#when i learned cub was back at it with the sculk

[bloop-im-a-frog-now]

"Spread The Sculk"

Cub never does something twice. Last time, his little sculk possession had been fun, putting sculk catalysts in everyone’s base, and forcing the others to cure him. The addicting feeling of letting his body being control will never cease to amaze him.

But it’s over now. 

“No more sculk,” he tells himself as he does his usual early season routine.

The last time he told that to himself, he let the hungry desire of diamonds take control of him during a civil war.

He isn’t the weak-minded fool he was before. He can control himself and the itch of letting an entire hivemind take his body as a host and doing their bidding for them. Sculk is very last season trend, and he has no desire to do anything with it again.

It means nothing every time he went mining, he always managed to find some sculk veins or an Ancient City. After all, Cub is able to go back where he came from and leave the place for good. He doesn’t need to block all the entrances to where the sculk is calling him. It isn’t calling him.

Cub sighs. The more he spends in denial, the more his work becomes affected by it. Doing the custom fireworks takes him more time than he planned it to be. All that for satisfying a stupid itch and a growing curiosity of the calls. 

He decides to go down in his mines, one day, silk touch pickaxe and some golden carrots in his inventory. He breaks the stone that blocked the entrance to the Deep Dark and inhales the air. A strong odour of fermented mushrooms takes over his mind, and something Cub thought he had buried deep inside him resurfaces at the smell.

He accidentally places his hand against the wall, and almost jerks his hand away at the feeling of the sculk veins, slimy and cloudy at the same time, like bread covered in jam. 

“Just exploring, okay Cub? You’re just exploring, and then you’ll go back.”

A clicking noise resonated in his skull, and that is when Cub knew he will not just explore.

“Just a taste,” he tries to convince himself. “Just a taste.”

His heart pounds in his head as he walks towards the Deep Dark, towards an Ancient City most likely. He is both frightened and delighted to be around sculk. Last time, it had taken them ages to cure him. The vex had simply stopped pestering his head, though by the way Scar often smirks at him, he has a strange feeling his friend made a deal with them. 

Sculk is both a different infatuation and a similar one. Cub knows the sensation of possession, of giving his free will to a malevolent entity only looking out for itself. Sculk seems to take control of him in a way he isn’t used to.

And that excites him. 

The air he inhales digs inside his lungs, wriggling as if it was a worm looking for a place to plant its eggs. Cub does not feel panic. As he arrives to an open area of the Deep Dark, close to an Ancient City, he realizes his lungs are filled to the brim with not air, but cotton balls clinging to the walls. 

His mind now has one objective, and he welcomes the sculk in his body with open arms. You can never satisfy an itch unless you scratch it until it bleeds.

The tremolo of the sculk sensor sends shivers down each vertebra of his spine. His boots crunch the sculk veins, becoming sparse the more he travels in the Deep Dark. He was in need of a sculk catalyst. 

Sculk sensors click around him. He knows being careless could cost his life. As the shiver spreads to the extremities of his members, as something worms itself in his heart, he grins widely. 

“Missed this,” Cub mumbles to himself, silk-touch pickaxe in his hand. 

He closes his eyes, and hums. The sculk washes around him, like waves against a beach. Slow and mounting, whispering sweet nothing to his ears as he walks on the sculk, a smile growing on his face. 

The sculk calls for him, left and right, and he can only obey to it. He steps on the sculk veins, the clicks of his boots against the stone bricks matches the tremolo of the sculk sensor. 

Cub opens his eyes as a Warden spawns. 

Right in front of him is a sculk catalyst, all alone in the myriad of sculks. 

“Let’s go,” he cheers quietly to himself as he breaks the catalyst with his pickaxe. 

The roar of the Warden echoes in his ears, but he simply closes his eyes once again, and lets the sculk call to him.

He does not need to speak. Something squeezes his heart as his feet walk on their own, triggering more sculk sensors and creating more Wardens. The creatures can not hear him. He grins to himself as he lets go of the control of his body. The sculk silences his breath, slithering to his nose and covering his mouth with its viscous body. 

Cub can no longer breath, but he is not worried. Its tendrils give him the bare minimum of oxygen he needs to survive, but he knows he is much more useful as a host than a body that has free will. His grin doesn’t come undone as the sculk pulls his legs forward, out of the Deep Dark, away from the Wardens searching for who had awakened them from their slumber. 

Sculk has limitations. It can not carry Cub above the mines, but he does not need them to. Determinedly, he walks to the surface, close to his base, and places the sculk catalyst right at his front door. 

“Time to spread it,” he chuckles to himself as he jumps on the catalyst. 

Immediately, sculk veins burst out of the catalyst and turns the grass to sculk. Cub softly laughs to himself as the sculk takes over his legs, over his body and forces him to jump over and over again on the sculk catalyst. 

It will spread to Etho’s base, which will spread to Tango’s base, which will spread to Cleo’s base. 

A tremolo greets his jumping, like a cat purring, but it isn’t a purr. It is a laugh, echoing in Cub’s head, becoming louder and louder the more he jumps. His legs become as heavy as lead. He is no longer the one jumping, but he doesn’t care. His thoughts are swallowed by the laughter, and he pants for air the more the weight of exhaustion crushes his body.

