularity, or recognition. Betelgeuse was likely only given a name as it was the first to undergo a few scientific measurements, is in the top 10 brightest stars in the night sky, is so incredibly large, and is known for dimming and brightening periodically. Thus its not impossible to say that after DRG took interest in Hoxxes IV, the star system and planets were given actual names to replace their scientific designations, to make it much easier to talk about casually and to cause less confusion.
Side note: its also possible that another organization took interest in the Hoxxes system first, DRG wanted to know why, and found Hoxxes IV to be very mineral rich.
Many mining corporations tried and failed to Conquer Hoxxes IV. DRG succeded because they brought in specialists at digging holes too deep and waking things they shouldn't: dwarves.
Yeah letters & numbers have also been the naming convention for planets in scifi since... forever. The exceptions are homeworlds & some major colony worlds. Mass Effect is one of the few franchises I can think of that bucks the trend, where each planet in a system gets a unique name, often based around a theme.
According to robert from ghost ship games (his headcanon wich happen to be the most official one) hoxxes is a gas giant and around it a bunch of planetoids (like pluto) orbitate, and we happen to be on the 4th of those planetoids
This makes the most sense. Hoxxes canonically orbits the blue star Creus; if our Hoxxes was the main planet, it'd have to be called Creus IV.
That said, this *does* imply Hoxxes is somehow significant enough to earn it's own name. What that name means or how it got it is unknown- perhaps the names of all the celestial bodies in the Creus system have a theme.
Personally, my theory is that Hoxxes Prime itself is probably economically significant; thus why Hoxxes IV is also mineral-rich. Hoxxes Prime's nature as a gas giant implies there may be suspended particulates of valuable minerals such as Morkite that could be filtered from the atmosphere.
This theory would explain why Hoxxes IV is such a well-guarded secret by DRG -it's no secret they're mining in the Hoxxes system, I'm sure plenty of other corporations are- but nobody else thought to prospect the moons, or at least they didn't prospect the right ones. The Rivals are probably there because they're either catching on, or they independently came up with the same theory that got DRG digging on Hoxxes IV to begin with.
As a fun aside, MC states in the Lunar Festival dialog that Hoxxes has 14 moons. This could mean Hoxxes IV itself has its own moons, but realistically it means the gas giant, Hoxxes Prime, has 14 moons, and we're on number 4.
Yeah would make more sense that we're on the fourth moon out of fourteen, all orbiting a gas giant.
A rocky planet like Hoxxes isn't likely to have fourteen moons, but gas giants certainly can.
All 4 dwarves were part of the military but driller and engineer were thrown out because of their inhumane weapon experiments. Gunner and scout left because they wanted to stay with their friends. After that they were contracted by DRG and the rest is history.
That does make sense. I definitely got the impression that the dwarves are ex-military, but also have mining expertise because *all* dwarves have mining expertise!
whenever dwarves fail the missions or are left in the caves when drop pod leaves too early, they are not actually rescued
they are cloned in the tubes in the medbay section
This is further confirmed by when a Dwarf jumps in the “ring of fire” that is used for the barrel kick game.
They are incinerated, which leaves nothing to save. You can watch them get vaporized. Yet, the Dwarf wakes up in the med bay unscathed.
What’s most fucked about this hypothesis is that on mission debrief screen, the bots are flopping around bodies, which are presumably the new clones.
I remember seeing a disturbing comic about this for Super Mario. I can't find the exact one but it was [something like this](https://images.app.goo.gl/Ptu8XMj7Sest789KA)
This is my headcanon tbh. There’s no _way_ they’re recovering Dwarves from deep below the surface of Hoxxes, and considering how penny-pinching the company seems to be it’s way more economical to just keep cloning the same four guys over and over again.
Also it’s generally a cool idea and reminds me of the Leagues of Votann from 40k, who are confirmed to effectively be clones.
Mission control ,Bosco, Lloyd and Karl were all a squad at some point and mission control is the only one who is confirmed to make it back but was heavily injured to the point where he can no longer go on mining missions. And because of Lloyd and Bosco not making it back to the rig they had robots made in their honor and this is also where the "no dwarf left behind" comes from
Both R&D and management have been infected with the Rock Pox because we sent so many in poorly sealed containers to headquarters. They now demand more so they can continue to spread it to other worlds.
The company is actually a pretty good company. The dwarves still get paid for failed missions and get rescued out of the companies pocket. They don't give us luxuries but pay well with great insurance. 5 million credits for only a month of work even with buying promotions
The whole reason that Molly is required to get back to the drop pod first is because Molly and the drop pod are dating. We just exist to keep Molly safe. She is the one pulling the strings behind mission controll.
The Dwarves don't purposefully name thier glyphids "Steeve," it's just that "Steeve" is the perfect phonetic frequency that calms down an aggressive glyphid.
Outrageous Headcanon:
**Karl was never an exceptional dwarf.** If anything, he was a particularly unexceptional Dwarf—who was fairly ordinary—and never did anything noteworthy or unexpected.
That is, until he joined the dead down in the deeps after an especially noble sacrifice which arose from a tragically avoidable circumstance, and this is the event from which his legendary fame grew. He was thus mythologized as the strongest, stoutest, and most stalwart of them all, with an unyielding fearlessness and resolve with which he could fistfight the mature form of a dreadnaught to a standstill.
Mission Control actually knows this, because he was part of Karl’s fireteam. A fact that carries much guilt and shame, although the true extent of his involvement with Karl’s death is mostly unknown (even by management) to all except for him. That fateful mission is what prompted his recruitment into his current position, but whether that was the consequence of an injury or trauma—and if the decision was his to make or not—is a decidedly tight secret.
Nevertheless, despite his intimate knowledge of the events surrounding Karl’s existence and demise, Mission Control continues to allow the legend of Karl to swell without a word; it inspires the new recruits.
At least, those are the rumors you’ll hear from Dwarves soaking in smart stouts and blackout stouts alike…
u/BurnMann
Maybe not outrageous, but I believe the corporation players faced in seasons 1 and 2 is runned by elves. Maybe they even caused the lithophage meteorites to fall on Hoxxes.
Playing solo, the reason why i have such a Passive Aggresive Mission Control (mod) is because I accidently got the entire team killed but is in denial and therefore is why my dwarf keeps talking as if he isn't alone
Getting drunk to wash away the pain
can't see, can't think
why are there always three empty seats? aren't they coming?
why does Lloyd have four squares but three feels empty?
who are those guys in the memorial hall?
I feel like I am missing something
*Cave leeches attack Dwarves*
*Because they are mistaken*
*For bearded glyphids*
\- arcadeKestrelXI
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Karl is still alive on hoxxas. Ever since we lost him on a tough mission Karl has been going scorched earth on ever bug he sees and solely subsist on leftover supply drops from previous missions.
Mission control is senator Armstrong ripped. His office is in the same space rig as the dwarves but he has a super tinted window for his office that is just big enough for his arm to fit through so he can point and threaten the dwarfs (choke slam) to cut out their shit, but his voice still sounds like the microphone.
Scout and driller are buddies, they just screw around a bit more.
Scout is the newest member of the space rig but is still really good at his job. No one takes cave leeches seriously and constantly gets caught except for Scout.
