Well, first of all none of my interpretations of the Hermits' characters are 100% human, so jot that down (/ref). Some appear humanoid because that's how their species looks, while others, if they have the ability to manipulate their appearance, just prefer to look like an approximation of a human to make hopping servers easier.
So far what I've settled on is:
glitch!Doc
watcher!Grian
starborne!Cub
shapeshifter!Mumbo (or as I like to call him: weird purple end cat /affectionate)
sorcerer!Scar (there's a reason he's on this list, trust me)
cinder!Tango
specter!Wels (and thus poltergeist!Hels)
werewolf!Beef
and a couple other fanon interpretations I haven't had the opportunity to meddle with, but have adopted nonetheless!
I've heavily built upon cinders and end shapeshifters with only little inspiration from other media, while for stuff like watchers, starbornes and the resident glitched creeper of Hermitcraft I've based them entirely on my headcanons of said species. Also, I've technically decided who most of Scar's deals were made with which does explain why he keeps making deals with fae and getting out of them, but that's for another time. More about my homebrewed chaos under cut.
Docm77
Doc had creeper code before he ever had Player code. He never was a regular creeper, mind you, but he never was a Player either prior to the glitch that created him as the Hermits know him. By all means, Doc is exactly what you'd assume he is upon first seeing him: a sentient, humanoid creeper centaur-like creature.
Much like regular creepers, he doesn't have bones, but a rather intricate network of thin branches and vines tightly woven together, the latter which serve as muscles and cushioning for internal organs. Creepers also have a coat of moss, lichen or small plants as their "fur" and Doc is no exception! He has a spanish moss coat that sometimes gets spotted with algae if he sits in humid environments for too long. Really his, Player-ness mostly consists in the ability to use crafting tables and inability to understand mob speak.
Doc's cybernetics also work in a really interesting fashion because they are very much cybernetics, but as creepers can somewhat regrow parts of themselves they are different from cybernetics meant for those whose anatomy is closer to humans. The shoulder and biceps part of his cybernetic arm are mostly hollow, and serve as both a brace to ensure the regrown arm doesn't do something wonky that'd be painful in the long run, and as an anchoring point for the cybernetic. Everything from his elbow down is 100% cybernetics and helps him immensely with fine motor movements although it took a good long while to get used to. The cybernetic eye also works similarly, except the cybernetic components are far better secured so he doesn't accidentally end up pulling them out.
Grian
Hermitcraft Grian is the most human the guy has ever looked, black sclerae and all. Before being a Watcher, Grian was an avian and had brown and white spotted pigeon wings, then after agreeing to become a Watcher (it sounded fun at the time, sue him) he took the form of a chimera of wings of different shapes, sizes and color, no two of the same feather.
Arguably, Hermits wouldn't mind having an amalgamation of wings and eyes ominously hovering about and causing mischief because that's not that weird given the everything that has happened and will most certainly continue to happen on the Hermitcraft server, but Grian is acutely aware this is not a universal consensus while simultaneously having a very poor reference of how common non-human inclusion actually is because of his years in the fringes of "the world between worlds" where legend places the Watchers' library in relation to everything else, so he's...a little nervous about his appearance to put it lightly. Watchers are not evil, nor righteous— they do what they feel they must to keep up with their work logging the events of an ever-expanding universe, and wade off the subsequent boredom that comes with such a repetitive task.
Grian and Pearl are both oddballs when it comes to their abilities as Watchers, because while most can capital w Watch and capital k Know, they can only do one or the other; Grian can only Know things and Pearl can only Watch things. This ultimately has influenced why they left— Grian because he wanted to see things for himself and interfere in Player's worlds and Pearl because she was sick of clinical observations and wanted to get to experience the things she saw for herself— but in the grand scheme of things they barely ever use their powers anymore for anything other than getting a different angle on their builds and cheating at cards when facing off against each other.
Cubfan135
Mr. Cubfan is quite literally made up of stardust and often leaves little particles of iron dust and ice wherever he goes! Appearing human is a purely aesthetic choice on his behalf, but the upkeep is definitely worth it because it allows him to get up to so many shenanigans with his friends or by himself, be it theming his outfit around the base he plans to build that season, convincing the others he also made a deal with the vex like Scar had in season 6, or just going up to a sleepy Hermit and placing a very cold hand on their face or back of the neck to wake them up.
There's also other pros and cons to being a starborne, namely having permanent night vision, healing faster at night, and requiring air in a far lesser capacity than most overworld inhabitants, while also being more susceptible to fall damage and kinetic damage due to gravity discrepancies between different planets. Does this deter Cub from building ridiculously high up? No. Should it deter him from building so damn high up? Yes, but when has common sense ever deterred Hermits from doing something? /rh
Also, unrelated to Cub being a starborne, but he has Oxford shoe heelies. I know it in my heart to be true <3.
