Episode One: Scouting The Terrain
Minecraft is not a quiet place. Grass rustles. Lava bubbles. Sheep bleat, cows moo, pigs grunt, wolves bark, foxes and rabbits squeak, spiders gurgle, creepers hiss. Villagers mumble to each other. Sometimes a zombie or a skeleton will moan or clatter from under the safe shelter of a tree or overhang.
However, it was rare in the Minecraft world to hear human noise.
That was exactly what happened on a bright, sunny Minecraft day in the middle of a forest clearing. A wolf, watching the clearing with disinterest, ran away as a group of people abruptly appeared from thin air, falling over each other and yelling in disorientation and surprise.
"-What's going on?-"
"What is this place!?"
"What kind of spell did this!?"
"Move over, you're standing on my foot!"
"Get off me!"
"Ow!"
"What happened to my weapons!?"
"Someone stole our things! Robbed us blind!"
"Enough!" a young voice called out from the middle of the squash of people. As young as it was, it rang out with enough authority to silence everyone in the clearing.
"Lord Atem!" the brunette cried out in joy, as the people who had unwittingly been tripping on top of or standing on the source of the voice quickly and awkwardly extricated themselves from the pile, leaving a young man to rise to his feet, shaking his head and pulling grass out of his wild red hair. Even though he was slightly more than half the height of several of his peers, he radiated such authority that no one seemed to care. Adjusting the winged crown he wore, he looked around at everyone in the clearing, gauging their feelings. Almost everyone looked scared. A few in particular were reaching for no-longer-present weapons and bristling, searching the trees with suspicion.
"I won't pretend this isn't alarming for all of us, but panicking won't help us discover how and why we've been brought here - or where here is."
Silence met his statement, but no one seemed to be outright terrified anymore.
"So, now that we've all presumably had a moment to calm down," Atem said. "Who is here?"
A slightly older teen with long brown hair dipped his head in a bow. "Every member of the Sacred Council, my lord, in addition to a few others. By our count, about ten people."
Atem turned to a man with chin-length black hair. "Right. Karim - you said your weapons were taken."
"Yes, Lord Pharaoh. My sword, my bow, my DiaDhank - everything has vanished."
"So have mine, which means, I assume, that everyone was affected. What equipment, if any, do you still have?"
"Our Millennium Items are still here, thank the gods," a young man with tattoos on his face said, holding up the Millennium Key.
"However, they have ceased to function as intended," an old man wearing a gold false eye added.
"Your Millennium Eye sees nothing?" a teenager with short, copper-brown hair asked sharply, tightening his grip on the winged scepter in his hands.
"Yes, and I believe that is the most damning evidence that none of them are working," the old man replied coolly. "Unless, of course, you propose exercising the mind-controlling power of your Millennium Rod on one of us."
One of the group members, a pale girl dressed in rags, started to raise her hand. "I could-"
"Quiet, peasant!" the old man snapped.
"It was only a suggestion…" the girl trailed off, sounding annoyed, while the teenager who held the Millennium Rod leveled a cold glare at the old man, subtly putting himself between the old man and the girl.
"No one is asking you to do that, Kisara," a dark-haired woman wearing a gold choker said more diplomatically.
"What could stop the Millennium Items from working?" the youngest in the group, a teenage girl in a floppy brown hat, asked nervously.
"It's never happened before." Another old man with friendlier eyes and wild hair that mirrored the Pharaohs - sans being gray with age - frowned in confusion. "Lord Aknadin, you have read extensively about the Items and their function. Have you come across a power that could render the Items powerless like this?"
"Not in my studies," Aknadin muttered.
"I can't call for my ka, either," the youngest girl realized.
"Nor can I send for the God-Beasts," Atem replied quietly.
"Until further notice, we must assume no magic from home works in this place," the teen who had bowed to the Pharaoh earlier said.
"No magic?" the pale girl whispered.
