Chapter 1: A Noob's Beginning

I don't remember much of anything that happened to me before I came to this place that I call "Craftworld". I remember my name: Steve, Steve… something or other. I call myself Steve Craft for lack of a memory of a surname. I remember my apartment. I remember just sitting at my computer, hunched over as I groggily clicked through various games in my attempts to take the edge off of my insomnia.

…And then blackness.

Next thing I know, I'm waking up in the middle of a place I'd never seen before, right in the spot where a desert, a jungle and broad expanse of plains all met. It was like visiting the Four Corners in the western United States, except there were only three and the place had an unfortunate lack of tourists or any other kind of human being. Wait, why do I remember the Four Corners? Eh, oh well.

It was really fun at first. Sorta like an exotic, twisted vacation. I had this camouflage patterned backpack with me that miraculously produced whatever I desired. Thirsty? No prob, just reach in and grab a bucket of water. Or milk. Just steer clear of the lava buckets. Hungry? No sweat. It would be easier to list what food this pack didn't have!

But I never seemed to get hungry or thirsty or even fatigued, so I only indulged in the occasional mound of cake. I wonder if my sweet tooth was ever this demanding in the world where my apartment resided. When I wasn't eating cake, I was making use of my pack's other materials. There were tools to mine, materials to craft and a bunch of other strange doo-hickeys that I could never make heads nor tails of. I built a snow igloo in the desert out of spite. I dug a cave under it, slapped in an underground waterfall, and then lit it up with jack-o-lanterns for effect. I engraved my name in the soil of the plains and then framed it with torches. I tossed cakes around as if they were the dollar bills and I was the rich Prince of Bel Air. Actually, I can't remember who the Prince of Bel Air was. I think I just made that up.

And then it all disappeared. The pack went slack and all that was left were the items I had stored in the second pocket to put them out of the way: some dirt… some cakes… some torches… and a block of gold. What in Craftworld am I gonna do with a heavy hunk of stupid gold? Tie it to my head and let it sink me in the river? Actually, it did cross my mind, but I'm too chicken to do myself in like that.

Turns out, I wasn't the only one looking to kill Steve Craft. Without the magic qualities to my backpack, sundown brought the Haunting. You wouldn't believe the horrors that pop up in the dark! By the end of the first night, I'd been shot at with arrows by a walking skeleton, chased through the jungle by a pack of zombies, and bitten twice in the arm by a giant, hairy black spider! I'm lucky nothing ate me while I was passed out in the cave under my igloo.

I'm not sure how long the spider venom had me under. It felt like only a night, but it could have been two. Either way, it was morning when I woke again.

That morning was absolutely miserable. I didn't seem to start healing until I had followed my hunger to my mountain of cakes and then satisfied said hunger with a couple mouthfuls of the dessert confections. And even then I had to sit around and wait for the throbbing in my knee to cease before I could walk properly. It was there, beneath Cake Mountain, that I resolved to start planning ahead. One more Haunting like that could kill me if I didn't do things differently.