Lore

Fic Premise (Part 1)

Can you elaborate on the beauty and the beast timeloop au and the hunger au?
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Someone else has already asked for more elaboration on the beauty and the beast timeloop so i will instead tell you about hunger au!!This one is what i also like to call my maximum self indulgence au and comes with a few obligatory warnings: cw for starvation, themes of disordered eating, parasitism, body horror mention, trauma mentions, and a suicide attempt. I'll be putting most of this under a cut so it doesn't get too long and so people can skip it if those warnings are triggers or squicks for them.Essentially, the premise of this fic is that Watchers are cosmic parasites that feed on extreme emotions. Doesn't matter what kind they are-- positive or negative-- but if they're amplified to a certain threshold (sorry in advance for this, im insane and love doing arbitrary research) ie: beta brain wave levels, Watchers can basically resonate with those electromagnetic waves and use them as "nutrients," so to speak.Still with me? Good, cause theres a LOT of worldbuilding to this under the cut.Watchers are, as stated above, parasites with a biological cycle roughly equivalent to endoparasitic wasps, though on a much larger scale. That is to say, they have a larval form, which grows inside a host and eventually kills it, they skip the pupae stage, and emerge instead as juveniles that eventually grow up into adults. There's a post i have saved that more or less looks like how i imagine them-- just add a ton of eyes and wings and bingo, thats basically how i picture their true forms.Grian isn't a natural Watcher, though, even if he functions the same way on a biological level. What happened to him was that after he (under duress) agreed to become a Watcher, they implanted a modified larva in him that copied his code, including personality and memories (because in this iteration of the universe, everything is made of code, including those!! thats a big important plot point), and eventually split him open as it emerged, killing his original iteration in the process. If you're familiar with the video game Soma, it's more or less the same concept of scanned "copies."So! Grian is now a Watcher!! Eventually, he escapes the Watchers and joins Hermitcraft. Fairly familiar in concept to what other Watcher fics include in their narratives. HOWEVER!!! Here's where the Watcher biology comes into play-- Grian has to feed off of a specific range of emotions. Anything in the 18-35 hertz range on the electromagnetic spectrum is something a Watcher can feed off of. Typically, Watchers will target intense negative emotions because those are easiest to come by: pain, rage, terror, etc. Grian, however, is trying to be different from the entities he hates, so he opts to feed on positive emotions, things like extreme joy and excitement, sometimes bordering on mania. These are a lot harder to come by, so to do this he organizes mini games, plays funny pranks, creates and goes to social events, all sorts of fun things he can do to inspire high intensity positive emotions in his friends, so he can get by on scraps until the next MCC, which is his major feeding event.Because the truth is, Hermitcraft isn't a very good food source. It's hard to organize the hermits in large enough numbers that he can feed without potentially hurting them; he's constantly starving himself because he's basically eating the equivalent of table scraps. But MCC has a huge volume of people and a lot of high emotions running through it-- as long as Grian can participate in or even just attend MCC each month, he can keep himself going on this new normal. Yes, he's always hungry, never has enough to eat, but this is far more ethical to him than feeding the way the other Watchers do. So it's worth it. It's worth it.Until MCC gets cancelled. And suddenly Grian is stranded with nothing to feed on and keep himself going until the next event. He rallies himself; he can be strong, he can make it work. He'll just do his best to keep himself occupied and ignore the hunger.But it doesn't last, and eventually, he loses control and ends up creating 3rd Life.My idea for this is more or less a sort of "everybody wakes up in 3rd Life and doesn't know why" situation. 3rd Life plays out as canon, and the entire time Grian is desperately feeding on their suffering, hating himself for it, and feeding anyway because that type of survival instinct is hardwired into his code. Everyone comes back to Hermitcraft traumatized and terrified, and Grian, sated and deeply ashamed, swears to himself it'll never happen again.And then MCC is delayed, and Last Life happens. Grian once again feeds and swears up and down to himself that he'll never do it again. And then, later, another obstruction keeps him from attending MCC; this time he loses control and creates Double Life.It's shortly after DL that it's discovered Grian is the reason the traffic series people have been pulled into these waking nightmares, and that revelation goes over... poorly. The hermits are betrayed and violated, and Grian doesn't know how to explain in a way they'll understand; he can't justify it, either, not even to himself. He's ultimately kicked from the server.After that is a period of time (a little less than a year) where Grian server hops, avoids the Watchers looking for him, and desperately tries to survive on less than what he had at his disposal before. Around halfway through this period, some of the hermits start to simmer down a bit. Reminders of Grian are everywhere, and it's hard not to miss him even when they're still angry. Besides, some of them want more information about what the hell all of that was about, too-- chief among them being Scar, Mumbo, Tango, and Pearl. They're looking for answers, but more than that they're looking for their friend, because now that they've had time to process, it's become increasingly obvious that something had been wrong for a while even before 3rd Life happened. And it's hard to forget all those previous years of close friendship!!! They're valid in their trauma but now that they've had time, they want to know more and get context.Scar ultimately convinces Xisuma to help them track down Grian, and for three months they relentlessly search, using Xisuma's voidwalking ability to traverse the dangerous planes in between servers. Grian eventually cottons on to the fact that they're tracking him down, comes to the conclusion they're hunting him down for revenge, and decides getting taken out by his old friends (and lover) is better than the slow starving to death that he's been doing. He ends up sneaking his way into a stranger's server, makes enough weakness potions to kill a normal Player so he can keep himself from trying to feed off of them, drinks them and then waits for his friends to catch up. This is my self indulgent au so the confrontation scene in this is SO fraught and complicated by Grian fully expecting and wanting them to kill him, meanwhile the search party is absolutely horrified. Don't look at me like that i just said this was self indulgent, its not meant to be _{good media} its meant to shamelessly cater to my favorite tropes and im a sucker /lhAnyway there's a lot more-- Grian passes out and when he wakes back up they all have to deal with the fallout while getting the answers they need for their own senses of closure, etc etc, i swear it does deal with the others' feelings and isnt just about Grian, but i'll probably leave it here unless someone asks more about it because ive rambled WAY more than i originally intended to skdjejddj. If you've made it this far im applauding you and handing you a juicebox of your favorite flavour tysm for reading my silly little emotionally scarring au<3

Fic Premise (Part 2)

If you're ok with it, I'd love to hear more about the hunger au- /nf ofc, feel free to ignore this<3

OH GOSH HELLO YES HI TEA ANON!!! deadass i have been trying to respond to ur original ask for days but haven't had the chance. OH MAN okay... so i think last time i talked about code-death, but this time i want to talk a little bit about more plot things (altho i still have a lot of worldbuilding i could expand on, too).Once again, cw for themes of starvation, parasitism, and a mentioned suicide attempt.I think the last thing i mentioned for hunger au's plot is that the search party (Scar, Mumbo, Pearl, Tango, and Xisuma) find Grian in the in-between place, the void between servers, and hustle him to the nearest world they can find which happens to be a singleplayer world Xisuma has to frantically recode into a multiplayer. This has the unenviable consequence of making the server VERY unstable, so Xisuma is essentially on code-wrangling duty for the full week it takes Grian to actually wake back up again.(there is an actual reason for why Grian takes that long to wake up, btw-- he's dangerously low on energy and he isnt a Player, so his body doesn't always respond the way a Player's might. In this case i like to imagine taking that many weakness potions, which could kill an ordinary Player and were definitely dangerous for him to take in his state, compounded with the year-long exhaustion of constantly running on like, less than fumes at this point, essentially knocked his body into a small coma while it tried to recover /lh)This isn't specifically written out in the actual fic im writing, since its from Grian's pov, but during that week the search party ends up splitting early game tasks among themselves-- Xisuma obviously is on full time code duty to keep the whole server from collapsing on themselves and spitting them back out into Hermitcraft (or, in Grian's case, potentially perma-killing him since they don't know if he has a respawn set in another world), Pearl is given animal and food farming duties, Tango switches between coal and wood gathering to glorified babysitting (somebody has to watch and make sure Grian wakes up), and Scar and Mumbo are essentially gently but firmly instructed to go farther afield for iron and other precious materials like gold, copper, lapis, etc. and end up doing a lot of caving.Technically, that last one is more for their benefit than anything else-- caving and mining are REALLY effective distractions, and while everyone is taking this hard, Scar and Mumbo are taking it about the hardest. Ironically even though this is very scarian on the periphery, Mumbo's reactions are what interest me the most in this situation, because he's only had the benefit of spending one life game with Grian. He's not well equipped to handle Grian's assisted suicide attempt; once Grian wakes up, his frantic concern pretty quickly morphs into the kind of desperate anger born from shock and fear. Also i just think Mumbo deserves to be pissed, quite frankly, and its a realistic reaction that i want to explore.Scar, on the other hand, saw Grian in that desert when it was just the two of them, and that was arguably when Grian was most open during those games he created. He also has a total of three games with Grian under his belt as opposed to Mumbo's one-- he's got better context. This isnt as out of the blue for him, he's seen how Grian can get. So while he's better equipped to handle this, it's still incredibly frightening to witness, and it's better to keep him distracted than let him ruminate on it.So theres a lot of compartmentalization going on in the search party, a lot of resource gathering for early game construction, and while nobody is strictly attached to any one task, they do tend to stick to whatever role they've taken up while they wait for Grian to come back to them.On the bright side (depending on who you ask and how you're looking at it), they at least don't have to worry about getting Grian fed. Watcher parasitism has already latched onto their fear, pain, and hope, providing a metaphorical drip feed for Grian to cling to even while unconscious. Although, when he wakes up, that's definitely going to change-- Grian's got Feelings about still being alive, and while the hunger has been lessened slightly during that single week, he's not very keen on feeding anymore.

