Ancestries

Ancestries

Pick a species. Get its traits. Play Minecraft as something other than human.

Ancestries is a server-side origins mod. Every player chooses one of 10 ancestries, each with a set of always-on passive traits and (for most) one or two activatable powers on a cooldown.

Vanilla players join with nothing installed

No mod file for players. No custom blocks, items, entities, screens, or keybinds. Everything runs on the server using stock game mechanics — attributes, status effects, and server-side block breaking — so anyone can connect with a completely vanilla client and still be a dragon, a creeper, or a wall-crawling spider.

How it works

• An operator places a clickable NPC in spawn with /origin npc (or players run /origin).
• Right-click it to open a chest-GUI menu — one icon per ancestry. Hover to read the full trait list, click to lock it in. Choosing is one-way (operators can reset with /origin clear <player>).
• Powers fire on a sneak gesture: double-tap sneak for power 1, triple-tap for power 2. /power lists your powers and cooldowns. Feedback shows on the action bar — no custom HUD.

The 10 ancestries

Ancestry	The idea
Dwarf	Tiny (fits a 1-block tunnel), permanent Haste, extra armour. Vein-mines ore clusters; launches straight up with no fall damage.
Enderman	Other endermen treat you as kin. Blink up to 40 blocks along your look; summon endermite "kin" that swarm what you fight.
Dragon	Big, armoured, immune to fire and lava, no fall damage. Rocket skyward and glide on invisible wings; breathe fire in a short cone. Can't wear diamond/netherite.
Drowned	Breathing is reversed — you breathe underwater and drown in air. Dolphin's Grace, fast underwater mining, Conduit Power. Dash through water.
Cheetah	Fastest thing on land and the most fragile (8 hearts). Burst of Speed V for a chase; a pounce that doubles your first falling hit.
Creeper	Immune to explosion damage and knockback. Self-detonate as an escape; blast a 3×3×8 tunnel through terrain. Get struck by lightning to go Charged.
Spy	A 1-heart assassin with no armour. Turn invisible and untouchable by mobs; prime a strike that drops any target to 1 heart. Silent to sculk.
Keeper	A beast-master with no powers of their own — command a pack of wolves, skeletons, or bees that fight what you fight.
Wither	Armoured undead, 14 hearts, immune to the Wither effect. Two nether hounds at your side, a wither-skull attack, banked double jumps — but sunlight burns you.
Spider	Climbs walls, takes no fall damage, small hitbox. Fire a 3×3 web patch onto any surface; inject poison on your next hit. Only chestplate + leggings slots work.

Every trait, cooldown, and drawback is tunable in config/ancestries.json (/origin reload to apply).

Requirements

• Minecraft 26.2, Fabric Loader 0.19.3+
• Fabric API
• Java 25 on the server

Install: drop the jar in your server's mods/ folder alongside Fabric API. Nothing goes to clients.

Commands

Command	Who	What
/origin	anyone	open the menu, or show your locked ancestry
/origin list · /origin info <id>	anyone	browse ancestries
/origin pick <id>	anyone	choose (fails if already chosen)
/power · /power 1 · /power 2	anyone	use your powers
/origin npc	operator	place a selection NPC
/origin set <players> <id>	operator	assign / change
/origin clear <players>	operator	reset (unlocks the menu)
/origin reload	operator	re-read the config

Credits & license

Inspired by the Origins mod by Apace100. Ancestries is an independent implementation — it contains no Origins or Apoli code and does not depend on them.

Released under the MIT license.