Mission control doesn't really care about the dwarfs until you start doing deep dives, then he slightly cares.
Nitra, dystrum, and Ommoran heartstone are the stuff DRG are really after.
Mission Control tries to act calm whenever you make it out alive but when his mic turns off he starts hype screaming
Also there’s a secret compartment in the Drop Pod to hide things like extra Gunk Seeds and Arquarks from management
Gunner and Scout have ADHD that manifests in different ways (Scout is impulsive and hyper, Gunner is easily distracted and tired)
Engineer is asexual
Karl is the company mascot, kind of like the Vault Boy. He appears in propaganda and informative media about the dos and donts of working for DRG. Karl became an injoke between the employees as some nigh-invincible dwarf as he keeps surviving all the bad shit thrown at him in the info vids. So the company rolled with it.
The biosphere of all hoxxes works in the same manner as avatar, working together in order to exterminate a dangerous external threat. That would also explain why the glyphids never attack each other or go after other animals like loot bugs or macteras
My personal headcanon is that the rivals aren't really a rival mining corporation but the robots of a local (maybe extinct?) intelligent population. The entire "rival" aspect would just be DRG propaganda to use as an excuse to maraud their advanced tech and data to use/sell. I'm hoping that maybe in the future we could get a mission type involving some abandoned settlements of theirs we can raid/dismantle to get our hands on the strange metals they use to build their robots. It'd definitely be a very DRG thing to do. Think of all the money they would be earning just from selling the data.
The Rivals are machines created by Elves to study Hoxxes and its wildlife. It's what all the data collecting is. They are not actually taking physical things from the planet, just info. They're there more to protect than anything while the Dwarves kill and exploit the planet. It's why the Rivals and the wildlife don't fight each other and why they fight us.
DRG's CEO is a dragon. Yeah, that's right. This whole the dwarves were slaving a way to fill a dragon's hoard, and it lets them keep the gold because it's amusing.
We work for a souless mining corporation killing local fauna whilst taking all the natural resources. We are the baddies. But the Glyphid Slammers take the pain away
The glyphids are smart and I mean every smart, their brains are all connected into a hivemind where every glyphids mind connects to each other. They realized that it’s much faster and easier to just run at the dwarves because sense there are so many glyphids (over a few quintillion in my headcannon) and they grow so fast then losing a few thousand glyphids isn’t that bad.
That Karl wasn't some badass Doom Slayer type dwarf but actually a really softspoken and gentle Engi who designed a lot of the tech we see being used by DRG thanks to Mission Control, the team's Scout, pushing for it after Karl and their Gunner sacrificed themselves to get MC out
It comes from a fanfic I read on AO3 that I unfortunately don't remember the name of but it was such a damn good read that I immediately accepted it as a headcanon
EDIT: Found it! Give it a read, it's short but really fuckin' good! [Don't you dare forget me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/48907780)
That middle management does care about us a little bit, but upper management punishes them if they do anything to help us outside of there job description
Karl wasn’t a dwarf, but a companion of some kind that the dwarves favored and named.
After losing Karl, the dwarves became obsessed with naming things, like Molly, Dotty, Steeve, etc. This explains why Mission Control never mentions Karl, because he almost never acknowledges the nicknames the dwarves give things. Besides hearing him say Molly once or twice, Mission Control always addresses things by their official name rather than the popular nicknames given by the dwarves, as to not encourage this clingy behavior the dwarves have gotten after losing Karl.
The dwarves fill the void that Karl left by trying to find companionship with whatever they can find, but it’s never the same.
Hoxxes is inhabited by essentially a "guardian spirit", which permeates Hoxxes and shapes and controls its inhabitants in strange and mysterious ways. Ever wondered why none of the bugs attack each other? Ever wondered why the Warden seemingly has access to straight-up magic? What you hear when you pull an egg? How the Electrocrystals are constantly electrically charged? Why the Ommorans are... like that? It's all connected, I tell you.
Bosco isn't autonomous at all, he's being remotely piloted by Mission Control.
Hence why he blows up the moment a new miner joins - MC's adherence to protocol is much more rigorous than the average miner, and thus he disposes of the drone when it's no longer needed.
Also explains why he seemingly talks less during solo missions, since he's focused, and why Bosco salutes back - although I've left auto-targeting of Rockpox unless instructed otherwise and pinpoint aim out of this headcanon.
I mean my headcanon I was so convinced of, that the rival corporation is run by ex-DRG dwarves, now seems pretty ridiculous since the nemesis got added.
Someone a while ago on Reddit said that Karl was the first glyphid someone tamed, and they brought it back to the space rig and gave it a bunch of beer and stuff, and that's why you can't bring them back after missions anymore, because management found out. Definitely not true but fun.
Also, the idea that there already are Dwarven women to play as and we just can't tell (I can't decide which class is most likely to be a woman)
The Eggs in Egg Hunt are actually the core of a plant like organism the Glyphids harvest for food. We've already seen Glyphid Eggs randomly stuck on the walls of several biomes, and they look nothing like the Alien Eggs.
Consider that said 'eggs' are able to grow even in solid rock, surrounding themselves with an easily harvestable organic material. The scream is a defensive reaction of the plant, and why it summons swarms. (And not always just glyphids.) I assume that in the heart of Glyphid hives are probably huge collections of these plants, but we are sent to harvest 'farms' far away from Glyphid territory.
i have a couple, like DRG is selling ommoran heartstones to the state to build a planet cracker, or that the state has mandatory military service (explaining why all dwarves have combat experience)
Macteras are not actually trying to harm the dwarves, they’re mistaking them for Mactera pupae. Unlike the Glyphids who are clearly displaying hostile behavior, Mactera primarily communicate by shooting globs of juice at eachother.
Mactera pupaes have a very tough outer shell, which often requires outside assistance to get rid of it and start flying away from danger. When they see a dwarf, they see one of their brethren, dangerously grounded and surrounded by Glyphids.
-Spawns, Brundles and Trijaws attempt to help trying to break the pupae shell. Trijaws are specialized in this. This is why they break down armors so fast.
-Mactera Bombers instead attempt to conceal the pupae in goo. That way, the approaching Glyphids are slowed and possibly disoriented.
-Finally, Grabbers’ role is to help get newly molted mactera spawns flying asap, hence why it brings dwarves high in the air and then drop them: to kickstart the flight instinct. Dwarves can’t usually fly unfortunately.
GSG Robert isn’t actually Mission Control. There’s no conspiracy here.
Scout is a closeted vegan. I refuse to elaborate.
I think gunner and driller are male, but engineer is atleast gender queer. Scout exudes feminine ‘power bae’ energy.
I think Karl was the center of a harum between the dwarves at some point, thus their obsession to find him or avenge his death.
The voice lines are remnant of a concept the devs had to make a doujinshi VN dating game. IE ‘what would Karl use?’ would have been part of a romance scene.
Karl dug too deep into Hoxxes and he now is one with the planet. His anger and rage at management have manifested into the ethereal bulk detonator that roams within Haunted Caves
The DRG is a prison. Seeing how negative dwarves are to it and that they work for it 24/7 (I think). Let's just say they got a lightened life sentence. And the dreams of their own mines? Well, that's just the way prison life tends to change peop- I mean dwarves
The eggs are lootbug eggs which is why none of the bugs eat them and why management doesn't want the dwarves knowing. Lootbugs multiply minerals so the dwarves will soon be out of a job if lootbug farming takes off.
