"Your age. Come on, ask us something difficult," Etho goaded.
"Yeah, ask us something difficult," Scar said. "We're all great at riddles."
Grian rolled his eyes. "Sure, whatever. Um... What can travel around the world without leaving its corner?"
"A stamp," Pearl chimed in. "You know, I always thought being a postmaster would be really fun."
"Ew, government work," Jevin muttered.
"I knew that one too," Scar said.
"Ooh, I have one!" Impulse said. "I'm always hungry and I'll die if I'm not fed. Whatever I touch will soon turn red. What am I?"
"Tango?" Etho said. Several snickers emanated from the gathered hermits.
"Close," Impulse said.
"Oh, I got it! Fire!" Pearl said. She beamed in victory when Impulse nodded.
Before anyone could add their thoughts, a deep, heavy voice echoed through the room: "The dungeon is ready for its next victim."
"Hypno made it out!" Grian said. "Who's up next again?"
"Uhh, Scar, I think," Etho said. He poked at the queueing system that always seemed to break at the least opportune moments.
"Ooh! Well, everyone better come up with more riddles, 'cause I'm gonna be in there a loooong time," Scar said. He waved flippantly as jeers followed him out the waiting room.
"Does anyone want to trade a shard for uh... Literally anything else?" Jevin said.
"Yeah, I'll trade one shard for two shards," Impulse said, grinning.
"Well that's not even funny," Jevin mumbled. He sat on a slab and crossed his arms.
Pearl scratched the side of her neck. "So, uh... Anyone got anymore riddles?"
Am inteles in sfarsit de fapt ce inseamna expresia — "nu pot trai fara tine". Nu e vorba de moarte, nu; nu voi muri fara tine. Voi trai, dar viata nu va fi la fel de frumoasa. Nu ma voi trezi dimineata cu aceeasi fluturi in stomac asteptand sa ne intalnim, sa vorbim si nu voi mai face nicio activitate cu atat de multa placere. Nu voi mai zambi deodata, mergand pe strada, gandindu-ma la momentul acela cand m-ai facut sa rad. Nu voi mai radia de fericire. Nu. Pentru ca nu va exista fericire fara tine, dupa tine, ci doar o viata monotona; voi trai doar ca sa traiesc, dar nu voi trai cu adevarat.
Am realizat ca "nu pot trai fara tine" inseamna a trai fara motiv, degeaba.
The magic of hermitcraft was way different than that of empires. For one, they didn't call it magic, and many scoffed at the very concept. Magic, on hermitcraft. That was for those modded worlds, not here on vanilla.
Joel, who'd used empires magic to grow to giant size and become a god, could tell that there was magic here. It was just... different.
Some of it was similar, if not the same: they could change their shape to match their aesthetic, like Lizzie becoming a cat or ocean queen, like Impulse becoming a dwarf or cybernetic future... guy. They could make life out of nothing, like that Grumbot guy he'd heard about, and of course his beloved Hermes.
But here the world didn't twist to their whims. Shubble's witchcraft would never work on hermitcraft, nor would that one demon guy from season one have much of an effect at all. So many hermits didn't put much substance in fwoopy, unclear magic-y sparkles, so the world didn't support it. They twisted the world to match their visions. Tango built a functioning factory using the laws of the world. It was huge and complex and would never have been built on empires. That wasn't even getting into whatever Doc or Zed were up to. Frankly, Joel liked sticking to his skyscrapers instead of testing the bounds of their world.
Still. It bugged him, because on empires he could have just built a car structure and boom, mustang for Joel Smallishbeans. But here he'd have to make like, an actual motor.
Joel leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and grumbled. Stupid hermits and their stupid redstone. Why couldn't life be easy.
On a world filled with every hybrid imaginable, Wels stuck out as one of the only "pure-blooded humans" (though the accuracy of such a statement was highly debated, particularly amongst Hypno and Jevin, since "human" was already a nebulous designation, plus the never-ending "half knight half human" jokes, and-)
Regardless, Wels didn't have any knowingly hybrid features.
