Game Theory - The SCARY Crimes of the Minecraft Illagers

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he dives into the CRIMES of Minecraft Illagers! Credits: Writers: Matthew Patrick and Zach Stewart Editors: Tyler Mascola, Danial "BanditRants" Keristoufi and Shannon (Bomb0i) Assistant Editor: AlyssaBeCrazy Sound Editor: Yosi Berman

What are the Illiger's doing in that dank secluded mansion of theirs? With its redstone jails, elaborate altars, and hidden rooms housing strange obsidian structures, it really seems like they're plotting something. That is a quote from Marsh Davies, former creative communications manager for Mojang, and his introduction to the evoker mob back when it was introduced in 2017. It's a line that is outright challenging us. It's telling us there's something hidden within the walls of the Illiger's Woodland Mansion compound. There's a mystery to be solved out there in those dark forests.

One that, according to my research, has gone unanswered that entire time. But now, three years later, I think I've done it. I think I know what the Illiger's are doing out there. And more importantly, I think I know what they're planning. Let's just say, after today's video, you will never look at Minecraft the same way again. Oh, internet! Welcome to Game Theory! Over the last year, we've been mining for Nuggets of Lore to craft together a massive overarching theory on the

story of Minecraft. Here's the thing though, up until this point you as the viewer and quite honestly me too have been uncertain what if anything has actually been planned by the Mojang team working on Minecraft. I mean don't get me wrong. I think we have done some incredible work piecing together a lore for this game. From the Enderman being the lost builders to the drowned being a civilization running away from a massive flood. The proof has been there in the gameplay and yet the question has remained. How much of this lore was intended versus how much of it was just me theory crafting by putting together

random details to make a coherent story. Today though is different. I started this episode with that quote from Marsh Davies for a reason. It shows that the developers intended some hidden lore to exist around the woodland mansions. The Illagers do indeed have something up those oversized sleeves of theirs. This time it's not just us over-analyzing things like we normally do, it's us piecing together clues to solve a secret that has remained hidden in this game for years. And maybe it's been for a good reason. Because if I'm right, The secret that the Illigeres are hiding takes this family-friendly game and makes it a much, much darker world. We're talking T for Teen at least! I think the Illegers are kidnapping villagers and turning them into animals through some bizarre magic, and that's not all. I think they're going one step further.

They're taking those experiments to try and recreate Steve. Now, if you've never been to a Woodland mansion before, I don't exactly blame you. The chance of one generating is extremely low, as they only generate in the rare dark forest bio. And even then, only if it fulfill them. if it fulfills a certain list of criteria and you're lucky to boot. That's why even with the maps that you can buy from the cartographer villagers, you still might find yourself trekking for hours to find the nearest mansion. So it's pretty safe to say that these are some of the rarest structures in the game. Entering the mansion, things seem pretty normal at first. The entrance hall is pretty much always the same. It has a nice red carpet, some stairs, and as you go through, you're likely to see lots of normal looking rooms, ones that appear to be dining halls, libraries, little farms of mushrooms and trees, but then you get to see. some of the stranger structures. Jail cells. A room with a large altar in the middle. A room with a large fake map in the middle. A room with a large fake end portal in the middle.

Rooms dedicated to large woolen statues of cats and chickens in the middle. Always in the middle. It is weird. And let me be clear, when I say fake end portals and fake maps, I mean it. These aren't made from your typical assortment of end portal frames and lava blocks or paper and compasses. These are made with wool. The fake end portal rooms are filled with orange wool in the middle in a ring of green wool above it, giving the appearance of a stronghold end portal. The map is made out of carpet. So are the numerous beds found throughout the mansion. More wool, more carpet. Again, it is weird. I say it on a lot of these episodes, but I think in this one it's hard to deny. Developers don't just put fake replicas of an end portal into the villains's hideout for the funsies. There is a reason these structures are here. But to understand why, we first

need to understand who the Illigerers are. For those of you who don't know, Illiger is the classification for a group of hostile mobs in Minecraft united by the fact that they all share similar features to normal villagers. The Illagers consist of magic using evokers, Axe wielding vindicators, and crossbow slinging pillagers. There's also illusioners who don't spawn naturally in the game, and the ravagers, which are just the big old ugly beasts that the Illiger's ride during the raids. Oh, look at that face, face only a mother, or I suppose another villager? Good love. Now, it's important to note that the illiger appearance isn't arbitrary. Sure, they look exactly like villagers in need of a sun tan, but that is a very intentional decision. It isn't like Mojang just ran out of ideas for how creatures in this universe could look. No, the one bit of lore that we know about these guys is that they're exiles.

