Welcome back everybody or welcome to the Minecraft Short
Stories podcast. This is episode 76 and in this
episode I will be reading the 4th part of the Players Not
Alone series, which is a story I wrote and this is a very highly
requested part. Probably because I left you on a
giant cliffhanger at the end of it.
I'm sorry, but this is going to be another cliffhanger at the
end of this one. This story finally has broken
the streak of every single story being like 500 words longer than
the last 500 words, meaning it's like 3 minutes longer.
So this one is less length. I guess that's a bad thing, not
a good thing, but for me reading it, it's kind of a good thing.
Anyway, there will be a part 5. I'll just go ahead and confirm
that I can't leave you where I left you off during this story.
Can't leave you on a cliffhanger once again.
So I'm very excited to read this.
And then also another thing I'm excited about the next part to
the story on the Patreon podcast.
So my girl short story is Prologue Podcast and the story
is coming along nicely. The story is for patrons of any
tier starting at $1.00, and it's called the Hidden Stories.
That's the series name, not the name of the story.
The name of the story is the Noble Quest of Salamar, which
you'll get the name if you listen to the story, I promise.
But this is for patrons and also on the Patreon podcast is a
story before the story, the story behind the stories where I
go through my reasoning, how I wrote this, the foreshadowing,
some extra stuff about the story that I didn't put inside the
story, some some background like knowledge and lore about it.
I made one for this episode that's like prologue 15 or 16,
but if you want to check any of those out, go to the links
inside the description. There's a link for this podcast
on YouTube if you want to watch on there for some reason, and
then there's also the link to the website.
anywaythatspatreon.com/minecraft short stories.
All one word, but I hope you enjoy the story and I will be
shouting out to all the people who got the quiz question right
from the 1,000,000 Plays special, so make sure to tune in
to the next episode. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy
the story before the story begins.
I know all of you guys won't go back and listen to all of the
three episodes before this episode to know what's
happening. I do have a quick summarization.
This is obviously not everything that happened inside this like
10,000 word story. So I highly recommend you go
listen to those episodes. Just look for the players Not
alone, part 1-2 and three. That's their names.
Anyways. So the story begins with the
player, which is he's only referred to as the player
spawning into a new world. He spawns into the middle of a
desert, and almost immediately he noticed something strange
about the world, which is whenever he does something,
something new, something novel, there is a lag spike there.
The CPU usage goes up. So he's in the middle of the
desert with one tree. He mines down the tree, he
crosses the desert and he makes it to a forest.
And this is when the story gets really weird.
All the force suddenly erupts into flames as he's trying to
make a house, and he gets 1 screenshot off of a mysterious
figure inside the woods layer. Checking, he realizes that the
figure has the exact same skin as him.
In the last installment of the series, the player goes down
into a cave to search for resources, and there he is
confronted by Ghost and barely escapes.
So with you guys all caught up, let's get right into the story.
The player is not alone. Part four.
I was shaken. My life in Minecraft been arrows
breath away from destruction. My first suspicion was that this
was some kind of cruel joke. Ghost was only sparing me to
kill me or trap me at a later date.
Then I actually considered it. Ghost had been an intent on my
demise. I had run and then defended
myself and he ran. Was it possible that Ghost was
copying me? I thought about it as I trudged
up The Cave I'd so nearly died in.
I thought back to my first encounter with Ghost, trying to
remember exactly what he did. The first time I had seen him,
and it seemed so long ago, was when he was spying on me from
behind a tree in the forest I entered after escaping the
desert. Importantly, the forest was
decimated by a huge inferno. When I first saw him, the puzzle
pieces clicked into place almost instantly.
I had been in that forest right before it burned down.
Ghost was also wearing my skin as he was in the forest.
When I first saw the specter, I thought he was only wearing my
skin to confuse and trick me, but what if he was just copying
me? Ghost had followed me into The
Cave. Ghost had shone arrow only after
I had been practicing shooting arrows.
Ghost also wore iron armor, which he hadn't had before I
crafted my set. Ghost didn't attack until after
I instigated, and he didn't run until I ran.
It all makes sense now. I somehow hadn't seen it before.
That ghost was copying me and learning from what I did.
Just as everything made sense, I came out of The Cave into the
sunlight. The understanding I had gained
flitted away like a newly awakened Minecraft bat.
There before me was something completely baffling to me.
Spread all around the ground where blocks of dirt and logs
piled on top of each other and even constructed into
freestanding walls occasionally. There was no form or function to
anything, and as I walked among it, I knew it had to be ghosts.
Doing what it could be or what it can mean was completely lost
to me. Just over the hill to the South
of the caves opening, I found where the blocks had come from.
The ground was pocketed with holes where dirt blocks had
been, and the trees are similarly missing log blocks
from their trunks. Sitting in the middle of the
disaster area was a crafting table.
I hadn't placed it, and it was evident that Ghost did place it
and he also knew how to utilize it.
