#starvault

"Alright... you... got me. You're... better... than I thought," he manages between breaths, "But... you're gonna... have to try... harder than that." Shaky metal joints rattle against one another as he tries to stand up, "Though... maybe... if you're... this strong..," he reaches for his hammer where it fell beside him, "Then... maybe-"

He's not allowed to finish as something grabs him from behind, hefting him up with a loud yelp. It's the Abomination; somehow looking larger, and more menacing. Where once the shining armored knight stood over the twisted fiend, now the opposite is true, with the corruption's herald holding him aloft effortlessly.

<It's about time,> the monster chuckles, tone dark and foreboding, <I've been waiting for this for so long.>

"Y-you won't win!" the Starvault shouts, seeming suddenly pitiful in his weak struggling, "Even... if I'm... not strong enough-! There is-" He holds out his arm, trying to call his hammer to it, but the weapon simply shudders in place on the ground. He's not strong enough after that decisive defeat.

<Oh, I'm sorry... did you want this?> The Abomination seethes with a sinister laugh, grabbing the hammer with one of its gnashing feet and kicking it up to its hand. The holy metal sizzles faintly against the monster’s slimy tendrils, but the rotting purple hulk doesn't seem to notice, <Here. Allow me.>

Without warning, the Abomination turns the hammer around and, with an overly dramatic wind up, thrusts the intricate, key-shaped pommel through the front of the Starvault's helmet.

The screams are horrific, ceaseless and deafening as the knight flails in agonized convulsions, helplessly clawing at the arm that turned his own weapon on him. The monster holds him fast, eyes glinting in the semblance of a  depraved smile.

<Heh,> The Abomination chuckles at first but it soon escalates to a raucous laugh, a sound far more hollow and heartless than even the cold suit of empty armor it's tormenting, <I wish I could see the look on your insipid human face. But I'm afraid I've got better things to do now. Like dealing with a certain little traitor~>

Tensing up, the muscular, rotting beast shifts its tendrilled grip on the hammer and gives it a single, wrenching twist. There's a disgusting, almost wet crunch as the screams cut off abruptly. The flailing Starvault seizes up for just a second before going completely limp. The only sound coming from him is an incredibly soft, pained sobbing as the Abomination lets him fall to the ground like a metal ragdoll.

The moment feels far longer than it really is as the Abomination waits, seeming almost anxious. Suddenly, the joints in the pearly silver and gold armor begin to glimmer in three colors, pulsing, getting brighter and brighter. The armor itself begins to crack beyond the joints as that light struggles to free itself.

The Starvault shatters. Three lights swirl about and the Abomination cackles.

However, before it vanishes, just as the purple light moves to engulf the fell beast, it turns to you, your weapon still in hand, and smiles.

The Keeper was the first one I made, and was for an official NPC contest at the original Terraria Online forums (the winner was the Stylist, btw). I went for something completely off-the-wall and inhuman because that’s just the kind of person I am, and I always want to inject that sort of thematic into the things I work on.

Aberrant came a little while afterward, upon my first discovering the Crimson, and his design decision was literally and entirely based on the simple idea of “self-conscious Face Monster in clothes”. None of this Starfallen nonsense. That was the idea that struck a chord with me, and it was the idea that struck a chord with everyone else around me at the time.

Abomination came afterwards as a sort of counterpoint (a proud monster), but had to be completely original on the account of there being no humanoid Corruption monsters, and also became a personal design challenge to come up with one.

Anomaly’s appearance and basic theme gelled soon afterwards as a mere attempt to ‘balance’ out representation for the three biomes. Anomaly was originally just a bunch of Chaos Elementals in suits and wigs:

…but I didn’t like that over time and couldn’t draw it in a way that felt good, and eventually decided to go with something more otherworldly.

They sort of existed in the same headspace for a while, and my mind occasionally wandered to the idea of them all being related spirits somehow. I even mused with the idea of them being directly in league with one another, holding pseudo-conferences in much more monstrous forms regarding the state of the world. Even Aberrant looked somewhere between Awakened Aberration and this thing for those ideas, but it never really got off the ground because I couldn’t really justify it under them just being representations of their biomes, and not some other kind of entity merely borrowing those biomes, which is where the Starfallen idea comes from.

Starvault/Excelsior came MUCH later, once I finalized the idea of them being Something Else and needing an excuse for them to have not been Giant Monsters All Along, and even he’s not 100% original, just being a suit of possessed (if slightly modified) Hallowed Armor with connections to the Paladins. To the point where when I first had the idea before putting it to paper and illustrating it, I didn’t even sprite it originally because it would have JUST been a player sprite with the Hallowed Set (with Mask as the helmet), and Angel Wings. I made it different because I wanted to.

Over time, anyone who changed from simpler roots did so to reflect changes in atmosphere, intent, and preference. There’s no lore reason; just personal.

The idea is basically that, in spite of its key motif, the hammer only has the power to seal things, not open them. As a drop, apart from its basic attack and/or hammer abilities (which implies breaking more than opening/unlocking), it could be used to re-lock chests. I don’t know what use this could have other than trolling, but maybe it could be used by people who want to use locked chests in builds without using an external editor. Idk. Like Anomaly’s sword, it’s mostly just a weird niche mechanic that exists more for theme than function.

More important is actually not how the player would use it once acquired, but what the theme means when it comes to fighting the Starvault as a boss.

You see, while he’s not particularly strong (intended to be more or less immediately post-Golem), the majority of the fight difficulty would revolve around his hammer-based attacks inflicting the player with a debuff called “Locked”, which randomly locks two hotbar slots every time it’s applied (3 in Expert; two random, plus always locking the slot that’s selected at the time of application. Depending on how annoying this is, Normal mode may also force the active slot to Lock + one random, instead of both being random).

Thankfully, it doesn’t stack, but naturally items in locked slots cannot be used, nor can anything be moved to or from those slots during the debuff duration. The random element means this could be inconsequential, or completely debilitating depending on weapon reliance, and the debuff itself would have a fairly short duration and thus be reapplied frequently for a shuffling effect.