*miscellaneous normal noises*

Like, I’m 100% sure the Organization wasn’t exactly happy with what Abolish found. “Oh we need holy water yeah we can do that. Holy beacon? We can probably replace that with any large holy object or area and we have to- oh. Oh.” Like, I think everyone can agree that having to kill the sire to be cured is like extremely messed up. Yes there’s bastards like Scott who I’m sure the organization would have no issue hunting down but for every one like him I’m sure there’s a million more like Louis who turned someone out of love, to help or hell simple accidents. It’s not fair that someone has to die for another to live, especially in cases where the sire has an extreme bond to their fledgling.

Pyro: in my - in my, in my dreams in episode 8 I walk alone to the town and I offer myself as - quite possibly - the most well experienced vampire hunter and I offer my services is hunting Scott. Um. In return I will be turned and walk away as human, um. That didn't happen though cause I didn't wanna fuck with the vibes.

And then she disappears. Vanished without a trace. The others insist it's proof she was never real. She was though. Avid and Marm who deride you for it. Drift with her shallow comfort, she saw Apo too, how is she pretending she was your imagination? And Legundo, immediately claiming there were always only five of you and she never even existed? Acting like he hasn't heard her name at all? What is his problem?

You are kicked out, Avid and Marms delusions bringing them to leave you out to freeze. You and Drift build an house together, she insists that Apo was fictional but she's...kind.. Kinder then the others. And then weird ghosts appear, with glowing unblinking white eyes. And red vines that crawl from the ground and corrupt what they touch. These people talk of weird places called Misadventures and Oakhurst, you don't know them. Weird. And that Legundo guy knows a lot. Too much. Weird.

"The Beast Formerly Known As Avid"

"Right then. You know, thirty years is pretty long on the scale of a human life, right?"

"That's true," she says. "It's funny. I hadn't noticed the not aging fully, but—"

"That's not really what I mean," Scott says, waving a hand. It's calloused these days, to the extent a vampire hand can be, and it's frankly irritating. He'd worked long and hard to make his hands soft, but these days his shoulders hurt and there are nicks on him. Dirt! Callouses! Hardly befitting an unaging vampire and a god amongst men. And for a time, he hadn't minded. It had felt—fitting. But time dulls all things. But the truth is, once he was no longer feeling more than a proper lord ever should...

Thirty years. He'd counted. "That's a perfectly reasonable amount of time to mourn, right? On the kind of timescale you and him were living on. Really, it seems like a bit long, given how short human lives are, but he was a vampire at the end so I'll give him that much."

Shelby frowns. "Scott, I still want to mourn him."

"Really? I mean, obviously, he's dead and I was very sad about it, and still am. But by now, haven't you learned not to think about it?"

Shelby sighs and looks back at Avid's grave. "I guess grief works differently for everyone, huh?"

Annoying. Derails his point further. He doesn't say anything, though, because he's reluctantly found that her being annoying is—fine? It's fine. During the three years she'd left to go settle some of her last affairs, the fact she hadn't been annoying around her had been—the point is that he doesn't point it out anymore, really.

But it's been thirty years.

"So don't you think it's been long enough?" he says. He looks at the callouses on his hands. "Like, okay, we can just like—I won't go back to eating people if that will bother you. But my manor, it's still just like, right there. And you know none of the human lords are better than me. When we were in Erewash, that guy who was taking so many livestock as taxes that we couldn't feed ourselves, let alone all the human peasants. Basically a bloodsucker himself."

Shelby frowns at the ground. "I mean, I guess, but—"

"And being hungry? I'm basically over it. The way I see it, if I go kill the guy who took my manor, you come with me, I can get you a super plush room, we'll be happy there. Avid won't mind. It's been thirty years. I'm tired of dirty hands."

"That's not normally what that one means, Scott," Shelby says. She looks back at Avid's grave. She swallows. "It's not."

Scott waves a hand. "Well yeah, but I've been good for thirty years. I can go back to taxing peasants for animals. Animals, Shelby. Not people! I'll be good or whatever, I just figure I don't have to, you know—I've been good a while, by human terms. We've earned a break."