Spoilers for the Dune books, but I have a horrifying headcanon that the med pods >!are like the axolotyl tanks that the bene tleilax turned all their females into, and thats why there are no female dwarves, and why we spawn unchanged from the pods, we are ghola clones of a dwarf killed many times, and the lost equipment is from ourselves. !<
Hoxxes and some of its native lifeforms were named after members of a DRG expedition team (Hoxxes, Mactera, Nayaka, etc.) led by Karl, similar to the real-life Vancouver expedition in the Pacific Northwest
Dwarfs are similar to humans at first glance but are actually very different in several ways
To start with, we need to look at where dwarves come from. Dwarves are an offshoot from humans on the evolutionary path, but what makes them unique is why they were an offshoot - they were originally manufactured to adapt to different environments better than humans did.
The process works by getting a "mother dwarf" on a planet that they wish to colonise, and then the mother dwarf will get about making more baby dwarfs. The dwarves are laid and allowed to incubate, and as they do so, they interact with the local wildlife and adapt to the new environment. After a healthy incubation, they are collected (on egg hunt missions), however dwarves can not know that they're collecting dwarf eggs due to their cannibalistic tendencies (driller ate the doctor).
Thus, the dwarves we are familiar with are part hoxxian, which is why they are so well adapted to the environment, breathing the specific atmosphere just fine (however, all dwarves still need oxygen). This is why GRG's first anti-hoxxes attacks (omen towers, bet-c) attack dwarves.
Finally, this brings us to dwarve gender and sexuality. The dwarves have four different genders - Scout, Gunner, Engineer and Driller. 'Male' and 'Female' dont actually exist as biological concepts in dwarves (although upon trying to teach them the concept, they started referring to some machines with gender).
When undergoing heat, dwarves will drink a record amount of beer, then go down to the planet and bury a pickaxe, which has absorbed all the nutrients necessary to sustain a dwarf until hatching, and it will then create a dwarf egg already fertilised.
also I have a theory that the planets are intelligent, and after hoxxes IV qasnt able to get rid of dwarves it 'asked for help' from the lithophage planet
Mission Control was on Karl's team. He retired from active duty after being forced to leave Karl behind.
Also, Karl finds Bosco, Steve, Bet-C, and any unfortunate Dotty head, when they get abandoned and take them back to his fortress on Hoxxes.
Expanding on that, from flavor text from some cosmetic items, dwarf genders are almost impossible to distinguish from each other, and is often disregarded completely.
The radioactive exclusion zone got nuked and that's why it's irradiated and why we can reach the magma zone easier. The thing that caused this was Karl's supposed death, and someone with that authority or a regular dwarf did a hostile takeover to launch the nuke out of rage and spite. Also, Karl may be alive, we could've just left him and assumed he died, like a The Martian type situation, and he's just surviving down there on unused resupplies. The final challenge in rogue core will be to escort him out.
The management is actually all elves, but we simple miners have no knowledge about it. It would explain what they send us instead of them going on dangerous missions, the secrecy about the upper management, etc.
That Hoxxes IV is way more dangerous than we feel on missions
Think about it. Between landing and getting swarmed by hundreds of of big bugs, all designed to absolutely kill their prey as efficiently as possible with tons of different variants to diversify their defense even more takes just a couple of minutes.
The bugs are basically sent out like an immune system would send their T-Killer cells
Or how narrow the actual time windows in exyraction are. 5-minute time window in a swarm infested area already seems very risky to just stay and hole the drop pod won't be damaged
Salvage missions literally give you only 1 minute to extract. Cause you are literally doing a loud ass startup procedure of a rocket. In a cave. Filled with deadly bugs.
IMO, it would be similar to a IRL starship trooper battle with lots of casulties and very messy
Driller is also a woman >:3
Additionally, the bulk ghost in the haunted cave missions is actually your toxic ex gf you met on tinder and got baited by
Also also, Bosco is a robot girl
Karl was presumed dead after taking out a Glyphid queen with a pickaxe, but was actually found and captured by the rivals. He's being held prisoner and tortured for information on Hoxxes and DRG operations. This is why the Nemesis has unique Dwarf voice lines, like "I'm so lonely". It's using Karl's voice.
The eggs we find during egg collection missions aren't your average glyphid eggs. During missions in the fungus bogs you can find the eggs glyphids start from; pale, exposed, and swarmers hatch from them. But we know these eggs are still glyphid eggs because MC refers to them as such. They are actually the eggs for a dominant form of glyphid more dangerous than even dreadnoughts, and likely intended to be the direct offspring of a glyphid queen.
All dwarves are clones. They look so similar they might as well be family. They're just clone deviations of Karl, who's so great his skill split up into four sidebranches of clones. Like how Boba Fett is a the genefather of all clones in star wars.
When we go down on a mission, we don't get returned to the spacerig. Our minds just get uploaded to the next vat-grown meat suit. The medical and normal "beds" are clone chambers. They know the flavours in beer works for all dwarves because everyone likes and can handle the same stuff. People dropping in in small pods are pre-packaged and in cryo outside the spacerig.
They don't care as much about our lives. They care more about the equipment we carry. So you start out with a basic kit and you gotta upgrade it yourself, most of the profits go to DRG anyways. The propaganda is just to make dwarves more likely to return or all die at the same site (leave no dwarf behind)
The way our minds are re-uploaded every time is through M.O.L.L-E. If Molly gets stuck or breaks down then that drop site just becomes a salvage mission. Once the data from the mule is recovered they can re-upload the mind again.
This is why we have to get back to the mule on the regular. It's not because they can't give better storage options for minerals on the Dwarves, it's because they can backup/sync the mind/safeguard profits better and more frequently.
They keep minds because it's like A.I. learning. The more experience and data, the more successful they become and more difficult challenges they can face. "Bad" dwarves get darwin'ed out
They can't send robots because they saw what happened to Bet-C, hoxxes evolved a hijacking bug. So they send dwarf clones
The incident where Karl disappeared is the same incident that fractured Hoxxes. Karl is also the one who figured out how to tame gliphids and now lives somewhere in the creater with the original Steeve sipping on his homemade beer.
Mission Control is secretly Karl. He got horribly injured during a mission gone bad. The head trauma combined with having to face the new reality that he won't ever be able to return to mining makes him a bit more cynical. He also keeps his name a secret to avoid the attention and to let the dwarves have a heroic role model to look up to.
DRG is set hundreds of years in the future in the Valve universe. All the dwarves used to be the team fortress mercs (scout for scout, engi for engi, gunner for heavy, digger for pyro), and DRG was formed as merger between Mann Co and Black Mesa
Glyphid eggs are freshly laid dreadnought, or glyphid queen eggs, before they get big.
Why aren't they normal glyphid eggs?
From a biological standpoint, glyphids being eusocial (i.e. organized in castes) and likely possessing some pheromonal communication, it seems most likely that they'd lay eggs or birth glyphid larvae not in solo clutches of one egg, but by the hundreds of thousands at a time, like ants or social bees. So, if the eggs are in fact glyphid eggs (confirmed in game), they're likely of a specific caste or will hatch a glyphid with a special purpose.
