A Regrowth Server Story (version 1.0 released!)

ICountFrom0

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This time I've recruited one of my friends to act as my sidekick. Timing isn't exactly when I'd have liked it to be, but honestly, this is when we've got time. I'd not be shocked if somebody told me that it had to be completely reworked due to changes in the mods involved.

I hope that those who have read my stories in the past continue to read through this one and continue to keep me going with likes and replies. I also hope at least one person will go through the older stories and see where I've been. All comments are welcomed, and advice is often used.

 

ICountFrom0

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Nowhere.
But still, this seems like it's somewhere.
I know I was promised a world for my work, but it seems that they never promised me a working world.

As I looked slowly around, I discovered I wasn't alone. Somebody had arrived just before me and she explained things.

This world had been devastated by a Dire Nemesis...



Scattered in this world are some structures I'd never seen before. Almost nothing that seems like a resource of any kind though. Nothing I was at all familiar with.

Even the trees refused to give wood. Sticks, and fragile bundles of deadwood. Sometimes a lightening blasted tree gave a little charcoal. The grass was dead, rarely giving anything. Fragments of bone from it would let me bonemeal myself some resources on the rare, scattered, guarded patches of grass. Sometimes some of the stone would breach the surface and I could break off from flint from it. Sometimes there was a single scrap of clay. From this I was supposed to make my way, somehow.



The first night I had to punch a hole in the ground, under one of the blasted trees and wall myself in with a few blocks of sand that I'd found in a cave. Not even proper sand, the red dust of deserts.

Still, in this shelter with my companion, we started to figure things out. That you could knap flint with other flint and break it into blades. That two sticks together could reinforce eachother enough to make a tool rod. That from those the most basic tools could be made.

That with a flint axe you could craft a crafting table from the deadwood.



The next day was better. We continued into the distance, leaving the place of landing far behind. I still wasn't sure if this was a job given because I was good at remaking worlds, or at least experienced, or punishment for not completing my work.

Further and further we walked, but now with tools and weapons, it was easier to collect the resources from what was was left of this world.



In the distance we saw houses unlike any we'd seen before, but never more then one. Not a village, but another loner, a single hobgoblin in a hut. Still, not quite a villager, but willing to trade, though I'd never heard of the dust he wanted, or the ore he was offering as an ingot.



So blasted these lands, from the depths of the earth slick black ooze bubbled and flowed, spread in slick pools over the surface. Such things are best to stay away from it seems. Too easy for such pits to claim your life. I've heard of tarpits that ate the lives of the most monstrous creatures, and so I didn't dare go close myself.

Further south, though now it was nothing more then wanting to move, thinking there had to be a better place. Feeling that what we'd gotten wasn't enough.

There was nowhere to take shelter on the second night, so we kept running. The next day came and there was a building on the horizon. It almost looked like a place one of the villagers had lived but...



There was almost nothing left of it. Fire and devastation. Blighted crops.

Though, still, it was a place to rest. To stop and catch our breaths. To eat what we could and patch our wounds, tend our hurt.

The straw bales that made up the statues of warning could give us a little bread. There was furnaces here and the charcoal let us cook, if we could find something alive for meat.



There was no meat. The fields, the crops gave no resources, and even the earth was blighted. It was a hungry time. A dangerous time. Still you do the best with what is given to you, as little as it is.

The building's remains could be worked with, most of it would be lost if broken, too fragile to hold, but a few of the blocks where still viable and solid. Those moved to patch the holes in the wall, the fence completed, and it would be a safe place to last the night.



Though to be safe we spent the night in the basement just the same, taking a few swings at monsters at the fences and through the ruins of the building for scraps of flesh from the undead. Better then starving, but you still felt hungry.

Better then the first night, hiding in the ground. Not by much. Still much better then a night on the run.



Another day on the run, and this time the structure in the distance was a stone circle, and strangest of strange things a witch that didn't want us dead. I'd seen many witches, and even the wither witches here and in other worlds, but this was the first that even gave a hint of being willing to be friendly. Is the magic here that plentiful that even these folk are willing to share it?

If so, that's the only resource that this world offers.



Honestly, I'd completely lost track of time and distance and even of my place in the universe long before I saw the sea. When I saw it though, I knew that on this blue shore was the place to build.

Then I discovered I didn't have to, and that was good because night was falling.

So in another ruined house on the edge of the blue water, we started to make a home.



To make a home, and defend it.

To eat the first food that wasn't a thing of nightmares, real meat from a real chicken. But to see that the only animals where in the hands of zombies was something of worry.

Better to secure ourselves underground, so there was always a place that would be safe from the blasted lands and horrific monsters.