Shelby looks at the grave.

"Shelby?"

"Not the one you have to worry about," someone says behind Scott. He turns around.

"Hello. Glad to see I can stop you before you misbehave for real," says Abolish, who immediately sticks the muzzle of a pistol into Scott's back. Scott sort of wants to tell him that guns don't kill vampires. Scott sort of wants to ask him what he did to his gun to kill vampires. Scott more than anything, though, wants to say:

"Oh, come on, can't you give a guy a break?"

"No." Abolish digs the gun in further.

"Would you hold a human to this standard? Really, I think it's a double standard. I'm just doing what a human lord would if I take Shelby up there and we just—I won't even kill anyone. You know, when Shelby and I were wandering, humans are killing their villages too, and would you—"

"Yes." Abolish says.

"That's not fair," Scott says. "It's not! I've been tragically sad for perfectly long enough, and even Shelby agrees I've been good, and don't I get a reward? Don't I get something? Are you saying that what, you expect me to be miserable for the rest of my eternal existence or you'll kill me? For the sake of morals your species doesn't even follow? I find that insulting."

"That's how it works, being good. If you see it like that."

"Scott, let it go," Shelby says. "It's okay."

Scott thinks he can take Abolish.

He can move faster than humans can react. He could kill Abolish now. It'd solve the problem, he thinks. He could go take back his castle. In a few years, Shelby would understand that just taxing the humans with their blood is easier and frankly kills fewer of them than famine, and they'd be comfortable and happy, and Scott wouldn't think about Avid except for once a year, which is good, because then he wouldn't have to feel about it at all. It'd be slow convincing her, but he's been good for thirty years, which is longer than Avid would have lived anyway so who cares?

Who cares? Who cares? WHO CARES.

Scott is shaking.

"I can tell you're thinking about starting a fight. Do you prefer the easy way out? 'Cause I think that'd make my life a whole lot easier."

"It's not fair," snarls Scott. "You shouldn't get to bind me forever. I shouldn't have to atone forever."

"Tough shit," Abolish says.

"Scott, it isn't about atoning," Shelby says. She's still looking at Avid's grave. "It isn't. You don't—being good isn't a ledger book."

"Look at me if you're going to insult me," Scott says.

Shelby does. She looks like she used to in Oakhurst.

Scott shakes more and more. All at once he feels nauseous and empty. It's not hunger—for all he's only recently acquainted with the feeling, he knows it's not. It's similar, though. It hollows out his chest. It makes him want to wretch. Avid's grave is right there. Shelby hasn't had that face in a decade. Avid's grave is right there, and Shelby hasn't looked like that in a decade, and his manor is right there and it'd be so easy, it'd be so easy, it'd be so much easier for everyone—

(Avid died for fucking nothing, and Shelby's here for fucking nothing too.)

"Well?" Abolish says.

"Go away," Shelby says. "I'll kill him if one of us have to, but you don't need to—not here. Not here."

Abolish snorts. "He was gonna try to slippery slope you, you know. Some people don't change."

"And some do," Shelby says. "Leave."

Abolish pulls the gun from Scott's back. "Catch." He throws it to Shelby. "I have more." He leaves.

Scott throws up.

"Do you want the easy way out?" Shelby asks. It is horribly tremulous and horribly kind.

"It isn't fair," Scott says. "I don't—I don't want this, I don't want this. I just wanted to be comfortable. I just wanted to be happy. I didn't want—"

"That's life. Welcome to living," Shelby says. "I'll be visiting Cleo. Here. If you need it. I don't think we should go back to your manor."

She puts the gun down on the grave. She leaves. He's alone.

A gun and a grave sit in front of him.

OKAY. SO WE CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH. THAT ENDERMAN SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THERE. that death should have been, on multiple different levels, mechanically impossible. frankly the fact that the world file corrupted and had to be restored from a backup afterwards makes sense because that should not have happened.

going down the list of "what the HELL happened here", we have:

To the best of our understanding about the Dimensional Doors mod, that gateway should not have been there. It could have been a more recently added aspect of the mod but last we'd played Dimdoors, gateways are not supposed to spawn in Limbo.