Mumbo Jumbo
As far as Mumbo is concerned, he is just a very unlucky human. I mean, everyone has weird things happen to them sometimes, right? There's nothing that odd about speaking a language that was thought to only be used in written form, or spawning in the Outer End, or turning into the things you eat— bugs happen, and they usually fix themselves after a while anyways, so it's fine! Shulkers target everyone the same, he's just bad at dodging, so it looks like they're targeting him more often, but that's totally not the case! Or, well, that are his claims at least, because for as long as he can remember he's thought of himself as human, so being inhuman is a bit...intimidating? Like, what does it mean to be inhuman? Is there a handbook for it or anything? There are far too many questions and every time Mumbo even considers it, he only seems to end up with more questions, so he'd really rather not think about it. Nothing bad ever came out of doing that! /s
Well, until something bad does happen, and the control he has on his appearance slips meaning that for the first time in many seasons he's not a moustached man with eye bags that wouldn't go away even with a lifetime's worth of sleep, but an end shapeshifter.
There aren't many reflective surfaces in the End unless you count the obsidian (too dark to see your image in) or the endstone (neither smooth nor crystalline), so whispy purple and off-white fur was definitely not what Mumbo expected to see. He has 2 pairs of eyes— a smaller one that's entirely black and looks kind of like a pair of eyebrows, and a bigger one with large purple irises— floppy triangle ears with some sort of whiskers on the ends, an off-white fur collar that starts on the sides of his neck and peaks between his shoulders before trailing off down his spine, 5 digit paws, and a stripe pattern starting on the sides of his body and covering his back and legs.
TangoTek
As mentioned, Tango is a cinder, though not the kind you would think of if you know the Lycanite's Mobs mod. Cinders were a proto-netheric species with blaze and wither like characteristics, meaning they could summon netherflames like blazes do while virtually being a more primitive version of wither skeletons from an anatomical standpoint. Now, being a skeleton is not exactly the best thing to be when your most important and only vital organ is a magic core inside your rib cage, so cinders built themselves bodies out of wax (as it made them easy to repair) tempered to withstand the ambient heat of the Nether.
Upon first meeting the Hermit, most find themselves inclined to assume that he's a fire elemental in the same way Gem is a nature elemental because of his ability to summon fire which passively manifests as a particularly fiery fauxhawk (good for finding soulsand valleys, apparently, which is both useful and annoying), or a sorcerer who's made a deal to gain the abilities of his patron like Scar does because of his red eyes and sharp teeth. There are little tells that's not true, though, mostly which lay in how him and other Hermits interact; Impulse joking that if he's so tired of wither skeleton hunting they could always take up Zed's offer of trying to see if they can summon a Wither Tango...for science, of course! Or Tango's endless complaining about blazes, and pistons misfiring and slamming him square in the face or legs which mean he has to put projects on hold while he patches himself up. Or even just him and Etho arguing from across the shopping district through a dialect that's not any recognizable sign language, but a form of sign language nonetheless.
Pre-1.15 worlds required many intentional respawns, tell you that much. The Nether has drastically changed since Tango first stepped into the Overworld.
Welsknight
Wels is stuck in an arthurian conundrum, so to speak. In life, Wels was a legendary knight who fought fiercely to defend his homeland and only died after the crucial battle to insure his kingdom's safety, but in death this feat has come as more of a curse/inconvenience to him as legend binds he shall only return to his homeland in its greatest time of need. Centuries have passed since then, and Wels has taken to accompanying the Hermits in their travels to pass the time in a more enjoyable manner than aimlessly wandering the world with no purpose— now he's aimlessly wandering the universe with purpose (i.e. shenanigans)! Very different.
Due to Wels being a specter, the miscalibrated cloning machine which created Helsknight made him into a poltergeist bound to haunt Wels for what they can only presume to be eternity? Or until Wels returns to his homeland? Or until Wels' spirit somehow dies? It's really quite unclear how they're supposed to get out of this, and Hels isn't exactly eager to find out what does happen if Wels dies, so he's spending his eternity just antagonizing his double for creating him in the first place and having quite a blast at it too— you should see his red string board someday, it's got so many devious schemes!
VintageBeef
Beef comes from a long line of werewolves, though there was no way to know for certain whether he was one as well until one faithful and quite frankly embarrassing full moon. If anyone asks about it, he says he can't remember much from when he's in wolf form, which is true, but none of the Mindcrack guys will let him live down trying to bite out of the moon, loosing his footing, and subsequently having to be dragged out of the river by 3 people so he didn't get a cold like a goof. Are there better anecdotes to motivate why you shouldn't panic if you see a large black wolf outside your base at 1 am? Yes. Is the moon accident an objectively funnier one, though? Also yes.
Besides the occasional incident, Beef is as chill in wolf form as he is in his less furry form, if not a tad more social because wolves can't exactly lose track of time while making map art as they can't make map art; they can be damn good at ruining snow layers, though— paw prints everywhere. It is not unusual to find Beef away from his base and sleeping in a pile of Hermits who still have to move out of their outdoors chest monsters (plus/minus a Zedaph who was too tired to make it all the way back to his own base) during the first few weeks of the server or in his sheep pen at any point of the season. They are very fluffy and make him sleepy is the reason the defendant pleads.
Oh! Also him, Ren and False sometimes hold contests to see who can catch the most impressive mob/get most hostile mob drops in a night. Cub is decidedly banned from this contest. Cub also decidedly doesn't care for the ban and likes to mess with his friends (all in good fun, of course).
does anyone remember those songs the family channel (the canadian equivalent of the disney channel) that use to play between tv shows? like the “upcoming canadian young artists” thing. cause i do. because i still have that god damn operator song stuck in my head.