The tendrils in his heart squeeze the organ again, to make it skip a beat before wrapping around his lungs. Cub laughs hysterically.

“That’s it, that’s it,” he wheezes out. “Take me with you.”

His mind flashes memories of the vex possession. The laughter morphs into their cackling, and Cub’s heart wells.

It feels like home.

“Master,” he lets out.

His vision turns black and faintly, he hears something snap, like a footstep breaking a twig. 

With his thoughts no longer existing, he does not become aware the sculk broke both of his legs, letting him lie there in it. The addicting feeling of giving your freewill to a parasite has carved itself a warm hole into Cub’s brain. 

He never left the sculk. The sculk never left him.

[wszczebrzyszynie]

Hello everyone. Today i bring you the Space Mining au masterpost ... this is somehting i planned on doing for a while now, as space mining started becoming more and more fleshed out and my answers to your questions started getting more convoluted. Answered one question created 5 more kind of thing. So here is a timeline i made and a lot of links to different asks explaining even different-er things. Its a lot of loredumping but i tried to make it as clear as possible. Normally its the kind of thing youd learn by reading the story but im not planning on making a comic and i will never write a fic so this is how it has to work. average bartek story treatment

Despite humanity spreading all over the universe in post-space colonisation era, the only other life form ever found was a fungi-like, small organism living in giant colonies, which by their appearance resemble earth minerals. it can be found deep below the surface of different, seemingly unrelated moons and planets, desperately hiding from all forms of light; most of it is long dead, found in its rock-like form. commonly known as sculk, it is the newest and most important discovery in recent human history, although very little is actually known about it. Tango is a former HASA engineer, one of the people who revolutionized space mining, renowned for his work on the nature of sculk, and currently a wanted terrorist on the run, after he blew up a chunk of callisto, one of Jupiters moons, durning an illegal sculk mining operation. Completly unfit for the criminal lifestyle, its a miracle he hasnt been caught yet, especially with many bounty hunters and criminals alike on his tail

I tried to include the absolute most important parts. Doesnt look very well but i hope its at least readable

* Everything starts when Tango blows up a part of callisto. He worked there on a practically illegal sculk mining site; everything was meant to be kept secret, obviously, so when it turned out that the sculk is actually alive, parasitic and infecting everyone at a rapid pace, there was little help they could get. The outbreak was catastrophic but with HASA being a govermnent organisation that set up an illegal mining site not only outside of their controled area, but also in the solar system (which was and still is considered something like a buffer state... in space. At the time of the story lots of people from different places live there because its considered peaceful enough) there is no way they would get involved. So the few remaining survivors chose to blow up the mining site to save themselves. It both did and didnt work as intented, destroying a chunk of the moon and succesfully sealing the cave system, but also killing the remaining miners, with Tango being the sole survivor. Despite being a great asset to the company (he is, despite it all, considered the father of modern space mining), everything that happened was swifly pinned on him, with HASA claiming everything happened behind their back. Tango became a wanted terrorist in one day. An important note about the worldbuilding is that everything is corrupted and not good

More information to be found here. I havent linked every post ive ever made about it, just the ones i think are the most important! every space mining related thing can be found in the space mining au tag. This part will be updated with new information whenever i post it!

Designs:

Tango and Jimmy / Scar / Hotguy Scar / Grian / Pearl (+ info) / Joel / Martyn / Skizz / Impulse / Scott (+ info) / Bdubs and Cleo / pre-retirement Cleo, Lizzie and Gem / Ren / Doc

About:

Character relationship chart (not everyone is included) Desert duo/Ranchers/Imp and Skizz relationships More about desert duo / more about the ranchers / more about Impulse and Skizz + space mining as a whole More about Scott and Jimmy + space stations Etho and Bdubs (and Cleo) / more about Etho Cub (and the burning of the ranch) More about Grian Pearl (+ design) Martyn Gem Doc

Zeds full reference/design isnt included because it isnt up to date.

[the-friendly-warden]

I dunno if these guys will eventually get their own blog or not, but I got the idea of a necromancer becoming allies with a warden, then I remembered a character I created in high school, Mezrith, a melanistic deep elf necromancer who was also a vampire and his familiar a white cat he creatively named "Cat". So he's been reborn, and has been adopted into a warden pride.

You can interact with them and ask them questions if you want!

Voryth is actually Zylarath's sire.

Seraphis: Usually fairly lazy, but can be very aggressive and territorial like a normal warden. His colors are more towards greens. He will sometimes try to challenge Ophelion for leadership of the pride, but always fails. The big, powerful old warden can easily kick his ass to the surface and back again any time he tries. This never seems serious, and they always get along just fine after one of these noisy spats

Ophelion: Incredibly old and powerful. Thick in build, tall and muscular. The long bone growths denote his age and power. Ophelion is surprisingly patient, especially with Seraphis. His power is immense. Ophelion can flatten most other wardens simply due to age, experience, and size. His territory is vast and well established, and very healthy. He's a good pride leader, looking after Seraphis and Voryth and keeping them safe. He's sired cubs with both of the smaller wardens, though the pride doesn't have any cubs currently.

