The Battle of Bonesburrow, Explained: The Death That Nobody Planned

Bonesburrow is the load-bearing event of Content SMP's first arc. Three separate long-running plots start here, and none of them were the point of the battle.

The setup

The Mason contracted with The Seven, Ancient Debris spawn rates changed, and five people kept it quiet. RAT found out and, with ClownPierce, killed everyone involved in the Easter Slaughter.

That should have settled it. It didn't, because The Mason was unaccounted for on the day.

So RAT recruits members for an assault on Bonesburrow. Astronyu recruits defenders. Both sides actually show up, which on this server is not a given.

Before the fighting: the will

The first thing that matters happens before anyone swings anything.

The Mason, expecting to lose, signs Bonesburrow over to Diansu.

This is a will. He knows how this ends and he's deciding who inherits. And it's the single most consequential administrative act in Content SMP history, because everything Diansu becomes starts here:

• Diansu holds Bonesburrow.
• Diansu grants Winsweep administrative control of it, giving the future antagonist his first legitimate authority.
• Diansu's power base eventually becomes Oceana, the nation that declares war at a theme park, annexes Spawn, and takes two arcs to dislodge.

A dying man wanted his house to go to someone. Two arcs later that someone is running the server.

Before the fighting: the defection

The second thing is stranger, and easy to miss.

Astronyu — who recruited the defenders — warns RAT about The Mason's defences. In exchange, he asks for protection. Not from RAT. From "the entity that comes after the Mason's demise."

Read that again. Before the battle, Astronyu knows:

1. That The Mason is going to die.
2. That something arrives because he dies.
3. That it will be dangerous enough to negotiate cover for in advance.

The next arc — the whole Haunting arc — is built on nobody knowing what's following RAT. RAT thinks it's a ghost. It takes a mid-air reveal aboard a burning airship to establish that it's an entity called Mouthpiece.

Astronyu had the shape of it before the battle started. How, the story doesn't say. Whether The Mason told him, whether it came through the Charter, whether he inferred it — unestablished. But he traded a battle's outcome for it, which suggests he took it seriously.

It also means his defection wasn't opportunism. He was buying insurance.

The battle

RAT's side wins. The Mason dies permanently.

The wiki is specific that this was unintended on RAT's part, and that detail carries the whole event. The protagonist of the server commits its first irreversible act by accident, having meant only to win a fight.

The fighting also blows a hole through the centre of Bonesburrow. It stays there. Winsweep later administers a settlement with a crater in it, which is a reasonably efficient piece of environmental storytelling.

What starts here

The Haunting. Something follows RAT home immediately. He mistakes it for The Mason's ghost. It's Mouthpiece, and it will still be alive at the end of the fourth arc, having outlived a bombed airship and a dedicated assassination attempt.

Oceana. Via the will, via Diansu, via Winsweep's administrative post.

FreakGenius's grudge. He kept The Mason's secret, and he does not forget that Astronyu sold out The Mason's defences. Arcs later, at The World's Faire, he defects to Oceana specifically to get at Astronyu over it. That grudge outlasts nearly every alliance on the server.

The thing about proportion

What makes Bonesburrow work is that nobody in it is a villain.

The Mason altered spawn rates and kept it quiet — a serious thing on a server whose whole premise is shared mechanics, but not a killing offence. RAT's response to being deceived was to kill everyone involved. Astronyu defended his friend right up until he had a better offer. Diansu accepted an inheritance.

Everyone behaves comprehensibly, and the outcome is a permanent death nobody wanted, a crater, and the founding conditions of a war.

That's the register Content SMP operates in for the next three arcs.

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Facts drawn from the community-run Content SMP Wiki (CC BY-SA 4.0), written up independently. The wiki orders these events but does not date them, so no dates are given here.