Dirt collected from below the ground, where the endless foes had not taken and tainted it, back to the surface and the blasted sands replaced with honest soil again. The burnt grasses had offered up to me a seed, and with the seed i was able to start new grass here at my home.

This grass was not guarded by swarms of zombies and skeletons, no, it was guarded by the strength of arms, mine and hers. That and a stout fence.



Down by the furnaces where things where dry enough, we'd started to dry and treat the monster flesh. It's a skill that is hard to master, but if you have it the zombie flesh can be treated, dried into jerky that was almost eatable. Almost. Least it didn't leave you feeling hungry. It was still something to motovate you to do more, to live better then this.



With the aid of crop sticks the spindly plants that grow from seeds here in this soil and all that is left here are able to grow stronger. It's food, not much of it, but still a start. Combined with the occasional potato or carrot from zombies who remembered what it was to have life once, a small garden in the wastes. It will bring us food.



Then from them, careful crossbreeding and mutation starts to bring us more of the remembered comforts. Nothing like having sugar cane again, and paper to write with. Better then having to remember these notes in story form.

With food, and the first seps at having a history secured, it was time to push a little further. A destroyed world, but strong in magic. Petals from flowers, powdered bone, roots of a magical plant, and the ashes of wood formed a powder that adds chaos and mutation to any growth. A very random chance, but from it, saplings and from those, TREES!



No more dependant and limited by the few things that can be done with the half destroyed deadwood, proper trees and proper logs. So much more becomes possible.

There are things, half remembered things that I was told of in stories. Of living trees and walking woods and the forests they guard, and that such things should exist in a world such as this. Perhaps, in time, this mutandus is the key to finding the truths in the old stories?



With the start of a base secured near the blue and shining water, some real food and supplies enough, we set out, trying to find what might be useful left in this world. She went to find bees, and I went to collect what I could from buildings and ruins. We shall see what she brings when we return and meet up again next.

 

ICountFrom0

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Zombie pigmen.

Spawning from some sort of ritual.

Lava. And an easy source of gold.

Not the safest way to get it, and not much of it to get here.



I helped her to make it safe. She returned to base with what she'd found in exploration. Because she'd made a scoop with some thread from the first spiders we'd destroyed I figured it was bees she'd be bringing back. I wasn't entirely sure though, so I did bring back what gold ingots, nuggets, and items I could.

Who knows, it might be useful, and it can't hurt to have some things ahead of time.



Came back to discover that there was a little botania in place, the bees safely stored. Perhaps it was the mana steel scoop that was a temptation.

I know I'm tempted by the mana steel tools that repair themselves.

Book says we need it anyway, so many things depend on us doing this right, to make the world better again.



Thus the flowers that remove impurity from the plants. The pure daisy, to have outselves the livingwood, and living rock, such little life to bring into the world, but better then the blasted land before.

Simple matter to push further in botania from here, spreaders and pools and the simplest of flowers.



Light into mana, and the pool slowly fills. The quests reward them to us, and for a time we can run without any more advanced plants.

Mana seems to be used to make seeds for materials that just otherwise don't seem to exist in this world.



Behold, the many colours of flower petal dyes, merge with mana to make a multi coloured flower.

That's the least of the things we can grow with this magic.

I moved on to farming again, but every now and again I looked in on her.



Seems that she got endoflames setup, quite a few of them, rather impressive.

She even got the potions up and running. Course that was with a reward from the overlords. Still, a blaze rod is a blaze rod, and it's quite nice to make multi use potions.




Meanwhile, the bees seem to almost all be the modest ones we'd find in the desert. With a lot of bonemeal I was able to get some tiny cactus that are enough to keep them happy, though it's slightly amusing to see an entire swarm of bees trying to cultivate just a single tiny cactus.

The wild hives must have had some intact combs, that's why we've gotten the bee houses. A lack of metal means that we've not yet got seed oil, but it just takes wood and the comb.

In truth they are a bit inefficient...



Still, some comb and the knowledge of eventual honey is better then none at all, even if it is from the impure queens of this land. Finding a proper queen that lasts is rare and hard.

Not as hard as taking out that last enderman so we had a mana pearl for the altar, but still a bit tricky.

From that first, more combs mean more bee houses and more bees at work.



And myself?

I went back to the garden.

As the crops cross, and more seeds where found in the dirt, I would place them, and start them growing towards full strength.



While waiting for them I'd get more bonemeal, more ash, and the green dye from the magical flowers to work with the mutandus.

Trying to get more kinds of trees and more kinds of crops to grow and maximize and cross.



From the altar and the rewards for progress, slowly, so slowly we started to get seeds for things we needed. Copper. Tin. Iron.

With the iron we where able to get mana steel, and it would last us for a long time, keeping repaired from the mana in the pools, rather then having to use flint to bring back the durrability time and time again.



