Prologue – Minecraftia, and the Sea Beyond
A couple of decades ago, this weird blocky world had never been touched by mankind. Nobody had ever even heard of it.
But then one day, an entryway to it just winked into existence, a portal appearing out of nowhere.
As a member of one of the newest generations born within this world, I had never seen the portal before. Neither had my parents, or even my grandparents; my great grandfather on my mother's side was born in the other world, but he was brought in as a child, so he knew little of it.
I was always told that it appeared in the side of a mountain, unnoticed to the world at first. Then it grew, and it grew and grew and grew, until it was spotted by some sort of weird flying machine that they had in the other world but have been unable to replicate here.
People were worried at first, wondering if their world was collapsing in on itself. They were afraid. They kept far away from it, but still close enough to keep tabs on it.
But eventually, somebody got the guts to investigate, and they found that their world wasn't ending—but a new one was beginning.
Well, it had already began. But it was beginning to merge with their world, so… that counts, right?
People from that world began crossing over to this one, and exploring the new frontier became a huge priority. Countries sent in colonizers by the hundreds, and the once unknown land became more defined, and the maps were filled in over the course of decades.
The portal placed them on a single landmass, a huge continent stretching on for thousands of miles. Woods, plains, taigas, mountains, everything under the big square sun. Finally, they came to a massive sea, and it was there that they decided to stop.
Settlements sprang up. The great trailblazers settled down.
Roads were built. Hamlets grew to villages, which sprouted into towns and then cities. Nature, which once ruled over the continent with a green stranglehold, was pushed back by the expanding urban jungle. Wildlife grew less and less wild, and more domesticated to the point where the only place that true wildlife could be found were nature reserves.
A generation of babies was born, never seeing the sun that their parents were raised under. The soft curvature of rolling hills and the piercing spikes of mountaintops and the puffy clouds were never known to these children. Everything was a sharp angle: crafting benches, beds, even water and how it flowed.
Then came another generation, born to the people who had never seen a round shape outside of the human race before. And another generation. And so on, and so forth. The only curving that we grew up seeing was our parents, and others like us.
And just as our ancestors had grown bored of the land that they knew, and sought adventures beyond the horizon of their world, so too have we, so many years after the discovery of this new land. This world, dubbed Minecraftia for its odd reliance on, well, mining and crafting, was small to us.
And so… the sea became a major point of interest. What lay beyond that endless horizontal line that the sun rose over every day? Did anything lay beyond that endless horizontal line that the sun rose over every day? Did the world just end there, and Minecraftia was all there was?
These questions overtook the thousands of settlements like a disease, rooting in the young and curious, rousing the old and tired. The fire of exploration was still there, rekindled by the crashing of waves upon the shorelines.
Of course, as it so often is, there were many cases in which the fire was snuffed out by water. Countless ships helmed by inexperienced sailors found themselves at the bottom of the ocean, their crew laid to rest in the cold, dark waters. Storms were the biggest cause at first, capsizing many vessels sometimes before they even broke free of the coast.
But the sailors who survived these squalls grew used to them. They learned to adapt, and they began to form alliances. Together, these alliances found hundreds upon thousands of islands in the seemingly endless sea, some only a few dozen blocks wide, others the size of nations. Steadily, others from the mainland began to migrate to the newly discovered lands, settling down on islands claimed by the brave explorers, but others still elected to stay on Minecraftia where it was safe instead of setting sail on unpredictable seas and setting up a brand new life on an island far away from the only home they had ever known.
The newly formed settlements became jumping off points for the sailors, who went further and further than ever…
…and finally, after several years of exploration, they found it.
Treasure.
A small island, covered in tall, tall trees was discovered, holding a tiny stone temple that was loaded to the brim with loot. Gold, silver, iron… but most importantly, emeralds. Precious green gems, a rarity on Minecraftia, were found by the dozen on this one tiny island.
As a result, islands like this were scrutinized more carefully. Hidden ones, half-buried under centuries of overgrown vines and leaves, overtaken by fallen dirt and stone, some even built into the sides of mountains, were found. The plunder within was torn from its ancient tombs and shipped back to the mainland to be sold for insanely high profit, and the explorers came into the possession of wealth the likes of which even the most shrewd merchant could not hope to attain.
But of course, money has a way of corrupting people.
The wealth got to the captains, who took the highest cut of the sales. They got greedier and greedier, and as the distances between islands grew greater and greater, the prospect of stealing from their rivals grew to be quite an enticing idea.
Out of the initial explorations, two major alliances rose above the countless others.