They were booted out of the villagers' villages. They're outcasts. According to the Minecraft Mob Beastieri, quote, The evokers are outcasts from the friendly villages that we know in love, twisted by their practice of evil." And quote. And again, with the vindicator description, here we go. Like the evokers, the vindicators were expelled from villages

for its unspeakable activities, and it too wanders the halls of the eerie woodland mansions. We do not know what they're trying to achieve out there in the woods, but we must be on our guard, end quote. So again, we're teased with little bits of lore here. These are villagers who are committing unspeakable acts and were booted out of the towns for it, only to take residents in the dark woods,

but we have no idea what all that is referencing. So we come back to the initial question. What were they doing? In the woodland mansions we have prisons and altars built by the Illagers, but what was it all for? Well, what if I told you that the first, and yes, there are several, but the first atrocity, is that the Illigers are kidnapping normal, peaceful villagers, and turning them into animals? Don't believe me? Take a closer look at the ravagers I mentioned earlier. The beasts that the Illiger's ride into battle look familiar? They should. Most obviously there's that signature knows that completely matches a normal villager. Okay, fine. That would just be an aesthetic choice. But then, what about the eyebrow?

Ravagers have a unibrow, just like every other villager that exists in Minecraft. What makes that similarity stand out all the more is that both the Vindicator and the evoker, who we know are former villagers themselves that were exiled, have themselves two separate angry eyebrows, clearly differentiating them from every other villager in the game. And yet the ravager shares the that the villagers still possess. And what about those green eyes? Again, every villager has green eyes, just like the eyes of the ravagers. So, the features of the ravager's face are an exact copy of the features on a villagers' face, but to say that they ARE a villager, seems to be an extreme jump, right? It does until you listen to this. That's one of the ravagers' roars. It's this big, fearsome beast that has a little honk, bong-hawk.

at the end of its roar? A honk that sounds kind of like the sounds that a villager makes when it's speaking. In fact, a lot of the ravager sound effects seem to have an undertone of honking to it. Again, listen to those grunts and roars. The honking is very clearly worked into the sounds that the beast is making. Suggesting that, along with the visuals, this was once an actual villager. But to me, the biggest,

piece of evidence doesn't come from the game itself, but rather from a tweet sent by Jeb, Chief Creative Officer for Minecraft. One of the odd little details about Ravagers was that when they were first introduced, they were programmed to be scared of rabbits. It was a cute little easter egg to have a giant, hulking, fearsome beast, suddenly run away from such a cute little animal. But when it was first discovered, Jeb, who, again, it bears repeating, is one of the main guys controlling everything Minecraft, Jeb tweeted back this. I ask Josh to remove this feature again. Although funny, being scared of rabbits doesn't fit with the beast's lore.

End quote. Doesn't fit with the lore? Ravager lore is non-existent. Literally, in the Meet the Ravager blog post, there is nothing about how these characters fit into the story. The various beasteries and wikis, nothing about the lore of these mobs. Sure, there are stories about how they were originally conceptualized,

what they're based off of, but nothing about the lore as they fit into the story. of Minecraft and yet apparently the lore exists enough for the rabbit scaring it off to somehow throw off that entire plot line and I think I know why I think it's because they're made of villagers and villagers aren't scared of rabbits so the beast that they are turned into by the illagers shouldn't scare them either in short I think that the prison cells and those sacrificial look-and-alter things in the woodland mansions are used for when evokers and vindicators capture villagers to use in their how did the mother Beastieri put it, unspeakable activities. I mean, between the magic and the axe, those two mobs should have pretty much everything they need to convert a villager into a giant hulking beast. Well, everything but the power over life and death. That would probably be helpful if you're trying to create some sort of weird animal villager hybrid monstrosity. Oh wait, the illagers actually have that ability too. You see, evokers hold power over life and death considering that they're the only source of totems of undying in the game. These totems are special items that allow the wielder to escape from death. And that, my friends, is the true plan of the illagers. Sure, they might be making beasts out of villagers, but I believe that's only one component of their larger, overarching plan. I think that the unspeakable activities that got them kicked out of the villages in the first place are actually them running experiments trying to harness the powers of life and death.

