Minecraft Headcanons That Don't Really Matter

Hostile Mob Headcanons: Guardian

A/N: I love guardians, and I have more developed headcanons for them than any other mob (other than ravagers).

The shining turquoise temple sprawls below you in the crystal-clear water, untouched for generations, its sunken glory waiting patiently for someone to come and save it. For someone to find their ancestor's supplies of sponges, of darker prismarine, of glorious sunny gold, and make use of those things for the first time in years.

But something is lurking within the blue-green walls. Something thorny. Something that you didn't see coming. Something that is preparing for a battle, waiting, swimming inside with its long tail lashing back and forth like an angered cat's. Something that watches. Something that's waiting for you to come closer, closer, closer, so that it may strike.

Guardians. The name is fitting, for they are guarding their home, guarding their young, guarding their leader, guarding themselves. They swarm you as you enter, and you stop, dumbstruck, as a laser cuts through the water straight towards you. Poisonous spikes unfold from the bizarre fish, stabbing you, and with a mighty shriek of triumph, the guardians watch as you fall beneath them.

But, as the world fades around you, you find yourself wondering...

...where do they come from, and what do they want?

...

- Guardians are closely related to pufferfish. However, they aren't a direct descendant, and their poison is different in makeup from a pufferfish's. This is why a pufferfish can kill a guardian by puffing up.

- Guardians live in pods similar to whales and dolphins. They communicate with each other via squeaks, groans, and other noises, and have a sort of half-developed language, unknown to the player: Rather sweetly, they have specific, softer noises of affection for each other (obviously, these aren't heard when they're near a player because "BAD BAD BAD CREATURE IN MY HOUSE PROTECT FAMILY ALERT LEADER BAD BAD BAD!"). Pods don't typically grow larger than twenty guardians, although "superpods" of one hundred or more can (very rarely) be found in the oceans.

- Though we don't see it in-game, guardian pods oftentimes don't live in monuments and instead live in coral reefs, the open ocean, trenches, and even near sheets of sea ice.

- They like to live in monuments because prismarine, for some reason, makes them feel calm and happy. Guardians will often pick out rooms in the maze of the monument as their "apartments" and sleep in those specific rooms. And only those rooms will do.

- Guardians can tolerate a ridiculous variety of temperatures. Pretty much nothing can stop them from living in the biome they want to live in, except, of course, players.

- The laser is actually shot from a small spot above the eye, and its makeup is similar to that of the poison.

- Elder guardians are a subspecies of guardian, but they're close enough in genetic makeup to the point where the elders will often join a normal guardian pod. They often act as leaders in these groups.

- Elders are smarter than the standard guardian--however, not by much; they're more like a bottlenose dolphin compared to an orca.

- Guardians mate for life and lay their eggs typically underneath the monument, if space allows, or within a cluster of seagrass. They'll always make sure to care for their offspring as best they can, because they won't be able to have more for a long time--as guardians become adults at two years, whereas elder guardians take twice that length--and typically have about three to five young.

- They are the apex predators in their environment, and will eat just about anything. Offscreen, they'll often go after cod, salmon, tropical fish, dolphins, heck, maybe even a drowned if they're given the chance. If they kill you in hardcore mode, there's a good chance they fed your dead body to their young. The children have to eat, after all.

- Their absolute favorite prey is squid.

- Guardian eggs are like fish eggs, but much bigger and tinted turquoise. Like a normal fish's egg, they're translucent, and you can see the baby guardian wiggle around as it develops inside. If it's close to hatching, you might even see the eye open and look around.

- An elder guardian's egg is the same, except a little larger and tinted a purplish gray. The baby inside doesn't wiggle as much, but the eye does open.

- They don't come out of the egg with their infamous thorny spikes. Those develop rapidly after hatching, with the "spikes" puffing up to be little bumps directly after the young guardian frees itself from its egg. Over the course of the next few days, the spikes gradually grow longer and longer, the poison glands form and the toxins kick in, and suddenly we have a creature that's more dangerous than an adult, because it doesn't know when to hold back and is much smaller (making it easier for it to follow you into smaller spaces, where you thought you were safe).

- Needless to say, guardians have absolutely amazing eyesight.

- They don't know what the heck the player is; all they know is that it is WEIRD and it is NOT DROWNING and it is INSIDE THE MONUMENT and OH GOSH OH HECK IT'S GOING FOR THE LEADER AND DESTROYING OUR HOME. Naturally, they want it gone.

- Elder guardians can inflict mining fatigue because it's a side effect of their venom, causing the unfortunate player to become sluggish as their organ systems slow.

- Guardians typically live about fifty years or more at best. Elder guardians are called such because they've been known to survive for one hundred years.

A/N: Next chapter will be either skeletons, killer bunnies (which have sadly been removed), or phantoms.