Lore/Story Avos Animation Totem Lore

Hey everyone!

In case you weren't aware, Avos Animation Totem is my fault.

I haven't posted to the forums in a while, but since posting the broad strokes of the lore for Avos Animation Totem in Wynncord a few days ago, I've asked Salted for permission to post this thread (he was so excited he even said 'sure i guess? talk with the team tho i have no idea what a lore is') so that I can get more of the finer details of what's going on with the Avos Animation Totem and its lore defined in one place.

I feel the need to point out that as this is almost certainly never going to make it into the game, it shouldn't be taken for granted as canon. It was intended to be the 'official' lore of Avos Animation Totem, so it doesn't contradict existing canon, but there never arose a good chance for me to do its lore justice in-game, and I've accepted there almost certainly never will be, which is why I'm posting it here. I'd like to reiterate that I do have permission to post this, and it is not leaking, because it's not going in-game. This is essentially a headcanon.

I also sort of wanted to talk about why Avos Animation Totem is like... that, so I've spent all night (it's currently 6:53am as I type) compiling a lot of my thoughts about its lore into one short story I'll post here (scroll to the bottom of the thread).

I don't want to go into too much details about the implementation of Avos Animation Totem because talking in too much detail about Wynn's internal systems is a bad idea, but after a cursory search for 'script 2' in Wynncord, I believe this is public information, so I'll put it here. I'm not going to post source code or anything, because that's stupid and some the implementation details on my end are so stupid and convoluted and unperformant that I'd get laughed out of here by any competent programmer.

Anyways, some time ago (I forget when, I want to say beginning of 2.0?) we got an update to our internal scripting system dubbed 'script 2' (if script 2 is so good, how come there's no script 2 2?) that allowed us to do a lot more. It was like moving from Lua to an actual programming language. It was crazy.

So when it came time to test out our new systems (both to break it in (find and eliminate bugs w/ the systems themselves), and to familiarize scripters with the new toys at our disposal), one of the things someone--I believe it was @nicktree --- did was make a boss with custom spells made with Wynnscript. I don't know whether or not it's in game, but it's actually still really cool, and is one of the things that got me started on getting really into Wynnscript.

Around the same time, the Elden Ring (which was a huge letdown that I found exceptionally boring and mediocre, don't @ me) gameplay trailer released, with a clip of a boss later revealed to be Maliketh, the Black Blade, where he lunges forward while doing a spinny beyblade attack, and I was like 'Oh my god! Spinny beyblade moves are peak game design!', a revelation by which I still stand.

So what would come to be Avos Animation Totem started out as just the spinny beyblade attack, internally called 'lunge spin' (by me and no one else), which is now known by the community as the 'number one minecraft mmorpg' attack. A lot of people think it's a teleport, but it's actually just a really powerful motion force.

From there, it was built out to include a couple other abilities - the first to be implemented after Lunge Spin were the short range attacks, though I forget in what order they were made in. If I had to guess, Backstep (which didn't used to bug out! Damn multiplayer integration!) was first, because it was the simplest (in my head).

At this point, I'm starting to run out of acceptable times to call it 'what would become Avos Animation Totem', but at this point in time, I did not really expect it to go in-game. It was more practice than anything, but as the complexity of the project expanded to include numerous spells, custom spellcasting logic, and multiple-target selection/multiplayer compatibility, I showed it off to more and more people within the content team. It was both a test of skill for CT, and a chance for me to address some of my grievances with encouraged player behavior, namely that in a lot of high-level, end-game play, I saw players standing still a lot, which just seemed boring to me (and it's important to me that players conform to my idea of what's fun rather than play according to their preferences /s), so once I realized it had the possibility of going in-game, I decided to make Avos Animation Totem a kind of antithesis to these player behaviors. I'll acknowledge, though, that most of Avos Animation Totem's abilities were implemented before a lot of the Ability Trees were complete, especially Archer/Hunter, the main class I tested on (though other people tested it extensively on other classes).

I feel like in the context of the 1.20 combat that Avos Animation Totem was built around and tested with primarily, Avos Animation Totem succeeds in making players move around more than they would have before---I've seen people critique it as being 'trivial' with decent movement, which I'm weirdly glad to hear---though I think 2.0 combat encourages movement a lot more, so it's sort of redundant.

Despite some of the... interesting design choices made vis-a-vis the damage types, numbers, and application, and some of the, ah, perfectly functional hit detection, I think I'd call Avos Animation Totem a success? It does what it set out to do, at the very least: provide a difficult optional boss (optional until 2.0.3 lootrun overhaul), test my skills as a scripter, and encourage a bit more player movement.