"By the gods, Wels, how are you not dying of heat right now?" Xisuma asked incredulously. As a bug-guy ("not a bug!") he couldn't sweat, so he was periodically spritzing himself with water. Hot days on hermitcraft were few and far between, because the weather was often either perfect or raining, but they did happen.
Wels had taken his helmet off but that was all and yeah, admittedly, he was cooking in his armor. But the aesthetic. The vibe. The embarrassing old band T-shirt he was wearing that he didn't want X to see. So many reasons.
"Maybe I'm just, like, built better," Wels said.
"Humanism? In my hermitcraft world?" Jevin muttered. He was thriving in the heat and prepping to leave, bored with Wels and X lounging around.
"I think he really is just built different," X mused, and he sounded so genuine about it that Wels could do nothing but laugh.
Etho, like every hermit, has a "home world": his solo, unbroadcasted world where he rests between hermitcraft seasons. Not the one everyone knows about, but a second, even more secluded solo world. One he can retreat to. One with scores and scores of massive trees he never has to fell.
He never put much thought into it until he takes a selfie at the request of Gem, making a peace sign with one hand and holding his comm in the other, and Gem sends back an all-caps "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR HOUSE????"
Before he knows it every hermit has seen the selfie. Few care about the hermit present in said selfie (except for Bdubs, bless the man), and are far more interested in the simple, nondescript background.
"Why is there a lantern on top of a chest?" Gem demands.
"There's not, the lantern's held up by fishing wire, see?" Etho says.
"That's worse!" Gem exclaims. And so on and so forth.
Etho thinks his home is pretty normal. It works for him, after all. No need to have anything fancy and new. He lives by the adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
He receives an invite to a Weirdness Ranking by Mumbo not too long after.
Doc stretches these rules to their limits. His redstone machines have shut down the world many, many times. He pushes at the confines of his cage and the cage, to his enjoyment and frustration, pushes back.
There's one area, though, that Xisuma, Hypno, and the others refuse to budge on.
"You cannot add modifications to your arm," Xisuma says.
"It already has-"
"You know what I mean," Xisuma says in exasperation, needing to be the Responsible Admin and hating every second of it.
Doc does, sort-of, in that he completely doesn't. "What's the difference between a soldering iron and a flamethrower, really?"
"Limiting the area of heat concentration," Tango adds helpfully. He's paying attention in the way Tango does best, conversing while fidgeting with a pile of metal gears that he periodically puts together and takes apart.
Doc rolls his eyes. "Yes, but to what limit?"
"The normal one," Tango says.
"We gotta make up numbers now?" Hypno mumbles. He's half asleep, headband pulled over his eyes.
"Nah. There are regulations already made for other prosthetics on vanilla-ish worlds," Tango says, which is annoying because Doc doesn't like following the rules of other vanilla-ish worlds. Tango shoots him an impish grin. "I know because I had to modify my arm from the create worlds."
Gem's first sword was a rickety stone thing that chipped on its first skeleton bone. She sharpened it nightly and it was always dull by noon the next day. She was young, maybe eight or nine, so she definitely shouldn't have been sneaking out to play chicken with a creeper. But clearing the forest of monsters, felling creatures stronger than she... Nothing beat it.
She upgraded to an old iron sword when she turned eleven. It sharpened far nicer and lasted much longer. Her stone sword gathered dust at the bottom of a chest.
Her first diamond sword was when she was fourteen or so -- incredibly young to be handling such an expensive blade, but she was different. She held swords like they were extra limbs. Like she was meant for slaughter.
Netherite wasn't discovered until she was twenty-four. At this point she'd lost and built more blades than she could count, so when netherite became an option she rolled up her sleeves, donned some armor, and got to work.
It glowed the way embers glowed, from deep in its core. It was purple-black and Gem wasn't partial to such an aesthetic, but... she twisted the sword so it reflected the red, burning lava in her blacksmith. With a twist, she flicked the blade at her training dummy and took its head clean off.
Her lips stretched into a grin. She could get used to this.
A ghost haunted season 10. Certainly not a malicious one, if a bit mischievous - and one had to keep a careful eye out to catch him.
