After years of being destroyed by your infection mods, the villagers decided to build their own.

A village, shortly after the Brain Node reached stage 3

The Village Fights Back turns ordinary villages into self-organizing strongholds. At the heart of every village sits the Village Brain Node, an AI that spends the village's emeralds to arm its people, raise walls, and evolve its defenders across 4 stages, until the village can strike back at whatever threatens it, players included.

Built to stand against the harshest infection mods, the village answers with its own: a contagious counter-infection, 12 weapons, 17 new creatures (two of them bosses), 3 potions, 17 structures it raises by itself, and a whole new dimension to chase the fight into.

The Village Brain Node

The Village Brain node UI

Every village gets a Village Brain Node, a block that appears in place of the village bell at the heart of the settlement and runs the whole defense. It keeps a per-village economy: the emeralds the village earns, and the ones you donate, fund everything it does.

It evolves through 4 stages. Each stage it reaches arms and upgrades the village's villagers, guards, and iron golems with stronger gear and new abilities. Let it grow on its own over time, or feed it emeralds to push it through the stages faster.

It thinks for itself. The Brain reads the state of the village and reacts: it sends out settlers, raises walls, and builds specific structures such as golem factories, barracks, and lure towers when the situation calls for them, spending emeralds as it goes. Right-click it to open its screen anytime, showing the current stage, stored emeralds, and live villager, guard, and golem counts. A Logs tab lists the last actions the Brain took, with the day each one happened.

Where you stand with the village. The Brain is neutral to you by default. Attack a villager, strike the node, or steal from the village's chests, and you become an Enemy of the Village: its defenders turn on you and hunt you down. Earn its trust instead by donating emeralds to the Brain or helping the village survive a raid, and you become a Hero of the Village, which grants you temporary permission to open and loot its chests. Chests and barrels placed near the Brain are claimed by the village, so taking from them without Hero status counts as theft, and the village will know.

It protects its own. At sunset the village calls in reinforcements scaled to the Brain's current stage, and an immunity aura radiates from the node over the village's villagers, guards, and golems.

Armed defenders and the arsenal

An iron golem factory, with a Defender Golem in it

The village does not run. Every villager fights, the guards carry heavier weapons, and the iron golems wield rocket launchers. They hold their ground against any hostile mob, and because targeting keys off Minecraft's own "hostile" tag, monsters from other mods are handled automatically, with no special support needed.

They fight as a unit. Defenders are immune to friendly fire and never hurt one another, and the golems only loose a rocket when no ally stands near the target, so the blast never catches their own. Golems brawl up close, launch themselves skyward on a wind charge, and fire from the top of the arc. Strike a defender yourself and it turns on you briefly before calming down, and you can read the mood on its face: a defender in combat wears an angry expression.

As the Brain evolves, so does their gear. Higher stages hand defenders steadily stronger equipment and abilities. From stage 3 their blades begin to infect whatever they hit with the Emerald Virus, escalating to a stronger strain at stage 4, while ordinary iron golems become golden Gigachad Golems with far more health and rockets of their own.

The arsenal the village forges includes:

Alien Slasher and Alien Eradicator, blades that spread the Emerald Virus (I and II) on hit
a native Mace with its three enchantments (Density, Breach, Wind Burst), and its Limbo-forged upgrade the Alien Smasher
the Rocket Launcher, Wind Charge, and Fire Grenade
Emerald Virus Arrows (I and II)
full Emerald and Limbo gear lines, tools and armor alike, including the Emerald Hammer and a Limbo chestplate that doubles as an elytra

Most of it is craftable, the Weaponsmith sells the Mace, wind charges, and the mace-enchant books, and defenders have a chance to drop their weapon when they fall.

Walls and defensive structures

The Lure Tower: a defensive stage 3 structure that lures enemies in a deadly trap

As the village grows, the Brain fortifies it. A built-in planner traces the village's actual footprint, however irregular, and villagers raise a wall around it course by course, complete with gates, loopholes to shoot through, and scaffolding to reach the high spots. The wall scales to the size of the settlement.

From stage 2, Wall Defenders are mounted above the gates: turret creatures that fire real bullets and rockets at anything that comes near.