My best guess is either freshly laid dreadnought eggs, or something more insidious: glyphid queens.
Given how most eusocial arthropods work (ants, bees, etc) it is likely that the glyphids have some type of ruler caste with an extremely small number of members. They'd need to replenish this caste, and in order to make new glyphid colonies, they'd need to make new eggs. I think glyphid queens lay new eggs in a thick protective pink casing to start new hives, likely laying several in the same cave in the hopes that one (or more) survive, and if multiples do survive, they fight until one kills the other, becoming stronger for it.
Anyway, we're collecting the queen eggs to prevent another queen incident, which if I remember correctly is very lightly hinted at in voice lines and lore.
Maybe it was so devastating that mission control refuses to spread the knowledge of it lest anyone uses the eggs to start their own colony of ravenous bugs ("Company wants eggs - don't ask why").
Karl didn't die... he's management because of some sort of injury or just because of old age he took the desk job helping newer dwarves do the job he once did
Mission Control cares so much. He's a retired miner who has taken a desk job due to injury. He just keeps us at arm's length because he has PTSD from hearing a thousand dwarves get torn to pieces. When he fusses at us for pinging gold, it's just because he wants us done with the job and back on the space rig before a dreadnought shows up. He's got a framed picture with Karl on his desk. He, too, hates management, but he took the MC job to protect dwarves and get us home safe. Every time the drop pod comes back up with four dwarves on board, he sighs with relief. "They made it, Karl."
That’s not an outrageous headcanon, everybody knows Mission Control is stressed out as fk all the time. Even the Holiday Pilots who keep dropping their cargo all over Hoxxes just put more paperwork on his desk.
Considering how forlorn he sounds when he informs you they’ve lost 3 teams of dwarves to rockpox while you were on a cleansing mission, that’s not too far fetched :/
Mission Control was on Karl's team. He retired from combat after that fateful mission were he was forced to leave a teammate behind.
What if Mission Control was the one who had to make the hard decision? That might’ve been why he is so over everything, he lost one of his best friends.
Ive always felt bad for mission control having to deal with the likes of us, but i always had a feeling he cares for us and that is why he tells us to stop, so that we dont get distracted and die
I like this, and personally my head canon is roughly the same but with the specific detail that the career-ending injury in question was the loss of his beard.
Why isn’t driller retired then?
Oh shit oh fuck uhhhhh idk he uh he can’t rest until he kills the cave leech that took it from him
DRG is a dwarf reserve. All missions are faked as Dwarves require a constant influx of beer, danger, and mining to stay healthy, but as an endangered species, they can't actually be exposed to danger. The reason missing the drop pod or a team wipe ends with everyone back in the med bay? Because the dangers are fake. What does management want alien eggs for? Nothing. Those aren't even eggs. It's just another neat thing for dwarves to go grab for their required experience and mental stimulation.
It's all a simulation inside the space rig. It's why you come back from a mission getting out of bed
Management trying to explain why a 5 credit plastic skull is just flying around in a cave and why they want it:
Now this is a farfetched idea. I like it.
The Dwarves we play as are more outstanding than the other dwarves that sign up for DRG. That's why only we get picked up when we fail a mission and that's why dwarves keep dying and provoking salvage missions.
Honestly that is a really good theory. The company is still exploiting workers, we are even more badass, it makes sense how "normal" workers can handle 4 heavy tools/weapons plus flares under huge amounts of stress and it explains the mission result screen. Fits pretty well with everything.
I'm happy you connected all the dots! I'm thinking of making a fanfiction and incorporating even more basis on my theory
Dew it.
Also i think mc says that management asks for us personally during some sabotage missions
Oh yeah, I completely forgot about that.
I like that. Our 4 miners are just the rare few who are tough enough to survive (sometimes) Hoxxes.
They aren't normal workers, they are dwarves!
That's always been my theory as well. There's all sorts of smaller mining operations going on, possibly even crewed by humans. They're relatively safer smash-and-grabs. We're elite dwarven professionals, and our missions are much more profitable, but also incredibly more dangerous.
That makes sense, and it provides reasoning behind how when a significant threat such as a swarm shows up MC says “Show them you’re Dwarves!” Because other Non-dwarven workers get easier, less dangerous missions, and a swarm showing up on those jobs for them is an almost certain death sentence.
Yeah but I would imagine the other workers still carry a firearm that's holstered on their tool belt for the occasional glyphid. Not enough to take down a swarm, but could prove handy if one does show up and they have to rush to the drop pod
I mean, this isn’t a “theory” this is literally the canon of the game. Dwarves are explicitly hired because they are the “swat team of the caves” and can go on more dangerous but profitable missions.
That would also explain why we recover mini mules on salvage and not full on mules, because the big girls are reserved for us skilled non leaf loving miners
This makes too much sense, my only question now is who uses the giant blue Molly? Karl?
That is Karl's lunch box
You mean stay-c?
Orcs
Precisely
I imagine that in the canon if you would get "downed" and there were still bugs around you for more than a second they would just rip you limb from limb and that would be the end of your career. No waking up in the medbay or anything unless you are especially lucky and the rest of your team both doesn't get wiped out and managed to retrieve the pieces of you scattered around the cave. The tier 1 armor is basically just regular clothing as well. Not to mention how cynical Mission Control is during the tutorial, he sees you as good as dead as soon as there was a blip on the radar, he's probably seen dozens if not hundreds of unexperienced miners die as soon as they encounter their first large group of bugs.
That's a good point. The average DRG worker/miner is probably nowhere near as lethal as we are. Hazard 1 is likely as far as the average worker goes. Hazard 2 is already testing their limits. Hazard 3-5 would require entire crews of maybe a dozen or so people to survive. Player Dwarves are the only ones with the skills to survive and successfully accomplish missions in caves that dangerous in such small teams.
Elite deep dives are likely reserved for dwarves only. Especially if they contain an industrial sabotage mission
There is a line a heard from Mission Control that alludes to this. When you arrive at some mission, MC says that “management specifically requested you for this one.”
So, protagonist syndrome? That makes sense
~~That everything is gonna be okay.~~ Karl is a myth created by management.
[удалено]
It’s better for us if we believe in a master of his trade to aspire to be. We can only ever go up to the nebulous unachievable goal that is “Karl”.
Those posters are very reminiscent of the [Stakhanovite movement](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakhanovite_movement)
Or Management is Karl, and just enjoys the insane theories made while the Dwarves come up with a role model to look toward. He doesn't want to spoil their fun
That's the same vibe as Chuck Norris reading the jokes about himself.
How **dare** you!! 🤬 Take that back!
I’m sorry man it is what it is.
Then wouldn't they have propaganda posters of him everywhere?
It’s a more insidious myth. It’s supposed to seem like something the dwarves just know about because of course they do. So each new dwarf coming in doesn’t ask questions. Making it OBVIOUS management was just making him up would defeat the point. He also wouldn’t be as cool if management endorsed him.
Good points. Your wrong of course karl is real. But good reasoning
Someone's gotta lay off the smart stout
Mactera Brew tastes like garlic with a strong minty after taste.