Sitting right beside it was a block of oak planks, which meant
this intruder could craft mine place and evident from the half
formed walls behind me, build. The image of ghosts casually
mining away in a cave somewhere, collecting resources to bring
back to his cozy cabin in the Minecraft forest popped into my
head. Perhaps even has a dog too.
I did in my head. This thought of a cabin in the
woods reinvigorated my drive to make my own house.
Now that I had more than adequate resources.
There is no more putting it off. I left the strangeness of these
two clearings marking down the coordinates and started further
into the woods. I was looking for a clearing,
Grove, Meadow, or even a mountain to set up my home base.
I saw Savannah to my right and instantly went in the opposite
direction. Savannahs were so bare and ugly
and literally no blocks look good in the Biome.
About 100 blocks later I reached a very steep incline with help
of my handy water bucket, the one without the axolotl in.
And of course, I quickly scaled it on top of the mini mountain,
complete with snow and a Cliff. There is nothing but a bare oak
tree and a great view. My secret to finding villages in
Minecraft was to find a vantage point such as this Cliff and
then set your render distance to 32 chunks.
Minecraft seem to be made with the assumption that you would
play with only a 16 render distance, so double that made
the world seem a lot smaller. Sometimes you could even see as
many as six biomes. Within these biomes you could
usually see the smoke and roof of the village.
After abusing my computer with the 32 render distance, I found
my plan worked perfectly. At the edge of where the fog
obscured my view, I can make out a medium sized village within an
old growth taiga, one of my favorite biomes.
I faced myself in the right direction and jumped.
After following a couple of dozen blocks, I put my water
bucket into my hands right as the ground rushed up to meet me.
I clicked with my bucket and stopped my fall with the source
of water. Unfortunately, this was the
bucket with my axolotl, so the water and the axolotl were there
to stop my fall. I scooped up my best friend,
apologized, reoriented myself, and stood out towards the
village. Night came and went with no
further sightings of Ghost. I hope he's OK.
I thought I had struck him with my iron sword and only now that
I start to think of the ramifications of that.
What if you could feel pain? He after all wasn't just another
player, he lived in my world and it alone.
What if I had hurt him beyond all repair?
What if he couldn't just eat food like my character and heal?
Most depressing of all my thoughts, what if I had killed
him? I knew I need to find Ghost, not
for my safety or curiosity, but to ensure he was OK.
While thinking these heavy thoughts, I reached the Taiga
village. The village was waking up just
as I arrived, villagers leaving their homes to do their work or
to congregate at the well. The village was larger than had
appeared when I first saw it. This was due to 1/3 of it being
under a large overhang connected to the rest of the village by
some very steep paths. I passed a librarian's house, a
Potter's house and a few of the generic villager huts, these
being the taiga version of course, until I found the well.
The well was rather small, only two blocks wide and two blocks
long, and it was rather pointless, the fact being that
any two by two source of water was infinite in Minecraft, which
meant the depth was arbitrary. Rather than explain to the
villagers the pointlessness of their well, I introduced myself
by going around and raiding their homes.
I came across a lot of bread and saplings, but also an extra pair
of iron leggings and some Obsidian from a blacksmith's
unguarded chest. With the village now bare of
what it cared about after it uprooted all of the farmers
crops, I backtracked from the village to a promising spot I'd
see in the woods. The spot caught my eye because
it's the perfect place to set a trap.
It was a relatively flat and completely treeless clearing,
covered in tall grasses for unseen observation.
The grass had the slightly bluer tint of the Meadow Biome which
helped it stand out from the rest of the dark taiga, making
user for me and Ghost to find. My previous desire for a quaint
cabin in the woods had turned into a plan for a quaint trapped
in the taiga. The plan was simple.
It began by building and staying in a cabin for two my Griff
days. If ghosts continue to imitate
me, you would inevitably come to my location and reenact what I
had done. The two days I would stay would
provide ghosts with enough time to find me and hopefully trigger
any of the things that made ghosts copy me.
I refound the Meadow and began my work.
I immediately came upon a problem.
I was never a builder in Minecraft, more of a wanderer.
Whenever I spawned in, I'll go searching for materials in
villages. On my journeys I would write
down the coordinates for promising spots for my base.
They usually never settle till post diamond.
Even then it was usually in the middle of a forest near village,
never in one of the hot biomes and usually not in the cold
either. Because of my temperaments, I
never got much practice with building in Minecraft.
My elaborate build ideas would ultimately end in frustration as
I failed to implement them over and over.
For this plan to save my mental health, I went with the classic
and time honored technique of building a cube on the ground,
building a wall around the perimeter of the cube, and then
laying a roof on top of it. This style is called Remaking a
Villager's House. The building was accented by
pillars of unstripped tiger logs in the corners, and it had
cobblestone floors. After placing the last block, I
took a step back and admired my work.
This is probably the best thing I've ever done.
I said, congratulating myself. I set my bed down on the left
side of the cabin and my crafting table on the right.
Next to my crafting table, I set the smoker and blast furnace.