They are literally playing God. I mean, they have totems of undying. They are the only ones to have totems of the undying. And we see that these things work. I mean, they certainly manage to keep us alive. Plus, we know that magic is a real thing in Minecraft. Obviously in the game we're able to enchant weapons and armor using Lapis Lazuli. So, Minecraft is making the case that Lapus Lazuli has some sort of mystical power. Now, this isn't a totally novel idea. Humans dating back all the way to ancient Sumeria have also believed that Lapis had some sort of mystical quality. The Sumerians believe that Lapis held the souls of gods. And all of that seems pretty darn relevant, considering where Lapis Lazuli is hidden in the woodland mansions. Well, it's not obvious, there is a bluishers. block of Lapis hidden in the center of the giant wool illiger heads that decorate the entire building

implying there to be this close connection between Illiger's and this magical stone. I mean in the statues it's literally right where their brain should be now I cannot stress enough how bad of an idea would be to actually inject lapis lazuli into your head. There's nearly a hundred percent chance of medical complication and a zero percent chance of you getting magical powers but in the Minecraft universe it seems like the odds are a bit more in your favor considering the evoker's magical power Could all of these statues be implying that evokers have lapis literally implanted into their skulls? Thereby giving them their magical abilities? Probably not, if that were the case, you'd expect them to have some chance of dropping a shard of lapis or something. But the lapis stone being in the middle of the statue's head does imply that maybe experiments with lapis and magic were another thing that got these villagers kicked out and turned into the exiled illagers.

Which brings us back to their experiments on life and death. Because here's the thing, I don't think it's stuff. with just the ravagers. I believe that there's something far more sinister and threatening going on in the woodland mansions that ties together all of these clues while also explaining what happened to get the illagers thrown out of society. In some rooms in woodland mansions, there are piles and piles of of blue and cyan wool. Okay, okay, it sounds pretty mundane. But consider the specific coloring of this wool. Blue and cyan. They're the same color. as default Steve's clothing. His cyan shirt, his blue pants. I mean, there is really no other reason to have stacks of blue and cyan wools together in a room. It is such a specific item in such a specific set of two colors. I mean, sure. Elsewhere in the woodland mansion, the Illiger's use blue wool sometimes as carpet to make fake beds or maps. But they also use yellow and red wool for those same purposes, and we see none of that in any of the rooms in the Woodland Mansion, and yet we see rooms dedicated to just blue and the blue and the red woolen. cyan wool. They are specifically Steve-colored wool piles. Steve and zombie colored wool piles. Remember, this is a cult with at least some control over life and death. And in the Minecraft world, we see snowmen built with two snowblocks and a pumpkin

we see Iron Golemns made by creating a tea out of iron and then plop and a pumpkin head on top of that. Now we have ourselves a cult of illagers who create giant statues in their homes and sometimes even embed lapis lazuli into them. So it's not so much of a stretch to think that they could maybe Stack some blue and cyan wool together, plop a pumpkin on top, and hope to create a new Steve. But you see, that's where things probably went terribly wrong. An evoker using a totem of the undying must have tried to make this lump of wool come to life, only to create something twisted, something twisted, and something hungry. The first zombie.

As the first zombies came out and started biting villagers, it's probably no surprise that the weird cultists who created it got booted from society and ended up settling huge distances away in dark and mysterious woodland mansions where they could continue their experiments in private. And now those same cultists live in harmony with their creations. The Illigerers now share their mansions with creepers and skeletons, and of course, their own zomified creations. Be they built from wool and skeletons, be they built from wool and dead bodies. So now we know why the Illiger's exist.

What makes them fundamentally different from their villager cousins and why the two populations separated to begin with. Their big evil plot that's been alluded to by the development team since their inclusion in the game is to create their own life. create their own version of Steve using a combination of wool and magic. But in the process, they created zombies. They're like the Elric brothers of Minecraft. Who knew that it would take more than a few bits of wool to make a human? And now everyone in the Minecraft world has to pay a price. And that, my friends, is the secret of the Woodland Mansion.

But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.