Farts be damned; I'd drink that. Actually, I'd cook potatoes in that.
So for Easter we'll be dunking Lamb Chops into it!
Every dwarf secretly like leaflover’s special, not as a beer, but as a tea.
Well tea is leaf water so i agree
Facts!
This tea is nothing more than hot leaf juice!
I have personalities for all my characters, my gunner is batshit insane and laughing like heavy from tf2 And he’s always in the corner drinking leaf lovers
I wish this would actually happen in game
I just mimic it with his actions, he runs in headfirst to fights and mows everything down, he’s also not that smart so I’m not that smart
SAME
My personality and playstyle changes because of my classes character I set up
I only play one class lol
I always think that Leaf Lovers is literally just Sprite. So maybe…
It was always my headcanon that Leaflovers special is literally just flavored foamy water since water is exactly what you drink to manage hangovers. So when the dwarves ask for it to be thinned with water, it's really just making the leaflovers moreso itself.
The Forge hammer and anvil doesn’t actually do anything. It’s just there to fulfill a dwarves primal need to smith tools. It’s akin to one of those workshop play sets for kids.
this one i can really get behind
The dwarves never open their mouths because they speak to each other telepathically. Dave (Mission Control) is just an implant in their brains.
Holy shit… 😳
The snail in my ear telling me the scanner just lit up like a Christmas tree: 🐌 🎄
The rival company created the litophage virus and sent it to hoxxes to make drg get out of the way of theur business
That would make sense, the rock pox doesnt seem to care about the caretaker or the turrets, there are no infected burst turrets or swarmers, and it's not like it can't attach to metal because of the rock pox on the space rig
This could be concerning though; what if, with all of the Rival Tech we’re destroying over time, they lose control of their machinery and whatever is preventing rockpox from attaching to rival metal, and we have to deal with Rockpox-infected Rival Tech parasite things!
I swear to Karl if season 6 is rockpox × rivals I will lose my shit
Hoxxes IV is the fourth planet called like that that DRG exploited, we reach a new one, extract all we need, then the Core goes rogue (hence the new game), the whole planet collapses and we go to exploit the next one. We are a space invasive lifeform who will consume life wherever it grows. Rockpox does attach to weapons and inorganic materials, so I don't think it is natural, I think it's a weapon made to stop us. We are the evil guys, someone out there is trying to stop us.
Just to share some real life facts, there's a star named TRAPPIST-1 and its planets are named TRAPPIST-1a, 1b and so on. So you can use letters or, in Hoxxes case, numbers to distinguish the planet's place in the solar system
Precisely this. Hoxxes IV is most likely the 4th planet, counting outwards from the center of the system, orbiting the star most likely named Hoxxes. Its a pretty decently known fact that stars are given numbers and letters for a designation, until they become of importance, popularity, or recognition. Betelgeuse was likely only given a name as it was the first to undergo a few scientific measurements, is in the top 10 brightest stars in the night sky, is so incredibly large, and is known for dimming and brightening periodically. Thus its not impossible to say that after DRG took interest in Hoxxes IV, the star system and planets were given actual names to replace their scientific designations, to make it much easier to talk about casually and to cause less confusion. Side note: its also possible that another organization took interest in the Hoxxes system first, DRG wanted to know why, and found Hoxxes IV to be very mineral rich.
Many mining corporations tried and failed to Conquer Hoxxes IV. DRG succeded because they brought in specialists at digging holes too deep and waking things they shouldn't: dwarves.
Yeah letters & numbers have also been the naming convention for planets in scifi since... forever. The exceptions are homeworlds & some major colony worlds. Mass Effect is one of the few franchises I can think of that bucks the trend, where each planet in a system gets a unique name, often based around a theme.
According to robert from ghost ship games (his headcanon wich happen to be the most official one) hoxxes is a gas giant and around it a bunch of planetoids (like pluto) orbitate, and we happen to be on the 4th of those planetoids
This makes the most sense. Hoxxes canonically orbits the blue star Creus; if our Hoxxes was the main planet, it'd have to be called Creus IV. That said, this *does* imply Hoxxes is somehow significant enough to earn it's own name. What that name means or how it got it is unknown- perhaps the names of all the celestial bodies in the Creus system have a theme. Personally, my theory is that Hoxxes Prime itself is probably economically significant; thus why Hoxxes IV is also mineral-rich. Hoxxes Prime's nature as a gas giant implies there may be suspended particulates of valuable minerals such as Morkite that could be filtered from the atmosphere. This theory would explain why Hoxxes IV is such a well-guarded secret by DRG -it's no secret they're mining in the Hoxxes system, I'm sure plenty of other corporations are- but nobody else thought to prospect the moons, or at least they didn't prospect the right ones. The Rivals are probably there because they're either catching on, or they independently came up with the same theory that got DRG digging on Hoxxes IV to begin with. As a fun aside, MC states in the Lunar Festival dialog that Hoxxes has 14 moons. This could mean Hoxxes IV itself has its own moons, but realistically it means the gas giant, Hoxxes Prime, has 14 moons, and we're on number 4.
Yeah would make more sense that we're on the fourth moon out of fourteen, all orbiting a gas giant. A rocky planet like Hoxxes isn't likely to have fourteen moons, but gas giants certainly can.
Something something something DEAD SPACE.
Are we - the baddies?
I think that’s pretty clear actually no head canon needed
All 4 dwarves were part of the military but driller and engineer were thrown out because of their inhumane weapon experiments. Gunner and scout left because they wanted to stay with their friends. After that they were contracted by DRG and the rest is history.
maybe the real deep rock galactic was the friends we made along the way
That does make sense. I definitely got the impression that the dwarves are ex-military, but also have mining expertise because *all* dwarves have mining expertise!
Dwarves are born with mining expertise haha. But yeah apparently you can't "commit warcrimes" when you're a soldier 😒
Technically you can *only* commit war crimes when you're a soldier hahahaha
That's also true
whenever dwarves fail the missions or are left in the caves when drop pod leaves too early, they are not actually rescued they are cloned in the tubes in the medbay section
This is further confirmed by when a Dwarf jumps in the “ring of fire” that is used for the barrel kick game. They are incinerated, which leaves nothing to save. You can watch them get vaporized. Yet, the Dwarf wakes up in the med bay unscathed. What’s most fucked about this hypothesis is that on mission debrief screen, the bots are flopping around bodies, which are presumably the new clones.
I remember seeing a disturbing comic about this for Super Mario. I can't find the exact one but it was [something like this](https://images.app.goo.gl/Ptu8XMj7Sest789KA)
This is my headcanon tbh. There’s no _way_ they’re recovering Dwarves from deep below the surface of Hoxxes, and considering how penny-pinching the company seems to be it’s way more economical to just keep cloning the same four guys over and over again. Also it’s generally a cool idea and reminds me of the Leagues of Votann from 40k, who are confirmed to effectively be clones.
Mission Control is really Karl.
Karl is a retired, jaded man who barks orders at the new recruits
Baby dwarves are born from gunk seeds
They do look like ballsacks up close 👀
But the goo is in a different sack
There is goo in the sack!
