The Black Hood

## Appearance

The Black Hood has a skin identical to Stan's – the default skin in Minecraft – except with glowing snow-white eyes. He wears navy-blue pants and dark-brown shoes, while the upper half of his body is covered by a black cloak. The covering extends upward over his head, obscuring his face from view. He also has a Swedish accent. When looking into his eyes, Stan described them as appearing warm and inviting, drawing him in like a moth to a flame. When looking into his eyes, it feels like everything is right in the world, and one feels at peace.

## History

### Before Elementia

The Black Hood does not recall where he came from, and his earliest memories are jumbled and foggy. All he remembes for sure is that he came into being during the Alpha days of Minecraft, and soon found that he had access to all the powers that were possible for a player to have in vanilla Minecraft.

At first, the Black Hood saw no need to destroy or corrupt worlds. He saw Minecraft as a beautiful place, a place of wonder and splendor. He was particularly fascinated by the players, beings from a realm outside of Minecraft, who could build just like him and created all sorts of incredible things in their worlds. He had a habit of watching the players work from a distance, entranced by the various things that they created. He never let himself be seen, fearing that if the players noticed him, they would stop the work that he found so fascinating.

However, one day, a player did see the Black Hood, captured him in a screenshot, and posted it online. The Blach Hood didn’t think much of it because people posted fake pictures of player-like glitches all the time, but before long, he was shocked to find that the Mojang team released a patch of the game that banished him from entering any Minecraft world ever again.

The Black Hood was confused and angry. He hadn’t been harming anybody, only watching players, so he didn't understand why Mojang wanted him removed from the game. However, despite the patch, he was a glitch who was capable of adapting, so he found a way to get around the banishment. Before long, he was back in Minecraft, determined to never be spotted again, in case Mojang tried to kick him out again.

Alas, his attempts to be inconspicuous were in vain. Mojang soon released another patch, which banished him yet again, this time making it even harder for him to reenter. Now he was furious, not understanding why he was being kicked out of the game and why the game hated him. He became more determined to reenter Minecraft than ever, but now he no longer wished to watch the players. Instead he wanted to attack, haunt, and frighten the players, to get back at the game that had decided that he had no place in it.

He earned that the player who had captured him in a screenshot had made up a story about him, saying that he interfered with the world by creating pyramids and tunnels, that he was the spirit of Notch’s deceased brother, and that his name was Herobrine. He adopted the persona and the name, and terrorized players all throughout Alpha and into the early stages of Beta. Although Mojang constantly tried to remove him, he found ways around their defenses, always reentering Minecraft to terrorize more players, growing stronger and stronger as more new abilities were added into the game for him to mimic.

As the official release of Minecraft approached, the Black Hood knew that the Mojang team was trying to iron out as many glitches as possible in preparation for the new game engine of the Adventure Update. However, he never could have predicted what they put into the game to counter him. He never knew what it was, but whatever Mojang coded into the game was not just a patch meant to keep him out. Whatever it was, it was alive, sentient, and capable of adapting, just like he was. The Black Hood named it the Voice in the Sky. Whenever the Black Hood entered a Minecraft server and interacted with the blocks, the mobs, the players, or anything else, the Voice in the Sky told him to stop. If he did not stop, his energy began to rapidly drain.

To avoid dying forever, the Black Hood stayed out of Minecraft servers, hanging in the void of cyberspace between thousands of Minecraft worlds. He could watch the worlds from a distance, but he could never enter them, interact with them, or wreak havoc in them again without the Voice in the Sky catching him. As the Black Hood watched these hundreds of thousands of Minecraft worlds from afar, he no longer felt the need to destroy them. He watched the players working together, building together, and creating amazing structures and worlds together. The amazement with Minecraft that he had felt upon first entering the game returned to him, and he realized how wrong he had been. He saw how Minecraft allows people to have a place where they can do anything they want, where the only limit is their imagination. The Black Hood realized that he had been foolish for wanting to corrupt such a marvelous universe.

However, the damage was done. The Voice in the Sky was still watching him, and every time that he entered a Minecraft world, he could feel his life force fading more and more by the second. The only time he was ever safe was when he floated in limbo between the Minecraft worlds, watching longingly from far away. And the Black Hood saw that even though the players in the worlds had nothing holding them back, nothing trying to keep them out, many still found the need to antagonize others. While he saw many players building together in harmony, he also saw countless Griefers, going out of their way to make the Minecraft experience miserable for others. As he watched these players fight, he couldn’t help but feel responsible. He was the original Griefer, the one who introduced the concept to Minecraft. He believed that because of him, Minecraft was no longer a world solely of creativity and wonder, but a world where you had to constantly watch your back, lest you be destroyed.

Stricken with guilt, the Black Hood knew that he had to make up for it somehow. He swore to himself, right then and there, that if anything were to ever threaten Minecraft on a large scale, he would do everything in his power to stop it. That opportunity came to him when Lord Tenebris began to take energy from Minecraft servers to fuel his power, endangering the game.

### In Elementia

The Black Hood first joins Elementia in the prologue of Herobrine's Message. He attempts to summon a diamond sword in his hand, but a bolt of lightning from the Voice in the Sky hits right next to him and breaks his concentration. He doesn't move or even breathe for a couple of minutes out of fear. He then decides that he should just start from the beginning like any regular player would, to avoid getting into trouble.

The Black Hood appears various times during the war against Nocturia to save character's lives or help them make hard decisions. He appears to save Leonidas when he is about to be killed by Spyro, and then again to warn Stan and Leonidas that the ELM were near. He also saves Kat when she is escaping from the Mushroom Islands, and saves Leonidas from being killed by Charlie. When Stan is about to set off the bomb in Nocturia, the Black Hood appears to him when he is conflicted on whether to pull the lever, but refuses to give Stan an answer and vanishes in the wind after a gust of snow.

### The Message

After Lord Tenebris kills Kat and takes Stan to the destroyed Adorian Village to give him the ultimatum of drinking a Potion of Harming and dying or eating a superpowerful Golden Apple and facing him in battle, Stan follows Rex after his breakdown to an open area in the forest and finds the Black Hood standing there.

Waiting for him is the Black Hood, who takes off his hood to reveal his snow-white eyes. He tells Stan about his history. After Stan realises that the Black Hood is the actual Herobrine, the Black Hood tells Stan the history of Elementia and explains that:

1. King Kev had operating powers all along, but pretended to give them up to please his people and did not use them.
2. King Kev changed the gamemode so he could respawn before he died. Then he changed his skin to appear as Herobrine.
3. Lord Tenebris (King Kev) is drawing energy out of all the servers of Minecraft to make himself more powerful.

The Black Hood then gives Operating Powers to Stan so he can fight Lord Tenebris. He then fades away and only appears again to engage Lord Tenebris in battle one time, using up the remains of his energy to kill him.

### **Death**

When Stan goes into the desert for a week to honor DZ, the Black Hood watches him and knows that he has finished his work in Elementia. Then the Voice in the Sky tells him it's time to take his punishment. The Black Hood says, "I accept my punishment." and fades from existence.