#rayvee actually writes

[rayveewrites]

It was a nice day, at least. The sun was shining, and a pleasant breeze whistled along the mountain pass. Even the wild Pokémon seemed to be enjoying it- despite their usual aggression, the Houndour were just lazing around, and actually seemed to be willing to leave them be, for once. “We ran into the Ogre last night,” his new travelling companion said, finally breaking the silence, and Kieran froze. “W-What?”

...So. It's been a while. Sorry about that. Burnout has been kicking my ass for the last eighteen-odd months.

I finally wrote a thing again. A small thing, but a thing nonetheless. It's Pokémon's Teal Mask DLC, not any of the fandoms most of you follow me for, but the plot makes me kinda wanna slap someone so. I guess this is the consequence.

If you don't know the plot of TM, this... probably won't make sense. I don't know. My brain isn't really operating correctly, so I can't put myself in your position right now.

I don't know when I'll write again, but it probably won't be Hermitcraft. Sorry. Hyperfixations change, y'know? ...Yeah, I wish LPAU wasn't unfinished, too. I hope I'll be able to come back to it someday.

[rayveewrites]

Oh, Twelve. You have no idea. Truly Bedrock lore is a very long, very complicated ride.

I'll preface this by saying that I haven't watched all perspectives (mostly just Zloy and Lyarrah), and I haven't watched a ton of seasons 0 & 1. That said, I feel I have a pretty decent idea as to the lore of this damn SMP, or at least a better one than a lott of people.

We start in Season 0, where a collection of players load into a Bedrock world that might be normal if a) it wasn't a handful of islands in the middle of the ocean, b) the players weren't all completely insane, and c) the moon was in one piece. The moon is not in one piece. The moon will not be in one piece for many seasons.

Like I said, I haven't watched much of Season 0, so I may have missed out on some plot (I think there was time travel involved?), but by the end of the season, they've built a small but thriving community on the ocean and islands, and have decided to sail to greener pastures, because they wanted to experience the wonders of the 1.14 update or something.

As the group sails gracefully away on their boats and giant turtles and whatnot, a piece of the moon falls to the land below, destroying the fleet and conveniently resetting all progress.

Welcome to Season 1! Don't get too attached.

Season 1's world is actually JaseyBee's own personal singleplayer world, in which the Truly Bedrock crrew just kinda showed up. Jasey's opinion on this is blatantly ignored.

[EDIT: I made a mistake, this isn't Jasey's world. It was actually JessiieB's, who is a completely different person. My only defence is that I was going off spoken words for this and their names are absurdly similar.]

The Season 1 has two main problems: One, the moon is still very not much in one piece, and pieces of the moon are still travelling toward the server, and two, Illager patrols have a habit of spawning and spawning and spawning and spawning and- you get the idea.

The TBers mostly ignore the moon in the hopes it'll go away, and they complain loudly about the constant Pillagers but don't really do anything about it, and they coninue to build stuff and cause each other problems because that's the kind of group this is.

By the end of the season, enough of the TBers have decided that maybe they should do something about the moon thing to drag the more reluctant players along with them as they hunt down a woodland mansion in the hope that killing off enough Illagers will make the moon behave itself.

The mansion they find is weird, in that it is actually several mansions stacked on top of each other at odd angles, and also there is a hidden room inside wih a circle of small, strange creatures doing some sort of ritual.

There are two trains of thought, here: Either the mysterious beings are performing a ritual to bring the moon down on them, and they should kill them; or they're performing a ritual to stop the moon from destroying everything (again), and therefore should not be killed.

Lyarrah and Jasey [Jessiie] are the only ones who subscribe to the latter. Consequently, they are also the closest thing the server has to any impulse control. Truly Bedrock does not have much in the way of impulse control.

Murders are commited, moon chunks start to fall, everyone takes shelter in the nether to ride it out, and the server resets.

Season 2 is upon us! There is notably Less Moon in the sky, but there is still Some Moon left and it's not like minecraft has tides or whatever to be affected by it.

Season 2's main problem (because there's always a main problem) is that placing a beacon down and activating it will result in slowly expanding nether corruption. The obvious answer would be to just burn all the beacons on the server and ban them outright, but that would require acknowledging the problem.

Meanwhile Zloy has a sideplot where he bulds an item sorter/accounting system/AI for his shop. The AI is called Alice. They're sentient. Zloy is their dad.

Meanwhile meanwhile, FoxyNoTail obtains a giant laser. Foxy is not the sort of person who one should allow to have a giant laser. Nobody on Truly Bedrock is the sort of person who one should allow to have a giant laser. At some point, Big Chicken carves SilentWhisperer's face into the literal sun. Who's Big Chicken? Well, he's definitely not Foxy in a chicken skin doing a bad Russian accent. Definitely not.

Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile, Zloyxp is building a giant, impenetrable vault. He intends to scam Mr Beardstone out of his diamonds. The vault lasts for one week. It does not last two.

Back in the main plot, Jasey is being guided through the Nether by a group of piglins, where she finds a giant, ominous portal frame and decides that she should tell someone about it, marking her as the most proactive member of the server. Unfortunately, she is still kind of stuck in the Nether.

Also, there's a time traveller from a future in which everything was overrun by the beacon corruption. His name is BrunoDanUy, and he tries to tell people before things get too bad. Unfortunately, everyone blatantly ignores his warnings.

Eventally, during a group meeting, GruvvaGuy mentions that there's a great big portal over by his base which he didn't build, Jasey valiantly manages to not strangle Foxy on the spot, and everyone gets over to Gruvva's base in time to witness a Magma Cube the size of a building come through. The group bolts.

Zloy and MrBeardstone team up to build a giant mech constructed out of shops and operated by Alice. Everyone else goes off to upgrade, aim and fire Foxy's giant laser. Alice fights the Cube for a while, the giant laser finishes both of them off, and now the server's been overrun by less giant, far more numerous magma cubes.

Bruno tells everyone that "Whatever you do, don't shoot the moon with the laser", and Foxy and Silent immideately go shoot the moon with the laser (Bruno's trying his best, guys).

The laser is a direct hit, everyone gets their asses into Zloy's vault, and the season ends with the traditional moonfall and enough magma cream items to probably crash the server.

Season 3 time! This world's problem is that, uh... um. Hm. Well, this is new. While Season 3's world does have Nether and End biomes in the Overworld, everything else seems weirdly fine. Including the moon. Especially the moon, actually, because it's in one piece for the first time in Truly Bedrock history.

And aside from some glitches (which go ignored, because this is Minecraft Bedrock Edition and glitches kinda go with the territory), and some huh-Alice-is-acting-weird, everything's fine and dandy!

