Welcome back everybody to the Minecraft Short Stories podcast
in this episode today. This episode is episode 71.
I will be reading the Part 2 for the Players Not Alone, which is
my newest story, and you can listen to part one.
It was the previous episode, episode 70, So quickly listen to
that. And if you've already listened
to that but kind of forget what's happening, there'll be a
short recap. So this is Part 2.
And then this story is quite long.
It's 2000 plus words, one of the longest stories ever read on
this podcast, which I seem to be constantly breaking that record
every episode now, which I don't know why that is.
I guess the stories have progressively gone longer for
some reason. Anyways, this is the Part 2 and
there will be more parts after this.
I cannot quite promise that I will write those parts, but this
story is not the conclusion to the overall story.
And then also, I'm going on a vacation tomorrow as of
recording this, so there will not be an episode for a little
while longer. It's a 10 day vacation, so it's
going to be a little bit before I get an episode out.
For the same reason, there will not be a prologue episode quite
yet. I'll make that when I get home.
But in the last few days, I released another prologue
episode over. I converted Aesop's Fables into
Minecraft, so I go over all of those.
It's a pretty funny episode. I think that you should check
that one out. The link to the Patreon is down
below. And with no further ado, let's
get right into it. So I'll just summarize this
really quickly. A player spawns into a new
world, and as they gather materials such as wood and
stone, they experience random lag surges for no reason as
you're doing this. And then after they cross the
desert in which they spawned, they find a good place to begin
making their house. But suddenly, the entire forest
erupts into flames around them. And within this forest fire, the
player can see trees without trunks and other such strange
things. This is Part 2 of the players
not alone by me, Kalmelas. I had no way forward in
Minecraft, a game famous for its infinite possibilities.
I could do nothing. The forest was still burning,
sending multitudes of grey, opaque smoke into the sky.
My game was still frozen, my vision locked onto the side of
the flames consuming the blocky landscape.
The forest was almost gone, and along with it, any semblance of
normalcy this world once held. I try not to jump to
conclusions, but there's nothing native to Minecraft that could
have caused this. Something or someone was at
work. As the forest continued to burn,
I reflected upon what I had experienced.
An inconceivable spawn, unaccounted for lag, and a
forest fire that had erupted into existence.
These mysteries were like mismatched puzzle pieces.
Even if you fit them together, the resulting image wouldn't
make any sense. I didn't know what to believe.
The lag could have been my computer's fault.
It isn't exactly new. The fire could have resulted
from the lava pit I left unattended, and the trunkless
trees could have been a flute caused by the fire.
It seems silly to think that was some entity that had an interest
in me. Even if this was an entity, I
didn't have to stay in this world.
I could have closed Minecraft, or worked on the homework I'd
been putting off. These were options, but I wanted
to get to the bottom of this mystery.
The force gave off the sense of ominous anticipation, and I felt
that if I took my eyes off it for a second, something would
happen. I wasn't scared.
Even in the midst of these unrelenting questions, sitting
in the chair in front of my desk, I was detached from the
Minecraft world. I knew I could close Minecraft
at any time or take a screenshot with a click of F2 That reminded
me. Ha.
I said rather half heartedly as I started a screen recording of
Minecraft. It had always bothered me when
these people online who had apparently witnessed an
inconceivable entity in Minecraft never bothered to tape
it. Now at least I could have a
record if anything similar happened to me.
For my world, what stirred the most anxiety in me was the signs
of life. The missing trunks of the trees
made me uncomfortable and I couldn't shake the feeling of
being watched. Missing wood from trees seemed
to always be the first sign of habitation for entities such as
Herobrine or Nall. Entity or not, spending the
night roaming this forest with the chance of one of those
things in my world was impossible.
I needed to find shelter. I was exposed as I stood
motionless on the hilltop where I was originally paralyzed with
lag. The spots where I stood offered
no protection from searching eyes, and I could easily imagine
something lurking in the woods watching me.
I had a bed in my inventory and would place it once I'd
confirmed to the best of my ability that no entity's gaze
was upon me. I would place the bed once the
sun had set. As the dying light from the sun
treaded the smoking remains of my forest in darkness, my eyes
caught a motion different from the dying flames.
I automatically flicked my eyes over to it and caught sight of
what could only be a figure obscured by darkness.
Ducking out of view behind a tree, my heart immediately
started to beat faster. I burst into motion, running as
fast as I could to try and confront the spectator.
This can't be happening. I yelled inwardly.
Almost all of my fear was replaced with thrill as I raced
towards the results of my anticipation.
My flights haphazardness did me more harm than good though. 50
blocks from the wildfires wreckage, I plummeted into one
of the deep sinkholes that I occasionally mar Minecraft's
landscape. Almost frantically, I began
trying to tower back up the walls, but my quick pace
continued to do me harm the entire climb upwards.