Jevin heard him first, deep underground. He was hunting iron, early in the season, and he was having the worst luck. He even looked up where iron should be, to make sure the updates hadn't changed anything! Alas, the iron evaded him. Jevin might have to resort to begging and then jump straight to a farm.
And he kept hearing these crackly, faint snickers. At first he thought he'd been on a voice channel accidentally, but, no, his comm wasn't connected. Then, just to make sure, he disconnected it entirely - but the laughter prevailed. Jevin chalked it up to too many sleepless nights, and went to find an overachieving hermit already building an iron farm.
Stress heard him next, but as someone who heard murmuring monsters on a good day, she didn't give it a second thought. Clear as day she heard an, "oh, bugger." She thought, you and me both, monster, before going along with her day.
Then it was Xisuma, though he didn't hear anyone, he saw. It was a mere glimmer out of the corner of his eye. White hair, stout, pickaxe slung lovingly over a shoulder. When he looked back there was nothing. He resolved to run diagnostics on his helmet, because something was clearly haywire.
And in Joel's defense, he was both exhausted and brand new to hermitcraft. It wasn't like people had nametags on, they were a group of friends! So when an old man grumbled by, lost as could be within the shopping district, Joel furrowed his brows but ultimately was too tired to ruminate. He overheard the man saying something about shroomlights and called out, "Tango has the permit, but he doesn't have a shop up yet!"
The man startled, muttered something about "permits?" before scuttling off like a spooked horse. Joel shrugged. It was called hermitcraft, after all. There had to be loads of people he hadn't met yet.
Small instances added up. Scar fell asleep making a tree, hidden amongst the branches, and was spooked awake by the sound of a player dying. But when he checked his comm, nothing showed up. A dream, he thought uneasily.
I just need sleep, Tango thought.
Wow, someone's wearing a sick costume, Skizz thought. Too bad I'm too busy to go chat right now!
Who's messing with my hourglass now? Doc thought. Only, there wasn't anyone else on the server at the time. Probably an armor stand prank.
It all came to head when Hypno stumbled across his fifth stripmine in one mining session. He rolled his eyes, because of course Wels had created tunnels beneath Hypno's place just to be a nuisance. Except when he pointed it out to Wels, who was on call with Hypno but was busy caving, Wels expressed confusion.
"I've only made one or two strip mines. And they're not near you," Wels said.
Hypno saw a wisp of white hair turning a corner. "Haha, very funny, Wels. Come on out."
"I'm not joking?" Wels said in confusion. In the same beat he got the achievement for sneaking successfully past a shrieker for the first time and Hypno was far too high up to be near an ancient city.
"Maybe it's someone else?" Hypno murmured, checking who was online. Grian and Joel, who were having their own shenanigans blowing up the comms (it involved TNT, so the blowing up was quite literal). Impulse had just left. Etho, who could be a contender if Hypno didn't know he'd fallen asleep at the post office three hours ago. Plus, what sort of prank would this be, from Etho?
He explored the endless strip mines and got so lost that he had to dig his way up. When he mentioned the strangeness to Keralis, the man lit up and exclaimed that he'd found the same thing, how weird was that, huh?
Hypno investigated. If there was a bug in the world he'd need to know.
"You know, it might not be a bug," Cleo said meaningfully. They fidgeted with a tear in their clothes.
"What else would it be?" Hypno asked, mystified.
"Maybe it's a player. You know. Someone we never removed from the whitelist."
Cleo raised an eyebrow. It wasn't in their nature to beat around the bush, but at the same time they didn't want to act crass. Not for this.
Tentative realization trickled through Hypno. He nodded and abruptly left, unsure how to feel.
The information spread slowly through the rest of the server. Joe took to leaving boxes of torches and iron pickaxes about, and every so often would have to refill them. He didn't ask, but everyone swore they hadn't been stealing. Who would need an iron pickaxe at this point, anyway?
One night, Cub let off a slew of fireworks that were spherical and solid green. He heard a faint chuckle on the breeze, and raised a drink in quiet salute.
So, yes. A ghost haunted season 10. But ghost haunting had such a negative connotation, didn't it? The hermits, if they spoke about him at all, much preferred to call him the True Hermit who never left.