With all these new crops, and hints of even more to come, it's clear that we'd have to make room, to build and build more, higher and higher.

So, upward. Four nice pads of soil, to be slowly replaced with the garden soil as it composts.



The first set of essences infuse into an even stronger infusion stone, able to give us normal essence.

With those we've got even more plants within our reach, though those starting from scratch are slower to raise to the limits then the ones we can cross for ourselves. It's still worth it.



When those grow, we'll have to go higher, but for now, this first patch of magical plants, able to give us much needed metal will make things much easier, much better in this blasted land. It's not enough to feel like a home yet, but enough that it's starting to feel easier. Better.



As you can see, we're not doing badly for food either. Sugar Cane means paper, wheat carrots, potatoes, always lovely for food, even when we're starting.

For a change of pace, there's some mushrooms growing downstairs in a little guarded chamber.



Thus, with food taken care of, lets push the limits, and see what else we can manage in this empty land.

With the copper it's easy enough to make a vat. That vat is a good source of obsidian, but it seems to be the key to progress here.



The vat lets you sear brick with lava, this dries it even further, making it able to more easily tolerate high heat.

Just a touch of iron and a bit of tinker easy enough to make a crucible that burns hot enough to melt stone.

The melted stone is just what it takes to start a smeltery. If I really wanted to I could make tools more complex then my flint now.

It also lets me make a proper tool forge, for when I want something better then a simple axe.

It's a good start, these forge essentials.

 
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Pascal Simard

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Welcome! Well, I would have done an earlier journal such as that of Count Zero, but my camera failed to work at first, and now that I have managed to get it working, I have taken a few pictures of the world as it is now ... I joined the world somewhat late as well, so I could start with a bit of a retell. At first, there was nothing. Then, Bird, my partner in regrowth, built a small house.
2016-08-22_09.06.09.png

Though, that small house was getting cramped really fast. So I took it upon myself to stripmine the marble underneath that small house, and build something a little more substancial...
2016-08-22_09.06.22.png

This slightly bigger house would soon become our storehouse, workshop, and watch tower. I have plans to perhaps allow it to grow even taller at some points... by adding a light house on top of it. A beacon of hope for all to find safety within our walls... but for now, this is what it looks like. You can also see the Fir Trees we planted around our home. Why so many Fir trees? We both were Canadians before the nemesis destroyed the world... So this is a bit of a souvenir of what it was like back home!
2016-08-22_08.55.47.png

This is the workshop and laboratory as it can be seen right now. Tool racks, composting, workbenches, forges, and my very first smelters. Then, I took a few days to build the next thing, something a little more substancial
2016-08-22_08.51.48.png

This smeltery, nine metres across, four metres tall, can smelt more metals and alloys then we could ever hope for. Once that was built, I made a better metal, bronze, and then used that to create new tools and armor for myself, and my partner, Bird.
2016-08-22_08.50.37.png

This here is an irrigation system that was recently set up. It helps the various plants in the crops to grow even faster, which means getting seeds via double cropsticks is even faster.

2016-08-22_08.56.14.png

This one however, is a project I had very little to do with. I added maybe what... sixty metres square to the surface? It is a bridge that takes us directly to Count Zero and Pinky's base of operations. Concrete makes the journey so much faster, and the torches makes it so much safer!

Hopefully, he will never find out that the reason the world is like this is because of one of my experiments ... I am never going to rebuild a Dakari Tower, no, not if it means leaving the world devoid of all life ... But everyone, keep this a secret. I would be in trouble if he ever finds out I am this Nemesis he speaks of...
 
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Pascal Simard

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That Nemesis post is about a project of mine, a mod I have been studying Java for hope of making at some point. It is, for the most part, based on Crystalmancy, an art that I have created for my novels. The Dakari Tower is one of the high-end constructs that leads to creating a vast portion of the world to become dark and cold and dangerous ... The zombies and skeletons that spawn in there are twice as big, and four times as dangerous as the usual kind, and other nasties spawn along with them . . . Of course, being such a forbidden art, in trying to gain mastery over Darkness and Light, might have been something the overlords, as ICountFrom0 calls them, would punish him for.
 
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ICountFrom0

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It's slightly odd to be doing restoration with a partner and compatriot, but it feels good.

That's not the only odd thing. You did notice that we'd made the forge first for advanced tools before making the proper smeltery. Truth is we hadden't found a good underground source of lava yet, and in the meantime we could at least use manasteel to make lumber axe for such large trees as those.



Still, with one chapter down, you start feeling like you've started to hit your stride. None of the demands where extraordinary, it was all very basic suggestions that lead us gently into the first part of our work and helped us to secure the base.