...Except it isn't, because Season 3 is actually an insustainable simulation powered by a singular Minecraft shop in order to keep the TBers' brains alive while they heal from being crushed by the moon for the third time, and now Alice can't shut it down without risking their zombie dad due to his weird biology.

Season 3 has the quickest turnaround between revealing the plot and actually doing something about it, probably because Zloy is better at listening to Alice than Beardy is to Bruno or Foxy is to literally anyone.

They get out, the main change is that Zloy is now a Zombie possessing a decapitated zombie head possessing a zombie (as opposed to just being a ghost posessing a zombie, which he was before), and the moon is back to being in pieces, although there really isn't all that much left by this point.

Season 4's main problem is that there is a weird, shady group of not-TBer people hanging around, usually glimpsed whenever a glitch mysteriously rights itself. These range from odd (where did that second dragon egg go?), to mildly annoying (I could have sworn there was a surface spawner around here somewhere), to downright inconvenient (removing a furnace glitch in which a player can get absurd amounts of xp in a version without dual-wielding). They also manage to get the moon in one piece (for the first actual time in the server's history), so you know they're evil.

The shady group is called the World Builder Corp., they build worlds, and it only took them, what, three years to notice that the Truly Bedrock server had some problems. They decided to clean up the server to bring it up to standards, and their roadmap also includes gletches which are buddy-that's-a-person, including Pigglesworth (who is a pig), Zloy (who is an item), and Alice (who should probably not be sentient, but they are, and we love them).

That's right, folks! That hybrid discrimination MCYT fic trope? Someone finally did it in an SMP!

Oh, and the Worldbuilders are shutting down the server, Alice is now an Allay, and Foxy has an RV capable of space travel. Don't worry about it.

They take the only natural course of action, which is to fly to the now-repaired moon, because the Worldbuilders won't think to go there for a while. They find a house on the moon, which apparently belongs to a couple of definitely-not-just-Foxy-with-a-weird-costume-and-bad-accent (it's actually really difficult to figure out if these characters exist in-universe or not; people just go with whichever option is funnier so it changes on a dime). The only one actually in the house, though, is Bruno, who has apparently been hanging out on the moon for a bit.

(OOC: I assume what's happened is that Bruno took a hiatus from TB during S4 and this is just a way for him to be back in S5, but I don't watch Bruno so I could be wrong.)

Before they leave, Foxy decides to plant the ruly Bedrock SMP flag, which causes the apparently shoddily-repaired moon to break apart again. They take off, land in another world, and manage to get through their second season finale without getting directly crushed by a chunk of moon (although it's broken again, so it's only a matter of time).

y’all, I’m watching the newest Truly Bedrock season, but there seems to be a lot of lore? any TB fans wanna catch me up a bit on all that?

[rayvee]

“Okay, found the trail,” Ren whispered, “looks like he went this way, dude.”

“I should probably give you a leash,” Zloy muttered. The thought had just occurred to him, but if they were going to be in public…

“Ugh. Do you have to?”

“I don't know. I think there’s fines or something if a dog isn’t on a leash?”

“Wow, rude. Who made that decision?”

“Some Human, I dunno.”

“What a butt. Well, us getting fined won’t save Pix any faster, I guess.”

“You sure?”

“Go ahead, dude. Just keep it the crap kind I can break out of whenever.”

“Well, by Human standards, that’s most leads. But sure.”

“Let's go find Pixie!”

-

“Jeez, whoever did this got pretty far.”

“No kidding,” Zloy responded. Humans only had so much stamina, and they’d crossed that threshold a while ago. Which was kind of concerning, honestly, but there wasn’t much that could take on a zombie and a werewolf in this day and age.

Ren suddenly swerved down an innocent-looking alleyway, and then paused.

“Dude… it disappears down here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I wouldn’t lie to you, dude.”

“Oh no,” Zloy muttered, “where- could they be underground? Are we dealing with another Player?”

“Oh gods, you think so? I haven’t seen hide nor hair of other Players this whole time, dude. Who could it even be?”

“Yeah, no idea. I’ve been on this island for a couple hundred years by now, you’d think that I’d have heard something.”

“Especially with that illusion, which- no offence, dude, but it sucks.”

“It fools Humans but not Players, which is pretty much all I need, so…”

“Yeah, that makes- hey, what’s this?” Ren glanced around, then shifted back to human form and pulled a concealed lever.

A block in the floor retracted, and a hole into the earth appeared.

“Well. That’s not suspicious at all.”

[rayveewrites]

for the ask thing: botem playing keep away with impulses com while hes on the phone with skizz?

<Skizzleman> Hey dude.

<Skizzleman> Impy.

<ImpulseSV> Hey?

<Skizzleman> I’ve got a fun idea for the next N&S

<ImpulseSV> Oh? Do tell.

<Skizzleman> Well, I was thinking, y’know.

<ImpulseSV> dangerous.

<Skizzleman> Hey! Anyway, with 1.18 coming up soon

<Skizzleman> Maybe the next one could be on a snapshot?

<ImplulseSV> asdfecazxz

<Skizzleman> Dude? You okay?

<Skizzleman> Was that a yes or a no?

<ImpulseSV> What’s N&S?

<Skizzleman> …Naked and Scared? Hardcore challenge? Are you alright?

<ImpulseSV> Oh, the thing Impulse keeps disappearing off to every now and hen?

<Skizzleman> Who is this?

<ImpulseSV> Oh, I’m Pearl! I’m one of the new hermits :D

<Skizzleman> Nice to meet you!

<Skizzleman> Did you steal my buddy’s comm?

<ImpulseSV> Well.

<ImpulseSV> He should’ve known better than to text during a meeting.

<Skizzleman> So what are you doing right now then?

<ImpulseSV> cvbhjnbvcbgbhnjnhj

<Skizzleman> Pearl?

<ImpulseSV> Oh, hey, Skizzleman!

<ImpulseSV> Can I interest you in some copper?

<Skizzleman> …Hi, Scar.

<Skizzleman> How are you gonna get it across servers?

<ImpulseSV> I have my ways.

<ImpulseSV> Just trust me.

<Skizzleman> …If 3rd Life taught me one thing.

<Skizzleman> It’s that you cannot be trusted.

<ImpulseSV> Rude! I’ll have you know that this is top-quality copper.

<Skizzleman> …Sure, dude. I’m pretty sure you aren’t whitelisted on my personal world?

<ImpulseSV> Well, there’s one warhgjkgvchdgh

<ImpulseSV> sdgfh;gvjh ygh

<Skizzleman> Again?

<ImpulseSV> What’s going on?

<ImpulseSV> Oh, you were talking about your hardcore thing.

<Skizzleman> Is this Grian or Mumbo?

<ImpulseSV> Grian.