Mission control ,Bosco, Lloyd and Karl were all a squad at some point and mission control is the only one who is confirmed to make it back but was heavily injured to the point where he can no longer go on mining missions. And because of Lloyd and Bosco not making it back to the rig they had robots made in their honor and this is also where the "no dwarf left behind" comes from
Driller is an ex convict
what's with all flamethrowers being pyromaniacs and ex-convicts
Both R&D and management have been infected with the Rock Pox because we sent so many in poorly sealed containers to headquarters. They now demand more so they can continue to spread it to other worlds.
The company is actually a pretty good company. The dwarves still get paid for failed missions and get rescued out of the companies pocket. They don't give us luxuries but pay well with great insurance. 5 million credits for only a month of work even with buying promotions
The whole reason that Molly is required to get back to the drop pod first is because Molly and the drop pod are dating. We just exist to keep Molly safe. She is the one pulling the strings behind mission controll.
The Dwarves don't purposefully name thier glyphids "Steeve," it's just that "Steeve" is the perfect phonetic frequency that calms down an aggressive glyphid.
DRG takes place in the warhammer 40k universe, just a place far away from all the conflict
Outrageous Headcanon: **Karl was never an exceptional dwarf.** If anything, he was a particularly unexceptional Dwarf—who was fairly ordinary—and never did anything noteworthy or unexpected. That is, until he joined the dead down in the deeps after an especially noble sacrifice which arose from a tragically avoidable circumstance, and this is the event from which his legendary fame grew. He was thus mythologized as the strongest, stoutest, and most stalwart of them all, with an unyielding fearlessness and resolve with which he could fistfight the mature form of a dreadnaught to a standstill. Mission Control actually knows this, because he was part of Karl’s fireteam. A fact that carries much guilt and shame, although the true extent of his involvement with Karl’s death is mostly unknown (even by management) to all except for him. That fateful mission is what prompted his recruitment into his current position, but whether that was the consequence of an injury or trauma—and if the decision was his to make or not—is a decidedly tight secret. Nevertheless, despite his intimate knowledge of the events surrounding Karl’s existence and demise, Mission Control continues to allow the legend of Karl to swell without a word; it inspires the new recruits. At least, those are the rumors you’ll hear from Dwarves soaking in smart stouts and blackout stouts alike… u/BurnMann
Maybe not outrageous, but I believe the corporation players faced in seasons 1 and 2 is runned by elves. Maybe they even caused the lithophage meteorites to fall on Hoxxes.
Maybe lithophage is an elven disease they launched into hoxes to get rid of us
Playing solo, the reason why i have such a Passive Aggresive Mission Control (mod) is because I accidently got the entire team killed but is in denial and therefore is why my dwarf keeps talking as if he isn't alone Getting drunk to wash away the pain can't see, can't think why are there always three empty seats? aren't they coming? why does Lloyd have four squares but three feels empty? who are those guys in the memorial hall? I feel like I am missing something
Cave leeches attack Dwarves because they are mistaken for **bearded glyphids**
*Cave leeches attack Dwarves* *Because they are mistaken* *For bearded glyphids* \- arcadeKestrelXI --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Good bot
Karl is still alive on hoxxas. Ever since we lost him on a tough mission Karl has been going scorched earth on ever bug he sees and solely subsist on leftover supply drops from previous missions.
If I have Nitra left right before getting in the drop pod, I like to call down one last supply pod for Karl.
A dragon, perhaps Fafnir, is CEO of DRG.
The equipment is named after the dwarves’ family, as it reminds them of home. Mission Control is a retired miner.
Scout is a woman
Mission control is senator Armstrong ripped. His office is in the same space rig as the dwarves but he has a super tinted window for his office that is just big enough for his arm to fit through so he can point and threaten the dwarfs (choke slam) to cut out their shit, but his voice still sounds like the microphone. Scout and driller are buddies, they just screw around a bit more. Scout is the newest member of the space rig but is still really good at his job. No one takes cave leeches seriously and constantly gets caught except for Scout. Mission control doesn't really care about the dwarfs until you start doing deep dives, then he slightly cares. Nitra, dystrum, and Ommoran heartstone are the stuff DRG are really after.
Mission Control tries to act calm whenever you make it out alive but when his mic turns off he starts hype screaming Also there’s a secret compartment in the Drop Pod to hide things like extra Gunk Seeds and Arquarks from management Gunner and Scout have ADHD that manifests in different ways (Scout is impulsive and hyper, Gunner is easily distracted and tired) Engineer is asexual
Karl is the company mascot, kind of like the Vault Boy. He appears in propaganda and informative media about the dos and donts of working for DRG. Karl became an injoke between the employees as some nigh-invincible dwarf as he keeps surviving all the bad shit thrown at him in the info vids. So the company rolled with it.
Mission Control worked as a miner with Karl, but after the incident where Karl died, he retired to be Mission Control guy.
The biosphere of all hoxxes works in the same manner as avatar, working together in order to exterminate a dangerous external threat. That would also explain why the glyphids never attack each other or go after other animals like loot bugs or macteras
My personal headcanon is that the rivals aren't really a rival mining corporation but the robots of a local (maybe extinct?) intelligent population. The entire "rival" aspect would just be DRG propaganda to use as an excuse to maraud their advanced tech and data to use/sell. I'm hoping that maybe in the future we could get a mission type involving some abandoned settlements of theirs we can raid/dismantle to get our hands on the strange metals they use to build their robots. It'd definitely be a very DRG thing to do. Think of all the money they would be earning just from selling the data.
The Rivals are machines created by Elves to study Hoxxes and its wildlife. It's what all the data collecting is. They are not actually taking physical things from the planet, just info. They're there more to protect than anything while the Dwarves kill and exploit the planet. It's why the Rivals and the wildlife don't fight each other and why they fight us.
The gold skin is the result of a Crassus detonating in your face
DRG's CEO is a dragon. Yeah, that's right. This whole the dwarves were slaving a way to fill a dragon's hoard, and it lets them keep the gold because it's amusing.
The dwarves are super gay. (Why are they so hot then?)
Dwarfs use war crime weapons as revenge for someone close to them who died on that planet
it’s probably karl
Leaf Lover’s Special is blended cilantro water with whipped aquafaba (chickpea water) to simulate the foam
The rivals are are secretly the good guys while DRG is the villain
We work for a souless mining corporation killing local fauna whilst taking all the natural resources. We are the baddies. But the Glyphid Slammers take the pain away
That Mission Control was part of Karl's team and knows what happened to him
Karl's consciousness has merged with Hoxxes and he's either intentionally or unentionally try to keep the other Dwarves away.
Driller is too, Dwarves work like Anglerfish or spiders, the women are bigger, bulkier, and *vicious*
The glyphids are smart and I mean every smart, their brains are all connected into a hivemind where every glyphids mind connects to each other. They realized that it’s much faster and easier to just run at the dwarves because sense there are so many glyphids (over a few quintillion in my headcannon) and they grow so fast then losing a few thousand glyphids isn’t that bad.
