pearl (rain world)
Items found throughout Rain World which resemble pearls. Most are white but some of them, usually those found in hard-to-reach places, are various colors. Slugcats can carry them, or they can safely store them in their stomach if they need to keep their hands free.
Scavengers value them very highly, and a slugcat can give them pearls to pass through their "tolls", make simple trades, or just for goodwill.
They are data storage devices produced by the Ancients. Iterators can read/write to them, and fully operational Iterators maintain a small constellation of them in their chambers as scratch-pad memory.
Colored pearls contain largely intact data of some significance. If a slugcat capable of understanding Iterator communication takes one of these to a friendly Iterator, he/she will explain its contents to the slugcat, sometimes prompting them to talk about a particular subject at length. This is the primary mechanism by which the player discovers the game's tremendous amount of lore.