<Skizzleman> Cool. How’re you doing, dude?

<ImpulseSV> Oh, y’know.

<ImpulseSV> Sitting on the mast of Pearl’s starter house.

<ImpulseSV> Watching Impulse trying and failing to land on a one-block wide platform to get his comm back.

<ImpulseSV> Oh he made it! Shame his balance was so wonky.

<Skizzleman> You pushed him off, didn’t you?

<ImpulseSV> I would never!

<ImpulseSV> ANYWAY, while I have you here.

<ImpulseSV> Do you think you’re up for a second season of 3rd Life?

<ImpulseSV> I’m still hashing out the details rn. Might rename it, we’ll have to see.

<Skizzleman> Sure dude, sounds fun!

<Skizzleman> Give me the deets once you’ve worked them out?

<ImpulseSV> Great! I’ll DM you later

<ImpulseSV> dfcghbnkjlmjkbhjvghfcvh nb

<ImpulseSV> 8765rtfthhukiopl;/’;lkjhg

<Skizzleman> Again?

<ImpulseSV> 67y8uikj bvdzxhvm ‘’[87tf

<ImpulseSV> OKAY I GOT MY COMM BACK.

<ImpulseSV> Mumbo managed to butterfingers it into the boatem hole so it respawned on me.

<ImpulseSV> Snapshot N&S sounds interesting.

<Skizzleman> Wanna chat later then?

<ImpulseSV> …Yes.

<ImpulseSV> when my friends aren't playing keep-away with my comm

<ImpulseSV> stdrfyhgvhkjchfx

<ImpulseSV> How does anyone manage to lose their comm all the way out here?

<Skizzleman> Who’s got it this time?

<ImpulseSV> TFC

<Skizzleman> Nice to meet you!

[rayveewrites]

Okay, so you know all those posts going around about nonhermits seeing Hermit builds for the first time and just being (righteously) in awe of how impressive and detailed and enormous they are?

That's fun and all, but like. Imagine if the big builds were all that people knew about them.

Sure, people know of the hermits, at the very least, or at most they've played with them- in MCC, in Last Life, in other SMPs. And the hermits are friendly enough, especially because it's the social ones who leave the server to interact with nonhermits; but nonetheless, they don't know much about the server itself.

Oh, they've seen the World Downloads; they've explored past Seasons after the hermits themselves move on. So from their perspective, Hermitcraft must be a place filled with dedicated builders and redstoners and sure, there might be a little prankage on the side, but clearly they spend most of their time building and redstoning and so on. Right?

Say someone gets onto Hermitcraft, someone who isn't supposed to be there- pick a content creator, or a hermit!<insert name/s nere> au you like. Their whole life, they've only known hermits as these friendly-but-distant people dedicated to their respective crafts and capable of creating magnificent builds.

They are not prepared for the cults. Or the pranks. Or the really stupid wars. Or the fact that the moon's growing bigger. Or the eldrich cat.

They're unprepared for the petty infighting or the fact doomsday devices show up like every other week or that these famous, incredible creators are actually complete idiots.

[rayveewrites]

What, you think I wouldn't let such a huge milestone pass without doing anything?

It’s rare that the Hermitcraft Server is open to outsiders. But today is not a normal day. Ten years. Ten years of pushing the boundaries, of doing the unthinkable, to creating beauty within function and function within beauty. Ten years of people, coming and going, returning and arriving, torches passed and generations bridged. Ten years old and still going strong. Here’s to ten more.

[rayveewrites]

“So how did this even happen?” the stranger asked as they pulled some sort of odd device from seemingly nowhere. They held it up, and Pix blinked as a weird beam scanned him up and down.

“I… sort of drank a magic potion? By accident?”

“What kind?”

“Awkward, I think he said it was?”

“Okay, that’s weird. Awkward potions aren’t supposed to do anything.”

“So I’ve been told,” Pix said dryly, “Zloy said they were a base for other potions or something.”

“Yeah. They don’t do jack on their own, they’re just a base for other potions to come from. I guess it’d make sense that a Human couldn’t handle much magic in general, let alone undirected magic…”

“That’s what Zloy said, too,” he squinted slightly at his captor, “almost word-for-word.”

“Ha! That’s new. I learned a lot from him, though, so I guess I might use some of the same language. Didn’t imagine that’d translate to English, though.”

“He taught you potion brewing?”

“He taught me a lot of things. Potion-brewing was one of them. He wanted me to be able to manage ʖᔑ∷ʖ∷ᒷ∴ᔑ if she needed maintenance,” their head angled. “At least, that’s what he said. It was probably because he wanted to make sure I could make a Weakness potion if necessary.”

“Weakness?” Pix echoed curiously.

“Does pretty much what you’d expect it to. It’s part of managing Zloy’s… the closest word would be zombification. Managing that if it gets too far out of hand.”

“It can get out of hand?!”

“His control’s pretty good. Can I take a sample of your breath?”

“Uh, sure?”

“Don’t stick anything in his mouth and you’ll be fine, I imagine,” the stranger continued. “Like I said, his control's pretty good, and if he hasn’t eaten anyone yet he’s probably not going to. Unless the body gets stripped of safeguards and fried again, but if that happens we’ll probably have bigger problems. Don’t stick anything in his mouth and we’ll be golden.”

“What happens if I stick something in his mouth?”

“He’ll probably bite it automatically. Blood sample?”

“Why do you need a blood sample?”

“I want to see how deeply embedded the magic is in your body.”

“Oh, okay. That’s fine.”

***

Ren hefted his sword, not liking how out-of-practice he felt. Training opportunities had unfortunately been few and far between since he’d Respawned, since Zloy didn’t really have easy access to a place large, private and soundproof enough to really go at it. 

The hole- which had water at the bottom- led to a hall. It was fairly simplistic, just carved out of the stone in a two-by-three, but it confirmed what Ren had feared- this was Player-made, and pretty recently, too.

What would a Player want with Pix? He was just… Human. He was perfectly lovely, of course, but to an outsider…

Zloy splashed down behind him, the flimsy illusion completely gone. They were doing this as themselves, Players to Player, and may the gods be kind to whoever had taken their friend from his home, because Ren sure wouldn’t.

“Which way?” the zombie asked, his tone terse. Zloy had his own sword and shield equipped.

“I’m not sure, dude,” Ren admitted. 

“We’ll split up then. Yell if you find him,” Zloy’s eyes were starting to develop the film that indicated a zombie on the hunt. He’d stop at nothing to find his perceived prey; Ren had seen Cleo do exactly the same thing, and it was always terrifying to be on the receiving end.

Ren nodded, and started down one direction. He heard Zloy’s light footsteps as he went down the other.

[rayveewrites]

“...So what happened to your eye then?”

