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What is the general opinion on the the Netherfall War at the moment in time this fic takes place? With how long it's been since then, are players taught how horrible it was, or have the details of it faded from the collective concious?
The Netherfall War, for the most part, is a tragedy placed squarely at the feet of Notch.
Horrible - the worst possible crime, and nowadays, pretty much everyone accepts that. During the War, though…
The thing is, Minecraft doesn’t share history with Earth in this universe. Players - people - didn’t have a *concept* of war before the Netherfall - not in the Technoblade sense, but in the nobody-knows-what-war-is sense. It had never been done before, not at this level of the Game. War in Minecraft was a thing done between factions that would always come back, a thing for entertainment or to resolve petty conflicts.
The Netherfall, by contrast, was Vietnam. A vastly more powerful Game, already well-established, decided to exert itself on one that was only just solidifying, stripping it for resources in a sea of atrocity and bloodshed. The Nether - and its Player allies - fought back, but they were never going to win. One by one, the Nether’s Devs died, until the last one fell and the Nether itself tore apart at the seams.
And no one *knew*. No one except the Devs and their Mods had any real idea of what ‘winning the war’ would look like. Players - yeah, lots of them, *most* of them, sided with Notch - but he was their *creator-god!* What else could they do?
Most Players not alive at the time have a thin knowledge of the reality of the War, at best. Minecraft society is spread thin by design - there’s no school-equivalent, so history, like many things, is passed down word-of-mouth and in handcrafted written histories that must be traded from server to server physically.
So a Player could know nothing about it. Or they could have any of a hundred different perspectives, passed on from player to player by those who were actually there, changed over time. Or they could be a learned scholar of the War - or they could have fought in it themselves, because unlike real wars, the Players who were actually there for the Netherfall War are immortal.
And then, there are the Hybrids - the last, desperate weapon of the Nether and the Minecraft Players who allied with her. Hybrids in this AU aren’t human-animal - they’re Player-something else, and the originals were all Players allied with the Nether who agreed to have Nether coding grafted into them to help them survive in the Nether.
Over time, they’ve diversified - to animals, other mobs, even non-living hybrids, occasionally. But all Hybrids originated after the War introduced the coding that made hybridization possible. So every living hybrid is a mark left on Minecraft by the War - a constant, living reminder to everyone old enough to remember.
The Devs, on the other hand - they remember very, very well what happened, and what they allowed to happen. It’s not the sort of thing they talk about openly, but they’ve committed themselves to not repeating their own mistakes, and so far, it’s worked.
What does it mean that Hackers are vectors for corruption? What about Hackers is different from normal players, or are certain players just more skilled with it? And if that second one is the case, do more talented Hackers make more powerful admins?
A hacker is someone using Admin magic on a server that they are neither Admin nor Mod for. Any Player or Hybrid can use Admin magic at least a bit, but their power can scale wildly just like it would if they were running a server.
Admin magic *usually* fades when you aren’t running a server, and you kind of forget it until you *need* to recall it - say, because you’ve been Modded. Hackers learn how to use it even when not running a server - and free of the responsibility for things like physics and respawn, they often have more power to bring to bear than an Admin might.So a hacker enters a server, and starts messing with the world - it’s like having two people cooking at once. Often, there’s no issue - but sometimes, the salt gets added twice, and that can become a glitch.
Over time, many small glitches can become corruption - snarls in the server’s magic that make it harder for the Admin to run things. First, it’s small - gravel not falling, water not flowing, blocks lagging back or not dropping when mined.
Eventually, if not controlled, it escalates. Chunks vanish, players respawn scarred or *wrong*, mobs stop spawning or spawn too much…If nothing is done, the server begins to unspool completely, and eventually, the shield keeping server in and Void out begins to dissolve.
Talented hackers have the *potential* to be powerful Admin, but rarely are. Wrapping up your power in a server is antithetical to being a strong hacker - it means depriving yourself of the freed-up magic you need to actually hack.
Did you ever end up making Tommy's base like you mentioned back in chapter 14? :D If so I'd love to see what it looks like!
I did… on my last computer. And then lost all of the screenshots, lol.
In chapter 21, Xisuma makes an offhanded remark about how avoiding Tommy for his(Tommy's) own piece of mind wouldn't be the worst thing he's ever done for one of his players. What was the worst thing X has ever done for a player?
He killed an Admin for them.
What are Techno's voices in this universe? Are they at all related to Notchs invasion and subjugation of the Nether, or are they simply something connected to what he is as a Concept?
Techno’s voices are a lot like Phil’s crows. They act as a conduit of his power between him and his… servants? Worshippers?
