When I warped into the Nether, I didn't know what I'd find.
Death, I fancied.
But based on my past experiences in the Nether, one thing I could be certain to see was fire, brimstone and lakes of molten lava. Imagine my confusion when I walk into what looks like the Sea Life center in Birmingham.
Water. Gallons and gallons of the stuff, in a world in which water technically cannot exist - swirling torrents gushing around the portal, threatening to sweep both Sp1z and I away. I look around and my confusion turns to terror as a few Ghasts are homing in on us, and I'll never be able to fight them while battling the water current. Additionally, it slowly dawns on me that there is lava down here too - and sheer cliffs - so being swept away by the water would be bad news.
All of these observations occur within five seconds, and in that time I only took one step away from the portal before completely losing my shit and leaping back into it. As the screen goes all wibbly-wobbly again, the last thing I see before teleporting back to the overworld is a fireball heading my way.
"Woah WOAH WOAH."
"What's up with you?" Sp1z asks, having followed me.
"What's up with me? What's up with all the running water?" I reply. "I was totally tripping balls in there, man."
We establish that there is no water. It's all in my mind, or at least in the Summerfields texture pack I've been using recently. I switch back to the default texture and we try once more.
Just as I'm trying to gather my bearings, that Ghast flies over and interrupts my bearing-gathering with a fireball which explodes a few feet next to me. This sends me into a blind panic and I run around in circles until Sp1z yells at me to follow him, and with only a handful of bearings having been gathered, we soon find ourselves in a narrow tunnel he'd previously carved into the rock.
Bravado is my middle name.
Now that I'm here, I don't want to leave the safety of this cubby hole. I've got one life and I've really enjoyed our adventures here so far, and I don't want to die.
I contemplate calling this whole thing off. Leaving the Nether and setting up my own house back in the relative peace of the overworld. Maybe focus on farming or accountancy or something. Yes, that's more my style; I'll leave the adventuring to the people who aren't playing in Iron Man Mode. Dumb idea, anyway.
"I can't do this," I type.
I type it, but don't hit enter. Before I get the chance, Sp1z declares that he thinks the Ghast has moved on and he leaves the tunnel.
I'm in this for the long haul, I guess. We head out.
We walk along a very precarious walkway leading around a cliff, and Sp1z seems to stop frequently to figure out where he's going. I then remember that we don't know where we're going, and we need to find a stronghold. It could be anywhere in this cavernous monstrosity.
"So - stronghold," Sp1z reiterates.
"It could be anywhere in this cavernous monstrosity," I re-reiterate.
So we wander. Along the way Sp1z gets attacked by a couple of zombie pigmen - denizens of the Nether who prowl in large numbers - while I helpfully gather some mushrooms for a stew I have planned later (which I know he'll love!). When he gets set on fire by a Ghast, I waste half of our arrows trying to hit it from about three miles away and failing to land a single one.
With the Ghast still shooting fireballs at us and blowing blocks out from under our feet, we're really pushing the boundaries of what's sensible by mining our way around the side of a cliff, to the left of which is a vertical drop down into an ocean of lava. Yikes!
And this is the point at which something terrifying happens. I get caught in a situation where I need to think carefully before I knock out the next block in case I end up falling to my death, but I'm deprived of an environment in which I can think clearly as well as the time I need to make the call properly.
A fireball, shot from that damned Ghast, is heading straight towards me and our little one-block walkway. Sp1z is right up my ass and trying to back up may result in us knocking each other off, so my options consist of:
a) Jump out of the way of the fireball. Land in lava. Die.
b) Wildly try to mine out of the way of it. Probably fall into the lava. Die.
c) Take the fireball on the chin and hope the explosion doesn't destroy the walkway under my feet. It probably will. Die.
But just as Option C is thrust upon me (I take so long to decide, it's inevitably going to hit me regardless of what I do), a previously hidden Option D flies in out of nowhere and supersedes the whole situation.
Right before the fireball hits, this is what happens:
I'm booted out of the game. Java has been doing this to me all day.
This presents an interesting problem. On the one hand, it's just saved me from death. On the other hand... well, has it? Sp1z is still on the server, so that fireball would have hit the walkway after I vanished. When I reconnect, am I going to appear above a hole? Will my final session in this game consist solely of me falling to a firey demise?
I could call Sp1z and ask him what the situation in-game looks like, and maybe ask him to remake the walkway so I can land on it when I spawn. But it's 2am and I don't want to wake up either of our houses. Also, he's probably in trouble himself and having to answer the phone is the last thing he needs.
So I take a chance...
... and all is fine. Phew.