"What is powerful enough to construct a block on all magic?"
"Will we ever get it back?"
"Please, everyone, calm down!" Atem ordered, quieting them all.
"What do you propose we do, Lord Atem?" the kinder old man asked.
"First, I propose getting out of this forest. As it is we can barely see a foot in front of us. Seth."
The teenager holding the Millennium Rod looked up at the sound of his name. "Yes, Pharaoh?"
"Does the Millennium Rod still have the blade hidden in the shaft?"
Seth took off the top of the scepter, revealing a small dagger. "Yes. It remains untouched."
"Which means you are the only person in the group who has a weapon," Atem said. "Stay near the front, and keep that dagger ready."
"I will."
"Be careful, Seth," the pale girl said quietly.
The group apprehensively left the clearing, following Atem and Seth. However, it didn't take long for them to notice something strange.
Every time one of them shoved aside a patch of leaves, it would break off in a perfectly cube-shaped block, which would then disappear. The same thing happened - although it took longer - when they had to cut through wood. All the ground looked like it was cut into blocks as well, meaning each rise and fall of the landscape came in the form of ankle-high steps.
"It appears the rules of this world are very different from ours," the teen with long brown hair said.
Seth shot him a 'no kidding' look. "Where do the blocks disappear to once broken off?"
Atem frowned, deep in thought. When he concentrated, he could almost see a gray switch on the edge of his vision…
"Hey! What's that light?"
Everyone gathered around the youngest girl, who pointed to a brilliant golden pillar on the other side of the trees. It towered so high that it vanished into the clouds.
"Well, that doesn't look important at all," Seth deadpanned.
"It could have answers about this place," Atem said. "Let's head that way and see where it's coming from."
"What kind of rhetoric is that?" Aknadin grumbled. "It could also be a trap."
"Quick to undermine the Pharaoh, are we?" the woman with the choker whispered mildly, prompting a noise from Aknadin that sounded like a boiling tea kettle.
Atem broke through a barrier of leaves in front of them, revealing a large meadow. "Let's go, it's just ahead of us."
The pillar of light touched the ground at the top of a tall hill, hewn, like the rest of the landscape, into blocks. Because of the steepness of the hill, one side was essentially a sheer cliff. They ended up traveling around the back of the hill, which was shallower. Even so, Seth and Atem ended up having to break the dirt into a path up.
The beam of light turned out to be coming from a small chest on the top of the hill, perfectly square like the landscape around it. Atem carefully inspected it, finding no tripwires or switches near it that could trigger a trap, before gingerly opening it. Immediately, a gray image popped up in front of him, startling Seth and the girl with the floppy hat, who were standing closest.
The image was subdivided into groups of white and gray boxes, one of which contained the picture of a book. Atem gingerly touched the shrunken book, and it was his turn to pull back in surprise when a full-sized book, beautifully bound in leather, appeared in his hands.
"Is… that how you retrieve items from chests in this world?" the girl in the hat asked nervously.
"Seems overly complex to me," Seth muttered, folding his arms.
"Perhaps the chests are enchanted," the spiky-haired old man commented. "What does the book say, Lord Atem?"
Atem unlatched and opened the book. Even though the pages were yellow with age, the ink looked fresh.
"Lord Pharaoh Atem, commander of the Egyptian God Beasts, incarnation of the sun, keeper of the Millennium Pendant, lord of the…" Atem began. He frowned in annoyance at the page, which continued to list Atem's various earthly and heavenly titles - of which he had many. It was something he was accustomed to, but at the moment he just wanted answers as to why he and his friends had been stranded in this strange world of blocks, and he wasn't in the mood. He hummed in irritation, parsing through the list of names, itself three pages in length, before he finally came to the true beginning of the mysterious book writer's message. "Ahem ... sovereign of Upper and Lower Egypt, I offer you my sincerest welcome into the world of Minecraft."
"Minecraft?" The word was passed around the group, everyone befuddled by the strange name but also too nervous to poke fun at it.