Some of these things make sense, the dirt below the ground that the endermen could not take, of course it's low in nutrient, that explains perfectly why we'd need the crop sticks. Makes even more sense that we'd have to use compost to make things livable for the more delicate magical plants. Shame we can't just bonemeal it, but using the magical remnants in the bonemeal and the magical flowers, and just a touch of the mutandus for change, of course.

So many things I'll be taking back to the world with me, to try when I can.



Proud was the day we had enough growing that we could fill one wall with furnaces and do our smelting in vast batches. Proud too that we had resources enough that doing such actually made sense... even if half the time it was cobblestone into smooth stone so that we could continue to build well in this decaying world.

Proud too that our ability to tame mana has lead us away from these simple tools of flint into better ones of mana steel, both crafted on the forge and crafted with magic. It's a strange feeling, knowing you've got this figured out and knowing that there is yet so much to learn, powerful but humbling.



And yet, the signs of difficulty in this world are hard to miss.

To get these chests, to go beyond the simple wood ones that we'd made from the deadwood, we had to have wool. Many nights and many spiders, while dealing with the creepers and the others left behind by the endermen to guard the world. The undead outnumber the living, and the few living things are creepers and spiders. Never a single sheep to be seen. It's discomforting.

And, if yea spotted that unusual furnace, seems that iron here is one of the things to feel the tainted bite of the magics of the endermen. Nothing is as strong as it should be and iron seems to have suffered the worst. But still, the overlords teach us, there is a tool. Iron, reforged with charcoal and sand, the process gives us impure wrought iron to work with. A material I've not seen before, dark as the night, but rich with potential. Still only potential, through we've made some of it to tinker with. Though to use it to the fullest, there's a dangerous thing we must do.



The vat, it lets us make obsidian, though nothing we have can break it once it's in place. Such a portal has an unusual weight of permanence in such circumstances, a strange dangerous feeling even if we could just extinguish it, it will always loom. At least until we can improve ourselves, and we will, we must.

So into the portal into the fiery pits, and we find that the pigmen seem to have been a part of it too. This world is rich in ores, and everything that was under the ground. It is the farthest thing from safe as this portal opens onto a tiny island in a vast open cavern of lava.

Still, with some work, a reinforced tunnel into the roof of the world is made. There it's safe, truth be told, never SAFE, to plunder some of the resources that are so dangerously and jealously guarded. I take just a few of each and then through the portal again. Work them in the smeltery and upgrade my tools, and back into the fire, time and time again.



Meanwhile, Pinky is working hard as well. With each new resource I take back, she seems to be able to get a new seed growing. In time we will never need to risk this place. In time.

Starting off the plants are things we would otherwise be taking for granted. Copper, tin, iron, even enderpearls are farmed here because the enderfolk rarely leave to check this blasted and blighted land.



With the coal, the endoflames have a new fuel source, and mana becomes plentiful. The overlords being kind have even seen to give us a few blaze rods now that we've shown we can handle the nether. Or, honestly, it's perhaps we have shown that we cannot handle the nether and that it's too dangerous for us.

Still, that reward was enough to let us setup a catalyst for additional forms of alchemy with the mana. One of the first things made is proper cactus, and with them the occasional slimeball so that I might push a bit in technology.



Also, likewise, cocoa. I'd gotten lucky with the mutandus and had myself some junglewood saved from that tree, so it was a simple thing to set some of the cocoa beans growing again. You'd not think this means much, but for a diet that had been mostly of bread, to suddenly know we could have cookies, it was a joy for us.

Also, the mana cookies make such a lovely emergency food that I think I'll never want to be without them, anywhere.



I did say that it seemed like we'd not get further without taking that insane risk, and with the risk taken come rewards.

Now it is simple enough to make sandy brick, even if the resources needed are strange feeling, the result is the same as ever. A coke oven. An even better fuel for our furnaces and for the endoflames.

This is also the next piece in turning the iron into something more suitable then the fragile shards it tends to want to become. Though it seems the blast furnace is going to be slightly out of our reach for a little more.



Still, with the new flushness of mana there are things we've wanted that we can now make. Many creatures that where just waiting a touch of magic to be drawn into the world again. Sheep for wool so that we could keep making better and better chests where unresistible now.

Likewise, as needful a chance in diet as the cookies, the pigs came forth into the world for us too.



Now, these rituals require eggs to contain the animals until they can be brought into the world, and while we'd been granted a few by the overlords, it wasn't many, and next had to be chickens. Without them we where at risk of running out and we knew not when we could obtain more.

So, carefully contained with the eggs collected for us, come the chickens.



Feathers too, I'm sure will prove to be useful, all in good time.

I offer you one strange thing I noticed, you'd not think that milk would be of much use, but it keeps showing up as something we need. With these lovely milk maids we can now make cake and satisfy the last of the runes that had been out of reach. Though still the last of them, sins, will require diamonds, and those are but a twinkling dream, still we've now gotten the seasons.