“That’s beside the point.”

“What is the point?”

“That I fought a god and won. Do keep up.”

“Well, I don’t see how…” Lisa looked up as Doc and Alice entered the room, still bickering good-naturedly.

“What’s going on?”

“Doc won’t tell me what happened to his face,” Alice whined, collapsing dramatically on Lisa’s lap.

“Oh, good luck with that,” Impulse responded, “he hasn’t told us, either.”

“That reminds me, what does the bundle look like?” Pearl asked.

“It’s empty at the moment. Cleared it after, well… y’know. Still got the records. Unless you want to reset?”

“Yeah, reset. How high did Bdubs and Etho drive Doc’s?”

“Into the shulkers. For blocks.”

“Could Etho even afford…”

“Yeah, probably not. He was banking on the fact that we’d never find out, I imagine.”

Doc got a gleam in his eye, “if I can bankrupt Etho…”

“You’re not allowed to bet on yourself, Doc, we established that in Season Two!”

“You guys are betting?” Alice interrupted.

“On Doc’s eye? Yeah.”

“Why?”

Several hermits shrugged.

“Banter can get weird,” Grian said from where he was lying on the back of a couch.”

“And because it’s funny,” Zedaph added.

“And because it’s funny,” the winged man conceded.

“Mostly because it’s funny.”

“So the bundle’s empty right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Just Doc’s or all of them?”

“All of them. Like I said, I’ve got the records if we want to go from there.”

“I almost want to say that’s not as fun.”

“Restart for now, reassess once everyone’s back?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“So standard options?” Doc asked, flipping open a book he’d seemingly produced from nowhere. He held a feather quill, poised to write.

“You can’t run this either,” the creeper hybrid pouted.

“So… ‘did something stupid’, ‘blew himself up’, ‘got stabbed in the face’..what else?” Cleo asked, looking around.

“Burn wounds?”

“Right, burn wounds.”

“Pissed off a second, unrelated god.”

“Born with it, too proud to say otherwise.”

“Just decided to remove his eye to see if he could.”

“I’m pretty sure that last one falls under ‘did something stupid’, Pearl.”

“How come Etho can add weirdly specific options, but not me?”

“You never asked.”

“And also it’s Etho.”

“And also it’s Etho.”

“What currency do you use?” Lisa asked mischievously.

“What, you want in?” Cleo responded, an amused glint in her eye.

“I want to put something in on ‘his own stupid fault’, if that’s an option.”

“Hey!”

“I mean, that one’s kind of a given, but…”

“Cleo I swear to the gods-”

“We typically use diamonds, but our society’s built on more of a barter system, so we could figure something out.”

“Oh hell yeah.”

“You’re supposed to be on my side!”

Lisa just started laughing.

[rayveewrites]

Okay I love this a lot yes very good. Parental EX goes brrr. Imma go off now.

Some of the kids being banned purely because they have magic powers they don't know how to handle, and EX teaching them to use them (and vaporizing the admins/operators who banned them)

EX being a bad influence by teaching the kids which blocks are and aren't flammable. Also how to use TNT to cause maximum destruction.

EX claiming he only looks after the kids because it means he gets a small army and everyone knowing he's lying.

The kids helping EX! Maybe he never learned to read, so they pool their knowledge and teach him! Maybe they show him new ways to stab! Maybe they come up with Fun New (extremely unrecommended and dangerous) ways to use his lightning! Maybe some of the kids use sign language and teach him! The possibilities are endless.

EX eventually making his own server for the kids because even when you have the protection of a small army the banscape really isn't that pleasant. That server quickly becoming a home to the kids. It's registered as an anarchy server, so there's no rules and therefore no banning. He still frequently goes back to the banscape to find more kids who need help.

EX taking in older kids as well! They help deal with the large numbers of small children because we all know EX can't really do it solo, and they can fill in the gaps.

Him inviting the only hermit who really made an effort to understand him (Zedaph Worm Man) who finds himself teaching the kids redstone and doing his best to be a good influence because he knows EX honestly isn't. He does his best to be understanding and not tread on any toes though! His redstone is fun, his Worm Man persona is hilarious and he's got a good sense of humour, so the kids like him.

Worm Man telling EX he's done a lot of good for the kids and EX barely holding it together because validation.

EX actually helping neurodivergent kids instead of trying to force them to act normally. There is a quiet space for kids dealing with sensory overload, for instance. One of the few server rules is no loud noises/flashing lights/etc in the Quiet Space.

EX having a hit list of various terrible admins, operators, parents/guardians and teachers. Occasionally he goes off and lightnings half a dozen. It's very therapeutic.

He encourages their creativity! Of course, usually their creativity leads to there being an awful lot of exactly what you'd expect from a pack of 9-12-year-olds. But they're having fun, and the fact there's a forest's worth of the things on the server is admittedly kinda funny.

EX teaching the kids to accept things like hybrids, disabled people, neurodivergent people, LGBT+ people etc. as normal people because he (and a lot of the kids) know how it feels to be ostracized. He never asked to be the evil clone, after all.

Xisuma finding out eventually and being Very Concerned for the kids but not really being able to do anything about it because he's not whitelisted, so Zedaph Worm Man gets some footage of the place to show it's actually fine and the kids are doing well. X is still worried but he's choosing to trust Zed WM and let it slide for now.

"Hey kids! Who wants to help me obliterate a random mountain for no good reason?" *enthusiastic cheering*

Helsknight is like the weird uncle who shows up occasionally and teaches you how to rap battle and get away with arson and then disappears again for several months.

Parts of the server are For Destruction (and get reset every now and then) and parts of the server are Not For Destruction. Do not get these mixed up, please.

Zedaph Worm Man is the only responsible adult on the server and he is definitely not used to it please help.

As the kids grow up, some of them stick around to help but others go off on adventures! Some are very successful, and they all live safe in the knowledge that they've always got a home to go to should they need it.

EX knows the name of each and every child on the server. He never uses any of them.

He has an array of shelves in his bedroom filled with all the gifts the kids have given him- bracelets, drawings, flowers, cool rocks... he keeps everything.

Very occasionally he has a run-in with Xisuma and threatens to sic his army of small children on the hermits. Xisuma is still trying to figure out if he's serious or not.

A Slightly Less Depressing Evil Xisuma Theory

Because as angsty and widely accepted as the idea of a "ban void" is, I've actually always held a slightly different idea.

Okay. So, the general consensus in the Hermitcraft fandom seems to be that getting banned lands you in a kind of limbo space unique to every world. However, I've never really thought of it that way? The nature of banning is to expel you from that one world, de-linking you from it entirely. If you have another world to go to, you can, but if you don't, it just doesn't seem like a natural conclusion to me that you would end up in a limbo specific to the world you were just ejected from, when you aren't even linked to that world anymore.