It seems that I am blessed by the beard of Zeus, or at least by a game which recognised the issue and put me on the next viable block over. Sp1z is okay, and we make haste to get off the side of the cliff. Fairly ridiculous place to hang out, anyway.
Things don't improve much as a swarm of zombie pigmen decide they don't like the cut of our respective jibs. Oh, hi guys.
While Sp1z takes the offensive, I assume a defensive stance by blocking all attacks with my face, somehow setting myself on fire, attracting even more pigmen to our position and finally running away like a little girl. A little girl who's on fire and has ten zombie pig things chasing after her.
I get lost in my attempt to shake them off (of course I get lost; this is what I do) and end up hiding in a small alcove. Sp1z asks where I am, and I report that I don't know. He asks me to describe my location, and I can only tell him that it's blocky-looking and surrounded by fire and lava. Needless to say, it takes us a while to sort that situation out.
When we finally reconvene, we take a moment to reflect on where this stronghold might be. Anywhere, for all we know. "What does it look like?" Sp1z ponders, which is a pretty good question so I do a quick search on Google Images. "Can't miss it," I report back. "Massive structure, dark Lord of the Rings-style bridges and towers and shit."
We press on, and decide that we'll be better off eating mushrooms and getting as high as possible. Er... by that I mean eating mushroom stew for health reasons and getting physically higher up the cliffs in order to maximise the chances of spotting this stronghold. I ask Sp1z if he can remember where the portal is in the event we end up wanting to leave, to which he responds in the negative. Great. We're permanent residents here, now.
Pretty soon we're virtually at roof level, the highest you can get before hitting bedrock (which cannot be destroyed), and there's a very sketchy-looking sheer drop on our left:
Oh, and now a Ghast is shooting fireballs at us. DID WE NOT JUST GO THROUGH ALL THIS.
"Shit," says Sp1z.
"Double shit," I concur.
We decide the safest thing to do is tunnel into the rock and proceed that way, rather than skirting around the outside. Skirting didn't get us very far last time.
With a thin layer of rock between us and the outside (which the Ghast keeps breaking through), it seems we need to go a bit deeper. Sp1z works his way upwards while I keep mining straight ahead under the agreement that one of us will holler if we find a way through.
With iron pickaxe in hand, I try to... oh. That's annoying.
I log back in and plan on carrying on tunneling through the cliff. But the game has other ideas.
When I respawn, for whatever reason the game decides the block I was on isn't viable just like it did earlier, and shifts me to the next available space which my body can fit into.
That, it seems, is an infinite field of bedrock. What the deuce?
This is weird. I wander around for a bit, but it's clear that it stretches on forever.
No worries. I log out, then log back in again.
Oh. Plenty of worries, because I'm still here.
I report the issue back to Sp1z, try logging off and on again a few times, but I keep spawning on top of what looks like the 'roof' of the Nether - just as there's a flat plane of bedrock at the lowest level of the overworld, there's a bedrock layer at the very top of the Nether to limit how high players can go. Perplexingly, the game has put me above this layer.
"Well, this is pleasant."
"Can you not dig down?"
"It's all bedrock, as far as the eye can see."
"Well, I've tunnelled upwards and reached the underside of that layer," Sp1z explains. "Can you not see any walls?
"Nope, just a red background."
"Can you place any blocks?"
I try. "Nope."
"It looks like you're screwed," Sp1z replies.
Thanks man.
I can hear noises below the floor, and occasionally the game glitches and I can see through the floor before it renders - and yes, it seems I'm definitely above the unbreakable roof...
... and it slowly dawns on me that this is the end.
At first, this thought fills me with dread at first as I run around the infinite void, looking for something, anything, that might get me below the single block which has sealed my fate. When it is clear that this is not going to happen, I feel strangely peaceful.
Perhaps it's simply the knowledge of how it all ends is what has put a contented smile on my face. I slowly nod to myself, realising that the 20,000 words of blog before this have lead me here, to a place where the game decided to end things on its terms. I thought I was the master of my own destiny all along, and when I died, it would be as a direct result of my own actions (or stupidity).
How wrong I was. How very, very wrong. Perhaps this was destined to be my fate right from the moment I came into the game and killed that duck/chicken thing; my death and the end of this blog written in stone from the start. Or written in bedrock, as it were.
The only way out of this would be to kill myself. As per site rules, that would be the definitive end to this blog. And I don't even have the luxury of being able to end things that way - I can't think of any way to get myself deaded.
I sigh. I imagine the heavy iron armour is making my guy hot and tired. He takes it off - after all, it's useless now - and leaves it on the ground behind him along with his equally useless pickaxe.
With his sights set on the infinite horizon, he walks.
There is a lot of walking to do.