And so, this corner of the wastelands was almost starting to feel like a place that might have life, a place that might have hope. We even have neighbors who we know are working just as hard across the pond, all in all a good feeling, somebody to pit ourselves against and work with, turn and turn about however it might go.

Seems there was just one bit of life left in the world though, something rather unexpected.



Never thought that the escenceberries would be the crop that survived the end of the world. Must be because they where thorny and hard to pick up, that's the only thing that saved them from the endermen I figure. Perhaps the pigmen where not able to move them because they where alive.

I'll never know, surely the two conspiring forces would never tell ME about how they did it.



Speaking of the nether again, there's one thing I can use from there to my advantage, perhaps two in the long run but I'm not entirely sure about THAT part yet. Still the netherrack does make a wonderfully potent furnace, able to use the perpetual heat of the nether to make itself far more efficent. It only takes two coal coke to process an entire stack of items now, and for the small batches even sticks manage to be enough.



There's pinky, she's rather fond of the pink tools and her new armor, posing for the camera, it looks good on her.

Right beside her is the upgraded smeltery, pushing it higher while doing a touch of relocating, putting the proper tools right by it. A place ofr everything, and everything in place.



Looks like I'm closing this little entry in the log with the lastest project that the pink one has started. She thinks it might be possible to channel the powers of nature through another magic. She's making a start on witchery, and not just because it's a task assigned by the overlords, but for the sake of making the land greener and better.

 
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Pascal Simard

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If I learn how to pan out and show my character somehow, I might take a photo of us all! ^.^
 

ICountFrom0

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Looks like my associate and assistant has left me something. Perhaps a plea for assistance?

Seems that she'd made the first plates by hand on the anvil, and then moved on to see if she could do it more efficiently. The rolling machine and engine being clear signs that she did figure it out.

Rolling machine also has a few other basic functions, the carpenter shows that she'd also accomplished some of those.

Inside the carpenter machine was some sand and the wasteland cracked earth. Seems she was doing her best to restore what she could while I was sleeping, following along with the demands of the overlords.



I can always ask when she wakes up, and in the meantime there's nothing wrong with a little experimentation.

Seems that the anvil is meant for refining jewelry and other magical devices, as well as being an easy early source of plates. Though to make use of that I'll need to go under the water as the overlords have been demanding and bring forth some oysters.

Still, it's something the overlords want, so it might be something we do in time.



Well, truth be told, I did just do it, but we will have a look at it in a moment. Don't want to let myself get TOO distracted.

With all the farming and cross breeding and crops, there was quite a few seeds that we'd made along the way that where just not good enough to keep. Each of the seeds is only a tiny bit of seed oil it's still a better purpose for them then just waiting in a chest and never seeing the light of day.

Course, we're not quite ready to make proper use of the seed oil, but it IS a better resource then the seeds.



With the start of technology means being able to set things up before that would have needed us to watch and wait and spill the metal a bit at a time.

Easy enough now to set things up and move on to better things.

Well, not better, just different.



A ring of cordata makes these demands a little easier to deal with. When you can think and swim like a fish it's harder to drown. A diving suit and the ring together makes being underwater quite enjoyable. A leisurely swim without worrying that the water would take my breath away and leave me gasping.

Though, of a matter of course, it did prove to be harder then I thought to find the bubbles leaking up from a gas pocket. Still, I was able to get down there, hold my breath a while more and pump the gas into tanks for latter use. Some of the ancient sand also seemed like a good idea to get.

I also noticed the strange liquid shimmer down here that was refusing to mix with the water. It refused to let itself be scanned and even seemed to resist being taken away from here. A mystery for another time.



When I'd gotten back to the surface she'd woken up and gotten a blast furnace made. This means another step up the tech tree was now possible. The wrought iron mixed with coal coke in the blast furnace became a usable steel. Then it could even be refined further into a better steel. Still it's a long process and not the only long process that had to be done to climb higher.

The natural gas I brought up was useful in making a number of things in mariculture the overlords had demanded, including the rest of the outfit to go with the tank that Pinky pulled out to show me. Seems she'd been tinkering on the anvil and made it from plates early on but hadn't been able to fill it yet.

I did promise though, didn't I?



Some of the components in the tech demanded by the overlords, made from the mariculture supplies required the pearls that I'd been quietly farming for a little while now. I admit I was sneaky in getting the first one, I made a dry pocket under water and took the ground out from under the shell. Then the overlords rewarded my ambition with more of them. This small chamber just happens to contain the two rewards and the first oyster.

Turned out that it also was useful for getting a few ender pearls. Shame we've got enough growing. If we'd known that, well... it probably wouldn't have changed much as this only gives them rarely.