He goes into the door and it's not connected to anything ("this rift doesn't lead anywhere"), so it breaks. Cool, that bit's working as intended. Except, a full second later, there's a block breaking/placing noise and an Enderman spawns, which uh:

Mobs are not supposed to spawn in Limbo, but unstable rifts to the best of our knowledge are not able to spawn Endermen in general! Especially not at that small of a size!

Mobs can go through rifts, but in that case it implies the other side of the rift was loaded somehow in order for the Enderman to walk through, which it can't have been, because it didn't connect to anything.

It gets weirder. That Enderman somehow spawns pre-aggroed. Even though it's making passive chirping noises, you can see it doing the aggro vibrating animation as it spawns in. At no point does Legundo look at anything higher than the bottom of its arms before it gives him his first damage tick, and he's not standing near enough to the Enderman to aggro it via it spawning literally on top of him. It should not have been aggroed, and the only explanation for how it is aggroed is that it spawns in like that.

Generally dying in Limbo through means other than "bathing in reality" -- usually accomplished via digging through the bottom of the dimension and falling into the Void -- just sends you somewhere random in the world minus all of your stuff. That death shouldn't have counted, but even if it did, Dimensional Doors literally has a system for handling that, which technically wouldn't involve permadeath at all.

And then the world file corrupted! On top of all of that! Frankly no wonder given all of the above!

TL;DR THAT ENDERMAN WAS A DECEM OP. LIKE NARRATIVELY AND ALSO METANARRATIVELY. WHAT THE HELL.

Let's dig into the code here. Searching for enderman in the dimdoors 1.18 github leads us to the detached rift block entity and the mod config. Highlights from the mod config include the lines

@Tooltip public double endermanSpawnChance = 0.00005; @Tooltip public double endermanAggressiveChance = 0.5;

Which is to say, by default, there's a 0.005% chance of an enderman spawning, and if it spawns, there's a 50% chance that it's aggressive.

Now, in the detached rift block entity, we've got the code that makes this actually happen. TLDR: Every update, if it's not serverside, do nothing, if it's got an enderman id saved, do nothing. Now roll for the spawn. If that passes the chance set in the config, check for endermen in the 9x3x9 cube around the rift, and if there are none, spawn one in the rift. Then roll for enderman aggression and potentially set its target to the nearest player.

It spawns the enderman directly, so this might bypass the rule where no mobs spawn in limbo?

and then he comes to oakhurst.

the town is full to choking of the ghosts of people he has never seen before, all of them ripped to shreds by the claws of some monstrous entity, and... okay. one: ghosts are real.

two: he asks what did this to them, more out of reflex than of expecting an answer, and every single one of them points silently, accusingly, at the lumberjack.

and oh, sure, they pale in number compared to that lumberjack, but there’s still easily over a hundred of them. and he's been disregarding them all this time. has been ignoring their cries for help -- has failed them a second time, in death. and he can't even do anything to help most of them now, because, well, either they keep saying patently untrue things like that he shouldn't blame himself, or because their closure is stuck behind something he cannot do for them anymore...

...because everyone is stuck in oakhurst.

he can't leave flowers at anyone's graves. he can't help search for anyone's family. he can't ask after their friends and neighbors. he's stuck with this torrent of countless ghosts, both internal and external, and he can do nothing to save any of them.

or. well. that's what he would say if he was one to give up on people. and dr. legs is nothing if not stubborn when it comes to trying to help people.

He knows he's stressed because the hallucinations are acting up. On good days, he only sees his failures in the corners of his vision, a glimpse at the edge of the lantern light. On bad days, they linger and spread, overflowing from the shadows until they're everywhere, staring at him, begging, promising --

The point is, Legundo is not having a good day. There's a pair of children he can still see when he closes his eyes, and the worst thing is he doesn't recognize these ones. One points at him and whispers something, the other starts crying. How did he kill them? How did he forget killing them?

