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Zeekerss’Lethal Companyquickly surged into beeing one of the most popular co-op survival horror video games, and it comes with its own lore and mysteries. Although there aren’t many clues to piece together a cohesive narrative regarding what occurred over the course of 500 years of in-game time, you can at least deduce what happened to the crews that came before yours.
The game’s subtle jab at capitalism blends in well with the post-apocalyptic themes. The creatures you may wind up encountering during your scavenging, or the debris you find left behind, might just be an indication of a cosmos devoid of human life.
The Setting
The Lethal Company universe is a precarious one,full of unfathomable Lovecraftien alien creatures that make your job a wee bit too hardto carry out. Marooned on a ship with barely any recollection of how you may have got there, your only goal is to make sure youcollect ‘valuable’ objectsfor the company you work for.
As you navigate your way traveling to different moons, you encounterall sorts of wildlife except other human beings. Despite that, your loot mostly consists ofman-made products spread across the Thistle Nebula.
In this universe,humans left Earth, or had the capacity to do so, well before their real-world counterparts did. Sigurd and his crew weren’t so phased out by the thought of traveling to space for a job.
Not only that, according to one of the first few crew member’s log,the computer technology you use is olddespite how it matches up with actual real world technology from the ’60s.
The Famine And Resources On The Moons
The Bunker Spiders were recognized as a threat to humanity around the year 2497.
The game’s set in the future, after certain events occur thatput human life across the solar system at risk. The only way to find out what happened is toexamine old logs in your computerthat detail the journey of the first crew, along with the fliers and notes decorating the walls of your ship.
According to a poster you’ll find near your archaic PC, there’sa famine that’s forced humans to conserve food. In an effort to expand, humans broadened their horizons andeventually conquered the galaxy, either before or after this event. Although, the company’s objective is to have you scavenge fornon-edible items on several moons instead.
Wildlife on these moonsand across the Thistle Nebula hasevolved at unfathomable speeds, and a lot of these mutations have made them hostile to normal human beings. Although, there’sno record of the beasts being displaced from their original planets.
Sigurd’s Crew
Unbeknownst to them, at the instruction of a ‘shady’ and clearly fake voice, the crew signed their own death warrants when each member decided to work for the company.Sigurd, his brother Desmond, a smelly man named Rich, and Jesswere one of the first few crews that explored the moons before you.
Despite their best efforts, they were barely able to scrounge up much, and essentially collected the same things you do, butover 500 years ago. To make matters worse,none of these individuals survived.
Luckily enough,Sigurd made Desmond install a log featureonto the computer they used to better document their discoveries.
The Bestiary
When closely examined, some entries on the bestiary give away the fact thathumanity tried to domesticate alien wildlife for centuries. Well before Sigurd and his crew ever set foot on the ship, humans were studying and colonizing other planets across the solar system.
There arevery detailed excerpts on Spore Lizards and Manticolisthat show just how closely humans spent time with them and tried to domesticate them.
Creatures like Coil Heads have descriptions that narratehow they came about as weapons of mass destructionmeant for some ancient war between humans that occurred long before they were even documented.
Sigurd’s Log Entries
According to Sigurd, in 1968,his crew arrived using an unmanned spaceship on autopilot. They merely received instructional videos presented by the same fake voice that coerced each of them into signing away their freedom. They were apparently promised a large sum of money in exchange for working forjust a season.
Unfortunately,none of them seemed to have survived their ordeal, despite their best efforts. Sigurd and Desmond did manage to investigate the company they were working for and came to some rather startling conclusions.
The last entry by Desmond posits thatanyone working for the company has been roped into feeding an unimaginable terror, and there’s no means of escape. He mentions how the logs were encrypted in order to safeguard their existence on the company servers.
The Voice And Sigurd’s Walkie Talkie
Upon investigation, Sigurd and Desmond found outthe voice that they communicated with over the phone was an artificial onethat originated from a source somewhere far away in the solar system. It’san untraceable sourceand any interaction with the voice is fairly minimal.
Sigurd also came in contact with an individual who sounded real to him,claiming to be a victim of a beast who consumed a mythical golden planet. This individual told Sigurd he was in its belly and proceeded to lose him mind once they realized they were inside the company’s walls, according to Sigurd. This person also told him there were others trapped inside with him.
Much like Sigurd and his crew, none of them had any recollection of how they got there in the first place.
The Fate Of Sigurd’s Crew
Their numbers slowly dwindled away, with some succumbing to the madness of it all and othersdying to the hazardsthey encountered while on the job. The crew first lost Rich, and wound up getting a replacement named Lucas soon-after.
Eventually,all of them lost any memories of their life before starting work with the company, and their efforts to escape were presumably futile.
The logs don’t explicitly cover how each member met their end, but considering the amount of time that’s elapsed since the initial entries,they’re long gone either way.
The Golden Planet And The Planet Eater
Considered to be a myth, this utopia known as the Golden Planet was seeminglystruck by a meteor long ago.Be that as it may, Sigurd was told by the voices in his walkie-talkie thatthat was not the case.
Instead of being struck by some other heavenly body, the planet was in facteaten by an unnamed monsterof epic proportions.
Despite Desmond expressing his desire to investigate further and commute to the location of the Golden Planet,the crew couldn’t carry out his requests. There is no indication of whether it exists or not.
The ‘DrillPump’
Found on the water world moon the company’s main building resides on, an unmanned drill of sorts is waiting to be used. On its side, you’ll find words written on it thaturge you to keep its existence a secret.
There’sno way for you to interact with it, but it’s at least a sign that other crews before yours made an effort to either escape or bore a hole into the company’s walls.
The Company
As ominous as its name, The Company is a mystery to you and will remain as such since its objectives are unclear, and you don’t really interact with anyone representing it.Its goals are practically non-existent, yet it’s managed to stay in business well before 1968. Despite the lore, all you’re left with are questions.
Is it an unfathomable beast capable of eating planets and altering human minds? Is it a building that’s sentient and capable of unspeakable evil? What lies behind the giant walls that surround it, and just what happened to the human race that conquered the stars?