Now, with the demands nearly done, it was time to reward myself.

Well, not really, the overlords wanted us to repopulate the missing fish from the sea, and that meant I would have to catch and breed them. A task made rather difficult when the world wants to consume my flesh and brains, or perhaps just explode around me.

Still, a chance to rest and fish a while, I shouldn't be too upset.



Now, when you've fished for days and gotten almost everything but the type of fish the overlords are asking you to get, that's when I start to get a bit frustrated.

Still, they arn't actually insisting that I bring them minow, they just say that such a fish is the easiest to breed in the ruined wastelands.

If I'm smart, and careful, I can just build the fishery here under water.



Though, it turns out I was lacking, just a little on a pair that would thrive in the oceans. Still now that I am down here it's easier to fish. More of them survive the process of being hooked and trapped. It's not long before I can get the last few fish I need and get them ere in the water.



Thus one of the harder demands from the overlords is settled. I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to continue to run these fish tanks and hatch the eggs, but I could. It's not as much trouble as the bees are, at least now that I've started to figure out how it operates.

Thus back to the surface with me, I'll make up my mind about them in time.



The luxury of a smeltery that empties itself is such a joy that I just had to try to setup something else. With the steam engine filling itself from the water tank and more of the water feeding into the carpenter it's much easier to craft things and to turn the broken soil of this land into sand. It's not as good as a usable soil, but it has some uses. Though it seems that soon Pinky will have for us some seeds that mean an end to such techniques. Better then clawing holes in what's left of this planet to get what we need she says, and I must agree.

Course, I am not without my contributions myself. With each of these better resources I'm able to mine slightly more durrable resources that the pigmen have stolen into the nether. It took me trips and trips, days and days, slowly improving my pick a little at a time, fighting for my life against the pigmen as they swarmed in waves. I fought, and I mined, and eventually I won. Some of the materials refused to surrender themselves into a useable form without the intence heat of the blast furnace to cook away the impurities of the nether.



That work eventually rewarded me with this purple beauty. Manyleium. Though strangely not the strongest material in this world. It was needed for me to be able to get the osmium that higher technology in this realm seems to be built around. Still, I am not quite ready to do more then stockpile that for latter use.

Nay, I still have quite a bit to go even with this long day and night I've been working to the task.



Seems that my friend got a better picture of the process when I was doing it again latter, I quite admit that this isn't a picture of my first time doing it. Nay, it took a few tries before I got efficient at washing the smelted limestone and getting the grains of magnesium I needed.

Rhyolite ore, when purified in the blast furnace and smelted again with the lava helping the crucible furnace reach a high enough heat melts down into impure titanium.



This impure titanium needs to be processed a second time with the magnesium, giving a chance for the impurity to be drawn off into slag. This gives me a small amount of the final, pure, titanium ingot.

With them I can start tinkering in the final pieces, to get myself that much closer to a real and working world of machines.



A few minutes work and I've gotten a generator in place. It took a little longer then I thought it would take to get the blocks in places and the rotors on them. Still, just water wasn't enough to make them flow. Not in any speed that could actually generate power for me.

I've got enough aluminum to make the rotors as often as I'd like, but they don't seem to be the key. A check of the book says I need to build up the pressure and release it with sluice gates.



Turns out, that was a bit easier to read about in the book then it actually was to do.

I made just the smallest of mistakes and the water tore through the weakened ground of this place. It drove a hole until there was something stronger to stop it. This was with almost nothing to give it pressure.

I took a breath, I patched the holes, and I got back to work.



Once I had the pressure properly contained, the sluice gates ticking over and releasing the water in measured amounts, I could get a little power flowing from the generator in small but steady amounts.

Makes sense to expand this structure again, instead of making something completely from scratch, what with it being a slightly dangerous substance being made into an even more dangerous substance.



Thus the work of a few days slowly grew into this. A large enough structure to be the proper start of my power. I've just enough resources to move further, but I would be doing my friend a horrible disservice to not spent just as long showing what she'd been doing while I was here smashing my hammer at this tech until it behaved.

Behave it did, but the work she's done is quite a bit more impressive.

 

ICountFrom0

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While I was working ot refine these corrupted materials into things that could be used for machines, it seems that Pinky was across the plot, working on adding more and more magic into the materials, giving them purification of a completely different sort.

It seems that the ruined materials left here just drink up magic. Great gouts of it. While it can be a little tricky to get the mana for such things, it is not impossible. Seems this world is a thirsty world.



Seems too that it's a bit thin. Does not take much to get a portal that resonates with another realm. The aelfheim where confused to hear from a land they had thought destroyed but eager to trade with us for materials. It seems that the magic laced resources we have here are practically mundane in comparison to the naturally occurring things they have on the other side, but they are eager for it just the same.