Instead, what about a common destination for all banned people? I've always visualized a more universal ban space, an area separate from all worlds that everyone defaults to when they are kicked out. If a "world hub" is a kind of marketplace/train station hybrid, a meeting ground and a gateway to all worlds, then a "ban hub" would be similar, but more hostile. The only way to leave is to enter another world, but if you don't have one to go to, you can stay and try to make your way in the chaos that happens when a bunch of ban-worthy people are packed into the same space. Most of the banned brush themselves off and beg or bargain their way into a new world, or create their own to sulk in, but some...some can't bring themselves to move on. Evil Xisuma included. Whether out of misplaced hope or a need for revenge, a certain set of people stay in that in-between space, carving out a space for themselves by force.

Edgy, right? Until you actually consider who most of these people would be. Think about it. What people who are most commonly banned from worlds, would also be the most likely to spend a long time dwelling on it instead of moving on?

Realistically? A bunch of kids! Nine year olds who just discovered how to use a flint and steel and torched builds until their equally young admins got fed up with it, twelve year olds who think a non-stop stream of cursing in the chat makes them adults, teens who griefed their younger siblings' worlds out of boredom...yes, there are some pretty brutal and powerful people around the ban hub, but the majority of the population is just. Problem children. Too immature yet to accept their consequences and form their own future, or innocent enough to hope that their old world will take them back.

So. That would mean that Evil Xisuma is currently attempting to navigate an intense and mayhem filled landscape composed of petty conflicts between thousands and thousands of kids (with the occasional Actual Threat to keep him on his toes). Whether he's attempting to become their king, getting absolutely steamrolled by them in PvP, begrudgingly adopting them and protecting them from the few other powerful players... whatever version you want to imagine. Just think about it. Evil Xisuma in a banscape filled with those little Minecraft menaces you remember from childhood...so many possibilities for happiness and angst and hilarity....

[rayveewrites]

Ren’s head shot up. 

He smelled blood.

He smelled blood.

Sure, it was only a little blood, but it was still blood and it was Human and gods only knew how frail they were. Pix was only Human, he couldn’t take much damage.

He started to run.

-

Pix blinked when Ren appeared in the doorway, ears flattened back and with a strange-looking sword in one hand. Pix distantly registered it as the weird ancient-made metal that had been dubbed darksteel despite not actually containing steel, and then Ren lunged at the robot and Pix scrambled out of the way because he really did not want to get cut on that thing, even by accident.

Despite the powerful blow on his captor’s exposed back, they took the blow surprisingly well and turned, seemingly unbothered by the hit. A sword appeared in their own hand, and the two started to fight.

Pix backed up about as much as he could, because the fight looked nasty and he wasn’t about to get caught in that. And also because he was pretty sure those two could both take much more of a beating than he could.

Ren’s sword struck the stranger’s shoulder, nearly severing their arm in the process. The sound of metal on metal rang in the air, and Ren winced- probably the sensitive dog ears.

They took the opening, headbutting Ren under the chin. Red glitter floated down from their injured arm, and the werewolf was visibly stunned. 

There were no neat movements or  clever tactics- it was just one on one, limbs all over the place. The stranger’s cloak was ripped off, revealing bright pink hair and hard, metallic skin. 

Zloy took that moment to appear in the doorway, his teeth bared. His eyes were blank, and there was something about it that made Pix’s entire body scream at him to run that’s a predator on the hunt it will kill you run run RUN.

And then Zloy took one look at the scene before him, and those eyes almost slammed back to normal.

“Alice?!”

[rayveewrites]

“Pix, I’ve been having trouble with the printer, it keeps mangling- Pix?”

His friend was nowhere to be seen. Sure, he could have gone out to get groceries or whatever, but he generally locked his door when he wasn’t home.

“Pix?” he called again, taking a better look at the apartment. At first, everything seemed normal, but when Zloy took a closer look, he knew something was wrong.

There was broken glass on the floor, for one thing- what looked to be the remains of a drinking glass. Pix normally would’ve cleaned that up pretty quickly, because broken glass and Human fragility weren’t a great combination and the guy did have standards.

Everything else looked mostly normal, although Zloy did catch a whiff of some kind of chemical he vaguely recognized as chloroform. That stuff was mostly used to knock Humans unconscious, wasn’t it?

Zloy followed the scent trail to Pix’s bedroom window, where he found a few hints- signs of the glass being removed and replaced, a few scratches on the sill, and, most concerningly, a bootprint on the outer ledge.

Zombie noses were good, but Zloy knew he’d quickly lose the trail in the constant bombardment of scents London had to offer.

-

“Hey dude! What’s up?”

“Pix has been kidnapped.”

“…What?!”

“Well it looks like it, anyway! Someone came through the window. I’d guess it was a few hours ago? Maybe at night, question mark?”

“Oh man, that’s not good. Do you need help, dude?”

“Please?”

“I’ll be there as fast as I can, man. Just hang on, okay?”

“Thanks, Ren.”

[rayveewrites]

We’ve lived and died and laughed and cried and made it to the end

And on that tree in victory I see you stand, my friend

And as you sit among those leaves and watch as heartbeats cease

Know that it’s all over; you can at last feel peace

.

Red and green and in between; we danced this gruelling dance

Stand and fight or flee in fright we had to take that chance

And though you cannot hear us I can tell you this:

We will look back on this and we will joke and we will reminisce

.

Remember among the moon and stars that you are not alone

Remember before this all began we knew we’d die flesh and bone

I swear to you I've no regrets from when I met my end

So let this guilt just leave your soul; you’ll soon be on the mend

.

We’ve laughed and cried and danced and died; it’s time that we go home

But please remember each and every member; we are not alone

For though we live in worlds apart we’re under the same sky

None of us do feel regret so spread your wings and fly

.

And for now we’ve one last dance so high among the stars

The wispy ghosts can sing and laugh and we can see so far

And even once we all go home know this is not goodbye

But for now please take my hand and join us in the sky

.

But though it seems it’s all over remember this my friend:

For though we call it such a thing will never be the end

And as the blood is washed away I swear to you that we

Will live and die and laugh and cry again in Season Three

[rayveewrites]

So this post is going off a bit now? Which is fun? But, more importantly, it's a little out of date, so let's catch up!

After Alice shows up and names Zloy's overcomplicated autobrewer ("Barbrewa", who is not sentient), things are generally pretty quiet for the two. Alice moves in, Zloy is slightly wary of being around his servermates because he goes full zombie when he sleeps and keeps biting his villagers, Lyarrah points out that Players can't be zombified and Silent is a zombie already, and everything is about as normal as you can get on the Truly Bedrock SMP.

