The Chained Watcher

Return to the Hub

Several things had happened over the past couple weeks.

With so many builders working on them, the various builds had been finalized and named. The giant tree was called 'The World Tree' despite Iskall's attempts to add 'omega' and 'of doom' to it, with its branches covering the entirety of the visible sky. Faerie houses were sculpted into the flowers adorning the crown of the tree, and the entire thing was artfully lit with veins of light.

The medieval spires had morphed into a sprawling castle town, with imposing walls surrounding an isekai style town lit by glowberries and redstone lamps. The lighting made the entire place feel warm and welcoming, while still having well-established vibes. This build was nicknamed 'Castle Town' since no official name had been agreed upon.

Finally, the futuristic ruins were mostly hidden underground, but several hints of the ancient structure were visible in the out-of-the-way corners of the castle town. The main part of this build is a sci-fi underground lab, with fancy redstone doors and pointless cool machines. There's even a rainbow beacon machine inside a broken spaceship down at the bottom of the facility, though who managed to find a nether star to make it remained a mystery.

Several other smaller builds had been raised nearby, and Grian himself had amused himself by making little mysterious builds out and about in the wilderness. He had written several books in galactic to take the role of 'ancient texts' and set them up to float instead of the normal enchantment table books. They all take advantage of the way blocks float to add to the magic vibes, leaning heavily on unnatural palettes to add to the atmosphere.

There was now a semi-functional translator function available for communicating with the locals, but with the percentage of players who were hybrids there had been little in the way of interaction. After the town had turned away the delegation due to the presence of hybrids among them, they had left the town alone. If several expensive decorations from the high end district went missing, who could tell?

A couple more local orphans had ended up getting spirited away to friendlier places, with Grian flying across the ocean several times to get the hybrid children to a kinder home. Some of the other players had jokingly called themselves fae, with how they kept pranking the town and spiriting children away in the dead of night, and it had caught on before anyone knew.

A foreboding haunted forest had also been planted around the base, hopefully to keep any unwanted raiders from looting their builds. They had put a lot of work into all of this, and the thought of some random group looting and breaking things left a sour taste in their mouths.

Lately however, all the players had been feeling a slight pull from the portal, like it was beckoning them back to their servers. It was pretty subtle if you hadn't realized the hub's influence, but quite noticeable if you had. There wasn't any malicious feeling from it, more akin to calling children back home before it could get dark.

Today they were all planning to pull out of their base here and return to their respective servers, so everyone was gathering to go over a list of what they'd done. A large open square with a fountain in the center was the designated meeting place, and the players filled the ground and roofs nearby. Speakers were set up again, bringing silence to the square even without needing to call for it.

"How is everyone doing today?" Loud happy noises filled the air from the crowd. "Good! So we've been here for a while now, and I bet some of you are starting to feel a bit homesick. I am happy to confirm what has been rumored lately, we are pulling out of here tomorrow! If you have any unfinished business left please finish it before we leave or forever hold your peace."

The crowd scattered to go finish up builds and gather personal effects from their chest monsters, leaving those who'd already finished to chat while walking through town. Grian hadn't brought anything with him that he would miss if left behind, so he decided to go tour the different builds for his final day here.