My spirits sank lower. It was a full half minute before
I reached the surface. I continued my Sprint to the oak
tree where the spectre had vanished and began searching for
any sign of what I knew I had seen.
Nothing revealed itself, the entity had escaped and left
nothing except a forest fire. I assumed the creature had
started the fire, some missing trunks and a very confused
player. Even my second more in depth
search yielded nothing. The sun was completely down, and
I knew finding any evidence was hopeless.
After searching farther in the dark woods for another minute or
two, I set my bed down, resigned but oddly satisfied, and entered
it. The woods were dark, and
Minecraft's lack of friendly ambience was ominous as my
screen darkened. I was on edge from this day's
experience, and the silence was sinister.
I fully expected to drift to sleep and suddenly see the face
of a mysterious figure appear, looking down at me.
My finger stayed taut on the mouse, the cursor hovering over
the leave bed button until it disappeared.
Luckily for my heart, future enjoyment of the game and real
life sleep, nothing appeared. I don't know what I would have
done if something had shown up. I like to think I would have
pursued the entity and gone bulletproof evidence of its
existence, but more likely I would have just fallen over
backwards in my chair. After the handful of seconds it
took for the Minecraft night to pass, I woke up.
My longing for ambient sounds in the game.
Sisters, rustling leaves, the chirping of birds, maybe even
the howling of wolves at night. It's only heightened by waking
up the dead silence. I mined my bed and prepared to
spend the entire day searching. A couple of hapless chickens met
the reign by the blade of my sword.
I felt a little bad as I ate my cooked chicken.
I had noticed, coincidentally, that chicken was the only food I
was consuming. The chickens probably thought of
me as some kind of serial killer.
Anyways, with my player now having a full hunger bar,
worryingly, I still had no armor.
I began my search. I'd planned to 1st investigate
the land around and underneath the oak tree, then slowly work
my way farther into the woods, making sure to miss nothing.
I began. After 15 minutes of searching, I
knew it was hopeless. All I uncovered were a few more
trunk deprived trees and no entities.
This thing must need a lot of wood, I noted aloud after
finding another eviscerated tree.
Whether this creature needed the wood, or whether it only took it
to terrify me was an important question.
I have a lot of important questions right now.
I stopped my search momentarily to tell it my total of destroyed
trees found. I'd found 9 oak and four Birch.
For future reference, I wrote down the number.
Unfortunately, there appeared to be no connection between wood
types and deforestation. My doubt reappeared and I
regretted ever letting it disappear.
What are you thinking? I asked myself.
This figure I'd seen could have just been a zombie.
I thought back from the brief glimpse I'd caught.
The figure's shirt was blue, the same shade as Minecraft's water,
and it was a very different shade from the colour of a
zombie shirt. A thought popped into my head.
I jumped on it. What if this was only a mods
doing? I checked my Minecraft mods
folder. Opening it up, I realized a
fatal flaw in my theory. I wasn't playing a modded
installation. It wouldn't matter if a mod was
present, because the game wouldn't have loaded it tricking
anyway. I found no mods present in the
folder. I made the difficult decision to
close Minecraft for a time. I need to sort out what was
happening, and I didn't want to reenact why I'd read so many
times. Almost every encounter goes as
follows. A player finds a mysterious
entity, falls for a lame trap, or gets inexplicably insta
killed, and then of course, the world is deleted.
I needed to gather. I needed to gather information
and they can pose a plan from what I learned, making sure to
avoid all the common pitfalls. A lot of work for a 7th grader.
I started as all great plan makers begin by grabbing a blank
sheet of paper. I split it into three sections.
What other players do, what I should do and what has already
happened. Dramatically cracking my
knuckles, I opened up Google Chrome and started on the 1st
category. Reading Minecraft players posts
on the Internet can be gruelling work.
The amount of labour required goes up as the use of grammar
goes down, but it is also a gold mine for Minecraft entity
encounters. After a bit of searching I found
a couple. 1 user reported an encounter with a player shaped
entity that had all black skin except for minimal purple
highlights. They didn't provide any
screenshots, but from what they described the creature looked
like an armored alien. This player's story began with a
normal spawn. They then did normal Minecraft
things. Drop down trees, find oars,
build a house out of planks, etcetera.
The point of this post was realized when after having been
away from their house gathering resources, they came back to
discover the wooden house was on fire and all their stored items
gone. Took my eyes off the screen to
write down no flammable houses. Searching the wreckage, all this
Minecraft player found was a sign sitting in the centre of
their house. On its was written Hope is no
more surrender. This user spent a long time
staring at the sign and wondering what it meant.