Martyn's Role

In the Hunger AU, you’ve mentioned how the Watchers speaking to Martyn is what led to Grian being discovered. So I’ve been wondering, why would a watcher say that to him? Did they do that to get back at Grian for leaving? Or just saying it not knowing about how Grian is hiding? Or is there a different reason?

I had to go check this to make sure i remembered correctly but!!! In my response to the original question of Martyn being spoken to by the Watchers, i said i was tentatively settling on the fact that they didn't actually speak to him, but instead the Listener fused to him sensed Grian wasn't a Player during Last Life and relayed this information to Martyn, which caused Martyn to start paying a lot more attention to what Grian was doing and how he acted during Double Life (and outside the games in general, during correspondence and other meetings)This has since been canonized, because it really wouldn't make sense for the Watchers to even know where Grian is-- they would snatch him right back if they found out his location, because every Watcher counts towards rebuilding their community population. What i imagine happened was that when his Listener relayed the relevant information, Martyn sort of "thought" that iconic "he was only ever meant to watch" line to himself, the way one might sometimes kind of just mentally narrate something (if you happen to think that way, of course. through most of my childhood i narrated everything i did in the 3rd person to myself WHEEEEZE, i was a quirky kid). And then, well. He paid attention, probably spoke to some people, and ended up being a huge catalyst in everyone finding out the truth of the life games

Pre-Canon Hermit's Feelings

How do some of the hermits/life series members feel about grian as of the current time frame period? Life before they find out the situation in which the games happened?

OH MAN OKAY THIS IS A GOOD ONEalright im gonna leave out some specifics bc of spoilers, but on the whole most people have simmered down from their initial highly negative feelings. Grian's been gone for almost a year, but traces of his presence remain everywhere. Not a lot of stuff got taken down even after he got kicked; nobody really had the heart to do it. The Entity got removed, but everything else was mostly avoided, covered up, or ignored.
Generally now, when people think about Grian, its with a lot of melancholy. The anger for most people (but not all. Some are still bitterly furious) has passed, and now theres just an aura of sadness and regret that someone they felt so close to had been taking advantage of them for so long. Theres no closure, no explanation as to why, and that keeps a lot of people up at night when they let themselves think about it.
This is the reason theres a decent chunk of hermits who fall into the category of "wary about Grian returning but willing to hear him out". People just really want answers. They want to know why their dear friend did the things he did. When you think about that, about getting the chance to ask someone very genuinely why they hurt you, and get an actual answer back... a lot of people would honestly jump for that chance. So, for most hermits, they're just plain sad about the situation, and theres not an insignificant number of them who wish things could go back to the way they were

Why the Watchers Chose Grian

okay hello hi here to shout again because I have ROTATING the hunger lore for DAYSECOSYSTEMSSSSS!!! LETS GOOOO!!! did I do well in biology? No!!! I did not :D but ecosystems I know bby!!! MOONS AND STARS ABOVE I love the way it's all connected to like this huge ecosystem and the Watchers being almost gone, the Seekers being completely gone, and rhe Listeners relatively new!! Like?? That's so extremely clever and fascinating to me, and I love the way things are out of balance now bc!!! Yea!!! That's how ecosystems be!!And also!!! It opens all these new thoughts!!! Like, I can't remember exactly if you said WHY the Watchers decided to take Grian, but if you didn't then like!!!! It opens up these possibilities of the Watchers trying to build back their population, which opens even MORE doors like "are they trying this with other players or was Grian the first/last?" And "would building their population out of Players actually help if Player-Watchers are different?" LIKE IM MEANT TO BE DOING SCHOOLWORK BUT I AM ROTATING(and also. Love the way Grian became a Watcher. Can't remember if you specified the why (will go back and look) or if you're keeping it secret for now, but!! I love considering the ways populations adapt and survive to great loss and near extinction. It's very different from my own lore (living weapon Grian. Watchers took him to be a soldier bc Watchers and Listeners can't harm each other) so it's so fun to just think about and!!! Yeah!!! That's all I got!!!Once again :D love your au <3 love your world building and your writing!! Was going to just send the one ask, but I cannot stop rotating your au!!! :D-Wren

AAAAAA thank you so much!!!! :D im really pleased that everyone likes the ecosystem stuff-- ive been kinda noodling on it for a while because ecosystems are just so neat to me and it made a lot of sense to develop one when i decided Watchers were parasitic in this verse!!!!I think ive only mentioned this offhand once or twice, but youve absolutely nailed the entire reason the Watchers took Grian-- they're trying to rebuild their population. Grian was essentially the beginning of an experiment to see if this was a suitable way to do that!!!Actually lemme dive into that real fast, because i dont think i actually have before, at least not publicly. Something to note about Watcher life cycles is that they take comparatively a LONG time. Specifically, Watcher larvae take around a year to incubate within their hosts, and then once they "hatch" (altho "emerge" might be a better word for it) the juveniles take far longer to grow up and teach. And because these things are basically made out of wet tissue paper, theyve got a pretty high mortality rate.So to get around that, and to try and get around the fact that juveniles often die because they dont know how to feed properly yet and often overextend themselves, why not try and copy the memory code of something fully grown and sentient and just... transfer it to a larva, so its easier to teach?? I feel like it kinda highlights the desperation the Watchers are feeling, that they'd go for this kind of wild experimentation, but it did technically work!!!They just uh. Didnt account for the insane trauma that would cause, because to them Players are typically just viewed as food sources. Very orange and blue morality, in terms of their value systems compared to Players'.Grian demonstrated to them that while its possible to rebuild this way on a technical level, its not actually feasible socially speaking. Grian ran from them because of the trauma they inflicted, and that sorta defeats the purpose of Watcherificating a Player so they can add to the community's population 💀💀💀💀 so yeah i'd say Grian is probably both the first and last experiment of his kind, if only because its just not reasonable to continue if your new Watchers are going to escape containment and flee to the ends of the universe every single time you make one /lhI really love your concept with Watcher!Grian being a weapon, thats INSANELY neat holy shit!!!! Im feeling Things™ about that, i would absolutely love to hear more if you decide you want to tell me!!! It sounds like youve got some really cool symbolism in your lore, and i live for that shit >:]Skdnwjfnmej anyway theres my own insane ramble to match your deeply flattering compliments, seriously thank you im so astonished people love this stuff so much, it makes me very very happy to know other people are spinning my concepts around in their heads :D feel free to send as many asks as you want!! I always love chatting with people :]

How the Watchers Viewed Grian

hello!! i have thoughts about the hunger au worldbuilding <3okay sowill Grian ever have an encounter with the Watchers in the fic (you dont have to answer ofc)?? but if he did,, what would his reaction be???are they looking for him? did they just let him leave??because- like. from what i can remember they didnt have any malicious intent towards him?? like Watchers function on a completely different moral level so they didnt mean any harm they DID harm him, y'know? if that makes sense??also! do they Watchers love him in the sense of like,, parent child love? or do they simply view him as their offspring TMnow that im typing this out i feel like this is all very spoilery ish so you probably wont be able to answer it, but!!! i had to try >:)-🐛

Hey bug anon!!! Dw i can answer these, thanks for asking!! :DThe Watchers wont be showing up in the main fic-- although theres definitely room for them to appear in future oneshots!!! That being said, uhhh.... Grian would NOT have a good reaction to seeing them again. He's got a lot of trauma surrounding them-- thats like, hardcore panic attack breakdown territory if he ever had another encounter.And the Watchers are looking for him, actually-- community is such a big part of Watcher culture that its anathema to them that he'd ever even want to leave in the first place, and they worry a lot for his safety (considering hes both an integral piece of restoring their population, and because to them, striking out on your own is synonymous with death). They've been looking for him for years now, though by the time the fic takes place, that's tapered off from any active searching. These days, they only look where their feeding happens to take them (many of their colony assume he's dead, but some still hold out hope despite everything).They didnt let him leave. Grian spent YEARS carefully watching them, cataloging their habits, learning how both they and his new body worked, before making a rapid and desperate escape. But they also didnt hold any malicious intent! Like you said, they just have a completely different moral structure, and ultimately, they were just following their customs. Community values dictate they stick together, so Grian's mad run for freedom took them all terribly by surprise, and was ultimately what gave him the leverage to successfully escapeI think the way Watchers parse the concept of love is very different from ours-- i hesitate to say they loved Grian if only because i dont feel like they define that feeling the same way Players would or even how we do irl. But they did deeply care. Juveniles are highly valued and taken care of by the entire community-- although Grian had the mind of an adult, not a freshly hatched juvenile, so that did make a slight difference in how they viewed him. I think a more accurate way to look at how they felt about him is that of a mentors and mentee relationship, where they taught him how to survive as one of them, and fully incorporated him as a member into their colony. He was genuinely cared for; in my head, i liken them to a well-meaning but very controlling family (though not a nuclear one)Thanks again for the ask, bug anon!! :D it was nice to get a chance to talk about this!! I definitely want to write the Watchers proper at some point, so who knows-- maybe in a future oneshot, they might appear. Whether thats a pre-canon fic or a future one...... well, who's to say >:]

How the Life Series Started

Hi hello I am halfway in this fandom now and I just found your Hunger AU and I am AAAAAAA /pos about it-Idk if you're still taking asks about the Hunger AU but I was wondering if you'd share a little more on how the mechanics of the Life Series worked in it? Like did the people participating think they were gonna die forever, or what happened there?

