Karasu

Karasu turns you into a crow. Walk, sprint, sneak and fly, and the crowd that scatters when you teleport arrives as crows instead of a puff of particles.

Works on Paper, Spigot, Purpur, Folia and Bukkit. Java 25.

Features

• Morphs into a crow, with walking, sprinting, sneaking and flying states.
• Scatters a swarm of crows every time you teleport, instead of a particle puff.
• The swarm follows a curved flight path out of the arrival point, so it reads as a flock rather than a spray.
• Optional self view, so you can see your own crow in third person.
• Optional hiding of your own held items and armor while morphed, so they do not float around the crow in F5.
• Renders with BetterModel, ModelEngine, or as a vanilla bat, depending on what your server has.

Model engines

Karasu draws the crow through whichever model engine you have. All of them are optional.

• BetterModel is used automatically when installed, and is the recommended option. It is the engine that currently targets the newest Minecraft versions.
• ModelEngine is the fallback for older setups. On very new servers, pin model-engine: modelengine and Karasu will warn you if it is not usable there.
• vanilla needs no model plugin at all. The crow becomes a bat. With LibsDisguises installed it is a real disguise, client-side, so damage, targeting and the tab list all behave normally. Without it, Karasu spawns a real bat and hides you, which is cosmetic only: that bat can be attacked separately from you, so Karasu warns you at startup and points at LibsDisguises.

Set the engine with model-engine in config.yml. The default, auto, prefers BetterModel and falls back to ModelEngine.

Crow models

BetterModel loads models from its own directory, so the models ship as a separate archive rather than inside the plugin jar.

1. Download Karasu-models-<version>.zip.
2. Unpack it into plugins/BetterModel/models/.

Both a perched and a flying crow are included. Restart the server, or reload BetterModel, afterwards.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.4 or newer for the full plugin. 1.21.9 or newer for the departure mannequin, which is a 1.21.9 entity; below that the crows burst immediately instead of pausing first, and nothing else changes.
• Java 25.
• A model engine, if you want the authored crow. Otherwise use model-engine: vanilla.

Configuration

config.yml is generated on first run and documents every option inline. The settings you are most likely to touch:

• karasu.visual.model-engine — auto, bettermodel, modelengine, vanilla or none.
• karasu.visual.self-view — see your own crow in third person.
• karasu.visual.hide-held-item-from-self and hide-armor-from-self — stop your gear showing through the crow. Needs packetevents.
• karasu.swarm.crow-count and swarm-distance — how big the teleport swarm is and how far it scatters.
• karasu.swarm.min-teleport-distance — teleports shorter than this play no swarm, so stepping across a chunk border stays quiet.

Commands live under /karasu, including /karasu reload and /karasu debug for checking which model engine is active.