Spoiler: Short Story

“You call that motherless curse a child?” the chief asked with a harshness, a vociferousness in his voice, bits of gold in his headdress jangling in the wind.

The only one to speak was the wind in its high-pitched whistle. The storms raged on in the distance, soaking mother, father, child, and chief in rain as lightning lashed down on the highlands.

“Those fools… I told them that necklace would bring about aught but their goals. First them, now this.”

I do not remember this day, I was but a newborn. But my mother recounted it to me, face pale and haunted.

“Forgive us, ch-” my mother began.

“Silence, woman! Outcasts are not permitted to speak to the Avos. And you…” he looked at my father.

“How could you let this happen?” the chief asked, shaking him by the shoulders. “What of your honor? Think of the shame you have brought upon yourself. Upon the Avos all.”

He said nothing, or so I am told.

I miss my mother’s pale gold hair. How it shone like pyrite in the sun.

“You.” he grabbed my father. “This… woman. She could not carry children. When you agreed to marry her, it became your problem. Tell me you were lied to. Deceived. Lest you be cast out along with her.”

“I was not lied to.”

“So what am I to do? With a bastard boy and his fathead father? I had not imagined when I named my last son to succeed me that you would bed some other woman and bring this shame to our family.”

I am told my father attempted to protest. He did not get a word in.

“Go.” My grandfather told him. “Out of my sight. Go wherever you like, to the Tainted Lands, to the Lowlands, the Lands Beyond, to the mountains west of Corkus, it matters not. Take your witch and your bastard boy to the ends of the world, and may you never come back.


He took him up on that offer, and moved with my mother to the mountains west of Corkus.







We were happy there, for a time. I remember life there was simple. We farmed, we cooked, we slept.


Then my father died when I was young. I could not have been older than ten when this happened. After this, my mother had a loneliness to her. She did not let it harden her heart, but I knew something was wrong. Even when I was young, so young, I could tell that she was bothered. I would catch her staring off into the distance, crying a single tear, zoning out and burning herself on the fire on accident. I would do the same, but when I was sure I was out of her sight. I did not want to burden her with my grief as well. She was strong, but everyone has their soft spots. Hers was my father and I.


I cannot imagine that she would rather have any other weakness. I remember her telling me that love was never a weakness, a folly, a futility, or a downfall. That you could not love too much or too deep. I admired her for that. Even before he passed, she always wore this look of regret on her face. That she might have spared my father, the next chieftain, the pain of being cast out, if only she had loved from afar. Then she wept away her tears, and reminded herself of what she told me.


I loved my mother dearly, but she was an isolated woman, moreso after my father’s untimely passing. It was hard to look at her and see aught but my mother. She loved me, too, but we were not the same person. Living with her and her alone was lonely.


When I was older, she told me more of her and my father.


When she was young, she was cast out of the Avos, for she could not carry children. This alone would not have been grounds to cast her out, but it was suspected she was a witch who had consigned herself to this fate.

She lived on her own, for a time, until she met my father. She still lived alone, but my father, rebellious, came to visit her on many occasions, day after day, bringing her gifts and helping her live on her own. They grew close, and they were happy, for a time, until the chief named him heir. It is customary for a chief to grant their heir’s wish upon their anointment, and he asked to marry her. My grandfather, the chief, accepted, but warned him that his line would die with him, and so he would have to anoint an heir not of his blood. He accepted this, though my grandfather greatly resented him for it. His brother, who came to be known as the Phoenix Prince, abandoned the family to start his own settlement of Avos.

And when he sired a son on a woman who could not give birth, it raised much suspicion indeed—that he had an affair, and these rumors brought much shame upon him, his father, and his wife.


And so he was banished, with his wife and I, to the mountains west of Corkus, where we lived for many years, until my mother also passed.


I remember burning her. I remember the flames, which grew tall and strong and bright, and the charring of the fabric she was wrapped in. I remember thinking that my last tether to this place was gone. That I could go wherever I liked, and I remember thinking it bizarre that I did not want to. I wanted to go home, but home was gone now. It died when my mother did. I had this place, but that was only my home so much as the people there were. I could go back to Corkus, and see if I would be welcomed back. But Corkus was not my home either, the last time I was there was when I came out of my mother.


I waited for my mother’s ashes to go cold, and packed them in my backpack, along with her books—written in the Common Tongue, and in the Old Avos language, too—and things to remind me of what home used to be. So that I would not become like the Faithless, who turned their backs on their makers.







I sailed for Corkus across the stormy seas, to go home.


I did not arrive there whole. I remember waking up on the cold beach sands, lightning lashing down in the sky. I remember feeling a numb tingling in my arm, and the smell of copper, and the feeling of warm, thick liquid on my feathers. Blood, I remember realizing. I looked down to see my right arm across the shore, and, despite being bogged down by not-insignificant pain and the weight of rain and blood upon my feathers, I got up. The effort felt like it was going to kill me. I suppose I should not have been worried: the bleeding out would have killed me first.


