Entry 013 - Wither Boss (no defined scientific name, but known to Testificates as "He Who Walks The Darkest Path", the pigmen as "A'Karai, Death of Ashes", and to ancient peoples as "Kaizatsz Hidarak")
"He stood upon the mountain
The Light at his back
Darkness to the front
And he took that fateful jump
Into the deathly void
The easy path
The path of power
That imprisons"
-Book of Answers, Testificate holy book
The Wither, in ancient legends and accounts of times gone by, used to be a Minecraftian, but was corrupted by power and magic. In most legends, the Wither used to have the name Pol Atrexe, and was the son of a nobleman who moved to a desert biome in search of fortune. The story then goes that one day he met Herobrine and his band of followers, holed out in a desert cave of sandstone and cobble; the fact that Herobrine was out in the desert at this time hints at the time period: somewhere around the time the Creepers declared war on Minecraftians. Herobrine trained young Pol in the ways of the Developers.
The legend is divided on what happened afterwards to start Pol's downward spiral towards evil. The Testificate Book of Answers says that Herobrine corrupted the youth via cleverly indoctrinated potions in his food. Thus Pol became He Who Walks The Darkest Path, and terrorized the cubescape until Notch confronted him and Herobrine on the highest peak of the Pickaxe Mountains and banished them both. The pigman epic titled Song of the Fallen Hero gives a different account. It says that Pol Atrexe, out hunting for water one day, found a hole in the ground that lead straight down to the Void below. There, it is written, dark forces possessed him with the knowledge of infinity, and drove him mad. Taking up the mantle A'Karai, he killed all of Herobrine's followers and faced down the god himself inside the ruined cave. After a battle that raged for weeks on end, Herobrine finally prevailed and sent A'Karai into a pocket dimension within the Nether.
The Wither's physical form is a strange amalgam of many things. The tail is reminiscent of a silverfish, the body is dark like bedrock and bare boned like a skeleton, and the Wither has the levitation powers of a Ghast and the projectile-shooting ability of a Blaze. Many who have survived an encounter with the Wither say that when the beast is defeated it leaves behind an object called a Nether Star. The Nether Star has been described in legends as a piece of the remnant of Pol Atrexe's soul, or a gift from Notch, or a mirror that reflects the light of Herobrine's pure white eyes. Whatever this shard may be, it is an item of great religious and spiritual significance, and is held in the highest reverence.
The Wither is technically immortal. It uses the celestial equivalent of save points, reappearing from a save point every time it dies. When the save point is obstructed, the Wither's essence jumps to every point in Minecraftia instantaneously, and randomly selects one to be reborn from. The Wither has appeared in the basements of people's houses, in crowded market squares, and even out in the middle of the ocean, scaring the wits out of lost sailors.
The Wither condition is a disease of sorts, originally started by a fight between the newly banished Pol Atrexe and a skeleton in a Nether fortress. The Wither condition acts in some ways like poison; it can be spread via attacks by infected individuals. However, once infected, a victim may quickly begin to see black necrotic patches of dead skin crop up all over their bodies. As the Wither condition progresses, the patches cover the body until the victim dies of their wounds. The victim's tissue decays rapidly upon death, and the leftover bones become a Wither Skeleton.