Chapter Text
[Current track playing: C418 - Minecraft]
The opening credits start and list off a couple names, before the scene fades to a blue morning sky, overlooking the grassy plains of the Overworld. The plains are speckled with trees, mainly oak, and also a plethora of farm animals, from cows to sheep-- chickens to pigs. The camera then pans to a burly man laying underneath an oak tree, the man was 6 feet in height with tanned skin and dark brown hair + iconic beard (yes it is a beard, sorry smiley Steve believers), his clothing is mostly shades of blue apart from a brown belt lining his jeans, and his eyes soon open to be blue? Purple..? Blurple, to appease both parties.
Wake up.
The first thing he sees is a blue sky with white clouds, half-covered by dark green leaves held up by a brown wooden body. The first thing he feels is the rush of air entering his lungs once he takes a deep breath.. inhale, exhale- and the soft, slightly wet grass beneath his figure, tickling his arms and his hands, palms and fingers- and the warmth of the ascending sun's rays, fully showering his legs while creeping through gaps in the tree's shade, to his torso and face. The first thing he smells is a faint, lingering scent of fresh dew from a previous rain shower-- well that explains the wet grass. The first thing he hears is the wind, rustling through the tree branches above, the mooing of a healthy, well-rounded cow, and faint crunching as a herd of sheep feast upon taller tufts of grass. Finally, the first thought in his head, what could it be..?
'It's a nice breeze.'
...
'But how did I get here?'
...
'You're a long way from home, Steve.'
'Is that my name? It does sound familiar..'
The man, now confirmed to be Steve, slowly stands up, using the trunk of the tree for support as he ascends from laying to a sitting position, before finally getting up on his feet. Looking around for a moment, he takes in the scenery, of the animals and the landscape, before fully stepping out into the sun, and giving his limbs a biiiiiiig stretch, short grunts easing into long, low groans as joints pop and crackle, and blood-flow evens out in every part of his body, he can't fully scope just how long he has been laying under that tree, nor why. In fact, he can't remember anything more beyond his waking moments, and with nothing in his pockets, stranded in the middle of nowhere, he's unsure of what to do next.
'You will need some tools to make shelter, wood is the origin of all crafting, I trust you'll figure out the rest.'
The mysterious voice in his head turns out to be right, as his fists somehow work with many forgotten years of muscle memory and punch a gaping hole right through the tree that sheltered his once unconscious self. In under a minute all the wood from the tree is stored in Steve's pockets, and he stays to watch the leaves slowly fall, catching a sapling or two- and later a red apple, in the midst of it. At the end of it, it didn't feel right to leave the space the oak once occupied empty, so he plants the sapling right there in the naked dirt, before stepping back to check his inventory.
One apple, one sapling, five oak logs.
Surely he can do something with that, and he's right, resting each log against his abdomen while he pulls it apart into quarters with his bare hands, grants him with four planks, times five makes twenty whole planks. Now he is getting somewhere. Taking the original four planks he begins to align them in various ways, starting with one and making it up to four, seeing the opportunity to make buttons, sticks.. and a Crafting Table. The voice was right on the mark, wood is the origin of all crafting!
...
Some time passes by and Steve now has basic wooden tools and is currently exploring the plains, not far from his waking point as he follows the river down the westward side of its length, east from his point of view, chopping down trees from a small forest for their wood (and occasional saplings/apples) and replanting them as he walks, through said forest and into another part of the plains where he finds.. a vast, open space, slightly elevated, but with a bit of terraforming it could be the perfect spot to build a house! With his shovel he clears excess blocks off the otherwise short, flat hill, and lays out a square foundation made of oak planks, along with some simple- oh, he doesn't have any wood left.. back to the forest he goes.
By the time he returns to the foundation, the sun has started to set, the skies grow dark, shifting from a vibrant blue to shades of purple and orange-red as he stops to watch dusk run its course.. the consequence to that being him left in the cover of night, with an unfinished house. His saturated skin crawls as the drawing silence is occasionally- then frequently, broken by various sounds, from sickly groans to the rattling of bones, hissing, inching, louder and louder--
"Ough!"
