Monster Origins

A Minecraft 1.20.1 / Fabric addon for Origins that adds four origins: Arachne (a humanoid spider), Medusa (a gorgon), Harpy (a storm wind bird woman), and Mermaid (a singer of the deep). Each one plays completely differently: a fragile fast assassin, a tanky bruiser, an aerial skirmisher, and aquatic support with crowd control.

Arachne

• Arachne Carnivore only diet, can climb any surface, traverses and crafts cobwebs freely. Immune to poison.
• Dangerous creatures glow with an outline once spotted (tracking).
• About 50% of normal height and width (via Pehkui).
• Attacks poison the target for 10 seconds (undead immune, 5s cooldown) and briefly web trap them (2s cooldown on the web).
• Every arthropod (spider, cave spider, silverfish, endermite) is friendly until you attack it.
• Night vision. 6 hearts of health, a small amount of natural armor.
• Rappel (double tap space, same as Origins Minus's Weaver origin): pull yourself upward on a strand of web. Only works indoors, under a ceiling or overhang. Reuses Origins Minus's own rappel power directly rather than reimplementing it.
• Scuttle (secondary key, unbound by default): a burst of Speed IV for 4 seconds, at the cost of burning through food much faster while it's active. 15 second cooldown.
• Can't use a shield.
• No fall damage from falls under 10 blocks.
• Weakened while touching water, a spider out of its element.
• Takes 50% more damage from fire: brittle, dry, and flammable.
• Produces 6 silk in your inventory every 20 minutes.
• Quickness: noticeably faster base movement speed (+35%, well past Avian's own barely noticeable +20% tailwind). Spiders are quick for their size. A flat attribute bonus, not a potion effect.
• Golden Spider Eye: a new food item, the carnivore diet equivalent of a golden apple (which Arachne can't eat since apples aren't meat). Same crafting cost (8 gold ingots around the center item) and the same buff (Regeneration II for 5s, Absorption I for 2 minutes), just built around a spider eye instead of an apple.
• Silk: a new crafting material (3 string makes 1 silk), craftable by anyone but thematically Arachne's own. No use yet, reserved for future recipes.

Medusa

• Carnivore only diet. 12 hearts of health, solid natural armor: a bruiser, not a glass cannon.
• Petrifying Bite: attacks briefly turn the target to stone, 3 seconds of heavy Slowness, Mining Fatigue, Blindness, and Darkness. 5 second cooldown.
• Stone Cursed: Fang: aFang: a light, fast dagger with a real dagger shaped icon: a shortened diagonal blade built the same way vanilla's own sword icons are (alternating light/mid tones, a dark outline, a distinct guard), not a recolored sword, in three tiers, each with its own blade and grip color. Poisons on every hit, undead excluded, Arachne only. Every tier's tooltip spells out exactly what it does and who it's for.

Harpy

• Carnivore only diet. 8 hearts of health, light hollow bones. Can't use a shield.
• Glide: drift down slowly when falling; hold sneak to drop out of the glide and fall normally.
• Wings: true flight, always. No elytra item needed.
• Sudden Gust (primary key, unbound by default, hold while flying): a firework rocket style boost in whatever direction you're currently facing, not a launch into the air. 3.5 second cooldown, effectively unlimited flight.
• Talons: bare handed strikes deal 2.5 extra hearts of damage and inflict Bleed for 10 seconds (undead immune), a brand new status effect added by this mod, ticking just like Poison (same real tick damage timing, verified against the game's actual source) but unlike Poison, it can kill.
• Scream (secondary key, unbound by default): a shrieking blast (with a Sonic Boom particle burst) that knocks back whatever's in front of you within 8 blocks. Behind you is completely unaffected. 10 second cooldown. Uses a real barn owl screech recording (CC BY SA 4.0, credited in CREDITS.md on my GitHub).
• 85% of normal height and width (via Pehkui).
• Hardy Stomach: raw meat and rotten flesh are perfectly safe to eat, no Hunger effect, just a brief 2 second burst of Regeneration.
• Takes 50% more damage from fire: hollow bones and feathers catch fast.

