Necro Origin SMP

Before there was an Axolotl SMP, before there was even a Discord, there was a Minecraft server running off nYx’s laptop. Everybody called him Necro, and so the world is remembered as Necro Origin SMP, or Nyx S1: the first season of the Nyx SMP era, and where this whole friend group’s story starts.

How it began

The Discord was born because the server needed one. On 2021-04-26 prop made it, explaining that the Origins server had no proper place to talk ¹. The first chat was mostly people announcing what they had become: prop a dragon, Necro a wither, IRIS an arachnid and Suresh a blazeborn.

That was the point of the season. The server ran Fabric on Minecraft 1.16.5, and its heart was the Origins Mod (0.7.0) with the Origins Classes and TooManyOrigins add-ons, alongside Fabric API, Barrels Plus, Backslot, Polymorph, Ok Zoomer and Medieval Weapons ^{2 3}. Players installed Fabric with installer 0.7.3, which prop posted on launch day ⁴. There was no fixed modpack (“we just put random mods that we wanted to try”), and the mods were simply listed in channels as people went along ⁵. On 2021-05-06 prop pinned down the rules in #s1-origins: every player chose one Origin and one Class, and any combination was allowed ⁶.

Optional extras came in the comfort channel: Boosted Brightness and the VoxelMap minimap on day one, and later Mod Menu, MiniHUD and ShulkerBoxTooltip (see Necro Origin SMP Client Mods). VoxelMap soon paid off. On 2021-04-30 prop shared a map of the Community mines, so thoroughly strip-mined that nYx said it looked like a parking area for a big mall ⁷.

The laptop server

Hosting was the season’s running gag and its running problem. The world lived on nYx’s laptop, so it went offline when the laptop did, and his home IP changed along the way. He kept posting new addresses, and an IP-updates channel was requested to hold them ^{8 9 10}. The chat blames the downtime on everything from being out to simply shutting the lid; see The laptop server and the ever-changing IP. Whatever else changed, nYx hosted the first three seasons and was later given the Retired Server Host role on 2021-06-18 ¹¹.

The first weeks

Late April and early May were the era of grinding, bickering and wandering. prop built what he called the best redstone door on the server (prop's redstone door), finishing it by 2021-04-28 ¹², and once it was done lost interest in the server for a while. On 2021-05-01 he and Kart had a fight (prop vs Kart), with Kart turning up in full enchanted netherite and a fire-aspect netherite battle axe ¹³. On 2021-05-16 prop showed off in #s1-epic-pics an axe that Fili called a Viking axe, likely from the Medieval Weapons mod (see Medieval Weapons and Battle Axes) ^{14 15}. IRIS lost his things in the void and put his house up for sale before being talked back into the game (IRIS's void death and the house for sale) ^{16 17}.

The big shared moment came on 2021-05-08, when everyone was online ¹⁸ and the group killed the Ender Dragon. prop announced it and nYx released the world seed right afterwards ^{19 20}.

The great expedition

In mid-May IRIS (called “abi” in the chat) and Suresh set off to see what lay beyond spawn. IRIS posted a screenshot of the places he had raided the night before ²¹, then reached a jungle temple he reckoned was 10k blocks away ²². Suresh put their position at “6k freakin blocs away from community” ²³. They raided temples and villages, dug up buried treasure and stashed the loot at a base on the way (The great expedition, Beach base). Eventually they begged prop to build a Nether roof portal to the big ruined portal so they could get home.

On 2021-05-14 prop took the opposite approach and went for the End. In full netherite he raided two End Cities (The raided End Cities) and came back with 2 elytra, plenty of mending gear and shulker boxes (he counted 8 early on) ^{24 25}. He declared he had reached his goal of being “the strongest or richest person on the server” ²⁶.

The end of Origins

The server’s days were numbered almost from the dragon fight. From 2021-05-12 the group debated what should come next: stay on Origins, switch to the tech mod Mekanism, or try nYx’s idea of a lore-driven apocalypse (Origins or Mekanism? The next-season debate). On 05-15 prop floated an “epik smp” with the regulars, and IRIS said they would need at least ten people; prop postponed it a day later (The Epik SMP proposal) ^{27 28}. By 05-14 prop was already “planning for season 2” ²⁹, and on 05-18 he said the Origins server was “getting reset anyway” ³⁰.

Origins stayed up until the next season was decided by vote ³¹. Season 2, a Forge 1.16.5 Mekanism server, opened on 2021-05-22, and by 05-23 prop considered Origins over ³².

Legacy

Necro Origin SMP was only a month long, but the group’s history starts here. The Discord that still holds it all was made for this world, and the cast was already in place: prop, nYx, IRIS, Suresh, Kart and Fili. The habits stuck too, with mod lists posted in channels, a screenshot channel per season, and a vote when it was time to decide what came next. Even the laptop server and its ever-changing IP became a fond running joke of the early days.