When someone kills in his name, or on his server, the voices gather up the power from that sacrifice and bring it to him. Over time, those slain repeatedly get added to the voices, bit by bit, until he can almost pick them out of the refrain, like shadows in the song.
When he wants to, he can channel them outwards. The singing of the voices swells inside his chosen target, empowering them with a fragment of his quasi-divinity, turning them into an instrument of War’s rage and might. This can be either spread amongst many - for example, blessing his whole mod team for a hunt - or focused into one person, making them into an absolute monster for the duration.
All Concepts have something like this - Phil has his crows, Techno the voices, Victory the other Ender Dragons, Mumza the void beasts. A little helper to abstract their power through, giving them a tangible way to effect the world around them.
How did Notch (and the other Devs to a lesser extent) hold back the Void Beasts while he was alive? With how many his corpse has attracted, one would think that during life he was practically a beacon to any particularly powerful ones (like Philza). Is it just that those powerful enough to do him harm didn't care to?
Void beasts don’t really ‘eat’ or ‘consume’ power from living things - they’re more detritivores than carnivores. Magic being controlled and manipulated by living beings - Players, Devs, or Admin - doesn’t interest them that much - they might come over and have a nose around, but they don’t see it as food in the same way that maggots don’t consume living flesh.
Once the magic is no longer controlled, though? It’s like putting an algae wafer in a fishtank. The bonds holding it together start to dissolve, turning it from inedible into a concentrated but easily-absorbable source of magic. Compared to what they usually do - slowly filter magic from the void like a baleen whale - fading worlds and dying gods are absolute feasts.
As an added note - Notch was not *particularly* powerful as a Dev. Devs just stratify - more powerful Devs run ultracomplex life-sim style Games, stuff almost indistinguishable from our real life, whereas a weaker Dev would make something more on the level of Dwarf Fortress or Don’t Starve.
Minecraft is right around average - along with games like Terraria and what the Nether would have been. They sit almost perfectly at the center of this cosmology - a position that privileges them with regards to accessing other games, but not because Notch was stronger than everyone else.
It’s just that Devs - any Dev - are much, much stronger than Admins. Orders of magnitude stronger, and Notch was foremost among his own Admin.
Is Tommy somehow connected to the Nether/Netherfall War? There's a line in chapter 39 which seems to hint at this, but is never expanded upon later,
"He’s a little mysterious, sure. Tommy doesn’t know where they first met -
- a battlefield a dozen lifetimes ago, before the Nether was a ruined place, before the Devs wrote laws in blood and magic that put an end to War -
- or what they are to each other, exactly -
- a child clutched in a monster’s arms, lost, without purpose, dying a death it did not deserve -" (The formatting it had was lost during copying and pasting, sorry )Later on Philza is called Rebirth by Techno, did he find Tommy (who may have been an inhabitant of the Nether???) And guide him to rebirth/reincarnation?
Not quite! The line is referring to where Techno and Phil met, not Tommy - Tommy was born a perfectly normal player, just happened to land on Techno’s server rather than a hub when he finally jumped off of his first world.
Phil is Rebirth because he uses the magic of worlds unmade/recycled by Kristen to create new things. It’s his aspect in relationship with Destruction.
Is Blood magic something unique to Techno/The Nether? Or is it just something he's uniquely suited to utilising?
Blood is representative of sacrifice - a representative unit of measure for the killing that fuels War. If Phil’s magic represents itself as ink-black, spiraling feathers, and Dream’s represents itself as the whorls of a fern, War’s power takes the shape of blood - in rivers, pooling, spilling, dripping, liquid and clinging to everything they touch.
Techno’s magic - when he isn’t acting as War, just a player - maintains a lot of that characteristic form, just - ethereal. So does Tommy’s - he learned it from Techno, after all.
(Straight from my notes app BTW lol) GRIAN ISN'T A WATCHER? WTF IS HE???
Grian could have been a Watcher. He chose not to be, but the potential was always there, and him having walked away doesn’t change that.
In chapter 50, when asked by Philza if any of them have ever actually killed an Admin, Xisuma averts eye contact with them all, I'm so interested to know the story there .
So the abandoned False/Xisuma/Techno story got revised along the way.
Originally I had planned for False to be the rebel and Xisuma to have been a loyalist. Over time, though, I realized that False made a really good mercenary, fighting for Notch, and Xisuma makes a passionate freedom fighter :) And as an Admin, he’s perfectly positioned to protect runaway members of his former faction…
So - post-Netherfall, in the wake of losing a war and many people he loves, Xisuma may have done a little terrorism. As a treat. And that may have ended in more than a little carnage before Dinnerbone and the other Devs were able to step in and stop him.And then, like I said in 4, he killed an Admin for one of his Players.