Hey anon!!! Im always taking hunger au asks :D you're always free to send some in, i enjoy interacting with people a lot!!!I'll admit i havent fully fleshed out everything surrounding the actual life series events wrt hunger au worldbuilding, but my general rough idea was that Grian, at the end of his rope, asked some friends to sign up for a fun new game in another server-- then fucked with their memory codes so they didnt quite remember it right when they got there. Everything was very hazy, because Grian was rushing and on the very edge of basically a starvation-fueled fugue state-- the lifers could remember that they knew each other, and how, but everything outside the games felt very dream-like and hazy, slipping through their fingers like fish in a streamHe did manipulate things so that the lifers thought they were going to permanently die after their red lives, yeah. I think it was both direct meddling with their memory codes, along with social engineering built on top of their existing paranoia about the situation, that did it-- Grian was basically running around just fucking with people the entire time each game was happening.As well as himself, actually-- normally, Watchers dont get directly involved in the conflicts they create. Thats not a part of their feeding strategy. So Grian was basically like... yknow like how sometimes you can immerse yourself just a little TOO well in LARPing or acting??? Grian was basically frogboiling himself as well, just marinating in the atmosphere of fear and horror he'd helped create until he started to believe it too. Pretty much all of them were in altered states of mind each time a life game happenedThat's about all i have properly fleshed out for that aspect of the au, tbh, but hopefully this makes sense fjsndkdndk i am very sleepy rn so my words are not as good as they are normally 😂😂😂😂

Worldbuilding

Code Structure

so lets talk hunger au code structure

It occurred to me that i havent spoken a whole lot about the layers of code structure for entities!! I've mentioned surface code quite a bit, and deeper code, but i never actually got into what that deeper code entails-- so here's a little breakdown of what each code layer looks like and does!!Surface code: This is the outer code layer, wrapping around everything in a similar way to how your skin covers your body. Surface code is, as previously stated in other asks, what dictates an entity's physical appearance. It's fairly easy to change once you learn the coding for it. This is the reason why physical hybrid traits can exist for Players, and why Watchers can camouflage themselves so well.Utility code: This is the inner layer directly below surface code. Utility code is responsible for managing hearts, hunger, and saturation, and it's tied pretty directly to surface code. If your hunger bar or hearts are low, then that's going to reflect in your surface code-- and it's also going to effect how much of your surface code you can change at one time. Changing surface code takes energy, so entities who are changing their appearance often get hungry. It's common for a spotter to bring snacks!Memory code: This is the code layer located beneath utility code, and is responsible for maintaining personality, memories, and keeping track of stats. Memory code is essentially what makes you a fully realized person!! Memory code can also be copied by entities (aka Watchers) that are very adept at manipulating code. In theory, a skilled Player could potentially do the same, but it's a very complex and tricky task to complete, so most people wouldn't consider attempting it.Structural/deep code: As the innermost code layer, this code dictates whether an entity is alive and sentient/sapient or not. This is the code that essentially separates a Player from, say, a tree, and also keeps the other code layers functioning on a base level. It's the last layer of code to dissolve when code structure fully destabilizes.And thats your little crash course in hunger au code structure!!! Pretty much every entity classified as alive has all of these code layers, although a chicken's memory code and a Player's memory code is going to look very different from each other. And, of course, non-sentient objects aren't going to have a utility or memory code, since they're, yknow, non-sentient. But their surface code can still be changed by a skilled coder, which is why some worlds are considered modded instead of vanilla!!

Players Spawns and Code (Part 1)

cough slides over a bowl of soup any hunger au thoughts...? /nf-🍂

HELLO TEA ANON WELCOME BACK TO THE HUNGER AU SHOW... i should probably make a masterlist of this au at some point. Anyway.I've been thinking a lot about worldbuilding and how Players form, and just. Players in general?? Which, in an au thats specifically about a Watcher, that might seem a little silly. But i like to think about what the general baseline is seen as, to really dig deep into the differences between them!!For Players, i think theres two general ways they come into being-- spawning in, or being born. Obviously the second one is a familiar concept so we dont need to talk about that, but spawning i think is actually more common for Players than being born. I imagine its a bit like new stars forming-- bits of code split off from the Greater Code and coalesce, forming all the components needed to make a Player. There's no infancy stage for spawned Players-- while some might spawn in younger than others, they generally tend to be young adults.Im honestly thinking that, when Players first spawn, new servers do too. Singleplayer, of course; their first spawn and first spawnpoint, a protective cocoon from the harshness of the in between. This is where a spawned Player learns the difference between breathing and becoming, and where they acquaint themselves with the rules of the world around them. This is their casting off point-- eventually, most of them outgrow their first world and move onto newer ones, some multiplayer, some single, some hardcore, some modded. And most don't return, either, and the server is eventually recycled back into the Greater Code by one of its cosmic decomposers (eg: viruses).The other thing im thinking about when it comes to Players is how they look when they spawn in. The thing about Player code is that there's layers. You have the type that's surface level, which dictates what your appearance looks like, and then the deeper code in charge of things like memories, personality, stats, etc. Because code is so scrambled in the beginning of a Player's spawn, the surface code is completely randomized!!! Players can look like anything at all, anyone at all, and can even have non-human traits from the outset. I also think this surface code can be fairly easily manipulated; learning to play with your own surface code is about the same level of difficulty as learning to code your own website, and occurs with a similar amount of regularity (which is to say, it's definitely not uncommon, but there are some people more adept at it than others, and a definite learning curve at the start). Playing with your surface code means you can make yourself look like anything, by give yourself new physical traits or just modify existing ones. It's usually recommended to do this with a spotter, though-- someone experienced with surface code who can look over your changes before you implement them to make sure there aren't any glaring mistakes, and step in if something glitches or you need help.So yeah those are my current hunger au thoughts with regards to worldbuilding!! I'm also still picking at what Listeners are like, as well as their and Watchers' ecological niche in the universe-- I'm tempted to say both have a much more brittle, and less adaptable code structure, which makes their type of feeding an even more vital and necessary part of their survival. Gotta keep that code from deteriorating, after all!! Anyway thank u for asking, i am always happy to receive hunger au questions, and if anyone has specific questions they want to ask that is great and often gives me a good direction to jump off of when explaining stuff :]

Players Spawns and Code (Part 2)

I think I asked earlier and I forgot the answer or maybe you hadn’t decided yet, but you recently mentioned the difference between spawned players and born players again. I think you mentioned spawned players are more common - are any of the people we know and love (hermits or otherwise) born rather than spawned? Or are they all spawned??I’m fascinated by the concept of spawned vs born players actually, and the way you said they’d have to get a comm specially made and fitted. Is there a minimum age a player needs to be for this? Actually what’s the lifespan of a player like, and how old are born players and spawned players each when they reach a similar developmental stage? I presume it’s different because spawned players are in a single player world alone whereas I assume born players are babies and thus need caring for?? Or how does that work.I’m just. Fascinated anew by this concept which I had forgotten about until you mentioned it haha.

Omg hello!!! I genuinely dont think ive seen your previous ask, but 😅😅 i have a lot of them in my inbox rn, so i very well may have intended to reply and then lost the notification and accidentally forgottenEither way, some of your questions have been answered in one of the very first posts i ever made about hunger au!!! Which means its probably VERY easy to miss since theres so much content in the tag now 💀 i really do need to post a link to my current masterlist for yall so it'll be easier to keep track of lore WODNKDNSKSK new project time YIPPEEEE <- loves organizingAs for the stuff that isnt included in that post, i'd say that yes, you do need to be of a certain age to get fitted with a comm-- im not quite sure what the requirement is, but its probably around when you first hit the double digits, maybe about 10ish?? Culturally it depends on the Player's parents/caretakers, but i think most born Players get their comms around ages 12-14.Lifespan for Players is on the same level as arctic sponges here-- they live for a while before their code begins to destabilize of natural causes. Thousands of years at least. This is a pretty young universe relatively speaking, so several of the oldest Players who first spawned in are actually still around!!!There are only two born Players on Hermitcraft, and those are Joe Hills and TFC. Mostly for vibes, and because the idea of the oldest looking hermit being technically younger than several of the others highly amuses me. Everyone else spawned in!! Since born Players are such a minority, it felt right to keep everyone else in the cast as spawned Players :]Im so glad you like all this worldbuilding!!! :D everyone who says they find it fascinating makes me SO happy like i cannot even tell you, because for the longest time i felt like worldbuilding was one of my biggest weaknesses. So its really reassuring to hear im getting better at it and people enjoy it!! thank you for stopping by!! :]

Players Spawns and Code (Part 3)

Are hybrids a thing in the hunger au universe? Like, grian has wings but thats because it's part of his code right? So i assume that other characters that are hybrids in canon/fanon (doc, scar etc) have mob features like wings or horns but not behaviours?