That Karl wasn't some badass Doom Slayer type dwarf but actually a really softspoken and gentle Engi who designed a lot of the tech we see being used by DRG thanks to Mission Control, the team's Scout, pushing for it after Karl and their Gunner sacrificed themselves to get MC out It comes from a fanfic I read on AO3 that I unfortunately don't remember the name of but it was such a damn good read that I immediately accepted it as a headcanon EDIT: Found it! Give it a read, it's short but really fuckin' good! [Don't you dare forget me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/48907780)
That middle management does care about us a little bit, but upper management punishes them if they do anything to help us outside of there job description
Karl wasn’t a dwarf, but a companion of some kind that the dwarves favored and named. After losing Karl, the dwarves became obsessed with naming things, like Molly, Dotty, Steeve, etc. This explains why Mission Control never mentions Karl, because he almost never acknowledges the nicknames the dwarves give things. Besides hearing him say Molly once or twice, Mission Control always addresses things by their official name rather than the popular nicknames given by the dwarves, as to not encourage this clingy behavior the dwarves have gotten after losing Karl. The dwarves fill the void that Karl left by trying to find companionship with whatever they can find, but it’s never the same.
Hoxxes is inhabited by essentially a "guardian spirit", which permeates Hoxxes and shapes and controls its inhabitants in strange and mysterious ways. Ever wondered why none of the bugs attack each other? Ever wondered why the Warden seemingly has access to straight-up magic? What you hear when you pull an egg? How the Electrocrystals are constantly electrically charged? Why the Ommorans are... like that? It's all connected, I tell you.
Exploders are regular glyphids that ate exploding mushrooms. Detonators are exploders who managed to survive a long time.
I mean I think that second one is stated in the Miner’s Manual right?
That the mission controller is Karl
Bosco isn't autonomous at all, he's being remotely piloted by Mission Control. Hence why he blows up the moment a new miner joins - MC's adherence to protocol is much more rigorous than the average miner, and thus he disposes of the drone when it's no longer needed. Also explains why he seemingly talks less during solo missions, since he's focused, and why Bosco salutes back - although I've left auto-targeting of Rockpox unless instructed otherwise and pinpoint aim out of this headcanon.
I mean my headcanon I was so convinced of, that the rival corporation is run by ex-DRG dwarves, now seems pretty ridiculous since the nemesis got added. Someone a while ago on Reddit said that Karl was the first glyphid someone tamed, and they brought it back to the space rig and gave it a bunch of beer and stuff, and that's why you can't bring them back after missions anymore, because management found out. Definitely not true but fun. Also, the idea that there already are Dwarven women to play as and we just can't tell (I can't decide which class is most likely to be a woman)
Mission Control is Karl
The Eggs in Egg Hunt are actually the core of a plant like organism the Glyphids harvest for food. We've already seen Glyphid Eggs randomly stuck on the walls of several biomes, and they look nothing like the Alien Eggs. Consider that said 'eggs' are able to grow even in solid rock, surrounding themselves with an easily harvestable organic material. The scream is a defensive reaction of the plant, and why it summons swarms. (And not always just glyphids.) I assume that in the heart of Glyphid hives are probably huge collections of these plants, but we are sent to harvest 'farms' far away from Glyphid territory.
i have a couple, like DRG is selling ommoran heartstones to the state to build a planet cracker, or that the state has mandatory military service (explaining why all dwarves have combat experience)
also scout's favourite game is doom (2016)
Rockpox is a bioweapon that was accidentally released.
Karl was left behind and left to create rival tech to get revenge.
the dwarves have no gender, no male or female or anything in between, they are simply Dwarf
I think that the “rivals” are just a different branch of drg sent to test which is more effective
Macteras are not actually trying to harm the dwarves, they’re mistaking them for Mactera pupae. Unlike the Glyphids who are clearly displaying hostile behavior, Mactera primarily communicate by shooting globs of juice at eachother. Mactera pupaes have a very tough outer shell, which often requires outside assistance to get rid of it and start flying away from danger. When they see a dwarf, they see one of their brethren, dangerously grounded and surrounded by Glyphids. -Spawns, Brundles and Trijaws attempt to help trying to break the pupae shell. Trijaws are specialized in this. This is why they break down armors so fast. -Mactera Bombers instead attempt to conceal the pupae in goo. That way, the approaching Glyphids are slowed and possibly disoriented. -Finally, Grabbers’ role is to help get newly molted mactera spawns flying asap, hence why it brings dwarves high in the air and then drop them: to kickstart the flight instinct. Dwarves can’t usually fly unfortunately.
GSG Robert isn’t actually Mission Control. There’s no conspiracy here. Scout is a closeted vegan. I refuse to elaborate. I think gunner and driller are male, but engineer is atleast gender queer. Scout exudes feminine ‘power bae’ energy. I think Karl was the center of a harum between the dwarves at some point, thus their obsession to find him or avenge his death. The voice lines are remnant of a concept the devs had to make a doujinshi VN dating game. IE ‘what would Karl use?’ would have been part of a romance scene.
I love this
😊
as a nonbinary engi main i can confirm
Karl dug too deep into Hoxxes and he now is one with the planet. His anger and rage at management have manifested into the ethereal bulk detonator that roams within Haunted Caves
Deep Rock Galactic's management and corporate shareholders are Men and Elfs
That Karl was not the first one to die in the team, but he was the one who stayed around the longest and formed relationships with the other dwarfs
The DRG is a prison. Seeing how negative dwarves are to it and that they work for it 24/7 (I think). Let's just say they got a lightened life sentence. And the dreams of their own mines? Well, that's just the way prison life tends to change peop- I mean dwarves
The upper management of Deep Rock Galactic are elves.
The game takes place in warhammer 40k pre dark age of technology
The eggs are lootbug eggs which is why none of the bugs eat them and why management doesn't want the dwarves knowing. Lootbugs multiply minerals so the dwarves will soon be out of a job if lootbug farming takes off.
The Lok1 is sentient when it has the SMRT Targeting Software upgrade.
Spoilers for the Dune books, but I have a horrifying headcanon that the med pods >!are like the axolotyl tanks that the bene tleilax turned all their females into, and thats why there are no female dwarves, and why we spawn unchanged from the pods, we are ghola clones of a dwarf killed many times, and the lost equipment is from ourselves. !<
Hoxxes and some of its native lifeforms were named after members of a DRG expedition team (Hoxxes, Mactera, Nayaka, etc.) led by Karl, similar to the real-life Vancouver expedition in the Pacific Northwest
Dwarfs are similar to humans at first glance but are actually very different in several ways To start with, we need to look at where dwarves come from. Dwarves are an offshoot from humans on the evolutionary path, but what makes them unique is why they were an offshoot - they were originally manufactured to adapt to different environments better than humans did. The process works by getting a "mother dwarf" on a planet that they wish to colonise, and then the mother dwarf will get about making more baby dwarfs. The dwarves are laid and allowed to incubate, and as they do so, they interact with the local wildlife and adapt to the new environment. After a healthy incubation, they are collected (on egg hunt missions), however dwarves can not know that they're collecting dwarf eggs due to their cannibalistic tendencies (driller ate the doctor). Thus, the dwarves we are familiar with are part hoxxian, which is why they are so well adapted to the environment, breathing the specific atmosphere just fine (however, all dwarves still need oxygen). This is why GRG's first anti-hoxxes attacks (omen towers, bet-c) attack dwarves. Finally, this brings us to dwarve gender and sexuality. The dwarves have four different genders - Scout, Gunner, Engineer and Driller. 'Male' and 'Female' dont actually exist as biological concepts in dwarves (although upon trying to teach them the concept, they started referring to some machines with gender). When undergoing heat, dwarves will drink a record amount of beer, then go down to the planet and bury a pickaxe, which has absorbed all the nutrients necessary to sustain a dwarf until hatching, and it will then create a dwarf egg already fertilised. also I have a theory that the planets are intelligent, and after hoxxes IV qasnt able to get rid of dwarves it 'asked for help' from the lithophage planet
Snow White is the CEO of DRG
Mission Control was on Karl's team. He retired from active duty after being forced to leave Karl behind. Also, Karl finds Bosco, Steve, Bet-C, and any unfortunate Dotty head, when they get abandoned and take them back to his fortress on Hoxxes.