Meanwhile, everyone else is dealing with this Season's main plot in-between pranking each other with various foodstuffs (long story), which consists of a mysterious group called The Worldbuilder Corporation sneaking around and fixing bugs. TBers are mostly put out by this, because they were using those bugs, thank you very much, and they've also somehow managed to get the moon back in one piece, despite the fact that it's been blown up at least thrice by this point.

Zloy takes a break around this point and steps back because of irl mental health problems to organise his basement, so what he and Alice are doing for a while is partially up to interpretation (I like to think they were having a father-daughter bonding arc). Needless to say, the next time we see them, they're raiding a Pillager Outpost for Allays. Zloy tells Alice that they're essentially better item sorters. Alice, who is an AI constructed mostly of item sorters, is not amused about this.

Alice also gets shot by a Worldbuilder, which is fine because its just a proxy and not Alice's actual consciousness or something, they have more, but it's not fine, because this has apparently been a common occurence lately.

This angers Zloy more than anything else the Worldbuilders have done (including 'fixing' their main source of experience in a world where dual-weilding is obnoxiously limited), because that's his child and you just don't do that. So he calls the Worldbuilders the fuck out, and meets with a representitive while Alice clears out.

See, since the Worldbuilders have been targeting Alice for some time now, it'll only take so long until they realize that the easiest way to deal with them is to take out the redstone filters which make up he core of Alice's being.

But this leaves a problem- Alice is a building. Buildings can't exactly move. Certainly not to another celestial body on short notice, which is what they have to do now, because the best place to hide from the Worldbuilders for a bit is the place they just finished repairing (read: the moon).

(Alice also probably doesn't want to be reliant on the moon, because this is would be their first time seeing the real thing, in one piece, waxing and waning, in their entire life. They know the TBer's track record with the thing).

Anyway, Alice's main problem is that a fully sentient AI's file size is, apparently, quite large. Large enough that none of their proxy bodies can fit them, anyway, which means they need something else.

Something compatible with Vanilla Minecraft, like their father's zombie form, so they know they'll be safe. Something that can travel easily, that can make it to the moon and back. Something similar enough to the item filters that are the basos of their entire existence. Something like the Allay that's been floating around behind them for the past ten minutes while they debate with themselves.

Meanwhile, Zloy's meeting with The Representitive (who was not named, so I'm going to be calling him that), and mostly complaining about all the weird problems were previous Truly Bedrock Seasons' main plots. Then he discovers that the Worldbuilders are planing to just reset the world instead of dealing with the problems individually (which makes some sense, but the All Store is one of the things that'd be deleted), and also that The Representitive is... Racist? Speciesist? Look, he wants to deal with all the players-that-are-technically-also-mobs, which is a list that includes Pigglesworth (a pig), Silent (a zombie pigman/lin) Tizztom (a fox), and Zloy himself (a decapitated zombie head piloting a different zombie body).

Zloy is not happy about any of this, naturally, and he's ready to throw hands with The Representitive, but the Representitive has a diamond sword which is unfortunately more effective than Zloy's bare hands. The idea is to just let Zloy (the decapitated head) despawn, which means The Representitive arguably didn't even commit any real crime. This also means The Representitive needs to wait five minutes, and Zloy'll be damned if he lets his last five minutes go by without annoying The Representitive as much as possible.

(Why The Representitive doesn't just exit the room is beyond me. Like. The door is right there.)

Speaking of the door, it's only two minutes into Zloy's time before a little Allay flies in, picks up his head, and shoves it over The Representitive's face.

The good news is that Alice is no longer tied to the All Store's continued existence! The bad news is that they're mortal now. Still, no solution is ever perfect, especially not when it was thought up in less than an hour.

Zloy and Alice dump The Representitive in a ditch and find a zombie body because Zloy feels sick while possessing the guy (whether it's because The Representitive is That Bad or if it's just because Zloy's unused to being alive is up for debate), and then it's time to meet up with the rest of the group and get the hell out of dodge.

It's pretty much what you'd expect from a Truly Bedrock road trip: loud, chaotic, scuffed, and they break the moon at one point (gotta maintain branding). Zloy's brought Alice, of course, but at some point between receiving a signal from Mr Onion and being dropped into a new world that was thrown out by the Worldbuilders, they've dissapeared.

Currently, I'm not sure if Alice is actually missing or if they're just hanging around off-camera while everyone gets established. We'll have to wait and see. Zloy is building up a concrete shop, which is probably a mistake (concrete converting is absolutely awful in Bedrock).

Who is Alice and What is Zloy: An Essay* on the Lore of Zlobert Experience

Aka I did not watch hours of Zloy videos and dig through his Tumblr to keep this information to myself.

*This will not be written in essay format. I have a visceral hatred toward structured writing. Thank you for your understanding.

Zloy is a dimension-jumper/worldhopper, which means he spends most of his time doing whatever he wants wherever he wants. Of course, Zloy was actually alive at one point, and he had trouble surviving in servers he wasn’t native to.

The solution? An exosuit! What exactly this damn thing is is a little unclear, but it is, presumably, pretty good at keeping the man alive, and most likely has an awful lot of robotic functions, or at least can be easily fitted with robotic functions.

So Zloy was doing his thing in some world or another when he ran into the ghost of a witch. Said witch’s ghost then proceeded to steal Zloy’s original body for reasons that are unclear to me but might have come up somewhere maybe? (Zloy for the love of god please tag your lore consistently I’m begging you-)

Zloy, now disembodied and watching a witch run around in his former body, then proceeded to possess the nearest humanoid creature, as one does. Said creature was, of course, a zombie, which was allergic to sunlight, as most zombies are. Being possessed by the ghost of a Player didn’t exactly change that little fact.

Fortunately(?), Zloy knew how to cure zombie villagers! And, consequently, how to look after his new zombie body: golden apples and weakness potions. Of course, those can only manage an actual zombie so much, and also his body was kinda decomposing, and part of Zloy’s brain was being exposed to the open air and the guy was just kinda miserable in general, so he made himself a helmet out of his available materials. (Gold. He made a gold helmet. It got stuck to his head pretty much immediately. Now he’s even more miserable).

So Zloy’s wandering the land, consuming weakness potions and golden apples, a helmet glued to his head that he’s waiting to break but also really doesn’t want to have break on him, and eventually it does, in fact, break, because gold is not a very practical metal to make your helmets out of.

Unfortunately, the helmet breaking does not change the fact that it is still, in fact, very much attached to Zloy’s head. The golden apples, meanwhile, finally start doing something useful, so Zloy is now a ghost possessing a zombie with chunks of gold helmet embedded beneath his skull that conveniently work as sunscreen.

