Hives & Colonies: Characters

Meet the first story characters of the Hives & Colonies universe.

Hives & Colonies: Characters is built around the idea that NPCs should feel readable, memorable, and alive. These characters are not villagers, pets, or simple followers. They are narrative entities with personality, memory, relationship progression, autonomous behavior, and a growing connection to the world around them.

The mod currently introduces Polen, a persistent story companion with memory loss, cautious behavior, emotional progression, and a larger mystery tied to bees, nature, Source magic, healing, and grief.

It also introduces SoaMarjorie, a legendary master miner who appears through temporary encounters near Bountiful bounty boards and deep underground caves. SoaMarjorie is sharp, confident, hard to impress, and always the best miner in the room. Players may earn her respect over time, but never truly surpass her.

Current Features

• Polen as a persistent story character entity
• SoaMarjorie as a temporary encounter-based mining character
• Story-based name reveal and early narrative progression for Polen
• Per-player affinity, relationship tracking, and character memory
• Shared NPC relationship foundation for current and future characters
• Graphical affinity feedback overlay when relationship changes occur
• World-level chapter and story flag progression
• Contextual dialogue, ambient lines, story events, and memory fragments
• Character-specific dialogue tones based on relationship level
• Autonomous behavior driven by needs, intent, mood, and tasks
• Early quiet activities for Polen such as singing, drawing, reflecting, and source attunement
• Safety behavior, refuge seeking, danger memory, and blink escape
• Night lighting through Polen’s managed lantern behavior
• Residence and shelter-aware behavior through colony/home-related items
• SoaMarjorie Bountiful board encounters in villages
• SoaMarjorie cave encounters from Y 0 and below
• Limited real mining behavior for SoaMarjorie
• Exposed ore detection and balanced mining output
• Partial resource sharing with nearby players during mining encounters
• Torch placement during SoaMarjorie cave encounters
• Defensive behavior using SoaMarjorie’s axe when threatened
• Persistent cooldowns for character encounters
• Early story, material, focus, colony, and accessory item families
• Curios-based support for affinity charms and future character accessories

About Polen

Polen begins as a quiet survivor with missing memories. She does not immediately trust the player, and her story is not revealed all at once.

Through exploration, safety, trust, and small moments, the player starts uncovering her connection to bees, nature, Source magic, healing, grief, and a much larger past.

The current playable experience focuses on the beginning of that journey: meeting Polen, earning her trust, giving her safety, watching her early autonomous behavior, and finding the first hints of who she used to be.

About SoaMarjorie

SoaMarjorie is a master miner, mentor, and occasional menace to bad decisions.

She can appear near Bountiful bounty boards in villages, where she may stay for a short time, offer dialogue, give small utility rewards, and remember previous encounters.

She can also appear deep underground, from Y 0 and below, where she searches for exposed ores, places torches, mines with her pickaxe, and may share part of what she gathers with a nearby player.

SoaMarjorie’s relationship progression is not soft or sentimental. As affinity grows, she begins to see the player less as a walking mining accident and more as a tolerable apprentice, then eventually as a reliable mining companion. Even then, SoaMarjorie remains the greatest miner in the world.

Affinity and Memory

Characters can now remember player interactions through a shared relationship system.

Affinity may change through meaningful events such as story progress, safe encounters, mining together, receiving rewards, or making poor choices like attacking a character.

When affinity changes, the player receives a compact visual notification showing the character, the relationship change, and progress toward the next relationship level.

This system is designed to support future story characters without duplicating relationship code for every NPC.

Development Status

This mod is in active beta development.

Polen is the first persistent story character, while SoaMarjorie introduces the first temporary encounter-based character system. The project is being structured so future characters can share common systems for affinity, memory, dialogue feedback, and world interaction while still keeping their own personality, behavior, and story.

Expect ongoing updates to AI behavior, dialogue, memory recovery, character encounters, relationship progression, items, balance, and integration with the broader Hives & Colonies modpack ecosystem.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.1
• NeoForge
• Curios API

Optional / Modpack Integrations

• Bountiful is used by the Hives & Colonies modpack for SoaMarjorie’s bounty board encounters.