Atem shifted his grip on the book and kept reading. "You don't know who I am, but I have been watching you and your friends with interest for some time. Don't be alarmed, I won't harm you. Directly."
"That's reassuring, isn't it?" Kisara said quietly, in a bout of sardonicism more like Seth than her usually gentle self.
"'What about getting home?' you may be wondering. Rest assured, I can spirit you back to your kingdom just as easily as I swept you away. Back to within the same minute you left, in fact."
"So why haven't they done it yet?" Seth demanded to know.
Atem cleared his throat and pointed at the book, which made Seth's face redden with annoyance. "However, I'm afraid I must ask you to complete a certain task for me first."
"A task?" Aknadin snarled.
"Calm yourself, Lord Aknadin," the spiky-haired old man said firmly.
"You have been tasked with building this world. As wonderful as Minecraft is, it is nothing without human builders to explore it. Build a civilization here. Explore every corner you can reach. Live the life of your dreams! Complete every challenge this world has to offer, and you will not only be rewarded very handsomely, but perhaps you will learn a little more about yourselves as well! Then, I will gladly send you home, no questions asked.
"'Build the world?'" the young woman with the choker asked.
"I'm not certain what it means either," Atem frowned. He narrowed his eyes at the last bit of text on that page, written slightly sloppier as if it had been jotted down later.
"Oh, and I almost forgot the most important task of all - SURVIVE. Good luck! :)"
"What!? That's it!?" Seth demanded to know.
"The author did draw a smiling face in the text. Taunting us, most likely," Atem said innocently. When Seth looked ready to explode, he quickly amended, "The rest of the book appears to be instruction on how to operate this world's magic system, the creatures that live here, and how to gather resources and survive." Part of him was surprised by how quickly this world was bringing out his more childish side.
He hadn't indulged in something as small as deliberately antagonizing Seth - not in a diaha or anything with stakes, just for fun - since… Ra knew how long.
"That makes sense," the boy with tattoos said. "Our magic does not function in this world, making it logical to learn this world's rules instead. The author of the book implied this was to test us. Allowing us our normal abilities would invalidate the test."
"How long is this test going to take?" Aknadin - possibly the only one more visibly angry at their predicament than Seth - asked gruffly.
"Long enough the author promised to return us within minutes of our departure, no matter how long we took. Building even a small village will take a long time."
"So, where do we start, my lord?" Karim asked.
"You're eager to accept this… dubious task?" Aknadin asked him sharply.
"I am eager to return home. Since it appears there is no alternative but to follow what the book says in order to do that, that is what I am choosing to do."
"The next few pages offer advice on this world's rules directly pertinent to getting started, so I suppose we follow the book's lead," Atem said. "Has anyone else noticed the gray switch out of the corner of your eye?"
"I have," Seth said.
"So have I," Lord Aknadin growled.
"I can see it now," the girl with the choker said.
"Me too!" the girl with the floppy brown hat said.
One by one, everyone confirmed they had found the mysterious switch.
"What does the book say it means?"
"Concentrate on that switch, and your inventory will appear. Like what happened with the chest, from what I understand." Atem furrowed his brow, and then another gray image popped up in front of him. Hardly anyone jumped this time, expecting it.
The boy with long brown hair was next to master it. "It looks like there are already things in the spaces," he said.
Atem nodded. "That answers the question as to where things disappear once broken. The book says that our inventories are a way to keep large amounts of materials on our person without difficulty. Sort of like spells back home for storing objects in the Duat. And any broken block or loose item on the ground will automatically be placed in the inventory of the nearest player for convenience."
"So we have usable materials for survival immediately," the spiky-haired old man said. "What does the book say to do with them?"
"It says that the first thing we must do is build a shelter to spend our first night and create essential survival tools," Atem replied.
"Would weapons be among those? I'm not fond of walking around empty handed," Karim said.