What's your name, says a ghost. There's no sound, just the certainty that those were the words.

There's no one here to take issue with Legundo talking to his hallucinations. "I'm sorry," he says. "Whoever you were, you didn't deserve this."

My name's ███████, says the ghost, and this is my little brother. You shouldn't be here.

Ominous. "Why not?"

You don't deserve this either.

Legundo doubts that. The first kid has a messy hole in their torso, like someone stabbed them with a bayonet a few times before firing the gun for good measure. The second is missing pieces of his fingers, blood still dripping when Legundo doesn't look directly at the illusion.

and then he comes to oakhurst.

the town is full to choking of the ghosts of people he has never seen before, all of them ripped to shreds by the claws of some monstrous entity, and... okay. one: ghosts are real.

two: he asks what did this to them, more out of reflex than of expecting an answer, and every single one of them points silently, accusingly, at the lumberjack.

and oh, sure, they pale in number compared to that lumberjack, but there’s still easily over a hundred of them. and he's been disregarding them all this time. has been ignoring their cries for help -- has failed them a second time, in death. and he can't even do anything to help most of them now, because, well, either they keep saying patently untrue things like that he shouldn't blame himself, or because their closure is stuck behind something he cannot do for them anymore...

...because everyone is stuck in oakhurst.

he can't leave flowers at anyone's graves. he can't help search for anyone's family. he can't ask after their friends and neighbors. he's stuck with this torrent of countless ghosts, both internal and external, and he can do nothing to save any of them.

or. well. that's what he would say if he was one to give up on people. and dr. legs is nothing if not stubborn when it comes to trying to help people.

Legundo isn't the only one to bring ghosts to Oakhurst. Most of them are from the massacre 200 years ago, but not all -- some are older than that, quieter than that, filling the crypts like murky water. Some are new. One wants their murder solved, and follows the person who could have succeeded. A pair come from Fernsfield, unable to decide whether they want revenge or forgiveness for their pointless deaths.

The point is, there's a lot of ghosts, and Legundo physically cannot keep track of all of them.

so, he arrives in Oakhurst, and he goes about his business. stays under the radar as one of the Good Neighbors, fishes out a couple names from people between handshakes without letting them know the difference -- safer with him if they don't know how to hang onto it, anyway. there's word on the wind of vampires, yes, and those are very much real, but they're low on his list of concerns for staying undetected. far worse things than vampires out in the woods.

it goes fine at first, except for this one incident, because one of the people Abolish happens to approach for their name is the town's local doctor and skeptic. they're in the mines, and Abolish tosses an offhand I don't think I got your name, could I have that? and Dr. Legs unknowingly hands that piece of himself right off to Abolish, and that would be that, except... his name, it's Legundo, and there's a weird ring to that. that's not just anyone's name. it may be the doc's, yeah, but it's also something else's Name. Abolish doesn't much like knowing that, doesn't much like the bone-deep familiarity of knowing that as though it's someone he should know. something with power. he's not sure what it means, but he knows keeping that name safe is of the utmost importance now, for both Legs and whoever that Name happens to belong to (and potentially even his own safety).

the first night, though, that goes fine. it is the second night that a problem arises. because two vampires, roused from their slumbers by an unknown force, get just the slightest bit too cat-and-mouse about the person they're attempting to drain the life right out of. start a bit too much of a hunt, and something stirs. this isn't vampire territory, these aren't Scott's hunting grounds, this -- especially by virtue of a name inferred by someone here to claim the place -- belongs to something else. something much older than a vampire.

Pyro scrambles frantically further into the water, the vampires closing in behind him, only to stop short and stumble out onto the far shore, disoriented by the cold shock. or, no, not the far shore -- the lake has iced over. he stands there, alone, in the howling winds and freezing cold, and hears the sound of a hunting horn in the distance. he knows, without even having to question it, that he is still being hunted. the vampires are simply no longer what he needs to worry about finding him. the only things that will find him out here are the cold and the sharp, the wandering hosts of an eternal hunt.