Voryth: Fairly chill. They may be where Zylarath got their friendly demeanor from. Voryth does have the natural territorial nature of a warden, but they generally don't really care too much. They leave all that stuff up to Ophelion. They very much look up to the big warden.

Mezrith: A deep elf who grew up in a viciously abusive home, seen as cursed due to a birth mark on his chest (Not shown, he keeps it covered). He was seen as a bane on the family he was born to, and his brother, Triew, was especially nasty to him. He ran away from home and took up studying necromancy when he was around 12 years old. He learned a lot as he grew, but he ended up getting exposed to the blood of a vampire, which caused him to turn. This angered him because it made necromancy MUCH harder. He found notes about wardens, and decided to try to seek out the sculk, to see if he could learn how their sentinels worked. If he could figure out how to harness sculk spores to animate corpses, it would take far less energy and he could get his vengeance. He eventually encountered Ophelion, who sensed that the deep elf was hurting and had been through a lot of pain and strife in his life. The big warden decided to adopt the elf into his pride, despite Mezrith being in the equivalent of his 30's. While he wasn't so sure at first, having a found family that treated him well made him feel a lot better. He ended up deciding against seeking vengeance because he realized it wasn't worth it. His family was cruel and chaotic, they'd have their own downfall given enough time and he would be thriving with his familiar and his new family. He's generally quiet, cranky, is not fond of people at all. He gets along well with the three wardens, though has a special bond with Ophelion.

"Cat": This is not her real name. Cat is a grimalkin, a creature that can be compared to a sort of fae cat. They are shapeshifters, able to take a human form, highly intelligent. They always have split tails and are poly-dactyl. Cat, of course, is not her real name. She posed as a normal cat to give Mezrith comfort when he was with his abusive family, and once he was away from them she revealed her true nature, shaking off the glamour spell that cloaked her. She decided to keep the name "Cat" because she found it amusing just how "creative" Mezrith was at naming. She's spoiled, can be sassy, confident, and not at all afraid of the wardens. Grimalkin are fierce and proud creatures, and incredibly powerful in their own right. She has a special bond with Voryth, often sitting on their shoulder. She is known to sometimes flirt with the warden in her human form, because seeing them get flustered amuses her. She's a bit of a trickster. She loves food.

[respectable-username]

And another chapter is out! And can I just say how much I love writing Hermit banter? Especially when Bdubs is one of those people. He's so fun to annoy (affectionate)!

I'm gon' give it to ya - Chapter 4

4. Time to Go

Fandom/Collection: Hermitcraft/@hermitgang-ao3

Words: 3371 of 8651 total

Summary: Another Hermit finds themselves trapped in the Deeper Dark. Meanwhile, Cleo and Etho recruit yet another Hermit to help them in their investigations.

Preview:

The winding path through the Deeper Dark from the wool hut to the spawn cave was becoming increasingly familiar to Impulse as he made the daily trek through the sculk-covered caves with Cub, redstone torch in hand. Even with seven Hermits transported across by now, they'd somehow lucked out on anyone having proper torches on them when they arrived.

The tunnel they'd been traversing suddenly opened up, the ground flat and level at their feet. The spawn cave was still an incredible sight, no matter how many times he made the journey. The way the light just disappeared as the walls curved towards an unseen ceiling. Towering stalagmites of sculk reached towards the sky, covered with the familiar dots of sensors and catalysts and shriekers, their very presence a threat to the Hermits' continued existence.

Cub gave the sign, and the two of them split up.

Cub got to work punching out the sculk, continuing to flatten the path between the spawning zone and the exit, removing any dips or trip hazards that could hinder a speedy escape. Each block break was followed by a pause, listening carefully for any signs the two of them would need to use that speedy escape themselves.

Impulse's job was a little more treacherous.

Limited supply of wool blocks in hand, Impulse snuck towards one of the stalagmites yet to be cleared and pillared up towards one of the sculk sensors, waving its tendrils in an imaginary breeze. Its corners had been gnawed at by skulk rats, though thankfully the dang creatures had learned by now that the spawn cavern wasn't a great place for them to lurk undisturbed.

Four wool blocks were carefully placed, and the sensor punched to oblivion, leaving behind only a couple of experience orbs. They were quickly absorbed into the surrounding sculk before Impulse had the chance to collect them. Not that it would have made a difference, with the way this dimension siphoned off any levels the Hermits did manage to collect.

He paused for a second, checking neither the block breaking nor the tinkle of experience set off of the other sensors. A couple seconds of silence later, he punched down the wool protection and made his way over to the next catalyst to repeat the process.

"Impulse!" The whisper echoed through the silent cavern. Impulse tensed, listening for the sound of any sensor activations. Thankfully there were none; they'd managed to clear out a lot over the last few days.

He turned around. Cub held up his clock and three fingers. Three minutes remaining. He set to work climbing back down again, carefully punching and collecting all the wool he'd used as scaffolding along the way.

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