In turn, so where we. The dragonstones are particularly amazing devices, able to be attuned to a wide range of magic, not just the limited range the local diamonds absorb. This is key to an entire new branch of magic exploration.



Seems that a properly constructed altar is able to take the mana drawn from the natural world and store it within itself. Properly made tools can then draw it out to power themselves, leading to a new method of transformation and alteration of the resources in this world.



This leads to a vast and complicated set of infusions and brews. Though today there's one special one that was the focus of much work. A brew of sleeping.

Unusual mutations of trees for magically infused wood, fumes of magic captured in the jars with the oven. Specialized equipment made with thread from the spinning wheel.

All this so that such a bewitching brew could be made.



To encourage sleep and dreams. There where things that could never be recovered to this world, not in any waking way.

But in dreams, it seems, some things could be pulled out. At least a tiny bit of them could be drawn into this reality through the thinness of the world.



The first attempts only brought back disturbed cotton. Nightmares, not sweet dreams all that where to be had. Still, the echo of it was something that could, too, be brought back. Spun on a spinning wheel, and then combined with a few exotic things and suddenly, there was a charm to guard our sleep.



With this, and a little luck, we reached though into the dreaming, and saw.

The damage done extended even this far, the dreaming world broken and shattered wastelands as far as the eye could see. The dreamlands where fighting back though, some soil remained, and below the earth was resources untouched.

It was as if three worlds where smashed together. Shattered lands, something out of a dream, but we where compelled to exist here. For there are things that can only be done by the dreaming mind.



From the blasted stone, flint. With that flint, the first tools, as once again we are started from nothing. With the flint, we strike the earth, and only copper will come to the call. From the vines of nightmare nether intruding, some netherrack is harvested, and from that the better furnaces are made.

From the first copper comes a vat, and into that, by the bucket, can go lava and water, giving obsidian as early as you could please.



A moment of pause as I discover that there's little I could make with the tinker's guidance that could let me mine any of the resources in the world. Seems That I must aim for another goal for now.

I strike the earth and go delving, hoping to see something I can harvest with this pick while the furnaces on the surface work over the copper.



There I see it, a mingling of materials, a bit of grout. It's many hours digging up the scattered bits of this where they exist on the edge of other things, but in time I bring back enough loads of it to the surface.



Thus, with the grout baked, we formed a smeltery. Lava was still a bucket at a time, with clay harvested from the scarce grass or the edges of water, for water was once again much a danger.

Also thus, the discovery. With only being able to harvest copper, there was no gold and no brass to make molds. So the only thing this was good for was making blocks. Still, with more blocks it could make itself larger, and 2 copper per ore was better then 1, even if it meant the lava would cost.



These caves, as deep and dark as anything have monsters, and from them the normal yields of slaying the creepers. A single block of TNT was eventually my reward of these efforts, as I thought I might have use of it.

A big boom latter, and I've a diamond for myself.

Sadly when I went to place it on my pick, it did not grow in strength as I had hopped. I was no better able to harvest then before.

Still, I had food, and the day was long, eternal, and peaceful, I did not have much to want, it was a good dream.



In one of these rests, I remembered, there are tools I was not using. With the natural world here mostly intact I could produce the needed materials, I could get the botanical fertalizer from the flowers and the grasses.

From that I was able to make the apothicary, the pure daisy, and the first living wood of this world.

Living wood and stone, a flower to capture the sun, and then with the mana from that, a slower that feeds on the fuels that are plentiful here.



I did say the pink one was doing quite a bit of work while I was working on machines, here I tagged out to return to them and she came in to make vast and important changes.

She remembered how the world started, and that it was needful to setup the compost for what would come.

While that was working, she worked.



The book of the overlords was easily made, and she set about collecting the essences from the quests completed, some on each side of the dreaming world's divide.

It wasn't long until my little patch of land was vastly expanded and much work done on it.

Each of the possible plants being crossbred back into existence, and the essences slowly infused on the altar to become again seeds.

Thus was the first real resources of this world gathered, not from the mines, but from magic.



I admit, when I visited, in dreaming, I saw many strange things that perhaps didn't really exist. Inn that world was only the dream of cows, and there are no seeds of them, a resource that we have to do without here.

Except, in my mad dreaming....



It was sometimes a nightmare I brought to this little world.

Other times it was insane inspiration.



For in my madness I gave her an idea. Into the sea she went, and with much time and exploration, the oyster where again seen. Carefully cultured from them a few pearls, and most importantly the hint of ender otherwise impossible in this land.

Seeds and materials otherwise impossible opened at that instant.

Though it was an odd brew that was required by the overlords, and that means netherwart. In this convluance of worlds, such a thing is possible to mutate into existence, and one step closer to a most insane demand was progressed.