I remember dragging myself to a cave on the shore and passing out. If I were to die, let it be in my sleep. Let there be no more pain for a poor Avo who was nine-and-ten, and who had already lost his mother, his father, his community.


But alas, I woke up in a hut. Facing the thatch roof above me, I groaned and rolled around, trying desperately to go back to sleep.


The man at the end of my bed looked strangely like my father. Had I died?


I looked to my right, and saw a bandaged stub. I had not dreamed it.

“Will he make it?” he asked.

“Gods be good.” the woman next to him said.

“Do we know him?” the man with the tall headdress asked.

“I do not.”

He looked around at the other Avos in the room, and when none of them claimed me, they all took a step back.


“Outcast. You may speak to us. Tell us your name.”


“Atroksa.” I said, weary.


The chief’s expression hardened.


“Escort it out of here. Live or die, it matters not. But you will do it on your own, out of our sight.”


“His arm—” the woman said before she was interrupted.’


“‘Live or die, it matters not. But you will do it on your own, out of our sight.’” he quoted himself.

“He will—” the woman protested again.

“As you care for it so much, mayhaps you’d like to join it in exile?” he asked.


The woman did not speak.




I was left outside the settlement’s gates by the end of the hour with my belongings. What little remained of them, at the very least.Among them my mother’s books.


I remember staying in the cave I fell asleep in for months, reading her findings, her collections and scribbled notes. I remember hearing the sound of gentle rain outside as I curled up in my hovel.


I remember reconnecting with my mother, my dearest mother, in her little drawings and scribbles on the books she’d collected in her time traveling. I remember feeling lonely, so lonely. I had not talked to anyone in so long I wondered if I had forgotten how to speak.


In time, I remember finding pages on non-Avos magics. Electromagic interested me not, nor did corruption. But animation did. The Avos, I am told, have their own form of animation magic, though it is more of an art for medicine men, peaimen, and farmers to mend injuries and grow crops, It is used to accelerate the magic of life all around us, not pull new magic out of thin air. I read an account of a sorcerer from the Kingdom of Feor-to-the-Far-East who was able to bring puppets to life with his powers, but it exacted a heavy cost, a piece of the creator’s soul to keep it going and going, even after their death.


I remember not caring whether or not I survived the ordeal. I remember binding together dragon’s blood wood in its own sap, sealing it with wax and treating it with oil, wrapping it in string and hair. I remember etching the few words I knew of the Old Avos language into the side of it, I remember unwrapping my bandages and beholding the stump that lay where my arm was. I remember the shakiness of my hand as I cut deep into my own flesh to sew it all together. I remember the quiver in my voice as I spoke the words which are now lost to me in my old age.


I remember the warmth of the tears on my face as I realized I had an arm once more. It was not what it once was—I was not what I once was—but it would suffice. At last I could turn the pages of my mothers books the way she had intended me to. At last I could fend for myself once more.







In the months following, I remember feeling… hollow. My victory had only gotten me so far. I had my arm back, but I was not whole again, if indeed I ever was whole.

It was strange, to feel grateful for losing my arm so shortly after losing my mother. But it was a distraction from that pain, and a good one at that. Now I was left on my own again, with nothing to protect me from myself. From my thoughts. From my loneliness.

It was strange. I could empathize with my mother when I tried, but it was not instinctual, and now I felt I understood her better than ever, months after she was no longer able to communicate herself to me.


I could not have children like my mother had me, but I could still make children of my own.


And so my fierce child, the animation totem Anedia was born. I took much pride in raising him, in befriending him, in making my companion strong and wise and brave.


I had many good, long years with him. I felt whole when we climbed and foraged, when we huddled in our cave during the winter and I slept by the fire, him watching over me.







Old age came for my vision some time ago. I have not, since then, seen my child Anedia. A shame. I would have liked to see him one last time, but alas, we are separated by world enough and fate, but not by mind.

I cry out for him each day, and I know he cries out for me as well. We are creator and creation united in yearning for each other. If that is the only way in which we are united, so be it. I will not resign myself to be the outsider once more.

 

I saw this thread coming

Anyways, the story was more tragic albeit beautiful than I expected...

 

The number one minecraft mmorpg

 

The number one minecraft mmorpg...

 

The number one minecraft mmorpg.

 

WYNNCRAFT! The #1 Minecraft MMORPG

 

The number one minecraft mmorpg..

 

Cool story! And a tragic one too...

Damn, they really did Lua dirty

 

idk how to break it to you but lua did lua dirty