Any Players with hybrid-esque features such as wings, horns, tails-- even fire or water effects-- etc etc. are the result of surface coding!!! So no hybrids as fandom typically portrays them-- Players dont have mob instincts or behaviors, just the physical traits that might be associated with them incorporated into their body!!!You can essentially think of every Player as a shapeshifter who operates under their personal values for "rule of cool" when it comes to their appearance. I also find this has some fun implications for characters like Cleo, who clearly thinks that being a zombie with their skin falling off is gender as hell (and she's right), and Scar, who i like to think gives himself all sorts of crazy add-ons depending on his mood for the day/month/year 😂😂😂

Player Culture - Wings

Okay, so, question I've had for a while but never got around to asking, what the FUCK is up with Grian's wings?If all physical differences in players (like those particularly ascribed to 'Hybrids' in mcyt fanon) in Hunger AU are a result of conscious altering of your own code for the express purpose of achieving YOUR IDEAL BODY(tm) then what does that mean for Grian and his wings? No one seems to regard Grian's wings as "What The Fuck, You Can DO That?!?" so presumably wings aren't so big of a change from normal biology that players can't do that. If so, why is it not more common? Man, if I could have wings I'd jump on that in seconds. Especially with the sheer utility the ability to fucking FLY gives players. Are wings (and maybe other larger alterations) just like, REALLY HARD to code in? If so, that might add a really cool layer of "Oh wow! They must be a really good coder!" to players who meet people like that.On a related note, Grian seems to have a positive regard for his wings, which is interesting because I would be willing to bet he didn't have that before insert sounds of worm-bursting and non-consensual body modification. I imagine seeing his wings would likely feel like a reminder of the Watchers and what they did to him. BUT, Watchers manipulate their own code when they change like Grian did to, y'know, not be a worm anymore so Grian probably specifically chose how he looked, right? So, unless he did so really rushed and somehow made a mistake while doing so (which he might not be able to risk the structural damage of correcting), keeping the wings was a conscious decision. Does Grian just not associate his wings with the Watchers or is it something else? Does he just really enjoy having wings?

HELLO I AM SO GLAD YOU'VE ASKED THIS BECAUSE I HAVE ‼️‼️‼️‼️ MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT IT ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️Okay okay so these are all SUCH valid questions, lemme go through them one by one. Wings are indeed something anyone could have if they wanted to code them in-- and in fact, i do believe many other Players have wings throughout the universe!!! As far as body mods go, i like to think of them as decently popular, so its definitely not anything too weird to see. In chapter 5, i even make a mention to Pearl having moth wings she occasionally codes in due to preference!!! So wings of many different types are definitely available-- but the catch is that they're real fiddly to code. You cant just give yourself wings, you have to code in the bone structure, the muscles, the tendons, etc etc, and then you have to change your entire body structure as well to work with and fully support them. They can be awkward and unwieldy, as ive tried to show in the fic itself, and i think that alone can be a big discouragement for Players considering coding in wings, along with the sheer coding effort needed to obtain them and make them functionalAnd the thing is, elytra already exist-- they're far more compact, they dont take up as much space, you can take them on and off super easily without having to mess with your coding, and they basically do the same thing. Sure, its a pain to get one, but a lot of Players really enjoy the sense of accomplishment, and i think theres a bit of cultural prestige too in that regard. Server milestones are a huge thing in Player culture, and getting your first pair of elytra is a big one!!! So it makes sense to me that people who just dont want to go through the effort of coding in wings (which can then in turn complicate how they code other future modifications) primarily stick to elytra.And everybody is different-- some people prefer attributes that arent wings. I like to think everyone in hermitcraft generally is a mix of "jeez thats effort, i could be building my base instead of doing that" and "eh im fine how i am, i like it" and "well we have elytra shops everywhere so why bother".So in short, yeah!! Wings are a bit complex to code in. They're still pretty popular, i think plenty of Players do choose to incorporate them, but it takes a lot of hard and thorough work to make sure they function right and wont bug you out when you use them. There are billions of Players scattered across the universe, so what you're seeing in the fic right now is truly just a drop in the ocean when it comes to Player body diversity :] and then, elytra basically already help Players achieve a form of flight without the hassle of recoding their entire body structure, so i think the majority of Players just prefer to use them instead.AS FOR GRIAN'S WINGS IN PARTICULAR......Well..... its complicated. Particularly his feelings about them-- in the fic, i referenced them as the only good thing the Watchers ever gave him, and thats how he sees it, i think: a thin silver lining. He's had many, many years to get used to them, and i think he goes through periods where he hates them and the memories attached, too. Ultimately, he's kinda stuck with them, so i think he hit a form of acceptance (as bitter-tinged as it may be) out of sheer necessity for his own sanity.As for why he has them, and hasnt coded them out: i think of it as a particular quirk of biology/structural coding. Watchers have a more instinctive way of coding than Players, but a Player-minded Watcher is still going to think like a Player, and thats going to muddle things a lot. Grian essentially had to relearn how to code, in a way that satisfied both Player and Watcher-style coding, and the results at first were.... a little rough around the edges. Once he managed to finally take on his original former appearance, the wings from his true form just kind of.... stuck. I like to think it took a few increasingly desperate tries before he realized he just could not figure out how to get rid of them (bc of how different his new code was), and had to accept that this was just how he was gonna have to live for a while until he finally figured it out. And then, well.... you can get used to anything, if you're stuck with it long enough. I think after a while it just stopped being a huge priority, and then he reached a point where it would be more awkward to live without them than with them, and he eventually dropped the idea altogether. And i think sometimes, they function almost like a scar, to him-- a reminder of what he went through, yes, but a reminder that he did manage to escape. And, ofc, he also just really, really likes flying skdjskdjdjSo yeah, loads of complicated feelings there about his wings, and its stuff i do plan on exploring later in the fic!!! This got a little rambly, but i hope this makes sense and answers your questions!!!! :D its a fun little complicated knot that im glad someone has gotten curious enough to ask about!!!!

Watcher Feeding Habits

grian snacking on Card Game Rage might even be a good long term thing as part of getting him to eat better, like, instead of limiting himself to just positive emotions he might realize there's a wide array of ethically sourced negative emotions including but not limited to "frustration at a contraption not working", "ARGH MOB", Card Game Rage, etc and there's a wide array of events other than MCC he can poke his head into for a meal

Oh!! So actually, this is something i want to mention about Watcher feeding habits and how they work, because i dont think i really expanded on this in any of my other posts laying out the lore and mechanics and whatnotSo when a Watcher feeds, its actually less about the emotions and more about the hertz frequency those emotions are occurring at on the electromagnetic spectrum. Beta brain waves hit around 18-35 Hz, which is about the hertz frequency that Watchers can "feed" off of as well. In truth, its less "feeding" so much as it is resonance. Watchers have very brittle code that takes a lot of time and energy to shape, and a lot of maintenance to keep from falling apart. Where Player code is super flexible and tends to repair itself just fine, Watchers have to resonate with a certain hertz frequency to repair their code manually. This hertz frequency basically happens to coincide with beta brain waves in Players, which in turn is related to high intensity emotions and agitation in the brain.Watchers can "bump" this frequency slightly by a few hertz, and then keep their prey at that level of agitation for extended periods of time while they repair their code. Anxiety becomes a panic attack that goes on for hours. Irritation becomes rage that wont stop. Excitement becomes a manic high. The problem with feeding on one person, or even just a few people at once, is that it will quite literally fry their brain-- this is why Watchers tend to bring together larger groups of people, agitate their brains a bit (the effect is lessened over a large group of people), and feast on the resulting frequencies all around them.So in truth, Grian feeding on Doc's rage would actually enhance and lengthen it, which is both dangerous for him, and everyone else around him. This is why Grian was so hardcore about only feeding on "positive" emotions-- putting together some silly events or fun games and then stirring their brains up is a little less dangerous¹ for everyone (but especially them) than making them all very scared, very sad, or very angry. That, and he loves them-- he doesnt want them to hurt. The fact that he fed on their suffering in the Life games quite literally haunts him.¹ obviously, mania is its own problem, can be just as scary and dangerous, and has its own potential for terrible accidents-- but this is being written from Grian's pov, who views it as the lesser of two evils. The point of this au ofc is that its a terrible, horribly messy situation where there are no clear cut answers, solutions, or faults; Grian has a right to his own survival, and the hermits have a right to not get their brain chemistry altered without their knowledge or consent. So while it might seem like the things you mentioned are ethical choices, the truth is that if Grian were to feed on them, he would be extending and enhancing those emotions to an extreme degree-- hence why he tried so hard to only feed off of positive ones, and why MCC was a good feeding option in his mind bc emotions are already very high during those games, and few people are gonna notice their adrenaline pumping while they're playing or cheering their fave on.(Altho, something i havent mentioned yet is that i HAVE come up with an eventual solution for him. And ironically enough, Doc is the one who makes it. I dont want to spoil it too much yet tho, so just know i do have something in mind that will help him get back home<3)

Watcher Biology

(Hunger au) I'm going into ecology and it's fascinating looking at your au's ecosystem, especially since this doesn't necessarily seem driven by natural selection and instead by just. The universe creating what it needs, with a purpose in mind. That's so different from our world that it's fascinating to think about the implications. Rather than existing to take advantage of and respond to resources and selective pressures, theyre basically creating said resources/pressures. The watchers are having to manually adapt to survive after a bottleneck effect, which to be fair even if there was natural selection they'd probably have to cuz adaptation takes a looong time in species with long reproductive cycles. Do they have a genome? Or are they just being arbiters of mutation themselves (by that i mean theres no genome so theyre changing their species themselves since theres nothing to mutate)? Do offspring inherit traits? What does this mean for natural selection (cuz like. If they survive differently depending on how their traits match up to the environment and selective pressures there is)? With the seekers gone are expected to have a population rebound barring any other selective pressures/fitness independent factors on their population? Their reproductive strategy seemingly aligns with the low pressure they're facing... I read a paper to understand this and it's really cool:

