Fold paper. Wake it. Make a wish.

You start with a sheet of paper and a Folding Table. You fold the sheet yourself, fold by fold: drag a point onto another point and the table folds the real paper, layer over layer. When the shape is right, the sheet becomes a Folded Form. Put it in a Breath Lantern with ink, and it wakes up as a paper familiar that works for you.

Paper is fragile. Rain makes it soggy and fire burns it. Make better paper from mulberry bark, find new diagrams in ruins, beat the Palimpsest, and fold one thousand cranes for the Wish.

Paperborne is new. There could still be bugs that have to be fixed.

How it works

Fold, wake, work, improve, wish.

• The Folding Table simulates a real flat fold. Left-drag folds all layers, right-drag folds only the top layer. The table reads the silhouette, so any fold sequence that makes the correct shape works.
• A Diagram names the shape. Without it, the table says that the shape wants a name.
• Three choices make each familiar unique: the shape decides the job, the paper grade decides health and resistance, the ink decides a trait.
• The Breath Lantern wakes the form. The familiar is yours: give it orders with the Folding Fan (Follow, Stay, Work, set a home, call everyone back).
• A familiar that dies leaves a Torn Form. Wheat Paste mends it back into a Folded Form.
• Each finished job gives a crease. With enough creases, the familiar gains a level.

Five stages

The Folding Room

Craft a Folding Table and a Bone Folder. Fold the Crane from the crafted diagram. Grind Sumi Ink on an Ink Stone: water, an ink sac, charcoal, five grinds, then fill bottles. Put the Folded Crane in the Breath Lantern, use the ink on it, and the lantern flares. The crane opens its wings and flies round you.

Mulberry Mornings

Mulberry trees grow in forests, cherry groves and plains. Strip the logs for bark, pulp the bark in a Pulp Vat with water and six stirs, lift sheets with the Papermaking Mould and dry them on a Drying Rack. Washi familiars have twice the health of paper ones. Wax the washi with honeycomb so rain cannot hurt it, then gild it with gold so fire cannot.

Familiars at Work

Cranes carry items from one Crane Roost to another. Foxes guard your home. Frogs harvest and replant crops. Beetles collect dropped items. Moths make light where they fly in the dark. Ride a Paper Skiff on water. Mix new inks from Sumi Ink: Glow, Ember, Tide and Void, each with its own trait.

The Scriptorium

Crumplings roll out at night and Ink Wisps shoot blinding ink. Explore Folder's Hermitages for the Fox, Frog and Beetle diagrams, and Scriptorium ruins for the Moth and Skiff diagrams. The seal in a Scriptorium wakes the Palimpsest. It changes form every few seconds: a flat sheet that cannot be hurt and calls Crumplings, a crane that dives, a fox that charges. Fire does double damage. It drops Palimpsest Vellum and the Dragon diagram.

A Thousand Cranes

Fold the Paper Dragon from Palimpsest Vellum, then ride and steer it through the sky. Let the Patterned Press fold cranes for you from paper and ink, fed by hoppers. String the cranes on the Garland Shrine. When it holds one thousand, ink it at night under the open sky. The cranes rise in a spiral and a Golden Crane comes down with your wish: Wings, Kinship or Fortune.

Features

• Folding: a real flat-fold simulation with layers, a fold preview, undo and reset. 9 patterns: Crane, Fox, Frog, Beetle, Moth, Skiff, Dragon, Fan and Lantern.
• Familiars: 7 familiars with jobs (courier, guard, farmer, collector, light-bearer, water mount, flying mount) and the Fortune Crane from the Wish.
• Paper grades: Paper, Washi, Waxed Washi, Gilded Washi and Palimpsest Vellum, from 1x to 5x health.
• Inks: Sumi, Glow, Ember, Tide and Void. The ink gives the familiar its trait.
• Papermaking: mulberry trees, the Pulp Vat, the Papermaking Mould and the Drying Rack.
• Automation: the Patterned Press folds forms from paper and ink. Hoppers work with the Ink Stone, the Patterned Press, the Garland Shrine and the Crane Roost.
• Danger: Crumplings, Ink Wisps and the Palimpsest boss with three forms.
• Structures: Folder's Hermitages and Scriptorium ruins, with their own loot.
• The Wish: Thousand-Fold Wings (a glider that never breaks), Kinship (4 more familiars, and lost familiars come back as forms) or Fortune (a gilded crane familiar that brings gifts each morning).
• Progress: a 13-step advancement tab from the Folding Table to the Thousand-Fold Wings.
• Integrations: JEI pages for folding, awakening, papermaking, drying, ink grinding and the Wish; Jade tooltips for the blocks and the familiars (both optional).
• Showcase: /paperborne showcase builds a gallery of every block, familiar, hostile form and item.

Getting started

1. Craft a Folding Table and a Bone Folder.
2. Craft the Crane Diagram from paper, Sumi Ink and a feather, and fold the Crane.
3. Grind Sumi Ink on an Ink Stone.
4. Wake the Folded Crane in a Breath Lantern.

JEI shows every pattern, its papers and its graded forms.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.11 with NeoForge 21.11.48 or newer.
• Required library: GeckoLib 5.4.5 or newer.
• Optional: JEI, Jade.

All textures, models, animations, sounds and code of Paperborne are original work.