Binding

Bind blessings and curses to other players, raise forbidden rites, cross the cults - and face the Old Ones in realms beyond the world.

Binding is a dark-fantasy adventure mod for Minecraft 1.21.1 (NeoForge). It starts with a book and a little blood magic, and ends behind the sky, in front of the oldest thing there is.

Blood, bindings and rites

• The Binding Table - put a potion in, name a player, and bind a blessing or a curse to them. Seven tiers of shrine around the table unlock stronger bindings, from simple boons to Crowned bindings that need all three Old Ones beaten.
• Puppets, hair and scrying - make a Voodoo Puppet of whoever the hair came from, find every puppet of you with a Scrying Bowl, or tear a curse out of your blood at a Ritual Altar.
• Rites of summoning - grow a ritual circle from chalk to bone to the void, learn rites from Forbidden Pages, and call up a winged Eyeling familiar, a Voidwing mount that folds into a bone whistle - or things that hunt you.
• 13 Eldritch enchantments, each with a gift and a price.
• The Binding Codex - a book that keeps track of everything you've found (Book + Binding Dust).

The cults

Three cults camp in the overworld - the Watchful, the Drowned Choir and the Flesh-Wed - each with its own look, magic, camp and rite. Wear their mask and they let you pass. Kill a camp's priest and something comes for you: each cult has its own miniboss (the Vigil, the Cantor and the Grafter).

A fourth cult, the Unwoken, sleepwalks around great Wells sunk into the land. Ring the Great Bell at the bottom of one and the Eye opens.

The Old Ones

Four Old Ones, each in its own realm, each a boss fight with phases, tells and its own rules:

• The Old One behind the Gate - in the End of Times, a gate of globes you open with the Silver Key. It rewinds time.
• The Old One under the mire - in the Eldritch Deep, a mass of tentacles and eyes in a drowned hall. It hears you.
• The Old One whose body is the Viscera - a living realm of flesh, reached by a rite at a Heart Altar.
• The Old One older than the stars - behind the sky, asleep at the bottom of the Whorl. Its Chanters play its lullaby from the Pipe Keys to keep it asleep, and leave their Keys to defend it when you strike. Wake it fully and it unmakes everyone in the Round.

Die in an Old One's fight and you keep your things. Each Old One leaves pieces of itself behind, and a relic.

Realms

• The End of Times - spires, void currents to fly along, colossal eyes.
• The Eldritch Deep - flooded caverns where things hunt by sound.
• The Viscera - a world of flesh, with its own creatures and materials.
• The Back of the Sky - a whirlpool of stars over the Whorl, a spiral dungeon guarded by the Unwoken's great ones.

And on the overworld: rare cloud valleys, Nights of the Open Eye (a huge Eye opens in the sky and turns its gaze on one of you), and Old Ones that come looking for you once they've noticed you.

Gear

• Armour ranked on a ladder from the realms' own materials up to each Old One's set (Irisglass, Fathom, Heartstring), every piece with its own trick and every set a power.
• Firstdark, from the last Old One: a sword that splits into two blades that throw slashes, a bow with four charge phases ending in a comet, and a maul that leaps.
• Relics worn in Curios slots - some of them cursed.
• Corpses you can wear - skins of the creatures you kill, each with a power.

Made for friends

The boss fights scale with the number of players, several fights need you to help each other (pull a needle out of a friend, shake them awake), and the Old Ones keep a notice of each of you.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.1 with NeoForge 21.1.252 or newer.
• Install on both the client and the server.
• Curios API - recommended: relics, masks and other worn items go in its slots.
• JEI - optional: shows every recipe, ritual circle and rite.
• Looks right with or without shader packs (tested with Iris + BSL).

Configuration

config/binding-server.toml (or the Mods list's Config button in single player): the mod's enemies' health and damage (+50% by default), and the bosses' separately.

How Binding was made

Binding is designed and directed by Vernlage, and built with Claude, an AI model by Anthropic: most of its code, art and sounds were generated with AI under his direction, and every feature was tested in game before release.

The gallery images are renders made from the mod's own models and textures, not in-game screenshots.

PLEASE TELL ME IF THERES ISSUES WITH THE MOD IN THE COMMENTS SO I CAN FIX IT