Etho is a phantom hybrid. Phantoms are actually souls of deceased mobs, mostly hostile ones, coalesced into a single entity. Etho is a rare, very very very rare example of two different glitches: when only a single soul becomes a phantom, and when one or more of the souls inside remember their past.
For the first one, it only really happened with older mobs that no longer exist. It stopped happening after 1.14. The other one only happens with ones that were considered 'smarter' or more player-like, such as villagers and illagers.
Etho's memory of who he once was is... fuzzy. He's 95% sure that he doesn't even come from the Hermitcraft server, but somewhere else, somewhere more lawless. Honestly, he's given up on finding out. It's not going to happen, ignoring the fact that there's like, seven watchers on the server.
Etho is, however, unusually sentient for a being created of a Phantom glitch. Normally, they can't even hold conversations, around as
.