"They are, in fact. But the very first thing we have to make - and the book is very clear to label this essential - is a crafting table."
"Crafting table? What do you do with that?"
"From… What I'm reading in the book, it seems crafting tables are how this world's magic is tapped into," Atem said, flipping between two pages. "There are more specialized versions, but those come later. What's important now is making the basic version, which can allow us to create basic wooden weapons and tools."
"So how do we make one?" Seth demanded to know.
"The book says that making a crafting table requires four wood plank blocks. Who managed to pick up wood on our way here?"
Kisara, Seth, the boy with tattoos, and Karim all raised their hands.
"Good. That means we should have enough."
"What does this number mean?" Kisara asked.
Atem glanced at her inventory. "Part of how the spell works. It sorts items of the same type together in the inventory to save space. You have three logs in your inventory, not just one."
"I have a number like that as well," the boy with tattoos said. "I have four."
"We have enough to make several of these crafting tables, then," the spiky-haired man said. "I suppose we should have more than one, in case we get separated."
"Good thinking, Siamun," Atem said.
"So what do we do with them?" Seth asked.
"To start, the book calls for wooden planks, not logs. But there should be a crafting function built into your inventory. Only the most rudimentary version - a crafting table is needed to build anything more advanced - but you can convert wood logs into wooden planks and make a crafting table just fine."
"And you just… put the wood in?" Kisara asked, tapping her collected logs with her finger and then moving the tiny picture over to the set of squares on the right hand side. "Ah!" A new picture appeared, that of polished wooden planks arranged in a neat block like the log.
Seth, the boy with tattoos, and Karim all revealed they'd discovered the same result.
"But I used up all my logs to do that…" Kisara frowned.
"There's no shortage of trees around here," Siamun reassured her. "But look - I found that if you concentrate on a specific number and hold your finger down on the picture, you only pick up that amount."
"We may have to learn some things through trial and error," Atem said, shaking his head. "That wasn't explained in the book."
"There, Pharaoh," Seth said. He tapped his inventory and held out his hand, and a wooden block hung with tiny-sized hand saws and other carpentry tools appeared on the ground. "Kisara and Shada both made several with the wood they had, too."
"Thank you, Seth. Pick that back up for now, though. I want to collect more wood - at least enough to make basic wooden tools and weapons for everyone."
"How much wood will that be?" Seth asked. He struck the crafting table, causing cracks to run up and down its sides before it turned into a tiny, floating version of itself, which he picked up.
"Well, according to the book, a simple wooden sword requires two planks and a stick - which itself also requires two planks to make four. How many planks do we have left?"
"I don't have any left," Kisara said sheepishly. "I thought it was more important to ensure everyone had a crafting table. But Shada has four left." She nodded in the direction of the boy with tattoos.
"That should be enough to make one sword. Two planks to make four sticks, then two more planks plus one of the sticks creates a sword. And three sticks left over to make more swords."
"I unfortunately spent my planks on a crafting table," Karim said with a frown. "Seth, how many do you have left?"
Seth scowled and pointed to the crafting table in his inventory - currently the only thing in it - as an answer.
"So collecting more wood is definitely in order," the spiky-haired man said.
"We should split up to cover more ground," Atem decided. "Each group should have a weapon, though. Seth, since you still have the Millennium Rod's dagger, you should take a group."
Shada placed his crafting table on the ground and knelt down next to it, prompting another gray box to appear in front of him in the air. He moved some things around on it, and a sword made entirely out of carved wood appeared in his hand. He broke the crafting table, picked it up, and turned to Atem.
"I shall lead the other group, Lord Atem."
Atem nodded. "We should hurry. I looked ahead in the book to see why the first night in this world is something to be feared, and nothing I read sounded good."
"What did you see, my lord?" the long-haired boy asked.
"I'll explain it all to you once we've gotten wood and begun a shelter. As Lord Aknadin said, time is of the essence."