(either the apples or the helmet also turned his eyes yellow at some point)

And things are looking up! Not only has Zloy brute-forced his new body into being a fully functional Player, but his newfound zombie nature means he’s compatible with worlds by default, because zombs are a Minecraft constant. He’s free to travel the universe and cause problems for everyone, including himself!

Eventually Zloy finds his way to a little server called Truly Bedrock, where the moon is in pieces before they even start and the inhabitants are every flavour of unhinged imaginable. Zloy, who has seen weirder things than a broken moon and is also very unhinged, was right at home!

…Until said home got blown up by a chunk of moon.

And then the rest of the moon.

Fortunately, the TBers are frankly impossible to kill, even if they get bits of moon dropped on their heads every season finale. They’re like extremely weird cockroaches (affectionate).

So welcome to Season Two! This is where things get really interesting.

Zloy starts the season off with a shop in their new shopping district called the All Store. The All Store’s function is that people can both sell common resources to it, and buy from it, ideally creating a shop that restocks itself.

Originally it starts out as a fairly traditional chests-and-signs shop, but after a while Zloy gets bored waiting for the server to update to 1.16 I guess, so he revamps the All Store with an awful lot of well-explained redstone.

Realizing he’s kinda created something that could tangentially count as an artificial intelligence, he dubs it Allistore (Alice for short), mostly for the pun.

He then takes a break to reinvent the TNT duper because those don’t work on Bedrock. His solution is ghasts. He also builds a bunch of pirate ships and giant skulls because Zloy. He ignores the current ongoing serverwide problem that is beacons causing nether corruption in the overworld, but so does the rest of the server so.

Eventually going back to the All Store, Zloy gets to work and expands it once again and kinda rants in the general direction of whoever’s been messing with the circuits.

He finds a dark oak sign saying ‘hi’ in one of the dispensers, renames it to ‘henlo’, and chucks it into Alice’s water stream (which is set up to never let items despawn, meaning it'll in there forever) as a stupid joke. 

Then he goes off to design a vault! It has elder guardians, cobblestone generators, obsidian, the works. His plan is to convince his servermate Dadcraft73 to pay Zloy for the right to put his diamonds in said vault. Dadcraft agrees, so long as a) the diamonds are insured and b) Zloy stores his diamonds in there as well.

…So the diamonds get stolen like a week later.

Zloy’s put on trial, and the court is a kangaroo court, and nothing makes sense and a definitely-not-Foxy-person shows up at one point while Judge Foxy steps out of the room, but he ends up owing Dadcraft hundreds of diamonds he doesn’t have.

Zloy finishes his expansion of the All Store, and checks his accounting chest to find not the results of his test run, but a face saying hi dad. Here’s the sign you lost.

So it turns out Alice is, in fact, sentient. Somehow. Neither they nor Zloy are quite sure why.

(It’s at this point Zloy switches from using she/her to they/them pronouns for Alice. Canonically they’re fine with both. )

Zloy installs a shulker box swapper so Alice can talk more easily than messing with the accounting chest, and then Alice tells him to get his act together and reopen so they can maybe earn Dadcraft’s diamonds before Zloy gets locked in his own vault (which is a very effective prison).

Alice mail-orders a mech from Mr Beardstone, who has a mech shop for some reason, and Zloy realizes Alice can look after themself and doesn’t really need him anymore. He gives them the diamonds he managed to accumulate and goes off to lock himself in his vault-turned-prison for the remainder of the season.

Alice is, quite frankly, having none of this, so they scan the inner workings of the mech and combine that information with a scan of a thing named Chuck that showed up like once and…. Look, I dunno what that thing is either tbh. There's no context as far as I can tell.

Anyway, these scans come in useful when Alice uses them to get Zloy’s old exosuit working and operational and they finally have a player-sized body to work with, so it’s time to bust Zloy out of jail!

Alice basically tells him to get his act together and get mining, because apparently he hasn’t told anyone other than Lyarrah that his shop is a person, and they don’t particularly want to get repossessed.

Zloy does a lot of mining and gives Dadcraft a stupid amount of diamond ore arranged in the most obnoxious tree he can manage and that’s the end of that.

The TBers finally decide to do something about the ongoing beacon corruption, and JessieB comes in with news of an extremely big, extremely ominous nether portal that will spell the end of the server.

Naturally, the TBers go to investigate, and learn that the extremely big, extremely ominous nether portal will not, in fact, turn off. And then a giant magma cube came out and started destroying stuff.

While most of the TBers ran to upgrade and fire FoxyNoTail’s giant laser, Zloy and Beardstone split off to make a giant mech out of shops for Alice to pilot, and Alice fought the giant magma cube… at least until the laser destroyed both the mech and the magma cube.

The problem, as you might imagine, is that giant magma cubes tend to split into many, many, many smaller (large-size) magma cubes that are now swarming the entire server. The things are everywhere. There’s no escape.

Foxy figures that hey, they haven’t had the moon fall on them yet, may as well get it over with. He shoots the moon with the aforementioned laser, and everyone hauls tail into the very secure, apparently moon-proof vault/prison. Zloy doesn’t want to leave Alice to die, but Alice just kinda yells at him to get in the vault, they’ll be fine, they literally can’t die as long as the All Store still stands.

Zloy grabs part of Alice and goes, and then another chunk of moon lands on the TB server because these people really can’t go a season without that happening. It’s a wonder they have any moon left. 

Speaking of which, the moon is suspiciously fine for Season 3. Not only is it in one piece, something that has not been the case for the server’s entire history, and also Alice shows up and starts acting really weirdly about halfway through the season (the thing Zloy grabbed turned out to just be a monitor).

Turns out Season 3 is a simulation run by Alice so the TBer’s brains don’t die while they heal from being squashed by the moon again. Unfortunately, Alice had to strip a lot of Zloy’s permissions to make this work, so even if they do pull everyone out, Zloy will be left without a functional body, and- no, stop offering yourself up as sacrifice you stupid zombie.

They break the server via the medium of maps, because maps in bedrock servers take up obscene amounts of data and completely destroy the file size. That’s not a TB-exclusive thing, that’s just a known problem with bedrock edition.

They get out, but Zloy’s body is, in fact, no longer functional, so Silent chops off his head and they take it with them. Zloy is fine, if rather grumpy from being stuck in Silent’s hotbar and unable to do anything except loudly judge Silent’s actions.

Eventually Silent gives up and gives Zloy to a random zombie he finds in a cliff, and Zloy, once equipped, is once again able to possess the zombie’s body and is capable of making that everyone’s problem, including his own.

Alice shows up eventually, names his overcomplicated autobrewer, and starts chilling in his hotel.