I fed the furnaces, then fed my stomach with the last of my
chicken. With health and hunger
habilitated, I set off the poach some more prime poultry.
After continuing my crime streak of chicken murdering, I went
underground. This time I wasn't looking for
iron or even diamonds, but Redstone.
However, I wouldn't pass up a diamond if I found it.
I needed the Redstone for the most important part of my plan,
the trap. I wasn't very talented at
Redstone, by talented I mean knows how to use it at all, but
I could make a few things. At the entrance to The Cave I
set a blank sign, just testing to see if Ghost would mess with
anything. I also set out a cake I had
made. I took a slice out of it to see
if he would do the same. And a campfire.
I put out the campfire with a shovel to see if Ghost would
relight it. Hypothesize that Ghost would
mess with what I had, directly interact with the cake in the
fire, but leave the sign alone. As I crafted these items, I
could see my CPU usage momentarily going up on the F3
screen and lag occurring from that.
I took a screenshot of my makeshift lab before going
underground. The Cave system under my cabin
was very hard to get through. The Spaghetti Cave After
spaghetti cave, monsters send the dark recesses of these
narrow caves, surprising me by attacking from behind my
thought. I had already lit up that part
of The Cave. After battling my way through
hundreds of blocks of caves, I eventually reached around Y
level 20 and could begin filling my inventory with Redstone.
With my diamond pickaxe tearing through the glowing ore almost
instantly and to being in abundance, my inventory was soon
filled to the brim. I didn't need close to this
amount, but I got kind of carried away by backtracking the
way I'd come. I managed to reach the surface
without having further durability taken from my armor
upon reaching the surface. There's nothing to report about
with the lab, and I didn't need the screenshot to tell me that.
If Ghost had already found me, I would have been grossly
unprepared. I left the items as they were
and stood my unneeded items in a chest I'd hidden under the
bottom log of a tree. Back at the cabin, I laid my
first trap. The first trap was simple but
devious. On the block before the door on
the inside of the cabin, I placed a piston right below it.
I then used a Redstone torch, Redstone dust, and extenders to
carry the signal. Dozens of blocks away from the
cabin, the entire wire was underground.
This lever, when pulled would push an iron block in front of
the cabin door, making it impossible to escape without
mining. The lever to activate it was
situated inside a special outpost are designed for when
Ghost found my clearing. It was just a tiny dirt room,
terraformed to look like the surrounding landscape, with a
door into it located on the side not visible from the cabin.
With this mechanism turning out surprisingly well, I moved on to
the next. After all, a single iron block
would deter anyone for long. After looking at my paper that
outlined the plan I had made, though it hardly seemed relevant
now, I was reminded of the danger of death.
With this in mind, I designed the next trap.
My next upgrade ended up just being an emulation of the first.
What I did was extend the trap in front of the door to the
outside walls of the house. Since I didn't have enough iron,
I used cobbled deep slate to try and make it take as long as
possible to mine. I simply set up a chain of
Pistons all around the outside walls that would push the
cobbled deep slate up by 1 block when activated by a lever.
This would shortly deter Ghost if you tried to mine out the
cabin through the walls and that amount of time.
The next stage of my plan would begin.
I wired the Redstone and placed the lever beside the other.
I labeled them with some hanging signs.
Just as I clicked out the first sign reading one door trap, the
game did something horrifying. Minecraft crashed.
A bolt of fear ran through me. This is bad, I thought.
Minecraft momentarily put up its savings screen.
They completely quit along with my hopes.
I have a very bad feeling about this.
I reopened the Minecraft launcher and pressed play.
It loaded in normally, as did the world, and I had a sense of
dread as I watched the cube fill in on the loading screen.
It's strengthening as the cube grew.
If Ghost was standing before me I wouldn't be surprised, though
I would be grateful to know he was OK.
The world loaded and nothing seemed out of the ordinary at
first. Of course, that was the same
situation when I first joined this cursed world.
Looking to my left, the sign was still where I left it, with no
creepy messages like run or turn around added to it.
I took a few tentative steps out the door, expecting to see the
cabin on fire, but it was fine. I ran over to my lab and
inspected every object. My inspection was instantly
stopped when I noticed what had been changed on the previously
blank sign. There was text.
I don't believe this. I groaned aloud some while still
managing to walk forward through my fear.
I read what the sign said. I read XYC GH3TO.
Looking around, I was alone. No sign of Ghost and no
explanation to what his first sign of communication could mean
into part 4. Thank you guys so much for
listening to the story and thanks again for everyone who
participates at the poll. There's still time to
participate. I have not told you what the
answer, ABC or D is yet, so go participate before the episode.
If you're do it inside the comments on Spotify or the
comments on Apple Podcasts, you may get shout out.
I won't guarantee a shout out just because there's so many of
you guys. So if I miss you, one of you, or
if there's just too many, I'm sorry, I got left out.
So make sure to check out all the links in the description,
make sure to check out the Patreon for the bimonthly update
on the podcast, and make sure to look out for the next episode.
I'll see you guys inside the next episode.