Steve is taken aback by a sudden sharpness plunging into the side of his breast, and like a deer he runs immediately, to hide behind the half-constructed walls of his property only to hear the sickening sound of eight legs scaling the wood, thus being forced to run again. Another sharpness flies through his thigh, and he stumbles, eeking at the pain as he continuously stops at dead ends filled with monsters, or more open space with nowhere else to hide, but then he looks at his shovel, still moving around the grassy fields to keep from being cornered, and has an idea. With just enough distance between him and the incoming horde, he digs straight down, and once fully submerged he covers the top of the hole with the dirt accumulated from digging, thus planting himself in like a seed.. a safe, still alive seed.
Darkness surrounds him, and as much as he has grown to dislike the dark, his breathing still slows to a calm, and his hands slowly feel around to assess the damage, long and thin poles seem to be embedded where the pain was, one sharp point deep in his flesh, the other protruding like a broken bone. Arrows, these are arrows, but who-- what shot them? At him? It's hard to see in the dark, so he didn't get a chance to see his assailants. At least now, now he can focus on thinking.
'Are you there?'
'Always.'
'Who are you?'
'An old friend of yours..'
'An old friend that I cannot see? How strange.'
'That will soon change, you'll begin to remember as you sleep, and I'll answer any question you ask.. to the best of my own memory.'
...
'Not once have you spoken aloud since dawn, church mouse. How come? You'd speak your mind as loud as the fog, long before this.. incident.'
'.. fog?'
No response, in fact, the rest of the night is followed by silence, and Steve is left wondering. What fog? What incident..? Should he be worried about his own silence? He doesn't think so, not once in the day has he found much reason to exercise his vocal chords, aside from the moment he was first shot at, though, those sounds were forced out of him, seemingly. Hmm, he's starting to feel hungry, all that running sure burned through a lot of energy.. fortunately he's not left fully destitute, he still has those apples from his lumbering trips, and they are still fresh. He will appreciate the following sweetness and soothing texture for the rest of his days.
...
[Current track playing: C418 - Haggstrom]
Time skips to the morning, where Steve climbs out of the hole and finishes working on his house, which, for the time being, is a simple wood hut, just big enough for the bare essentials, though he intends to build an actual home later on. He gives his wooden sword a couple swings, aiming at the grass when out pops some seeds, wheat seeds, which he uses to start a small farm after tilling the soil by the river, seeds planted in rows, one space apart to promote faster growth. While admiring his handiwork in agriculture, he notices that the arrows once stuck in him have gone away, leaving behind scars where they pierced him, at the same time he sees another scar that he hasn't noticed before, a long cut trailing down his forearm.
'Now where did I get that from?'
In the meantime, he decides to put his pickaxe to the test, wandering further into the plains in search of a cave or any exposed stone, and ends up finding a small tunnel littered with a few specks of coal.. which turn out to be huge veins that run deep into the earth. Wow, that's a lot of coal! He soon returns home with a bunch of coal and a bunch of cobblestone, which he uses to upgrade his tools and craft a new contraption.. the furnace. Pairing some coal with the remainder of his sticks gives him torches, which he uses to bring some light into his hut and secure the area around it, a hunch tells him that the monsters of the night will be warded off by the small fires... And the hunch is right, barely any monsters come to harass him the following midnight, and this time he is able to see the stars in all their glory.
...
It is only now that Steve remembers sleep, as he wonders why he feels so drowsy, even in the coziness of the dirt hole from the first night, he didn't get much shut-eye, the wood floor seems less so, though it was warmer with the torches around.. he needs a proper bed. At the break of dawn he ventures out to find sheep, coming across a herd drinking from the river- they are unbothered by his presence, and he gingerly reaches out to pet one. Sweet multi-colored Jeb, that is a soft pelt! Surely there's a way to collect it without hurting this passive animal, and there is, shears.. but shears require iron, iron that he doesn't have yet. Well, off to get some!