(From https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-42562-7)They seem to be an r-selected species and invest a lot in their offspring, but they just naturally have low infant survival rates. This is the sort of species that does not do well in the long run so that adds urgency to their efforts to edit themselves.All this to say that I'm rotating the concept of an ecological system that has one of ecology's core tenants (evolution) heavily altered/removed. Tis fascinating.

between you and chem anon im going to have a heart attack over sciency people looking at my silly au /lhI really did want to go like vastly different from how our world works since this is such a video game setting-- it was really fun to noodle about what a universe made out of code instead of DNA would look like!!! and having the universe be quasi-sentient, affected by a form of evolution itself as well (thank you julien gough for the universe evolution theory that i have wholeheartedly adopted into my worldview).... idk its led to some very interesting worldbuilding for sure 😂😂😂Watchers-- or any entity in this universe, actually-- dont really have a genome like we'd understand it. Instead, theyre made up of code and code blocks, which i guess would sorta mimic that to a certain degree, but its more tipped in favour of computer programming than biology. The whole au sorta just wholesale marries the two together, along with physics and chemistry (i am currently percolating on how crafting works in this au rn and my current idea involves the concept of the crafting table acting somewhat like a catalyst, which. okay dont take that as gospel yet i havent fully cooked on that one) etc etc etc.But the Watchers did intentionally change their coding to help defend against the Seekers when they were being hunted into extinction!!! Watchers already had a natural affinity for deep coding, so while it took a lot of effort and caused a lot of damage to themselves, they managed to rapidly change their code structure (aka this universe's version of genetic makeup) to get better at, well. Watching. Seeing the Seekers coming far enough in advance to run before they got there became their primary defense against getting voraciously hunted, and by the end of it the Seekers starved out and went extinct bc they'd gotten so adept at avoiding them.Offspring is interesting because in my mind at their base level (so genetically/code structurally speaking), Watchers are identical clones of each other. They reproduce asexually-- think uhhh mourning geckos and some species of aphids, which reproduce via parthenogenesis. So yes, in a sense they do inherit traits, but its in a direct line from the parent as a genetic copy. Their memory codes and surface code layers are what differentiate themselves from each otherReading this chart is so interesting.... i'd say you're right in that Watchers would be considered an r-selected species!! I think if they werent like. Essentially made out of tissue paper thats constantly getting damaged and having to be repaired, they would be able to bounce back to the point of population rebound for sure. The problem with that though is there are only about 40 Watchers left-- thats how bad and out of control the situation got. And since they have such a long reproductive cycle, and such a high infant mortality rate, and their experiment with Grian went so wrong, AND the universe formed Listeners to replace them via direct competition (Watchers cant feed from Listener-infected Players!!), they are unfortunately headed right for extinction too.Hopefully this makes a modicum of sense and isnt just me totally talking out of my ass wkdnjedjkejdke but i hope this answered most of your questions!!! Im really glad you like the direction ive taken this, its a lot of fun to conceptualize a world that works on different rules than our own :]

Watcher Culture (Part 1)

Hiiiii. I just spent the last 2 days reading all of the hunger au posts on you master list doc ( which let me tell you, it's amazing!!! It's so organized and pretty and I love it!!!) And my brain wants more lore and world building cause it's such a cool concept!!!!! I don't feel like I have any specific questions, just hungry for more rambles if you have any :D (if you have anything in watcher culture that might be cool to read :))

Omg hello!!! Im so glad you like the masterlist doc :D big big fan of organization, makes the autism go brrrrrrr for me. If i see a chance to organize i will take it in a heartbeat [makes unblinking eye contact at my personal discord fic archive]Ooooh man lets see... i feel like theres so much i could say about Watchers, but the biggest thing for me is that they're really community oriented!!!! Almost obsessively so-- because of their history with Seekers, Watcher colonies are extremely tight-knit, and have a heavy focus on interdependence. For Watchers raised in Watcher culture, being alone is synonymous with certain death. This is why the Watchers in Grian's colony chased him when he made his eventual escape (something i also havent touched on just quite yet lol)!!!I want to do a bit more worldbuilding for Watcher colonies, but typically their social structure is built on the decisions of a select group of elders within each colony. Caring for larval hosts and juveniles is communal, and they're protected very intensely since they tend to have such a high mortality rate.That's about all i can think of for now, there's a lot more i want to get into about their culture but i want to spend some time noodling on it more before i add anything else :] i hope this satisfies the itch a little bit, thanks for sending this ask!!! :D

Watcher Culture (Part 2)

you've talked before about how the watchers are going to go extinct at some point in the future due to being competed out of their ecological niche by the listeners. which got me thinking. couldn't... something that might prevent that... be... whatever doc's machine is going to be? LIKE. don't get me wrong that would not be a good or workable idea for many, MANY reasons on ALL sides here. it's not like the continued existence of the watchers as a race is even something that literally any character in the fic, including and especially grian, even actually wants, like grian would be jumping for joy if you walked up to him and told him the watchers are gonna go extinct. but like. it's coming to me that the eventual endpoint of the fic is that grian's food issues are taken care of and he will be secure and well-fed for the foreseeable future, while the rest of the watchers as a society are doomed to slow extinction via starvation. which just. idk. makes me feel stuff.

Tbh i also feel things about this-- theres a very grim undertone to the whole au when you really look at it beyond Grian's experiences. It is, i think, at its core a quietly bleak concept, and i dont blame you for having some weird feelings about it. I dont necessarily set out to make those canon ofc, but sometimes the worldbuilding leads to these kind of conclusions, and its definitely very gut-wrenching when you really think about itIdeally, yes, Doc's machine would be able to feed the Watchers-- though whether or not they'd accept that solution is a different story. I think the best way i can give some insight on this is via an analogy; think of, lets say....... livestock. You're a keeper of livestock, and one day one of your cows comes up to you and offers you a limitless supply of raw potatoes in exchange for not eating cows anymore. And like-- you could!! You could do that!!! Potatoes are nutritionally capable of supporting the vast majority of your needs, food-wise, but theyre just. Raw potatoes. They taste bad and they're ultimately very boring to eat day after day. And maybe if you're looking to turn vegan, you'd take this offer in less than a heartbeat. But your average person is not gonna wanna give up dairy or steak, or their livelihood. Its kinda like that-- the Players are a food source for Watchers, and barring that, a cradle for Watcher larvae.I think ultimately Grian wouldnt like. Be jumping for joy at the concept of the Watchers going extinct-- i think his reaction would be far more complicated, marked by both compassion (he's starved-- he knows how terrible it is) and fear (they are the main source of his trauma). Like i just generally think his feelings on the matter boil down to "i hope i never have to see them again, they can go exist over there as far away from me as possible" if that makes sense. But i wouldnt say he'd be cheering for their deaths-- just that once its clear Listeners are competing them out, it'd be a foregone conclusion to him. A very objectively sad but inescapable inevitability :(

Voidwalkers / Admins / Watchers

Hunger AU lore question: What's the difference between an admin, a voidwalker, and a watcher, ability-wise? Like, I know both voidwalkers and watchers can navigate the void, and both admins and watchers can manipulate code, but I'm curious about what exactly sets the three apart. Also, a (hopefully) quick question that's semi-related: what abilities does Scott have which led the gang to ask him to help track down Grian?

HEYO!!so Voidwalkers are actually just Players!! Specifically, they're Players who are skilled enough at coding that they can keep their own code together when traversing the in-between, so Voidwalker isnt so much a separate classification as it is a title. Typically, Voidwalkers are more likely to be admins, since admins are generally the types of Players who are going to be at the skill level it takes to keep your code from unraveling in the void between servers-- but that doesnt mean a Player who doesnt have admin privileges cant do it at all. It just means its a little less likely, bc the amount of skill, concentration, quick reflexes, and both mental AND physical energy expended from voidwalking is pretty immense.Like the title of Voidwalker, admins arent a species of Player, its just a job title! Admins take care of multiplayer servers, which are much more complex to maintain for great lengths of time than singleplayer servers. You're generally expected to have a certain level of code proficiency when taking on the job of an admin, but that proficiency is nothing compared to the intuitive way a Watcher can manipulate code.Watchers are a completely different creature than Players, and are able to manipulate code in a much more direct way than Players can. Players need comms to manipulate their own surface code, and navigate the code of the servers around them; Watchers can do this directly and intuitively, but at the cost of a lot of energy and damage to their own structural code. Basically, they can do very powerful things very quickly, but it hurts them to do it if they dont feed regularly-- hence why in the fic, Grian has yet to really use his Watcher abilities (yet. smiles.)So i guess tldr; Voidwalkers are more likely to be admins, who are just Players that are more proficient at code manipulation, and Watchers are able to do a wider range of code manipulation much faster and much more easily than a Player can, but at the cost of damaging their structural code and having to feed to repair it.Also as for Scott-- it was his connections!!! Scott's that guy who just kinda knows Everybody, and if he doesnt know someone then he knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy-- so on and so forth. They had to hunt for trails to follow when they started searching for Grian, and getting Scott on board so he could send out feelers gave them a place to start and better leads to follow :] i hope this answered your questions okay!!!