The Brain builds with materials of its own:

Reinforced glass, as tough as ancient debris yet still lets light through, used for protective domes
Protecting glass, which stops projectiles coming from outside while the village keeps firing out
Fake cobblestone and fake obsidian smart gates, which allies pass straight through but enemies cannot

And it raises purpose-built structures as the situation demands: golem factories that forge new golems, barracks, and lure towers that funnel hostile mobs onto powder snow and drop them into a pool of lava. To put all this up quickly, the village uses special charges: Blue TNT that builds a house block by block, and Green TNT that builds tower variants.

The counter-infection: Fertile and Rich blocks

Map showing the counter-infection (stage 2)

Map showing the counter-infection (stage 3)

To answer the infection mods that rot the world, the village grows a green one of its own. Spreading out from the Brain Node, it slowly converts the world around it into Fertile blocks (with richer Rich variants), a full family of green-veined dirt, stone, sand, wood, deepslate, netherrack, end stone, sculk, leaves, and more. The spread is deliberately slow and capped, and it leaves your ores untouched. Those blocks are not just decoration: the Rich ones drop emeralds when mined, like a natural emerald ore, feeding the very economy the Brain runs on. The growth even has its own fertile chorus plants, whose fruit you can eat (it teleports you like ordinary chorus fruit, with a rare and unfortunate side effect). Out among the fertile fields you may meet the Rich Sheep, a green-touched sheep that drops lime wool and an emerald.

Easier Mining

A cave below the Brain node, without night vision

Because that green growth glows, mining beneath your village becomes far safer. As it creeps downward it turns the stone, deepslate, and even the Deep Dark under the village into a self-lit, lush cavern, with no darkness left for hostile mobs to spawn in and no need to place a single torch. It pays better, too: your natural ores are all preserved, so against the glowing backdrop every vein stands out at a glance, and the Rich blocks add emeralds on top, so the deeper the green reaches, the more there is to gather.

The Emerald Virus

The village also fights with a contagion, entirely separate from the green that spreads through the ground. The Emerald Virus is creature-borne: it passes from creature to creature, carried by the village's own fighters on their infecting blades and caught from a single bite of an Emerald Apple. Once a creature has it, it stays infected and spreads it on contact, and only the mod's Immunity (as an effect or a potion) can clear it. You can wield it yourself too, brewed into a Potion of Emerald Virus (with splash, lingering, and tipped-arrow forms) or fired as Emerald Virus Arrows (I and II).

At its peak the virus produces the Emeraldger, a stage-4 virus warrior whose strength scales with its host's health and who is immune to fire and to every status effect (the virus included), staring out through glowing green eyes.

The Emerald faction

A third power now walks the map: the Emerald faction, a creeping mob infection. Any hit from an emerald unit infects its victim, and a creature that dies while infected feeds the closest Brain Node with organic points. The Brain node can then use these points to summon emerald units, based on an AI system that identifies whether it is better to explore, hunt, swarm the enemy, summon a boss, etc.

The emerald faction and the village leave each other alone: emerald units never attack villagers, guards, or golems, and the village never strikes back at them, not even with air strikes. Everything else is prey, the wild animals, the monsters, and, if you become Enemy of the Village, you, though by default they stay neutral toward the player. Because I'm nice, I made them spare the cats, dogs and horses so that you don't lose your pets to them.

Where an emerald creature is born the ground below turns to an infested path that slowly grows the fertile zone on its own, and when an emerald unit dies those paths erupt with emerald mites while the survivors nearby grow stronger. Emerald units drop their normal loot plus an emerald. The whole faction can be tuned, capped, or turned off in the configs.

Bosses and the Infected faction

Two boss-grade creatures can take the field, both born of the village itself: its champion in life, and its vengeful spirit in death.

The Vindictive Village Spirit. When a village's Brain Node falls, whether its last villager dies or the node itself is destroyed, the village does not pass quietly. It rises as the Vindictive Village Spirit, a boss bent on vengeance that hammers the area with green sonic-boom banish waves, a ground-shaking slam, and a screen-shaking roar. It leads an Infected faction, the village's fallen defenders turned vengeful: vindictive guards and vindictive gigachads that never fight one another and shrug off most explosion damage, and any creature struck down by a direct hit from the spirit rises again as one of its minions. Let a village fall and you inherit a very angry ghost.