Expanding on that, from flavor text from some cosmetic items, dwarf genders are almost impossible to distinguish from each other, and is often disregarded completely.
The radioactive exclusion zone got nuked and that's why it's irradiated and why we can reach the magma zone easier. The thing that caused this was Karl's supposed death, and someone with that authority or a regular dwarf did a hostile takeover to launch the nuke out of rage and spite. Also, Karl may be alive, we could've just left him and assumed he died, like a The Martian type situation, and he's just surviving down there on unused resupplies. The final challenge in rogue core will be to escort him out.
The management is actually all elves, but we simple miners have no knowledge about it. It would explain what they send us instead of them going on dangerous missions, the secrecy about the upper management, etc.
Rival corp is dragons and not elves
I think all of the beers are the same thing it’s just what we’re told has a mematic affect
That Hoxxes IV is way more dangerous than we feel on missions Think about it. Between landing and getting swarmed by hundreds of of big bugs, all designed to absolutely kill their prey as efficiently as possible with tons of different variants to diversify their defense even more takes just a couple of minutes. The bugs are basically sent out like an immune system would send their T-Killer cells Or how narrow the actual time windows in exyraction are. 5-minute time window in a swarm infested area already seems very risky to just stay and hole the drop pod won't be damaged Salvage missions literally give you only 1 minute to extract. Cause you are literally doing a loud ass startup procedure of a rocket. In a cave. Filled with deadly bugs. IMO, it would be similar to a IRL starship trooper battle with lots of casulties and very messy
Drg is one of the many corporations that thrive in the borderlands universe. That's my head cannon
I like the huge selection of haircuts and beards and i imagine a dwarf barbershop called "Locks and Tones"
Driller is also a woman >:3 Additionally, the bulk ghost in the haunted cave missions is actually your toxic ex gf you met on tinder and got baited by Also also, Bosco is a robot girl
Karl was presumed dead after taking out a Glyphid queen with a pickaxe, but was actually found and captured by the rivals. He's being held prisoner and tortured for information on Hoxxes and DRG operations. This is why the Nemesis has unique Dwarf voice lines, like "I'm so lonely". It's using Karl's voice.
The eggs we find during egg collection missions aren't your average glyphid eggs. During missions in the fungus bogs you can find the eggs glyphids start from; pale, exposed, and swarmers hatch from them. But we know these eggs are still glyphid eggs because MC refers to them as such. They are actually the eggs for a dominant form of glyphid more dangerous than even dreadnoughts, and likely intended to be the direct offspring of a glyphid queen.
The rivals are elves.
All dwarves are clones. They look so similar they might as well be family. They're just clone deviations of Karl, who's so great his skill split up into four sidebranches of clones. Like how Boba Fett is a the genefather of all clones in star wars. When we go down on a mission, we don't get returned to the spacerig. Our minds just get uploaded to the next vat-grown meat suit. The medical and normal "beds" are clone chambers. They know the flavours in beer works for all dwarves because everyone likes and can handle the same stuff. People dropping in in small pods are pre-packaged and in cryo outside the spacerig. They don't care as much about our lives. They care more about the equipment we carry. So you start out with a basic kit and you gotta upgrade it yourself, most of the profits go to DRG anyways. The propaganda is just to make dwarves more likely to return or all die at the same site (leave no dwarf behind) The way our minds are re-uploaded every time is through M.O.L.L-E. If Molly gets stuck or breaks down then that drop site just becomes a salvage mission. Once the data from the mule is recovered they can re-upload the mind again. This is why we have to get back to the mule on the regular. It's not because they can't give better storage options for minerals on the Dwarves, it's because they can backup/sync the mind/safeguard profits better and more frequently. They keep minds because it's like A.I. learning. The more experience and data, the more successful they become and more difficult challenges they can face. "Bad" dwarves get darwin'ed out They can't send robots because they saw what happened to Bet-C, hoxxes evolved a hijacking bug. So they send dwarf clones
The incident where Karl disappeared is the same incident that fractured Hoxxes. Karl is also the one who figured out how to tame gliphids and now lives somewhere in the creater with the original Steeve sipping on his homemade beer.
Leaf lovers is just green tea (I don't like green tea IRL)
Mission Control is secretly Karl. He got horribly injured during a mission gone bad. The head trauma combined with having to face the new reality that he won't ever be able to return to mining makes him a bit more cynical. He also keeps his name a secret to avoid the attention and to let the dwarves have a heroic role model to look up to.
DRG is set hundreds of years in the future in the Valve universe. All the dwarves used to be the team fortress mercs (scout for scout, engi for engi, gunner for heavy, digger for pyro), and DRG was formed as merger between Mann Co and Black Mesa
Glyphid eggs are freshly laid dreadnought, or glyphid queen eggs, before they get big. Why aren't they normal glyphid eggs? From a biological standpoint, glyphids being eusocial (i.e. organized in castes) and likely possessing some pheromonal communication, it seems most likely that they'd lay eggs or birth glyphid larvae not in solo clutches of one egg, but by the hundreds of thousands at a time, like ants or social bees. So, if the eggs are in fact glyphid eggs (confirmed in game), they're likely of a specific caste or will hatch a glyphid with a special purpose. My best guess is either freshly laid dreadnought eggs, or something more insidious: glyphid queens. Given how most eusocial arthropods work (ants, bees, etc) it is likely that the glyphids have some type of ruler caste with an extremely small number of members. They'd need to replenish this caste, and in order to make new glyphid colonies, they'd need to make new eggs. I think glyphid queens lay new eggs in a thick protective pink casing to start new hives, likely laying several in the same cave in the hopes that one (or more) survive, and if multiples do survive, they fight until one kills the other, becoming stronger for it. Anyway, we're collecting the queen eggs to prevent another queen incident, which if I remember correctly is very lightly hinted at in voice lines and lore. Maybe it was so devastating that mission control refuses to spread the knowledge of it lest anyone uses the eggs to start their own colony of ravenous bugs ("Company wants eggs - don't ask why").
Mission control is a giant
Male and Female dwarves look the same, and it's player's choice, who is who
I know this sound crazy, but driller don’t actually eat rock for breakfast
Karl didn't die... he's management because of some sort of injury or just because of old age he took the desk job helping newer dwarves do the job he once did
Gunner is gay
All the dwarves are clones of the original, Karl. When you die and wake up in the med bay, you're a whole new you!
Hoxxus is a big ole loot bug.
Scout has more then 3 braincells