#twoastricts

Been a bit since I've drawn myself! Experimenting with giving my sona acne.

Let me talk about my Encoded Universe AU! Every ask which is specific to this AU will have 👩‍💻🌌 emojis at the top of it.

So, this AU focuses on Scott and Grian, but for this ask, imma talk about Grian!

(TW for non consensual human experimentation, non consensual body modification, and kinda sorta consumption of corpses)

So, Grian is a Watcher, but not really. It's strange. Basically, Xelqua and Grian were separate people. (important word there being were.) Xelqua was a super important Watcher, and Watchers overall are really important.

You know the philosophical conundrum, "if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Well, in this AU, the answer is no. In fact, if no one is around so see it, the tree doesn't exist. Nothing can exist if there is nothing to observe it, thus, the purpose of the Watchers and Listeners are to observe the universe, because if they don't, then the universe doesn't exist.

And Xelqua is a very important Watcher, he's the "Lord Protector of the Void" and worshipped by the voidwalkers as a guardian. Well, one day Xelqua died. No one knows how, or why, but this is an existential threat. Because if Watchers and Listeners can die, then so can the universe. And we don't want that.

So the voidwalkers decided to, just, replace Xelqua and hope the universe accepts a new Watcher. Xelqua is the universe's pet guinea pig and the voidwalkers are rushing off the store to get a replacement before it notices. Xelqua didn't die, he was just sent to the farm! (The universe is sentient BTW, this is important, though mostly for Scott's lore)

Anyways, after a lot of research and experimentation later, the voidwalkers decided that they had to turn a human into their new Xelqua.

See, the soul is made of 2 things, Soul Lattice, and the Spark. Soul Lattice is a form of magic, while the Spark is not. Nothing can manipulate the Spark save for Life herself (The Spring from ESMP) so the voidwalkers can't make a new soul, they have to manipulate a preexisting soul. And the latticework of a voidwalker soul is extremely hardy, as souls normally decay extremely quickly when exposed to void, so it needs to be for the voidwalkers to, you know, live in the void. This makes them extremely hard to manipulate with soul magic (which is forbidden, BTW) human souls, now they are very flexible and malleable. It's why hybrids are part human part animal instead of part elf part animal.

So, they kidnap a human! Scratch that, they kidnap many humans! And experiment on them all!

Enter Grian.

He was a normal human and admin of the server EVO. He also happened to be a new admin, and a very young and naive one.

See, the voidwalkers wanted an admin, because coding is a lesser form of Observer (Watcher and Listener) magic, so an admin, i.e., a player who can code, would be more susceptible to Xelqua's magic. (Because when Xelqua died, he left his magic behind as kinda a corpse. Since Observers don't have permanent bodies, they kinda just form their bodies up from nothing and can deconstruct them at will. They don't need bodies because their souls are immune to the void, they do still have code though.)

So, the voidwalkers courted EVO to take Grian, pretending to be the Watchers to do so. They tricked Grian into the end, and from there, into the void, where they experimented on him.

Now, he was meant to be nothing special, just another experiment, but he was receptive, really receptive, of the ascension process (As the voidwalkers put it) so he went through the entire process, becoming the new Xelqua.

This process involved:

Poking around Grian's soul

Reweaving his lattice

Rewriting his code (which caused his body to change)

Injecting him with potions

Forcing him the eat Xelqua's magic (you know, his corpse) so that he can wield it himself

Killing Grian over and over again so he'd respawn (as respawning is the act of code reconstructing a body after it becomes damaged. The purpose of the code is to make the body, which exists to protect the soul from the corruption of the void (though most world dwellers can't exist in the void because their bodies die in the void, the worlds they live on stopping the brunt of the void corruption. Void death is permadeath. Point is, they wanted Grian's body to be reconstructed by he code each time they rewrite it to see if they are writing it correctly)

Trying to use manipulation to convince Grian that he is Xelqua (this doesn't fully work, but it does mess him up immensely)

Implanting Grian with Xelqua's memories

Giving Grian Xelqua's mannerisms

So, yeah, Grian is kinda messed up. He's an artificial Watcher. He still has a body, his code still instantly respawns him when his body deconstructs, but he doesn't need it, he is fully immune to the void. He can see infrared and ultraviolet light, as well as heat and in the dark. He can also see everything's code, and soul, and completely deconstruct a person with a glance, knowing everything about them, species, magic, soul and code anomalies, age, username, gender and pronouns, home server, things like that. He has wings now (because Watchers, especially Xelqua, nearly always incarnate with pure white wings) and can shapeshift, but can't seem to shake his wings when shapeshifting (because the voidwalkers made it ingrained in him that he instinctually needs wings since Xelqua literally never incarnated without wings) he still gets hungry, though he doesn't need to eat, at least, not player food. He's slowly disassociating more and more every day as there are times where he cannot distinguish if he is Xelqua or Grian. He is not having fun. But, he is successfully a Watcher.

You know those chunk errors from early minecraft where an entire chunk would fail to load but you could still walk on the invisible blocks? Yeah, in this AU, those were caused by Xelqua's death. Grian's ascension fixed that.

Grian is actually a Watcher now, whether or not he's Xelqua, he still has a duty to observe the universe so it can exist and it f*cking terrifies him.

Once the voidwalkers were finished with Grian they tossed him to the other Watchers, who did not approve of the voidwalkers' actions, and thus punished the sect that did the experiments (they didn't like that the experiments were unconsensual are really don't think that the voidwalkers needed to do the whole, "turning him into Xelqua" thing because they needed A Watcher, not Xelqua specifically) before trying their best to help him and failing miserably, because again, they do kinda need him to stop the universe from falling apart.

So when one day, for the first time in years, Mumbo sends him a message, Grian uses that to trace his comlink with him back to Hermitcraft and crashes into the world of his best friend.

And in his journey of mental healing and being reassured in his identity, he's going to learn just how messed up he is

At least he'll have someone to share it with :D