General Darius. The village's living champion. Only a stage-4 Brain spends the emeralds to march him out, and only against a true threat: an enemy with 100 or more health, or a player who has killed three or more villagers or guards within a few minutes. Darius wields the Alien Smasher and the full Limbo set (elytra chestplate included), so he gets every Limbo advantage: immune to fire and falling, clears harmful effects, breaks through soft blocks on contact, and below half health he opens up with a banish beam. He locks onto the single biggest threat and ignores everyone else, hunting it across the world before turning to the next, then walks home once the danger is gone. Along the way he conscripts idle guards into a squad, double-jumps straight through ceilings, and pillars out of any pit. He carries his own boss bar, and he cannot be banished.

The Limbo dimension

The Limbo

Beyond the war for the village lies the Limbo, a dark void dimension with a bedrock holding cell at its spawn. There are several ways in and out: drink a Limbo Potion to be banished, throw a Volatile Limbo Potion to banish others, or build a Green Limbo Portal by lighting a fake-obsidian frame. The portal runs at twice the Nether's compression, so a short walk in the Limbo covers a long way back home. When you are sent there, a Limbo Gravel marker is left where you stood, and destroying that marker pulls you back; you can also use a bed in the Limbo, the dedicated Limbo Bed or any bed at all, to return. Even falling out of the world leads here: the void drops you into the Limbo, then from the Limbo into the End, and only the End's void is fatal.

What waits in the dark. The Limbo is dotted with floating bedrock cubes of every size, their outer shells crusted with Forgotten Glowstone, a vivid green growth that lights the void. The larger cubes hide nests of ancient debris cradling Limbo Eggs, and those eggs hatch into Limbo Phantoms: tripled in size, glowing, and able to phase straight through bedrock to snatch creatures and haul them off. Hunt them for Limbo Membrane. The Limbo is not even fully sealed from your world: a small fraction of its chunks mirror their Overworld and Nether twins, copying that terrain in, after which blocks you change on either side are mirrored across, though living creatures never make the crossing.

Limbo gear. Craft Limbo Membrane into Limbo Ingots, then use a rare smithing template to forge netherite into the Limbo set:

Limbo armor with full knockback immunity, including a chestplate that doubles as an elytra
a Limbo tool set that out-mines netherite, with a pickaxe that breaks bedrock and reinforced deepslate
wearing the full set makes you immune to fire and falling, clears harmful effects, turns the Limbo Phantoms neutral, smashes soft blocks as you move, lets you walk through bedrock, and arms a keybound green banish beam on a 30 second cooldown

The Limbo Sage. A new villager profession that deals in rare and costly Limbo goods, from oddment blocks up to enchanted Limbo tools, though never Limbo armor. Threaten one and it hurls a Volatile Limbo Potion to banish you outright.

The Limbo raid. Linger too long in the Limbo and you carry a curse home: come back to a village and a Limbo raid descends, a ghostly, oversized version of the vanilla raid roster, far tougher than the mobs it imitates. The whole journey is charted by its own advancements.

Where you stand: Hero or Enemy of the Village

The village keeps score of how you treat it, and it responds in kind.

Become a Hero. Donate emeralds to the Brain Node and you earn Hero of the Village, one minute per emerald, stacking onto whatever time you have left, in any game mode. Helping the village win a raid earns it the usual way too. As a Hero you are trusted, and may freely open and take from the village's chests.

Become an Enemy. Cross the village and you are branded an Enemy of the Village for 20 minutes: strike a villager, guard, or golem, or steal from its stores. Any chest or barrel placed within a Brain Node's range is claimed by the village. Open one without Hero standing and you get a warning; take something anyway and the whole server hears that you are stealing from the village, your Hero standing is revoked, and every defender turns to hunt you. The mark sticks through milk and even the mod's own Immunity, and clears only when the timer runs out or you die.