Suddenly, an entity of all black and purple came up behind them
and they were instantly slain. The last they saw of that world
was the black and purple figure standing over them.
Their world was deleted. With the story completed, I
turned to my paper and added the notes, Don't stare at signs too
long and backup world. I found another story and dove
into it. This one told the tale of the
player who found more than they desired while looting an ocean
monument. Their narrative began with an
account of their continued search for this rare temple.
After finally finding one, they downed a water breathing potion
and began the dangerous swim towards the monument.
They had to dodge the lasers shot by the ocean monument's
guardians and suffer through the mining fatigue effect.
After much struggle, the player reached the vast underwater
labyrinth. This user searched the structure
until they started hearing a strange wailing, growling sound.
After following the sound for a few minutes and consuming
another water breathing potion, they came to a room shrouded in
darkness. This darkness was completely
unnatural. The underwater lanterns lit all
the other corridors, but the illumination could not Pierce
this. Making their way in, they
couldn't see anything. Suddenly, the players start
taking damage. Their hearts were quick, their
hearts were quickly depleted, and they died without ever
finding out what was hiding in the darkness.
I wrote down bringing a light source.
Don't follow strange noises and don't go into strange places.
Without preparation, I finished writing down these points and
dropped my pencil onto my desk. I scanned why I'd gathered.
After reading through it a few times and trying to tackle the
problem from multiple different angles, I was getting nowhere.
I was excited to begin composing a plan, but I forced myself to
first note down all of the relevant information regarding
my world's irregularities. Writing it out, I slowly began
to realize something. The lag hadn't been random.
The lag had only occurred while I've been doing something.
The game ran perfectly fine. In any other instance, there had
to be a connection. My first thought was, what if
this lag is the fault of my computer?
Perhaps Minecraft is demanding enough that if I do anything
even slightly more intensive, the computer can't handle it.
And the forest fire causing so much slowdown was explained by
this. What I couldn't get past was
that this had never happened to me before.
In every other Minecraft playthrough, my game ran
completely fine. Perhaps this was the entity he's
doing. I finished my recap and put down
my pencil. Before me, I had two sets of
data. One was all the information I
had. Another was the information
other said. It seemed like I could almost
combine them and know what to do.
Staring at my sheet of paper trying to fit them together, I
suddenly realized I was growing tired of this game.
Not Minecraft, of course, but whatever game this entity had
involved me in. I'd restarted my Minecraft
playthrough to begin anew, and this creature was rehashing why
I'd already read so many times before.
It would follow the same timeline as all the others.
First some sightings, then some griefings, and finally my player
would be killed in the world. Deleted.
Catching it on video or finding out what it wanted never stopped
it. The feeling that was almost like
electricity in my veins. I remembered something.
I had been taking a screen recording when I saw the
creature in my world. I had it.
I had proof whether this was a zombie, my imagination, or my
computer. Returning to my computer, I
located the file where the recording was stored.
Opening up the folder, I found it empty.
I started to panic a little bit. Had the entity somehow infected
my computer? Another second later, I
remembered that the screen recording had to be finished for
it to be accessible. Pressing the necessary keys to
stop the tape, I watched relieved as the screen recording
popped into the folder. I opened it up before I could
start worrying once more about corrupted files.
I'd start the recording as the force was still flame so I
wouldn't have to wait too long. Thinking ahead, I opened it up
inside a video editor so I could slow down the recording and
reverse it. I clicked play.
It was all I had seen before. The real revelation was when the
figure appeared the second I saw the blue clothed entity.
I paused the video. With the thing now on mobile on
my screen, I could gather more details.
It was the exact shape of the player, and I got the impression
that the arms were the thicker ones of Steve.
This player was 30 plus blocks away, so I couldn't make out any
more details besides that. Looking at the figure watching
me, I got a strong sense of an ease.
Something about this felt wrong. Zooming in on the frame, I
immediately learned why. It was me.
My player's skin, my tools, my leather helmet.
It was me, end of Part 2. Bum bum bum.
Thank you all for listening to Part 2 of the Players Not alone,
part three or four may be coming out soon.
If four, then this means that this would be the first story to
ever get more than three parts on the podcast.
And the story definitely does look like it's shaping up to be
a three plus part story. So I'm planning on writing
those. And then also just a quick
update about the Patreon. Add a new perk to all the tiers
above the base tier. And the optional perk is that
you can just contact me on Patreon.
You can just use this to maybe get some feedback for your
stories, ask questions or give me story ideas.
I'm always willing to hear you guys's story ideas.
So anyway, just wanted to let you know if I didn't say before,
links in the description for the YouTube channel, the websites,
the Patreon, the that's about it.
Anyways, I do hope you guys enjoyed this episode, Hope
you'll join me for the next one and I'll see you guys inside the
next episode.