Game Theory: The Stolen Souls of Minecraft

The host has been investigating the Illagers, evil villager mobs that live in secret woodland mansion compounds. Previous theories concluded that Illagers, Vexes, and Ravagers were all villagers exiled for experimenting with life and death powers.

• Ravagers are the only mob with totems of undying that revive players at death • Ravagers share physical similarities with villagers: green eyes and unibrows • Both Ravagers and villagers share identical honking sounds • Illagers have rooms filled with wool in Steve's outfit colors, implying replication attempts

The existing evidence is weaker than a wooden axe against obsidian, requiring further investigation to strengthen the connections between these mobs and their supposed villager origins.

The host discovered new evidence that proves Evockers are manipulating life and death, but not in the originally theorized way. This breakthrough will be explored through investigating Vindicators and Vexes.

Vindicators have blue eyes, unlike other Illagers with green eyes. This blue eye color was intentionally changed back from green in snapshot 18w47b, indicating it's important to their character backstory.

• Woodland mansions contain statues of villager heads with grey Illager skin and a blue lapis lazuli cube in the middle • These statues feature connected unibrows, a villager trait, not an Illager trait • The statue design suggests a transformation process from villager to Vindicator

Evockers are kidnapping villagers and implanting lapis lazuli into their heads, converting them into mindless rage monsters called Vindicators. These blue lapis injections control the transformed villagers.

Vindicators were brainwashed or forced to become evil by Evockers. The name 'vindicate' means to clear someone of blame, suggesting these mobs are victims trying to prove their innocence rather than natural villains.

• Evockers cannot breed or reproduce; their numbers are fixed in any world • Vindicators also have limited numbers and do not breed • This fixed population constraint forces Evockers to create new members through magical means

Since Evockers cannot naturally increase their ranks, they kidnap villagers from surrounding communities and magically transform them into Vindicators to expand their forces.

According to the Minecraft mob bestiary, Vindicators are explicitly described as stupid, forgetting their victims after short periods. This mirrors the brain damage caused by lapis injection into their skulls.

The bestiary compares Vindicators to zombies, describing their bodies as only slightly tougher than zombie flesh. This reinforces the idea of Vindicators as mindless, brainwashed soldiers rather than true individuals.

Naming a Vindicator 'Johnny' makes it extremely violent against all other mobs except Illagers. This is a reference to the movie The Shining, where the protagonist Jack Torrance becomes a murderous madman.

In The Shining, Jack Torrance is an innocent man corrupted by evil supernatural forces in a haunted hotel, driven to madness and violence against those around him.

This Easter egg hints that Vindicators are innocent villagers corrupted by the evil magic of Evockers, transforming them from normal beings into violent attackers.

Vindicators are left trying to vindicate themselves, seeking to prove they are not actually guilty of the crimes they commit while under Evoker control.

• Vexes are flying hostile mobs summoned by Evockers to attack players • They can pass through any block type including water without taking damage • They glow in the dark but do not cast light onto surrounding environments • They are among the most challenging regular hostile mobs in the game

Individual Vexes produce overlapping voices in their sound effects, indicating they are compositions of multiple souls fused together. Their shrieking, laughing, and ghostly sounds reveal this multi-soul construction.

The Minecraft mob bestiary states the Vex's body composition is unknown but likely not flesh. The evidence suggests Vexes are beings composed entirely of spirits and souls, not physical bodies.

Evockers can summon the souls of the dead to do their bidding, demonstrating their power over life and death. They weaponize these spirits into flying attack creatures.

In Minecraft Dungeons, players collect souls from defeated mobs to fuel abilities from specialty artifacts. Souls represent spirits of the dead used as an energy source throughout the game.

The Minecraft Dungeons team tweeted that true adventurers put their souls into everything they do, and the truest adventurers put other people's souls into it too, confirming soul harvesting as canonical.

• Eternal Knife boosts soul gathering • Bow of Lost Souls enhances soul collection • Soul Fists are soul-powered weapons

Soul sand in the Nether is confirmed to be composed of dead people's souls. This child-friendly game explicitly canonizes that souls of the deceased are harvestable energy sources.

Vexes behave like spirits: they glow without casting light and pass through blocks like ghosts. This behavior matches souls depicted in Minecraft Dungeons, confirming Vexes are spirit-based creatures.

The Spirit Knife, a ceremonial weapon empowered using Illager vocations, holds the wrath of spirits. This shows Illagers can harness and weaponize the anger of the dead.

• Evockers draw upon souls contained within soul sand of the Nether • They use souls in attack forms like Vexes • They create new creatures using souls • They potentially infuse living or dead beings with life using soul magic

Evockers have definitive control over death itself through their mastery of soul manipulation, demonstrating true powers over both life and death in the Minecraft universe.