The Bratton Family was the wealthiest, originating from John Bratton and his crew who discovered that first island over forty years ago. They were widely respected for their explorative tendencies, and for their honorable nature in sharing a cut of the profits with the less fortunate. The Bratton Family passed down to John's son Ian Bratton, and then to Ian Bratton's son Frank Bratton; and Frank Bratton took them to war.
The next largest of the alliances was known as the Order of the Red Cod, a coalition of crews from the south all united under the banner of Brie Harris, an experienced sailor who was riding the waves since she was a child. She led her own crew through countless storms, and earned the respect and loyalty to so many other ships that the Cods gave the Brattons a run for their money.
And it was between those two that the first true war broke out.
The Red Cods were known for founding settlements on islands that they had already looted. Mostly used for agricultural purposes, they became largely responsible for feeding the vast majority of the regions south of Minecraftia. They set up their headquarters on an island they called the Sunhold and staffed it with some of the meanest bastards this side of the Portal.
And of course, where there were strong guards, Frank Bratton naturally assumed there to be insane amounts of treasure.
Gathering an armada with ships numbering in the thousands, the Bratton Family launched an attack on Sunhold. The battle was costly, and the waters around Sunhold were red with blood. The Bratton Family took Sunhold for their own, but Frank was decidedly disappointed to discover a distinct scarcity of plunder.
And naturally, when Brie Harris heard of this, she was livid.
The conflict between the Red Cods and the Bratton Family escalated to the point where the only choice the other alliances had was to either pick a side, or stay off the sea entirely, and most of them chose the former. Countless unnecessary deaths came about from that.
Finally the war between the Brattons and Cods came to a climax at the Battle of Weird Skull Run, a midsized island covered in a hilly taiga, a twisted river snaking its way down the middle of the island. Brie Harris and Frank Bratton clashed, their crews ripping one another to pieces as the members of their alliances unleashed hell on each other on land and sea.
However, the tenacity of the Brattons was not to be outdone. After a fierce fight, Frank Bratton ran the leader of the Red Cods through with a terrible golden sword. His men cut through hers with angry axes, and his ships at sea finally shattered hers to the point where those forced into her alliance switched sides and joined the Brattons in their slaughter.
If Sunhold was a bloody battle, then Weird Skull was a grisly butchery. The dead numbered in the thousands. Burning remnants of ships clogged up the water, and survivors swam for safety wherever they could find it.
Bratton ships assailed Red Cod islands, stamping out the remaining refuges of the enemy, and soon enough, their work was done.
Eventually the survivors made their way home. Most of them, at least.
And with them came tales. Tales of battle, death, and most important of all…
Treasure.
Some of the surviving crews returned home raving about islands full of treasure, made of precious metals and covered in sparkling gems. Their ramshackle ships couldn't carry all the weight, and so they had nothing to bring home—except for one single solitary raft, bearing a dead man.
And on that dead man… were sapphires. Dazzling blue gems that were as deep as the sea, and twice as beautiful.
The problem was, nobody could place which crew he came from, or even which alliance. No family came forth to claim him. There was nothing on him to identify him. The only thing people knew was that his raft came in from the south.
Thus, with the war ended and the Bratton Family in complete control over the discovered seas, exploration became the sole focus again. The Brattons had more pull over the political climate of Minecraftia than any naval alliance ever had now; they had the surviving members of the Red Cods who washed ashore rounded up and interrogated, hoping to glean information about the whereabouts of these fantastical islands, but there was nothing that they could get out of them.
Anyone who set sail became an employee of the Brattons, whether they liked it or not, and were required to check in at various stops along their journey.
Frank Bratton's greed was not to be outdone. He demanded a "fair" portion of any proceeds found on these expeditions, and the only choice was to pay, or be sent home in a floating coffin, and nobody was willing to choose the latter.
The ocean still called to the settlers of Minecraftia, and with heavily taxed loot or not they took off in ships to seek their fortune.
And I find myself as a member of that brave multitude.
My name is Toby Slate, and this is the story of my adventure into the great blue unknown.
There we go folks, this marks the end of the prologue. I'm working on the first chapter as I type this, so I'll hopefully have this up and running relatively soon.
Anyways, my name is Rider of the Stormwinds, pleasure to meet you all. It's been a little while since I've written something on here, so hopefully it's not too bad.
So my idea here is that this is sort of a "Minecraft meets One Piece" kind of thing, with a grand adventure spanning thousands of chapters… *insert disbelieving laughter in the distance* okay probably not that. I've got an idea for how I want this to go, and hopefully it doesn't take forever to get there.
I think that's enough talking now though, I'll let the story do the talking for itself.
Peace out,
RotS