Theory #9: The Cursed Link

In the Harvest Moon series, there are characters that share some type of similarities between different games. These links make them seem like they are related in some way despite having no canon plot behind it. Usually this takes the form of people having similar personalities, physical characteristics, or hair colors. Is Natalie related to Nami? Or maybe Lillia and Lyla? What about Muffy, Mark, and Elise? The possibilities of linking characters across games can be endless and fuels some pretty creative fanfiction.

This Halloween, I will be discussing a very special and dark link that binds several characters from the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons/Rune Factory games. A link that has Harvest Moon theorist scratching their heads for decades with no actual answers. I will share my theory involving the illness that has plagued the series since Harvest Moon: Back to Nature. Sound crazy? Good! Let us begin.

Our first case comes from Mineral Town. Regardless of what version you play, there is always one character that stands out as odd. Living among the small farming town, Lillia has some sort of illness that has never been truly explained. We know next to nothing about this strange disease. Everyone both real and fictional can agree on three things about her illness: It can’t be cured. It makes Lillia weak and unable to travel very far without help. Nobody seems to know how she contracted this illness.

Lillia’s primary symptom of her unnamed illness is her constant fatigue and low stamina. This implies that her illness slowly drains her stamina, raises her fatigue, or both. Her only known treatment is consuming medicine from the clinic. Since the only medicine they sell in the Mineral Town clinic are Bodigizer or Turbojolt, her illness must be related to her stamina or fatigue. Other than this, Lillia has no other known symptoms.

There is no evidence to prove that Lillia’s illness is fatal, but the fact that she has to constantly take medicine to treat it makes me believe that she can die from it. This also means that her treatment is quite expensive and causes strain in the chicken ranch business. This may be an alternate reason why Rod might have packed his bags and left the family in search for an imaginary cure. We know he’s not really looking for some desert flower that blooms once every 10 years.

What I find very strange about her illness is that nobody seems to know how she contracted it. Nobody else in town has it, so we know it’s not contagious. She was not born with this illness, but she must have been ill for quite some time considering her neighbors are comfortable around her. Even though there is no cure, Anna has heard about some odd flower that blooms in the desert that can treat it. Where did she hear this strange rumor? Basil is a plant hunter, and he has never heard of this miracle flower. It makes no sense.

No matter how much time passes or how many Mineral Town games they make, Lillia has never gotten anywhere near anything that resembles a cure. Since Back to Nature, no new details about this illness has come to light. Each Mineral Town game has the same old worn-out story. Lillia is ill and she can only wait for her husband to return with a cure that will never come. Everyone moved on and accepts that this is just some gimmick Harvest Moon created for this one character.

But what if I tell you that this is not true? There are more details about this illness, but we simply have not been looking in the right place. The developers have given us all the clues we need, and we’ve been simply ignoring them. The answers we’ve been looking for are right in front of our eyes.

In Magical Melody, we meet a young lady named Dia. A sickly young girl who is always weak and must live in a sanitarium under a doctor’s care for the rest of her life. It sounds like to me that Dia has the same illness that Lillia has. There has to be some type of link between these two characters that caused them to contract the same illness. The only problem is that at face value, these two women have nothing in common.

Lillia is a married older woman with two adult children and works at a chicken ranch. Dia is a young single girl from a wealthy family. Their personalities are different, their appearance doesn’t match at all, and there is no common ground that they share that would lead me to believe they contracted the same illness. So what gives? How did these two completely different women contract the same illness?

To find our answer, we will need to explore deep into the past of the Harvest Moon timeline. Once again, we are looking for answers in the wrong place. Once you see the link, everything will start to make sense.

In Rune Factory, we meet a young maiden named Felicity. She also has a strange illness which the doctor can’t figure out. They give her medicine which treats the symptoms, but not the disease. Her symptoms match Lillia and Dia’s exactly. This time, we do find out how Felicity contracted her illness.

One of the village children named Cecilia loves to collect stones. But one day she read a book in the library that told her of a stone that is cursed. She was so afraid that she threw them all away except one. Cecilia gifted Felicity one of the stones she owned, and the young maiden started to feel ill soon after. You take the stone away from her and take it to her doctor who tell you, “th-this stone. . . It carries a very evil aura.” He then discards the stone properly, and Felicity immediately starts to feel better. We now know that this illness is not a disease, but rather an evil curse!

Now we need to ask the big important question: How did Lillia and Dia get cursed?

Dia is much easier to explain. She also collects stones. While we will never see or hear about her collection, we do know that some of her favorite gifts are shiny stones. Her favorite gifts (other than blueberries) are emeralds and accessories made of sapphires, topaz, diamonds, and other valuable gems. It is fair to believe that she also has a stone that is cursed very similar to the one Felicity had. Sadly, there is no way to separate Dia from this cursed object. She will be ill for the rest of her life.

Lillia is much harder to link considering that there is no direct evidence that she collects valuable stones. But if you romance Popuri, you will see that there is an interest and possibly a collection of stones somewhere in the chicken ranch. During Popuri’s purple heart event, she will give you an item called a dorodango. Now I had no idea what the hell this thing was, so I had to look it up. Turns out that it’s a ball of mud, sand, or clay that is shaped into a sphere and polished to have some gloss to it. A shiny round object? Kind of like the stones Cecilia collected and passed on to Felicity. If Popuri has enough of these items to give away, then it’s fair to believe that Lillia might have some as well.

A dorodango is not a stone, and it’s probably not cursed. But then let’s focus on another common element of the Mineral Town games. Anna has heard of something called a desert flower. I believe that there is no such flower, but a possible reference to another stone commonly found in the Lake mines of Mineral Town. This item is called a sand rose. Quite a coincidence? Sand like the desert? Rose like a flower? Not to mention that the lake mines is also home to many cursed items. What if one of the dorodango Lillia owns has a cursed sand rose in it? This definitely could explain her illness.

And that is my theory. Felicity, Lillia, and Dia are linked by a cursed stone they hold with no idea that it is causing them harm. Ana probably heard about the cursed desert flower, but confused it for a cure instead of the cause. Very similar to how Cecilia discovered the cursed stone. This curse slowly drains the owner’s stamina, forcing them to rely on bodigizer forever. Where did this curse come from, we will never know. If only Mineral Town and Magical Melody would allow us to solve the curse and heal the sickly women, that would have made the Harvest Moon lore that much more interesting.