Guardians of Terraria was written in mid-2021 almost purely for fun. In the past I've made adventure maps for Minecraft that tell stories such as Assassin of Steve (where the default skin of Minecraft gets killed by an assassin that you have to track) and more recently a sci-fi one named Celestial Protocol (featuring lots of alien drones in space). While it is possible to create incredible experiences and gameplay in this medium, an advantage of directly writing stories is that you can focus more intensely on the story itself, on the journey of the characters, and also go wild with imagination. Plus, after years of telling Minecraft stories I wanted to try my hand at one of my other favourite games, Terraria, as that too has incredible story potential.

The four player characters were all designed to fall into one of Terraria's classes, the first letter of their name starting with the name of each class – William the Warrior, Robyn the Ranger, Sid the Summoner, and Meg the Mage. They also have different personalities that in some ways reflects their class. For example, William wants to protect everyone, in line with the high defence of the melee class.

The story itself is based on the progression of the game, while doing its best to fit around the official Terraria lore. It also builds upon the NPC (citizen) characters, taking inspiration from their existing dialogue and which other NPCs they like or dislike in order to flesh many of them out, some of them becoming prominent members of the supporting cast. This was one of my favourite things that came out of my experience in writing the story, and I had quite great fun finding ways of doing this, whether by amplifying their existing personality or relationships with each other, or coming up with whole new jokes (such as the Arms Dealer and Demolitionist competing to get the most kills but getting beaten by Luigi the Painter, who can win by doing absolutely nothing).

Originally the story didn't have a name, I just called it 'My Terraria fanfic,' because that was what it was basically. Even when I first created a Wattpad account in preparation for uploading my story it was still called that. I eventually came up with the name 'Guardians of Terraria.' It was inspired by two things – first the title Guardians of the Galaxy, which is a movie about five very different individuals coming together to stop a large threat and ultimately become the Guardians of the Galaxy. In some ways, a similar thing happens in this story. The other thing is, in the official Terraria lore the Wall of Flesh is described as the world's Guardian. The lore also implies Hardmode only starts so that the world can find a new Guardian, which I took to lead to the late reveal where the four player characters have become the new Guardians of the world. Hence, the Guardians of Terraria. It felt like the perfect name.

You've also likely noticed the different in-game screenshots I use for every chapter. It took quite a lot of work putting these together, perhaps more than was warranted, but it was fun and enjoyable. I created four different journey-mode characters, one for each of the player characters, and used Terrasavr to unlock every item in the duplication menu. From there, I worked my way through the story, taking screenshots with different builds and settings and the players doing different things. I did this all on my own and with just one account – in screenshots with more than one player I made use of image-editing tools to make them appear together, which led to me unintentionally learning a lot about Terraria's light engine (lol). If you zoom in you might be able to spot some evidence of image-splicing, but regardless, I think the results look amazing and it's one of my favourite things to come out of writing this story and putting it on Wattpad.

Now, here are some fun facts! Episode 9's Pirate Invasion is based on real events from one of my Terraria playthroughs. The pirates invaded very early in Hardmode and I basically couldn't do anything without dying over and over again. Yes, there are ways of cheesing the pirates, but where's the fun in that? I ended up doing what William, Sid and Meg did in the story – heading deep underground with only what was in my inventory. I found ways of gearing up, and soon returned to smash the pirates' heads in.

Some of the weapon choices and strategies are also based on my experience in playing Terraria. For example, when William took down the Flying Dutchman he used the Flying Knife, which I have also done myself on a melee playthrough, and when he took down the Destroyer he used Shadowflame Knives and the flying slime mount from the Gelatinous Pillion, both of which could bounce on the Destroyer. This was actually inspired from two different playthroughs, one where Shadowflame Knives were involved and the other (my first 1.4 one) where I used the Gelatinous Pillion.

The individual chapter that is my favourite is Episode 13.3, mostly because I found writing from the Golem's perspective very interesting. My favourite complete episode is Episode 15, due to the big battle between all of the NPCs against both the Pumpkin and Frost Moons and then Martian Madness, and of course the trick William uses to bring the fight with Robyn away from the Lunatic Cultist. The chapter I found hardest to write was Episode 7.2, mostly the party section as it took me a while to figure out how Robyn and William should react to each other and also have Robyn run out in fear.

The next thing you might be curious about is... the sequel. As the ending and the epilogue hint at more to come. Yes, there is a sequel in the works. As of publishing the Behind the Scenes it is not finished or anywhere near ready, but I have started it and it's already turning out to be quite incredible so far. If you carefully look through some of the chapters you might be able to guess what it will be about...

There's not much else I can think of saying, so I will end the Behind the Scenes here. I extend a big thank you for reading all the way to the end. If you voted, even bigger thank you, and if you commented and engaged with the story, awesome. If you want to know when the sequel will be released, follow me here on Wattpad and keep an eye on my announcements, and I will post semi-regular updates on my progress with the sequel. Maybe I'll even put up some excerpts or other teasers ;)

You can also join my discord server using the following link, where I will be posting the same updates, and there you can also chat with me and other fans of this book.

https://discord.gg/EWghT6Aa5R

But anyway, that's all for now. Until next time!

– Cavinator1