Listeners (Part 1)

hunger au question - what are the listeners n how do they work? what are their main differences compared to the watchers n devs? give me ur brain meat funny man- 🍑 (fat ass anon)

HELLO ANON THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME AN EXCUSE TO YELL ABOUT THIS BC IVE BEEN TRYING TO FORMAT MY THOUGHTS ON THEM FOR TWO DAYS NOW WITH LITTLE SUCCESSSo Listeners are, i've decided, kinda like fungi!!! More specifically, like endomycorrhizae-- they're symbiotic spore-like entities that attach to a Player host to strengthen their own brittle code; in return, the Player is given a boost to their reflexes and mental acuity, as well as a tenuous connection to the Greater Code. This level of symbiosis is, however, extremely invasive; a Player host's mind and body are permanently altered, and influenced directly by the Listener who has fused with them.Most Players don't even realize they have Something Else co-piloting them once they've fused with a Listener-- this is because Listeners don't really... talk, or at least, not in a way thats immediately recognizable. Instead, they use electrical impulses, sent directly to the Player's brain and nerves, and the Player host interprets and extracts meaning from that. In addition, Listeners (like Watchers) are, as previously stated, in tune with the Greater Code of the universe, and can glean strings of passing information from it within a certain radius of themselves. For a Player, this is sort of like minding your own business and then getting information beamed into your head, which can be very disorienting unless you're a newly spawned Player whose ties to the Greater Code haven't faded yet.Also, since Listeners don't really have a strong sense of individualism, they often "hook up" their electrical signals to each other if more than one of them are in the area, creating an effective "hivemind" that can work towards a shared goal. Because of this, Player hosts can recognize other Player hosts as Listeners immediately, and register them as friendly and trustworthy, regardless of past history or established social standing. "Hooked" Players will react in tandem to stimuli-- though their reactions may differ due to their own personalities-- and will also work towards the same goals, though they don't generally parse that they're being influenced when they do.Thats about all i have written about Listeners in my shiny new Lore Doc wjdjejdndnd or at least that's it so far. They are fucked up little mushroom guys your honor!!!! i love them soso much<3 thank you for asking!!

Listeners (Part 2)

We've talked about how listeners are different then watchers but have we talked about what they feed on? Like do they feed similarly to watchers or though some other way? I don't want to go scrolling if it has been mentioned.Was Martyn benefiting from Grian's games?

So Listeners dont actually feed-- or, well, they do, but the way they do so is just through their Player host's code. In simple terms, when a Player eats, the Listener who is fused to their code receives the saturation alongside them. In more accurate terms, when a Listener fuses their code to a Players, they're doing that very literally; physically, they are now the same entity (mentally is a different matter, but im unsure how to properly convey how squishy that concept is in my brain, so just think of them as like. Partially mind-melded in a sense, with the Listener influencing the Player). So if the Player consumes something, then the Listener receives the benefits (or detriments) of that as well.Because of that, Martyn wasn't benefitting from the life games the way Grian was, because Listeners cant feed off of emotions the way Watchers do. But as long as Martyn is alive and taking care of himself, the Listener fused to him is doing just fine.

Seekers

I was scrolling for a while but couldn't find anything about the Seekers, (I might not have scrolled far enough but couldn't find anything in the tags either) are those the creatures that hunt watchers you've mentioned in the past? Or do they have a different role?

I havent gotten the chance to talk much about them yet, but yes, those are the Watchers' extinct apex predators!!!Seekers were massive, totally blind fish-like creatures able to sense vibrations through the Greater Code through the long, trailing barbels around their mouths. They were voracious eaters, and while they started out small, they could rapidly grow to enormous sizes.They were so large, in fact, that they couldn't leave their natural home, the void between servers. Unlike Watchers, who learned to slip into servers when necessary, Seekers were so massive and hyper-adapted to the crushing depths of the void that they couldn't get through the server code barriers, let alone risk the depressurization that would occur if they did. Think blobfish, but like. Significantly Worse.Watchers very quickly became the only prey large enough to feed Seekers, and as a result they almost hunted them into extinction. This is why the Watchers adapted themselves so drastically to be able to camouflage and also see through the Greater Code; being forewarned about a Seeker's proximity became a necessary tool for survival, and they eventually got so good at it that they ended up starving the Seekers into extinction instead (though not without significant losses).

Developer Crystals

HEY SHOUTING ITS DEVELOPER CRYSTAL TIME!!!!

WHAT THE FUCK IS THE DEV CRYSTAL /POS LAY IT ON ME

this has such "randy your sticks" energy. TJ YOUR DEV CRYSTALS smash cut to me binging lotr with my friends for two days straightAlright guys lets talk about:

~ Developer Crystals ~

So developer crystals-- or dev crystals for short (and devs if you want to get even shorter)-- are one of THE most important objects in the universe. This is because they are, structurally speaking, the literal pillars keeping said universe intactDev crystals are massive crystalline structures that resemble end crystals, but are much larger and much more stable. They act as a sort of recycling centrifuge: strings of unraveled code get sucked up, swirled around, and spat back out to become something new. At the center of each server cluster in the universe (and there are SO many of them) is always a single dev crystal, and that dev crystal maintains the structural balance of everything within its specific radiusThe benefit of these constant strings of code running back and forth through them is that they emit a hertz frequency just about equal to the regeneration effect in beacons. Which is to say: dev crystals have a low level healing radius around them that can affect Players and potentially some other entities (mobs, for example, although it wouldn't be the best idea to take a cow out into the in-between.) Watchers, unfortunately, cant take advantage of this frequency since it lies outside what they can actually feed off of, but a Listener fused to a Player can.On a slightly different note, while dev crystals aren't sentient, per se, they aren't not sentient either. Think of it as a sort of quasi-sentience: dev crystals are so large and such an integral part of the universe that they aren't going to notice anything but the biggest of pictures. They dont talk, but there is an awareness there, and they can defend themselves if they truly need to. That being said, dev crystals are so insanely massive that destroying one is... very, very unlikely.About the only thing that can are viruses, which are corrupted strings of code that haven't gone through a dev crystal. In the dark spaces where no dev crystals reside (or where one has been rarely destroyed), viruses can develop freely, and usually end up on the outskirts of server clusters, devouring old servers to make room for new ones to grow within the cluster.Some fun extra lore tidbits pertaining to dev crystals:

Ecological Niches

I said I was gonna stop cause it’s late but I thought of another question that I think you might enjoyWhat exactly is the Listeners’ ecological niche? What do they do? You’ve mentioned that they’re symbiotic and function similarly to some fungi, and that they can even form a sort of hive mind with other Listener hosts to work towards the same goals, but what are those goals? How sentient are Listeners on their own, without a Player host?

WOOOOO OKAY SO THIS IS A POST IVE BEEN MEANING TO MAKE FOR A WHILE NOW AND ONLY JUST GOT THE TIME TO DO SOBuckle in everyone lets talk about:

~ Ecological Niches ~

So to answer this question, im gonna ironically set the stage by talking about something that doesnt SEEM related but trust the process alright this is necessary background infoWhat we need to briefly dissect is server formation.Ive mentioned before that singleplayer servers form around spawned Players--- much like a star, code coalesces and forms both Player and world, as a shield between them and the in-between. The thing ive only recently settled on is that all servers are formed by Players in some shape or manner.Essentially: Players drive server creation.I'm going to skip the mechanics for how multiplayers are formed rn because thats information for another post, but the essence of what you need to know is that Players are the driving force behind server formation. And the thing about Players, as entities, is that they have a drive to play. And the thing about playing is that sometimes... you get bored.Theres a tendency to abandon old servers and old worlds--- it happens eventually to pretty much all of them, and its a natural process. Servers arent supposed to be around forever. But sometimes a Player will abandon a world that isnt that old yet, that isnt ready to be recycled by a virus, often for a myriad of reasons. One of these is boredom. Sometimes you just dont click with a with a new world. Sometimes you dont want to continue playing, and so its fairly common to just abandon the world and start a new one.The problem with this is that theres only so much capacity a dev crystal has to maintain its server cluster, and overstuffing it with more servers than it can take will lead to its collapse (which as ive mentioned before, is CATASTROPHIC for the entire cluster). And this is where Watchers come in.Where a Player's ecological niche is to create servers, a Watcher's is to keep Players within that server for a greater length of time. Basically, Watchers are a bit like herding dogs (and massive shout out to the anon who gave me that idea); before they were hunted almost to extinction, Watcher colonies would flock to different multiplayer servers and feed on the Players within them, heightening their emotions which very lowkey softlocked the Players into staying on that server for a greater length of time than if they were left to their own devices. When youre invested in a world, in the people within it, and your emotions are heightened while inside, you arent exactly focused on leaving, yknow???So Watchers, on an ecological level, are essentially pinning Players in place to feed off of them, and keep them from abandoning servers for new ones at an unsustainable rate for the local dev crystal. Seekers, when they were around, would then hunt down the Watchers and eat them, or run them off in the process--- which then freed the Players to finally move on and make new servers again.Which brings us to the ACTUAL question here, about Listeners.Listeners are a relatively new type of entity, i think. With Seekers fully extinct, and most Watchers also hunted to critically endangered numbers, the universe needed a new solution for keeping Players in place for long periods of time so dev crystals wouldn't get overloaded. So Listeners were created as a new and more sophisticated way of forcing Players to stay in server worlds for a longer amount of time.While Listeners dont have a super strong sense of individualism, they are independently sentient from Players and as entities they have a vested interest in remaining on specific servers as long as possible--- specifically because ive recently decided they are specifically connected to sculk. The explanation for that is ALSO for a different post, i think, but essentiallyListeners can make new Listeners through the exp orbs Players expel after death, if they die near a sculk catalyst. So Listeners have a lot of incentive to stay on servers and get their Players to build up tons of exp levels before getting them to die so they can continue to make More Listeners, if that makes sense.So to recap:Players: create servers
Watchers: feed off Player emotions to trap them on servers for a longer period of timeSeekers: hunted and preyed on Watchers which released any trapped PlayersListeners: formed semi-recently to bridge the ecological gap made by the Seekers going extinct and hunting the Watchers to near extinction, for the same purpose of keeping Players in place for a longer period of timeI hope that answers your questions and then some!!! :D i need to make some posts about the new Listeners lore at some point soon, plus more info on multiplayers, but i'll leave those for a later date :] thank you for being patient while i percolated on this, i hope you like the post!!!