In short: Zloy is a ghost possessing a decapitated zombie head possessing a zombie. Alice is his offspring, an immortal AI/building who is able to use player-sized proxies to interact with people in a more traditional way. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[rayveewrites]

Who took Pixl in lpau au??? Im so invested hgfhgvjhv

Pix blinked groggily, trying to figure out where the hell he was and what had just happened. He seemed to be in a cell of some sort, with stark white walls and floor, a bed he was sitting on, some sort of strange light-tube-things running across the ceiling, and a camera in one corner.

Well. This was… probably concerning, if Pix was being honest. Had he seriously been kidnapped from his own apartment? Who had kidnapped him? He’d never actually seen them, just felt their powerful grip before they shoved chloroform under his nose and knocked him out.

Aside from some mild bruising, Pix seemed mostly unscathed, so at least there was that. He wondered if he could manage to break the camera. He didn’t seem to have much to work with, but maybe if he pushed the bed over he could reach it…

The blinking light by the camera indicated his captor was probably watching him, but nobody showed up to stop him as he slowly hauled the bed across the small room, or as he grabbed the camera itself and pulled down on it, letting his weight do most of the actual removal.

He heard movement behind him, and twisted to see that part of the wall had opened up, and a person- presumably his captor- was standing in the newly-created doorway.

They were cloaked, their face concealed, and clothing covered every other inch of skin- they even wore gloves. Pix also got the feeling they were staring at him, even if he couldn’t see their eyes.

“I hope you appreciate what a pain it was to hook that thing up,” they observed. Their voice was robotic, although it was in a filter-over-a-normal-voice way and not text-to-speech. A voice changer, maybe?

“You kidnapped me,” Pix said pointedly. The wires chose that particular moment to snap, sending him falling back onto the bed and floor. He whimpered as his head hit the ground.

“You’re in danger,” the hooded figure told him flatly, “this is for your own good.”

“In danger of what, exactly?”

“What, he didn’t tell you? You’re exhaling pure magic, Mr Riffs. That’s never a good sign. Generally, it’s an indicator for a rather unpleasant death, in fact.”

Pix blinked, “that’s what this is about? Because Zl- a friend of mine knows about it, and we’re keeping an eye on it, and it seems to be fine right now, but he knows what to do if anything-”

“And you trust Zloy? He’s made a lot of mistakes, you know.”

“I-” Pix wondered what mistakes they were talking about. Did they know Zloy personally? “I know Zloy can do some pretty dumb things, but I don’t feel he’d risk my life over something like this.”

“And if he’s wrong? If he’s made a miscalculation?”

“Well… I trust him more than I trust you.”

The head angled, “that’s fair. I did kidnap you.”

“Well, at least you’re honest about it.”

“Hmmm. Tried lying a few times, never went well. Don’t see much point lying to you, honestly. You’ll be dead in sixty years.”

“That’s comforting.”

“If the overload doesn’t kill you first.”

“...do you not recognize sarcasm?”

“Hey, you interrupted my sentence.”

“I guess I did. You mentioned Zloy had made a lot of mistakes. Do you know him, then?”

“Yeah. I did. Do. Whichever.”

“Whichever?”

The hooded figure shrugged, “Tense gets wonky when you’re around long enough. Haven’t seen him since the early 1700s, though. Idiot had to run off after Silent,” they went quiet for a moment.

“Thought he’d gotten himself permakilled until a few years ago,” they added, softly.

Pix fidgeted, unsure how to respond to that. This person clearly cared somewhat about Zloy, even if he didn’t know the exact connection. And the 1700s… were they Ancient too, then?

“How did you meet him?” he asked curiously.

“It’s… a long story. Can I check you over as I tell it?”

“I…Yeah, okay.”

[rayveewrites]

the thought of people just going OMG IS THAT KAKASHI?!?!? while etho goes "wut" is just hilarious to me for no reason. I can imagine the weebs goin' nuts over irl Kakashi. Twitter is probably gonna explode when Etho get caugh on the camera, have fun explaining that twitter tag person -Milo / ( ._.)

At first, people honestly kinda assume he’s a cosplayer. I mean, that’s the obvious conclusion, right?

Sure, it’s weird, and the guy’s obviously pretty eccentric, but this is a small town, with one general store and a population of like maybe 200 people who all know each other and maybe three sealed roads while the rest’s all gravel and dirt. So sure, some random cosplayer is weird, but like. To each their own. If he’s gonna wear a bulky vest at midday in the middle of summer, that’s his problem. He’s not causing trouble, even if he and his friend look pretty lost, and you don’t recognize their language but you figure they’ll switch to English when they actually want to talk to someone.

Except… they don’t, really. The cosplayer’s companion, a big bearded man with a weird eye and dark clothing (again, summer) speaks to you, in that same weird language, and you tell him that if he can’t speak English, he’s not gonna have much luck around here (you’re pretty sure old Henry from down the road knows some German, but you’re also pretty sure these guys aren’t speaking German, so it doesn’t matter, does it?).

He just looks confused, and you repeat yourself, a bit slower this time. Still no understanding from him, so you sigh and continue on your way to the general store to pick up some cereal and detergent.

They’re still there on the way back.

[rayveewrites]

Kinda forgot about the ones not in the forest oops.

Maybe we could hear a bit about beef and etho?

-🪐

You’re a little surprised to see Beardy and the cosplayer still hanging around, but you figure they can sort themselves out. Beardy tries to talk to you again, and while you don’t understand anything he says, you do hear your name in it. Huh. That’s odd. Where’d he learn that?

You take a better look at him. He’s definitely strong- actually, they both are, but Cosplayer’s muscle is the subtler kind that’s more for athletics than straight strength. He could climb a tree pretty easily, while Beardy is the one who could bring it down, so to speak.

His left eye is odd- instead of a white sclera, it’s yellow, and the pupil seems to be more catlike than human. But it’s whatever. You’ve seen weirder. It’s probably just a glass eye or contact lens or something.

It's a shame they can't speak english, really, because they’d be pretty good workers if they wanted to be. They’re not your problem, though, so after a while you leave them be.

-

“Miss Martha?”

It’s one of the kids from out of town- you don't know his name. He's Old Henry’s grandson, come to visit. Kids talk to you sometimes, and you don’t encourage it but you don’t dissuade them, either.

“Who were those people?”

You just shrug, “dunno. Don’t speak english. Not our problem, in any case.”

“Oh,” the child says, then: “d'you think they’re the people who’ve been hangn’ in the woods out back of Mr Peter’s place?”

“Could be. Could be unrelated. S’long as they don’t cause trouble I’m not too worried about it.”

“Oh, okay,” he wanders off, back to his own family, and you continue on your way.

-

The duo are gone as quietly as they appeared by late afternoon, when you’re heading down to the pub to see what’s up.