Guard Villagers

They spawn in villages in groups of six, equipped with either an iron sword or a crossbow. They're prepared to fight any threat to the village (possibly including you!). To make new guards, crouch and right click on a nitwit or unemployed villager with a sword or crossbow.

Guards can 'gossip' with villagers and will trust the player to open their inventory if they have a high enough reputation, have hero of the village, or was converted by the player. Right clicking will open up the guard inventory, allowing you to give them armor, and swap out their weapons! For their offhand slot, you can either give them a shield, or some food. If they have a shield, they will use it to block attacks. Crossbow guards with a shield won't be able to kick enemies if they're blocking. If they have food (or a potion), they will start eating or drinking if they are low on health. Clicking the patrol button will allow you to set patrol points for guards, forcing them to stand still and protect the area currently around them.

If you have hero of the village, they will gain the ability to follow and fight for you when you click the follow button.

Other minor additions include:

Illusioners, previously removed, now appear in raids*(false by default)

Big-headed baby villagers from bedrock have been added*(true by default)

Witches attack villagers. *true by default 

In raids, illagers kill any animal they see. *false by default 

Villagers and Illagers are scared of polar bears. *true by default 

Clerics heal low-health guards, villagers, and players with Hero of the Village using regeneration potions, and smiths repair iron golems with ingots.

Villagers that have excess food in their internal inventory will give food to the guards. 

Can you port to an older version/fabric?

No. Maintaining one version is hard enough already, and I've never learned fabric. However, the mod's license permits you to make ports yourself. A fabric version of this mod also currently exists.

Can you port to Windows 10 Edition/Xbox/Mobile?

No. Mods for the Bedrock ediiton use a completely different framework that I've also never learned. The mod's license allows you to try yourself, but since the modding API on Bedrock is less capable than forge you probably won't be able to replicate all of it.

Why don't guards have a workstation like other villager professions?

I haven't thought of a suitable block that would let you have a large number of guards without being inconvenient to store.

How would you make guards spawn with modded equipment?

You can make them spawn with modded equipment by making a datapack that overrides the guard_chestplate, guard_helmet, guard_legs, guard feet, guard_main_hand or guard_off_hand json files. If you don't know how to create a datapack, I suggest looking into this tutorial on the Minecraft wiki https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials/Creating_a_data_pack. Make sure to target the guardvillagers folder and then create your loot_tables folder inside it. 

Is this mod compatible with X?

Try and see!