Code Death

Hi yes I’d love to hear more about your self indulgent au please it sounds so cool

self indulgent au in questionGODS OKAY,,, WHERE DO I EVEN START. i have so much worldbuilding for this au it's crazy. [shuffles note cards] how abooooout.... the concept of code-death!!! Obligatory cw for discussions of death going forward!!So like, as stated in the previous post, everything in this universe is made of code. It's sort of like the equivalent of atoms and DNA combined; code is what makes up servers, entities, everything in the environment, etc. It also stores very important information like entity data: personality and memories and different stats, things that update every single minute of every single day. This code can decay or be corrupted and destroyed, which leads us to the concept of code-death.Code-death is essentially the term for permanent death in this universe (not to be confused with hardcore mode death, which is a different concept i'll revisit in a second). Specifically, it refers to the unraveling and recycling of entity code back into the Greater Code that makes up the universe. Code-death can happen in a variety of ways, but usually it's because the code has existed for long enough that its starting to destabilize and can no longer support itself.This type of decay happens on a really long timescale; we're talking the equivalent of arctic sponges here. Average Player lifespan is ridiculously massive and stretches on for ages-- server deaths, even hardcore ones, are generally just a temporary inconvenience in the grand scheme of their existence. When code decay happens though, the code holding them together eventually falls apart, erasing the consciousness and returning that code to the rest of the universe so it can be reused in something else.Generally, that's the only way code-death happens. Your code has to be unstable to unravel, otherwise its just another day on any old server. But there are other ways this can happen aside from reaching the end of a lifespan: viruses, too many hardcore world deaths, and dying in the in-between place-- the void that exists between servers.Viruses are a pretty big deal in that they rapidly destabilize an entity or server's code. Nothing is fully immune to them, not even Devs. If you catch a virus, it's really important to get rid of it as fast as possible before it damages you irreparably. Firewalls around servers help with this, but nothing is fully impermeable and viruses mutate constantly. Luckily, its not super common to catch one-- they usually latch onto older, empty worlds and eat them from the inside out, destroying the server and returning its code to the universe.Then you have hardcore world deaths. Hardcore deaths aren't fatal in their own right, actually-- if you die in hardcore mode, your code is just pulled to the nearest server you have a respawn point set in. But hardcore deaths are hard on entity code, and wear it down over time; enough of them can start to destabilize a Player's code to the point of code-death. Generally speaking this would take a lot of consistent hardcore deaths to achieve, so while there is some risk, it's not common for someone to hit code-death from a hardcore death.And that brings us to the in-between. This is the term i use for the space between servers, which is a type of void that with enough skill and practice in code-wrangling can be traversed by certain Players (known as voidwalkers-- normal Players can't even access this place generally). Other entities like Watchers, Listeners, and Devs can move through these planes naturally and without risking code-death just by being in it. The thing about the in-between, though, is that it doesn't have a respawn point. Dying in a hardcore server and being pulled to another for respawn is one thing. Dying in the void between servers, however, is permanent, and results in the same unraveling of code and consciousness as code decay does.The in-between is actually where Xisuma, Mumbo, Pearl, Tango, and Scar finally find Grian after months of searching. And its actually super dangerous for all of them to be there; Xisuma is essentially holding five separate Player codes together by himself while walking through the void and searching for Grian. Grian, being a Watcher, can walk these planes just fine-- but the major plot point here is that if he dies, it would be a code-death. Hence why he takes the weakness potions to block his access to most Watcher abilities and waits for his friends to find him, assuming they'll kill him and put him out of his misery.What essentially happens after Grian passes out during that scene is that Xisuma races all of them to the nearest empty server, which happens to be a singleplayer, does some very rapid code-wrangling to turn it into a multiplayer, and then has to spend the next full week performing nonstop server maintenance on it so the whole thing doesn't collapse on them from the abrupt switch in mode. Absolutely nobody is having a good time with this but Xisuma is in a particularly special type of hell gods bless thank you for attending my ted talk<3If anybody reads this and is curious about other concepts or the plot in general feel free to send an ask about it skdnskdjd i am full of so many brain bees for this au

Glitches and Bugs

Watchers probably have their own suite of sicknesses, and poor Grian being a player watcher he probably can catch everything from everybody. Add on being starved and stressed, dude is gonna have a bad time. This idea brought to you by Grian AFK episode. Like watcher sick can just dissociate Grian from his player self.

Grian isn't actually a Player anymore!! His code is completely Watcher; only the memory code, aka the code responsible for keeping track of his memories, personality, and stats, is what got copied over.That being said, i havent thought extensively about illnesses beyond the concept of glitches, bugs, and viruses-- all of which can happen to anybody/anything regardless of species. I'd hazard to say that "glitches" in this case are essentially like common illnesses: colds and stomach aches and the like. Temporary and typically harmless in the long run, although shitty to endure and a bit hectic to troubleshoot. Bugs, on the other hand, are more serious and can sometimes end up affecting an entity the entire rest of their life-- and then there are viruses, which are a HUGE deal bc those are pretty much universally fatal unless dealt with extremely quickly.I think you're right about Watchers having different types of glitches and bugs that can happen to them than Players-- sorta like how different issues pop up between windows and linux, etc etc. Since Grian's code is completely altered, he wouldn't be dealing with Player-typical illnesses-- they'd be Watcher specific, which definitely opens up some opportunities for a Very bad time AKDNKSNDMSMS

Server Lag

Is lag a thing in the worldbuilfing for hunger au? Ive seen some fics describe it as areas of the world/anomalies where time seems to slow down, and i was curious if u have any thoughts? :o

I think lag in this case would be considered more of a server glitch than anything else-- so not something thats super common, and not necessarily caused by the kind of things it would be in the game irl!! I'd go as far to say that modded worlds are probably more prone to it, especially if they feature heavy code changesAdditionally i think lag in hunger au is like, less that time seems to slow down and more that the gravity in specific areas is suddenly a LOT stronger, and weighs you down a ton so everything feels like moving through molasses. I'd imagine its an absolute pain in the ass to fix, although not very harmful, just hellishly annoying 😂😂😂😂

Comms

Hi!! Hello!! Your worldbuilding has once again enchanted and fascinated me! But I have no one to talk to about mcyt-related worldbuilding so I’m just going to (definitelynot) shout (ha ha. I’m funny.) at you if that’s ok!!Ever since I found this fandom I’ve been fascinated by how to deal with video game mechanics in writing, and I’ve found it a very interesting ongoing puzzle, to come up with worldbuilding or lore to explain the more mechanical, coding-based stuff and cover up the fact that the characters are in a videogame. I think that’s part of why I love your worldbuilding so much, because you went in completely the opposite direction, and made Code the base, the reality-fabric, of all the rest of your universe! It kinda blew my mind!Anyway, the player inventory and in-game chat are two of the most glaringly Video Game mechanics, and two of the first that I came up with explanations for, which is why I (like Tango) latched onto those few lines and details about them in chapter four. For me, they’re both explained by the very flexible fabric of reality inherent to server-words. Because reality is so easy to manipulate (and be manipulated without breaking down) in these worlds, it’s easy for Players to simply open a small personal pocket dimension they can store stuff in. (The same way it’s easy to make something float by just leaving it there and taking away what connects it to the ground) the chat happenes basically the same way. Server-worlds allow for a very shallow telepathic link across all players that everyone experiences a little differently (you might see it scroll across the inside of you arm, look at it in the corner of your vision, actually hear it quietly in your head, etc.)But that’s a lot of My Ideas, I am, in fact, here because of Your Ideas. Because I’ve alway seen them as sperate things, and I am So Curious about how you’ve linked them. The chat being on external comms on a watch or phone-like device seems pretty common in the fandom, but linking them the way you have — in that you can’t have an inventory without a comm — raises so many questions!! (/pos) how do they work? Are they mechanical? Magical? Natural? Bio-magical? If they were something that needed to be invented, who invented them? How long have they been around? What did people do before then? How does a new player get their first comm/inventory? If comms can comunicate across worlds, could they theoretically take their inventory across worlds/servers as well? Is cross-void trade a very dangerous, but lucrative, profession? Do they have to exchange comm-phone-numbers or can they immediately contact anyone they’ve ever met? If you have stuff in your inventory and you loose your comm, do you lose the stuff too? Or does it transfer like an ender chest? Could someone else steal your inventory by stealing your comm? Does a player have to attune to a comm like a dnd magic item? How common is it to have to build a new one?
I’m gonna stop now because this is really long, it’s 11, and I Will just keep thinking of more questions.I’m so intrigued by this!! Those few little lines have completely captivated me with their potential!! I’m excited!!(Sorry if this had a bit too much of my own personal worldbuilding ramble, I just really wanna talk to someone about this stuff!!