Configs (version >= 1.0.2)

Tune the village to taste. Every setting lives in a single commented file (config/thevillagefightsback-common.toml) and can also be changed live in-game with /thevillagefightsback config <name> [value] (read it with no value, set it as an operator). Multipliers default to 1.0; most switches default on.

Multipliers (1.0 = vanilla pace):

multiplier_level_up_emerald_threshold: emerald cost for the Brain Node to reach each stage
multiplier_unit_spawn_frequency: how many times a day every node and the Brain Node spawn their units (2.0 = twice a day, evenly spaced)
multiplier_number_of_settlers: how many settlers each wave sends out
multiplier_brain_initiatives_cooldown: how often the Brain Node's reflexes fire
multiplier_air_strikes_cooldown: how often air strikes fire (kept separate from the reflexes)
multiplier_block_infection_speed / multiplier_block_infection_reach: how fast and how far the fertile zone spreads
multiplier_brain_influence_radius: the reach of every "within the Brain's radius" rule
multiplier_limbo_raiders: how many raiders a Limbo raid throws at you
multiplier_emerald_mobs_spawned_by_brain: how many emerald scouts the Brain summons (base 2 cats per settlement + 1 bat per sunset, times this)
organic_army_multiplier: scales the standing organic army the Brain can field (cap = emerald_mobs_max_number times this)
organic_spawn_budget_multiplier: scales how much banked organic mass the Brain spends per decision (bigger bursts)

Switches and values:

enable_block_infection: master switch for the village's own fertile-zone takeover (the Brain Node's natural spread)
enable_mob_infection: master switch for the Emerald faction; off means no emerald unit can ever appear (no conversion, no brain summon, not even a spawn egg)
enable_emerald_infestation: whether emerald conversions lay infested paths that slowly spread the fertile growth on their own (separate from enable_block_infection)
emerald_mobs_are_hostile_to_player: if on, emerald units hunt Enemy-of-the-Village players; off by default, leaving them neutral toward you (they only fight back when struck)
emerald_mobs_max_number: soft cap on emerald units near a player (to limit lag); emeralds far away don't count. Over the cap a new unit's health is poured into the nearest emerald instead of spawning, and an egg/summon tells you
enable_organic_mass_system: emerald kills bank "organic points" in the nearest Brain Node, which spends them to field its own emerald army instead of converting each kill directly (off = classic convert-on-kill)
creature_rocket_ / air_strike_rocket_ / emerald_virus_explosion_destroy_blocks and _set_blocks_on_fire: whether each kind of explosion breaks blocks or starts fires (it always still hits units)
enable_emerald_virus_explosion: master switch for the emerald-virus death explosion; off means no blast at all (no damage, no fire), while the emeraldger and emerald loot still appear
guards_drop_fire_grenade_upon_death: whether a slain stage-3 guard goes out in a fiery blast
brain_node_extinguishes_fire: the Brain Node douses fire in its radius for an emerald
air_strikes_appear_at_stage (1-4): the stage air strikes unlock at
unstable_limbo_gravel_HP_threshold: the HP above which a banished creature is "unstable" in Limbo
guards_spawning_with_general_darius: guards that spawn already under General Darius's command
general_darius_remains: Darius holds the field instead of returning home
emeraldgers_size_variation: emeraldgers sized by the HP of the host they sprang from
player_spawn_in_village / player_is_given_bell_at_spawn: where you start and whether you start with a Bell
player_is_hostile: you are permanently an Enemy of the Village and can never be its Hero
mega_expansion_mode: the Brain Node founds a new building every minute
mega_brutal_mode: every village unit gains permanent Strength/Regen/Resistance/Speed III, guards swing Alien Smashers, and golems teleport to their prey

Handy commands: /thevillagefightsback brain_stage_get and brain_stage_set <1-4>, village_status_report (the nearest Brain Node's report), and tp_to_nearest_node (warp above the nearest Brain Node).

Requirements and credits

Minecraft: 1.20.1
Mod loader: Forge
Required dependency: Guard Villagers (the village's guards are built on it). Playtested with guardvillagers-1.20.1-1.6.17.
Author: Alexandre Le Mercier