This time he crosses the river to explore the plains on the other side, and he soon comes across a proper cave, entering the depths with a torch in one hand, stone pickaxe in the other. For a little while he doesn't see much other than coal, and what he soon finds to be copper, but no iron, not until he nearly falls into a gravel sinkhole that shows, for a glimmer of a second, that pale ore.. and also a mosh-pit of monsters. No way in low lava seas will he go down there unprotected, not without armor, and certainly not without food. Upon making his way back home he checks on the growing wheat crop, only to be disappointed to see that it hasn't grown any more since he left, not only that, he doesn't have many apples left, and they do not heal or fill that much. He will have to find something else.
... Cows?
Cows!
Steve remembers seeing a bunch of cows in the first part of the plains, so he ventures there, back where he started, and lo and behold.. cows. Lots of them, round (WHAT?!?!?!), lively, and grazing. The sight is almost too beautiful to touch.. almost. He readies his axe, walks in, and makes it quick and painless for any grown cow nearest to him, quickly accumulating beef, and leather, as he whittles the numbers down to nearly half. Soon he leaves with everything he needs and nothing more, having just enough for a full set of leather, and plenty of steak cooking in the furnace, while the remaining cows in the field move on to repopulate. Once the steak is done, he stashes it all in his pockets before leaving for the cave again, this time being more equipped to handle the mob situation down below, and carefully constructs a cobblestone staircase as he descends into the sinkhole, lighting the layers with torches as he goes. Even in his first set of armor he remains vigilant as he scopes out the iron ore, checking behind his shoulder before mining, he collects more and more iron as he jukes and skates around zombies and creepers and--
Baby zombies?!
'Why are they so fast--'
'NO NO NO NO GET AWAY SHOO GO AWAY NONONONO-'
Steve practically flies back to the cobble-stairs to escape the undead midgets attacking his ankles, but the way is blocked by a creeper, but there's nowhere else to go but through. He swings his sword wildly at the green obelisk creature, cutting away at and pushing past it as it hisses threateningly and- flickers white..?
'Uh oh.'
BOOM!
Every inch of his body screams in agony while his brain seems to be left behind, but he has reached the stairs in the nick of time, scrambling back up to the surface and out of the cave before completely collapsing onto the grass, coughing up smoke- and a bit of blood, as he hits the ground. For the longest time he just lays there, huffing and puffing like he has just run a marathon before his mind finally catches up, and he eventually remembers the steak he has packed, specifically for healing and keeping up stamina, both of which he's near out of.
After shoving a thick slab of meat or two down his throat like a ravenous beast, he is well enough to run again, so he runs back home and smelts all the iron in his inventory, and after that he crafts shears, shears a sheep, and finally, after almost losing his life to zombie children and a living explosive, he crafts his first bed. And after a long and eventful day like this, he is more than looking forward to a proper rest, though there's just a bit of day left to go before dusk, so he checks his inventory to see.. carrots, huh? He can plant those in with the wheat, and.. string? Hmm..
After filling the spaces between the wheat crop with the few carrots he has collected, supposedly from the zombies, he looks further into the string to see what he can do with it.. and to his delight, he comes up with a fishing rod. He doesn't know why this makes him so happy, other than gathering more food, but when he sits by the river and casts the line.. he soon finds out why. Seated, serene, immersed in nature, watching the fish in the stream swim to the lure, take the bait, and be drawn forth by the reel, the act of fishing, it's.. almost like a way of art.
Dusk finally arrives and Steve heads home, crafting a set of chests to sit alongside the crafting/cooking area, and in the now double-chest he puts away his armor, his fish, and anything else in his pockets before sitting down on his new bed and.. wow, it's so soft and cushy, and he has the sheep to thank for it. He slips off his shoes, loosens his belt, and sets his jeans down with them, before settling into the covers, laying his head on the pillow, and...
Achievement Get! [Sweet Dreams]