Ive been 👁️👁️ at this ask since you sent it in and first of all im so sorry the autism won for a bit and kept me from answering your questions, second of all i think your worldbuilding is SO NEAT :DDD this is SUPER COOL i love your ideas, comms being a telepathic link is so interesting to me!!! Also, im intensely flattered that you like the direction i took with hunger au's worldbuilding so much!! I've been having a lot of fun sorta marrying biology and irl physics with computer programming-based building building blocks for this universe, to the point where im actually starting to put together a legit glossary in my masterlist doc to keep it all straight in my head 😂😂😂 it's an interesting challenge for me to try and meld all these things together so i can make something that feels completely different from our world without losing its relatability, so im super glad you're appreciating it!!!These are a lot of questions im gonna try and answer all at once, so i'll put it beneath the cut so it doesnt clog people's dashes LMAOSo firstly, the way i view communicators is,,, okay dont laugh too hard but i literally just visualize them as pip boys from fallout SKDNJWNDJS for some reason ive NEVER been able to shake that mental image, so ive just sorta accepted that into how i view them for hunger au. Personally, i see them as sort of a... mishmash of the bio-mechanical, something that isnt QUITE a direct part of them but is very much attached and integrated with their code. So its not like an organ, but an interface, i guess-- comms are how you can access an inventory, which is basically just hammerspace the way you've already described it, and where you can change your own surface code, and its also just... the way Players are able to interact with the worlds around them.You also send messages with comms, but instead of there being anything like phone numbers, you're forming a direct link between your comm and someone else's!!! Not telepathic the way you've done with your worldbuilding, but because i see comms in this universe as something that latches onto and interacts with your code, its still a very important connection. Once connected, you can talk to that person all the time through your comm, even if they arent currently on your server-- although I do think that this only extends to when youre within the same server cluster.As for how Players get them in the first place: for spawned Players, they just spawn in with them. Thats where the bio part comes in i think, and its a little hard for me to explain the way i view it, but its something like... i guess a bit like when moons form around planets. The code of an entity has a certain weight to it, and when a Player and their singleplayer world spawns in, the comm does with them, already attached and integrated with their code. For birthed Players, its very different-- they arent born with a comm, so they need a comm made, and then integrated with their code by a skilled code wrangler. It is VERY tricky to make a comm-- theyre incredibly fiddly, super hard to code without mistakes, and they take an extraordinarily long time to put together, let alone integrate properly with someone's code. Im not sure the word dangerous is the most accurate term here, but there are potentially harmful consequences if you integrate a poorly made comm with someone's code.As for inventory transfer, i think you can bring stuff in your inventory from one server to another. This is mostly used for personal items or gifts, i think-- Player culture and attitude generally emphasizes fun, and whats more fun than giving someone something special that you made/got for them, or bringing a little memento with you from an old world you want to remember?Theoretically, im sure there are Players who bring supplies or previously used tools with them to new worlds, but i think most Players like the excitement and challenge of starting fresh. It all depends on the person and the community culture surrounding that server if its a multiplayer. Cross-void trade is probably definitely a thing, but i dont think its necessarily very dangerous, just something more personal that you'd do for yourself or for a friend rather than any kind of business model.As for someone being able to steal a comm, i dont think you can if its attached to the Player it belongs to, because at that point its basically a part of them. They can take them off, though, so someone could potentially steal it then, but unless theyre a skilled code wrangler and can crack into it, i dont think it would work for them or let them access that person's inventory. It would, however, be an incredibly effective (and cruel) way of controlling someone's actions and where they can go/who they can talk to.This is why, ultimately, lost comms are a huge deal; losing your comm is literally losing access to pieces of yourself, your world, and your community. And while as a Watcher, Grian doesnt technically need a comm to access his code or enter other servers, he does still need it to keep in touch with other people and facilitate those community bonds, as well as keep an inventory. So yeah, Tango fretting over Grian losing his comm was very much warranted.AAAAAAA THIS WAS VERY LONG i hope it was worth the wait!!! I know you sent another question but im gonna answer that one separately later since its about a different subject, and this is already SOOOO MUCH RAMBLING on my part. Thank you for sending these asks, and you are absolutely welcome to ramble at me as much as you want!!! :D

Crafting and Crafting Tables

Hunger AU Topic of The Day: Crafting Tables

So if you know me even a little bit you will know that i literally can never leave well enough alone when it comes to worldbuilding. In that vein, i have been noodling on the concept of what crafting tables-- and by association, crafting itself-- are like in the hunger au.As the folks in my discord server probably know, i've been noodling on this for a while.But a few days ago i finally came up with an answer, and that answer is: crafting tables arent actually tables in hunger au. Instead, they're a plugin that's a little larger than your average USB drive, and are designed to interact directly with a Player's comm to facilitate crafting.To talk about that, though, we need to dive into what crafting is in hunger au.In hunger au, crafting is essentially a chemical reaction, if that chemical reaction was made up of code instead of molecules. Crafting components are arranged together in a corresponding pattern and then, using the crafting table (also called a crafting upgrade, or even just a crafter), have key elements of their code stripped and rearranged, forming an entirely new object. The crafting table is vital to performing this transformation without having to wholesale code the object by yourself via comm-- something that takes far too long when it can be done with a crafter in a matter of seconds.This leads into the interfacing side of things. While your typical comm is already capable of the same function, it's only in a very limited capacity (aka the 2x2 crafting grid in your inventory). Attaching a crafting table to your comm offers a more robust and extensive selection of crafting commands, so the Player doesn't have to make up an entirely new item from scratch.As an example, one could arrange a few wooden planks and a cushion in the general shape of a chair, then attach a crafting table to their comm, and through use of commands, could turn those planks and the cushion into a chair. By consequence, since these objects aren't being made via typical irl construction, anchoring items like nails aren't necessary. The chair would come out as one whole piece.The physical look of a crafting table is, as previously mentioned, a little larger than your average USB drive-- so keeping them plugged in, while useful for crafting purposes, is less than convenient, considering comms in this universe are anchored to a Player's wrist. Most Players keep several lying around, or carry one in their inventory or even just their pocket-- but it's not uncommon to lose them and just have to make another. They're easy to craft using a comm, and one of the first things a newly spawned Player instinctively knows how to create.They're also somewhat customizable for those who care enough to do so. Many Players end up changing the surface code of their crafters, so that they resemble something other than the default crafting table texture. Scar's, for example, looks like Jellie :]Alright this post took me way too long to write but i hope this makes sense and you guys like the additional worldbuilding :] ive been thinking about this one for a while now, and im so glad to have finally gotten it figured out!!! :D

Single vs Multiplayer Servers

You've said before that the world our hermits and grian are currently in is a single player world modified to have more people in it by Xisuma. I'm curious what the difference in single player and multiplayer worlds are in this au. Is there a fundamental difference between them or am I just taking something and giving it wayyyy to much context? -🌺

Aughgh i wanted this to be a much longer explanation than it is but i've been super busy so this will have to stay short for now-- hopefully i can make a more in-depth post about this sometime later :]Basically, a singleplayer and a multiplayer server are pretty much exactly what they say on the tin-- singleplayers can only hold one Player, and multiplayers can hold a ton!! This is determined by the server's code, so you can absolutely change a singleplayer world to host more people-- you just have to know how to code it so the whole thing doesn't collapse and fall apart.One thing to note is that a lot of singleplayer worlds are created when a Player spawns in; they act as a sort of cocoon from the in-between so the Player doesn't just spawn in void and immediately get ripped to shreds. Thats about the only noticable difference between a multiplayer and a singleplayer world (at least as far as ive thought about it-- i'll get back to you if i come up with any changes!!)

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AU Designs

illustrative designs by corvidaearts

Size Chart Comparison

[ID: A series of digital pieces showing design comparisons for various forms and creatures of the Hermitcraft Hunger AU. The designs are done by Corvidae Arts, and there is a written disclaimer, reading "designs are either incomplete or simplified".Piece 1: A lineup of a Player character, the Ender Dragon, Grian in Watcher form, and a Watcher. The Player is drawn as small, vague, and human shaped. The Ender Dragon is a simple dragon, drawn about five times the height of the player, with wings outstretched. Grian in Watcher form, is about 3 players taller than the dragon, and drawn as a large fantasy millipede-esque creature with feathered wings on the back, and large eyes drawn on every segment of the body. A Watcher is next, over twice the height of an ender dragon, and with a similar form to Grian's. Its tail ends in a fluke shape.Piece 2: A zoomed out, continued version of the previous lineup. The next creature we see is a Seeker, an enormous creature resembling a sort of catfish. The Seeker is over four times the size of a Watcher. Next, hovers the side of a Developer Crystal, so enormous, only a small fraction of its crystal shape is visible at the corner of the art. End ID.]

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Watcher Design

[Image Description in progress…]

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Seeker Design (Version 1)

[ID: A detailed piece describing Seekers, showing them from the side and the front, revealing white eyes, and a many toothed, split jaw. There is a comparison of one's open jaw beside the shape of a player, showing the player to be much smaller than even one tooth of the creature. Text on the page lists information: "-blind, white eyes
-bisects and swallows prey whole
-split jaw (has thin membrane between the split)
-bioluminescence
-has a pharyngeal jaw
main biological references (but not limited to:)
-eel
-catfish
-dunkleosteus (particularly for the head)
-whale
-(a little hint of) jellyfish. End ID.]

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Seeker Design (Version 2)

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