Friend of the blog Fifth has posted on the sights of Minecraft. I played a lot of Minecraft multiplayer back in the good old days, and I'm familiar with the feeling of walking through a digital graveyard. You're in a world the size of seven earths, and while somewhere out there there might be three or four people — you can even talk to them if they're feeling talkative — you'll never, ever meet them. To augment the first list, here are twelve more sights of Minecraft (or from the ATM modpack) which you could also run into somewhere on the Outdoor Survival map.
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| Source: The Red Tower, Giorgio de Chirico |
- A small homestead with a small herb garden is completely ringed by a glittering wall of faceted obsidian fifty yards high. Water pumped from an underground spring pours over the exterior of the wall in a neverending falls.
- In this part of the world enormous monoliths of soil have been raised for no clear reason. Each monolith is a perfect cube thirty yards to a side. They stretch for miles, with the earth all around them scraped bare to provide material. A few have been dug out by hapless treasure hunters — apparently, after three or four strenuous excavations, they lost interest. Hundreds still remain.
- Sheets of hammered copper form a solar disc in the heart of the desert. Time has turned them green as grass — a year? Ten?
- Ten hollowed-out dragon eggs house ten enormous bees in a flask-shaped hole in the ground. The hives are full of fire, not honey. The bees are irritable.
- A lonely mountain pass, carved into a monstrous face. The only safe path runs into the thing's mouth and out the back of its empty skull.
- In a damp swamp, a copse of trees. Oak and apple, birch and blackthorn, mighty pine and trembling dogwood, bowing palm and tangled yew, trees that grow sorcerous fruit and trees that give magical lumber; the saplings must have been brought here from every land in the world.
- A brick tower has been sunk into the seabed. If you're brave, you can descend the spiral stairs all the way down to secret tunnels beneath the waves.
- Around the walls of a shining city, just beyond their sacred boundaries, some unspeakable war was fought. Ravines split the earth and lead down into unknowable darkness. Fragile catwalks of stone criss-cross the blasted hellscape. Pools of supernatural fire wait for unlucky steps, while other parts of the field are flooded or frozen solid or so incredibly irradiated that life is impossible. Vengeful demons are half-bound in shoddy cages. Hungry thieves armed with clubs or heavy stones are crouched in the rubble, waiting to ambush wanderers. If you must go, as I know you must, go carefully. But if you value your life, go quickly.
- A hill with faces carved sheer, topped with stone walls. Tattered banners still fly but the interior of the fort has been totally ravaged. Nothing of any value remains.
- An impossible bridge chaining two distant mountain peaks. One can cross leagues here without touching, or even being visible from, the ground.
- A labyrinth under the earth. Dozens of corridors, perfectly parallel and perfectly perpendicular, have stripped the earth of her riches. Who knows how many poor fools have lost their way in the unbroken dark?
- A lever on the wall shoves you into a pit. A lonely snowman is trapped at the bottom.