 

ICountFrom0

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(I figure an ending is owed, even if it is incomplete)

After sorting out the obtaining of nightmare shards in the dreamworld, by using one of us as bait and the other using the charm that lets them strike the monsters, I retired back to the real world. Though I'm starting to think that it was perhaps a bad idea to leave her alone in there. Things started getting strange very rapidly, but I'm getting ahead of myself.



Deep below the crust of the dreamworld there was still lava, and this was a very useful thing, not just to keep the smeltery going but now finally to be made into obsidian. Still the tools to harvest it did not exist. This is no obstacle as we'd managed to work through that before. Retracing old ground meant not having to maximize seeds, just rapidly work through them.



When you only need a few essences to carry yourself forward even 1/1/1 seeds are enough. From these enough was grown and far enough to make bronze, and that was the key to getting the tools to break the obsidian. The first sign of madness comes in what she did with it, the impossible. Though I am afraid I did enable this when I found the oysters that grew the otherwise forbidden pearls.



With this a link was formed between a realm of dreaming and the real world. A chest of ender should not have been able to do such a thing, and yet it did. It seems now that it did something to her mind. I should have watched more closely. Still, this meant that seeds could just be brought in, or clippings, and the gardens grew hugely, rapidly, and everything that was needed was soon grown.



Such a strange garden, in a place of the mind. Did this too have echoes in the mind? I know not. Still those who made demanded that we make a most unusual potion, one that could only be made in the world of dreaming. And so a cauldron was made, and the clothing of the witch. Materials of multiple worlds into a cauldron in the realms of dreaming, and such was a potion made that bridged the worlds.



And thus she finished the potion that had been demanded. Myself? I was cleaning the base, getting things setup and making more room, but if I'd known what use it would have been used for, surely I'd have been paying closer attention? Sadly I'd been spending more and more time away from the base, trying to contain and feed a hungry node, thinking that such was what the future would need of me.



There's just the briefest hint of me out in the distance as I worked to prepare. I should have been watching her. That age old advice to keep an eye on anything that does the thinking for you, perhaps I should have told her? Still, who could have argued against a think tank? Better by far to have something doing the research for us, instead of having to work through it by hand, over and over. Still, it's not that the research was being done, it's what research was being done. Seems the nightmare had taken a place in her mind, and she'd been pressed into the darkest of researches.



Seems that there where traces of the otherworld woven into the materials of the robes. Enough of the robes and materials of the void combined recreated the book. I shouldn't have performed the ritual that made the robes for her, but she did say they where required by those who demanded, and if it was demanded who was I to argue against it? We where brought there to make what we where told, were we not?



Though, I should have listened to her when she started talking about spiders pouring out of cracks in reality. There's things you can do to shore up the mind when you must research such dark things. I'd indulged such researches before, but once again I can only regretfully admit that I'd not taught my student these precautions because I'd not noticed her entering into such resources. She'd hid the book from me.



I never did find where she'd placed the portal. I'd thought we where both resting, instead she was out in the otherworld, seeking for things that where not in this world. Through darkest tunnels, twisting mazes that resisted attempts to map them, always seeming to twist in ways that where not in the slightest rational. Perhaps it was the face of the monster in the deepest recesses of the otherworld that drove her to the final madness. I never did know.



I did see signs of the tainted node that she used to power the portal, the point where corruption oozed forth into the world. A spreading darkness. By this time though much of the base was darkened, it was of no use in finding the portal. It was too late. Who'd have thought that the raw essence of magic could be turned in such a way...



In the inner most chamber of that world, she'd found a deamon and slain it. In the heart of the monster was a pearl. Most folks would turn that to empowering nodes, or rendering essences from objects, or perhaps a fabulous artifact. My apprentice, she turned it towards summoning an even more unnatural beast. She bargained with the deamon and took from it substances better not spoken of, ever.



It turned her. I should have noticed. I was far away preparing a village. Guarding it. Reinforcing it. Giving them light and places to live with gardens. From the village she took souls, and when I looked, she claimed they'd been vampires, and that it was needful to cage them for study, instead of simply killing them outright. The chamber I dug seemed to be the best place, we'd not put anything of use there yet, and it was secure, but it felt unsavory. I'd have placed them up in the light so they could not try to escape.



It wasn't long before there was an entire collection of them. The more I tried to defend the village, the more of them she said where vampires, and it was true, I could see the taint on them. I didn't understand until it was too late how they where being created. Instead I set about making sure that nothing else could attack the village to make more of them.



Foolish. Wasn't I?

It wasn't until the witch hunter showed up with the crossbow to kill her that I understood.

The last thing seen was one trying to claim her life. No signs of either of them after that. Surely...



Surely it isn't her that survived?

Somewhere?