Mermaid

• Carnivore only diet. 90% of normal height and width (via Pehkui).
• Fully at home in the water: breathes, sees, and swims underwater with no trouble, and mines at full (Aqua Affinity) speed while submerged.
• Landbound: can stay out of water (rain counts as wet too) for 5 minutes at a time before starting to suffocate.
• 1.5x swim speed, 0.8x walking speed. She belongs in the water, not on land.
• Mermaid's Call (primary key, unbound by default): a real singing sound effect, and a song that gives everyone nearby, including herself, Saturation and Regeneration, while hostile creatures caught in it are also slowed, blinded, and charmed into leaving everyone alone entirely for the duration. 4 second duration, 20 second cooldown.
• Dolphin's Grace (secondary key, unbound by default): toggles extra swim speed on or off, press once to go faster, press again to drop back down.
• Every sea creature is friendly unless attacked first, including Drowned and Guardians, not just the obviously passive fish.
• Mermaid's Crown: exclusive armor, crafted from diamonds and a Heart of the Sea. Grants +2 hearts and continuous Regeneration while worn.
• A new global recipe unlocks crafting a vanilla trident (3 prismarine shards + 2 sticks), craftable by anyone, not exclusive to Mermaid, same recipe can't see the player limitation as every other weapon in this mod.
• No water breathing bubble particles while it's active, just the effect, not the visual spam.

Weapons

• Every origin gets a themed craftable weapon. Anyone can craft or swing either one, but the bonus on hit effect only triggers for the matching origin. Each is its own origin's signature weapon, not generically useful loot:
• Fang: a light, fast dagger with a real dagger shaped icon: a shortened diagonal blade built the same way vanilla's own sword icons are (alternating light/mid tones, a dark outline, a distinct guard), not a recolored sword, in three tiers, each with its own blade and grip color. Poisons on every hit, undead excluded, Arachne only. Every tier's tooltip spells out exactly what it does and who it's for.

1. Fang (base): iron tier stats, Poison only. Crafted from a spider eye, an iron ingot, and a stick.
2. Venomfang: diamond tier (6 attack damage), adds Bleed. Upgraded on a crafting table from a Fang, a diamond, and a Golden Spider Eye.
3. Widowfang: netherite tier (7 attack damage), adds Wither on top of Poison and Bleed. Upgraded on a smithing table from a Venomfang, a netherite ingot, and another Golden Spider Eye, matching vanilla's own Diamond to Netherite upgrade convention rather than a plain crafting recipe.

• Petrifying Trident: a reskinned vanilla trident (same stats and behavior: throwable, riptide) that briefly petrifies whatever it hits (a lighter dose than Medusa's own Petrifying Bite). Medusa only. Crafted from stone and iron ingots.
• Harpy Javelin: a real 3D modeled throwing spear (a custom Blockbench model, not a flat icon), lighter and faster swinging than the vanilla trident it's built on. Renders as its own model everywhere, including in flight and lying on the ground after landing, via a dedicated thrown entity type and renderer, since (unlike the item model) that's hardcoded per projectile in vanilla and not something a simple reskin gets for free. Causes Bleed on hit (undead excluded), whether thrown or swung, and deals bonus damage on a thrown hit landed while flying. Harpy only. Crafted from an iron ingot, a stick, and a feather.

All origin gated weapons spell this out directly in their tooltip, not just in the README. No player should have to guess whose weapon they're holding.

It's also written as a worked, documented example of a data driven pattern for adding more origins. See TEMPLATE.MD. Medusa is the second worked example (the first was Arachne); Harpy is the third, and the first origin in this mod that genuinely needs custom Java beyond a single mixin: a new status effect (Bleed) and a custom Apoli action type (Scream's forward cone knockback), since neither has any data driven path. See CLAUDE.md for exactly why.

Requirements (to play)

Drop these into your mods/ folder (all for 1.20.1 Fabric):

• Fabric API (0.92.11+1.20.1 or newer)
• Origins (1.10.2+mc.1.20.1 or newer)
• Origins Minus (2.4.0+1.20 or newer)
• Pehkui (3.8.3+1.14.4-1.21 or newer)

Credits & licenses

Built against Origins and Origins Minus by their respective authors. This mod is an addon for their work, not affiliated with them. This mod's own code is available under CC0 (the Fabric template's license). Harpy's Scream sound is a real recording used under CC BY SA 4.0. See CREDITS.MD for full attribution.