Luxintrus and Noxintrus: What The Split Actually Did

The Split is a short beat with a long shadow. Mouthpiece kills Luxintrus, her mask breaks, and Noxintrus splits off from her, appearing alongside her when they respawn.

Two people where there was one. Then Noxintrus goes to ground in Oceana and starts building an investigation against RAT.

What makes it work isn't the spectacle. It's that the story had already spent an arc setting it up.

The setup nobody calls a setup

Before the Split, Luxintrus is losing control of her body. It happens repeatedly, and during one episode she tears out Winsweep's right eye and damages his mask.

She isn't in control. The story is explicit about that. But the damage is real, and it's the beginning of the grievance that eventually consumes both of them.

So by the time the mask breaks, the audience has already watched Luxintrus do things Luxintrus didn't choose. The Split doesn't introduce the idea that there's something else in there. It gives it a body and a name.

The division of labour

Once separated, the two are consistently allocated the same way: Noxintrus does what Luxintrus won't.

The clearest case is Seven Million Blocks. Noxintrus and Luxintrus persuade EightSidedSquare to backport brushes so they can dig up the shards of the Broken Lesser Divinity. They meet Diansu in Oceana. Noxintrus and Diansu pressure Luxintrus to use it on RAT — she's earned his trust, she'd have surprise, whereas RAT expects a fight from Noxintrus.

Luxintrus refuses.

So Noxintrus steals it and does it themself. Everyone in the know spends the following stretch believing RAT is permanently dead.

That's the relationship in one scene. Same information, same weapon, same target, opposite answer — and the half that says no doesn't get to stop the half that says yes.

Where they diverge

Follow them separately from there and the paths are almost mirrored.

Noxintrus allies with Winsweep — the man Luxintrus is at war with. Together they run the End Portal investigation, interrogate half the server, kidnap Astronyu, and blackmail Luxintrus using her own fish. Noxintrus also steals an experimental weapon from Oceana's laboratory and tries to permanently kill Winsweep with it, combined with the Broken Lesser Divinity — stopped only by Viceroy Boolean's raven. Then returns it at Diansu's request.

So Noxintrus is not simply "the bad one". Noxintrus is the one who acts, including against their own allies.

Luxintrus, meanwhile, receives the L'Ancre from Nautilux, is exiled to the Log Cabin, has her fish used against her, lies under interrogation to build the Neverend trap, and then rallies the server's neutral members into The Revolution.

One builds a case. The other builds a coalition.

The reunion that isn't

They end up on the same side, which is the part people miss.

After the Neverend trap removes Winsweep, Noxintrus and Talon for six months, and after Luxintrus kills Diansu in the duel that ends The Revolution, the pieces rearrange. At Operation: Kill Mouthpiece, RAT and Luxintrus plan to kill Mouthpiece with the Dusk's Epitaph — and Noxintrus joins their cause.

The person who split off from Luxintrus, hid in Oceana, and used the Broken Lesser Divinity on RAT ends up standing with both of them against the entity that caused the Split in the first place.

It fails. Lux's Charter contract is transferred to RAT, and she loses her arm.

The cost

Mouthpiece caused the Split by killing her. The attempt to kill Mouthpiece costs her a limb and her contract — the contract passing to the man Noxintrus tried to permanently kill on her behalf.

Then The Funeral, where she sacrifices her existence to save RAT.

Which closes the loop with some force. The Split happened because something in Luxintrus was acting without her consent. Her last act is the most complete exercise of consent available: choosing to spend her own existence, for a specific person, on purpose.

Why it's the best idea on the server

Most SMP body-horror is an event. The Split is a structure. Once there are two of them, every subsequent decision Luxintrus makes is legible as a choice, because the story has a standing demonstration of what the other answer looks like — walking around, in Oceana, doing it.

The Charter, the End Portals, Oceana's war: all of those are plots. The Split is characterisation with a plot attached, and it's the reason Luxintrus's ending lands as hard as it does.

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Facts drawn from the community-run Content SMP Wiki (CC BY-SA 4.0), written up independently.