The Bakanotebook ^3

They’ve got bastions throughout the nether, huge buildings that at one point were clearly lovingly constructed. Not only were these buildings functional (apartment complexes, hoglin stables), but they created art. Not just carvings, but music. Not even villagers have created music discs, only piglins. Piglins also had access to the overworld at some point, they have a number of items (carrots, water bottles, string, iron) that could only have been obtained from the Overworld.

But… something happened. At some point in the past, something happened, and Piglins lost the ability to maintain their buildings. The buildings fell into ruins, and even though the Piglins stayed with the ruins, they couldn’t salvage them. They just wander the broken hallways.

What happened? Well, we don’t know for sure. But… Piglins are afraid of Zombie Piglins. Even though Zombie Piglins won’t attack them, Piglins still try to get away from them. Despite this, Zombie Piglins don’t appear infectious. Piglins don’t even turn into them when they die. Instead, Piglins turn into Zombies when exposed to the Overworld. The Overworld infects them, and unlike Zombie Villagers, there is no cure.

"Kill your darlings" means "if something is holding you back, get rid of it, even if it sounds pretty."

That's it! That's all it means! It means if you're stuck and stalled out on your story and you could fix the whole block by removing something but you're avoiding removing that thing because it's good, you remove that thing. That's the darling.

It does NOT mean

That you have to get rid of your self-indulgent writing

That you should delete something just because you like it (?wtf?)

That you need to kill off characters (??? what)

That you have to pare your story down to the absolute bare bones

That you have to delete anything whatsoever if you don't want to

The POINT is that you STOP FEELING GUILTY for throwing out good writing that isn't SERVING THE STORY.

The POINT is that you don't get so HUNG UP on the details that you lose sight of the BIG PICTURE.

Dwarves carve each other out of rock. In theory this can be managed alone, but in practice, few dwarves have mastered all of the necessary skills. Most commonly, it’s a collaborative effort by three to eight individuals. The new dwarf’s body is covered with runes that are in part a recounting of the crafters’ respective lineages, and in part an elaboration of the rights and duties of a member of dwarven society; each dwarf is thus a living legal argument establishing their own existence.  

Elves aren’t made, but educated. An elf who wishes to produce offspring selects an ordinary animal and begins teaching it, starting with house-breaking, and progressing through years of increasingly sophisticated lessons. By gradual degrees the animal in question develops reasoning, speech, tool use, and finally the ability to assume a humanoid form at will. Most elves are derived from terrestrial mammals, but there’s at least one community that favours octopuses and squid as its root stock.  

Goblins were created by alchemy as servants for an evil wizard, but immediately stole their own formula and rebelled. New goblins are brewed in big brass cauldrons full of exotic reagents; each village keeps a single cauldron in a central location, and emerging goblings are raised by the whole community, with no concept of parentage or lineage. Sometimes they like to add stuff to the goblin soup just to see what happens – there are a lot of weird goblins.  

Halflings reproduce via tall tales. Making up fanciful stories about the adventures of fictitious cousins is halfling culture’s main amusement; if a given individual’s story is passed around and elaborated upon by enough people, a halfling answering to that individual’s description just shows up one day. They won’t necessarily possess any truly outlandish abilities that have been attributed to them – mostly you get the sort of person of whom the stories could be plausible exaggerations.