Hello,

this is an ancient creature made by the ancestors of the piglin tribes to oversee and maintain the vast warped and crimson forests in the Nether.


How the mechanical elephant got in the Nether

Piglins originated from a tribe of people who once lived on the Earth's surface but were banished into the Nether for opening a portal to the Nether. (I know this sounds stupid but it'll make sense in the end).
They were excellent craftsmen and had an extensive technological understanding. For a tribe, they were far developed. One day, they figured out how to open a portal to another dimension. In this newly discovered world, they found materials that didn't exist on Earth and therefore had a high value. Trade in and out of the portal flourished. To keep the new civilisation in a good shape, they designed a machine that would take care of the Nether forests, as they were the only source of highly demanded warped and crimson wood (people on Earth adored it for its otherworldly color) and to keep the forests at bay which had the tendency to grow all over the place.
When designing the machine, they took inspiration from tribes on Earth using elephants to move logs around. They made their machine the shape of an elephant and gave it a trunk which allowed it to move trees if they were growing in the wrong place, equipped it with four eyes for better all-round vision, gave it four tusks with machine guns in two of them to defend itself, hung many lanterns on it so that they could find it more easily in the dark Nether and hard-coded in its mechanical brain to always keep the forests in a healthy condition.
This way, the pioneers in the Nether could expand without their settlements being overgrown, even during long absence (there were many expeditions to explore the Nether which often required settlements to be abandoned for a while). Also, with the elephant maintaining the forests, there would always be enough warped and crimson wood to export.
For the elephant to be autonomous, they implemented a heat exchange system that powered the elephant using thermal energy. This thermal energy was provided when the elephant drank lava of which there was plenty in the Nether (so basically a stirling engine powered by hot lava).
To withstand rock falls and to keep the mechanism safe from the spiky surface, they fully armored the elephant's back and belly. The trunk also was armored because it would be the most endangered part in terms of scratches by rocks or trees. The head was completely armored, too, obviously because it contained the mechanical brain.
So far, life was good: the elephant took care of the forests and thus helped the pioneers explore and colonize the Nether while guaranteeing a steady supply of warped and crimson wood to the Overworld.

But, you know, fear changes peoples' minds...
The portal to the Nether created strange noises and once in a while creatures from the Nether would escape to the overworld. Soon, environmental disasters appeared strangely often and in their dispair and lack of knowledge the people from the Overworld blamed it on the portal. And to most people it made sense. Didn't they have a much more peaceful life before the portal to an infernal dimension was opened? When there were no scary noises, no scary creatures exiting the portal and no massed environmental disasters? Yes, they were sure if they destroyed the portal, everything would go back to normal. But that was not enough. To ensure there would never be such horrible events again, they wanted to wipe the portal and everyone who knew how to create one from existence.
In a stormy night, the scholars and scientists and everyone who had worked on opening the portal was banished into the nether by their own people. Since they were too few to fight back physically, they tried to explain the environmental disasters had nothing to do with the portal but their words were carried away by the storm's rumble. No one listened. The portal broke down the same night.
Without the supply from the overworld, the people in the Nether started eating what they could find: fungi with funny or poisenous effects, their allies, even parts of warped and crimson trees. Over time, they developed into what would later be known as the "zombie piglin" (they didn't get enough water either). Civilization in the Overworld collapsed like every other society after some time, no matter how developed it was.
The elephant however, self-sustaining as it had been built, continued to tend the Nether forests indefinitely – as if nothing had happened.


Enjoy!