I really should restart that fic…
Techno and False's relationship is so interesting to me, I'm so interested to see what happened between them to inspire such loyalty on both sides :D.
:)
Was War(Technoblade) changed by the violence that Notch brought down upon the Nether? Is that the reason why War is so uncontrollable, or would they always have been like that?
Technoblade was *created* by the violence that Notch brought down on the Nether. Every aspect of his Concept emerged from that war: he is Conquest (Notch establishing dominion over the Nether) but he is also Rebellion (the defiant races of the Nether defending their Devs). He is the fight for justice but also the tyrant’s war. He embodies every possible aspect of conflict - the worthy and the unworthy, the good and the bad.
War isn’t uncontrollable - Phil controls it often and with some success, and so, typically, does Techno. It *needs* that outside influence to give it direction, however - to point it at an enemy, to give it limits and targets. Without that, it kills and kills until there is nothing left to destroy, because that’s what a directionless conflict *is* - pointless, wanton destruction.
Fighting the Dreamon, Techno was *angry* - angry enough to stop controlling it. He gave over completely to his own Concept, in an empty place where the only thing that he could hurt was his target. That’s why Phil had to go get him back - otherwise, Techno would have simply rampaged alone in the void until he could claw back control of his own head.That’s also the in-universe reason for Techno being such a famed competitor in stuff like MCC and Bedwars. Conquest is an aspect of War, and so he uses the structure of competition to help him control and direct his energies. Like meditation, almost.
In chapter 53, it's insinuated that Dragons are, in some shape or format, connected to Void Leviathans,
" She nods, imperiously. “You should go.” Exhales, long and steady, and glances up at the stars. “I - that thing and I are kin, of sorts. It isn’t my place to intercede.” "
How are they connected? Did Notch take inspiration from the Void Leviathans when he made the Dragons?
Dinnerbone took a LOT of inspiration from Void Leviathans in making the Dragon. Ordinarily Void Leviathans are incompatible with Games - they occupy the space that Games do not, the Void between them, so having one participate in the game is kind of… oxymoronic? But he wanted something like that for his game…
So Notch gathered up energy from the Void, created a player, grafted the void into them to create basically a void-hybrid, and then used the results as a template for how to make an in-game Void Leviathan. Zedaph basically was created to model how void energy could interact with the server, his Playerhood stabilizing things for Notch so that he could design something functional.
So in essence, they’re - cousins? Related but a step apart. She is made to be a copy of them, but is fundamentally their opposite, being an innate part of a Game. A reflection of them, I think would be the best description.
(To clarify the timeline a bit - Zedaph did exist before the coding that created Hybrids more generally. The coding that was used to create him was stolen by Nether spies, and so it’s less that he’s a hybrid and more that Hybrids are all based on him.)
False says in chapter 1 of her backstory fic,
"She hasn’t seen a living Demon in years, and no one can agree if that’s a good thing or not."
What were the demons before the war? This seems to insinuate a more antagonistic relationship to the rest of the inhabitants of the Nether, were they opposed to the Blaze/Piglin populations before the Invasion?
The Demons - like BadBoyHalo and Tango, although I think I had him as a Demon Hybrid? - were the *most* player-like race of the Nether. Unlike Minecraft, which prior to the war only had one species, Player, the Nether had many species: the Blaze, the Withered, the Piglins, and the Demons being the most prominent.
Pre-war, Demons were the most independent race - they didn’t live in Bastions or Fortresses like the other three, instead preferring a semi-nomadic lifestyle. They traveled the Nether either alone or in small clan groups, using their magic to stabilize small areas to camp in, and transporting their possessions and tools with their player-like magic.
During the war, they fought for their Devs, often as saboteurs and spies - and this gave them a much better view of how the war was going: poorly. Many Demons died heroically - but many instead decided to take advantage of their indistinguishability from Players and run, instead.
Once on Minecraft, they’re hard to distinguish - a trained Admin can read their code and sense them that way, and any Dev would immediately perceive that they aren’t native to Minecraft, but most people just see them as other players.
So, post-war, many Demons survived, but *deeply* in hiding, scattered to servers as far from anywhere a Dev might be as possible. The Devs weren’t hunting them - and said as much publicly - but most demons didn’t believe that, not for a long time.At the point the story is at, Demons are mostly thought extinct, and those that do find public notoriety often do so during acts of anti-Dev terrorism. Because even decades after the war - it’s hard for everyone to let go of their world being destroyed.
And my last one I promise,
Do you have any plans to continue False's 'Terrorism Arc' (xD)? I'm so interested in seeing what happens next!Well, it will be Xisuma’s Terrorism Arc, but I think you’ll enjoy False’s role in it - they’re almost as intertwined as she and Techno are. And yeah, I do… maybe I’ll even work on it, now!