3

Chapter 3 Labyrinth

I set sail in my tiny boat for the island of Lorassyon. It's a large island just to the east of the main island of Lorath. It's also where both the Maze Makers and Disciples of Boash went to die.

There are a lot of rumors about the place. It's considered haunted though so very little in the way of facts. Sailors will stop at the shores for water, but no one has ventured into the heart of the island in centuries. To me it sounded perfect.

The only thing I was slightly wondering about was if the descendants of the Disciples of Boash still lived somewhere on the island. People, no matter how uncivilized, were much more dangerous to me than any animal. Well, except maybe dragons.

Arriving at the shore I can see why it was thought haunted. Even now, hours past dawn it's still heavy shrouded in mist. Every sound I make echoes oddly. Also while I can hear the sounds of birds along the shore from further inland, nothing. There is even a faint smell of rot in the air. Still I wasn't about to run away now.

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If anything the rumors hadn't done the extent of the stone maze justice. It was massive. The walls stood about twenty feet high and were basically everywhere. The island stretched out for thirty miles according the maps I'd seen and the maze spanned at least twenty of those.

Twenty miles long and ten wide. This place was insane. This place was perfect. I could see off in the distance the remnants of the wooden keep built by some lord or another. His name was much less important than the fact that it was the only known wooden structure to have survived dragon fire.

The stories say the dragon lords cursed the place to stand forever. It sounded like the perfect place to start exploring.

Exploring the maze by walking along the walls makes it much easier to navigate. Aside from a few melted portions the walls are in amazing condition. It also makes it easier to see a pattern. It's becoming obvious to me that the maze was actually a defensive structure.

There are guard towers scattered throughout the maze. Each perfectly placed to have clear firing lanes down long lanes. The towers all seem to be placed to cover each other. There are shallow pits and walkways at strategic locations. This place is beautiful.

A few things stand out though. The walls were wide enough to balance on so were meant to walk on. But there weren't any defenses to stop someone from just climbing up. What kind of enemies can't climb?

There also doesn't seem to be any ramps leading down despite the rumors of underground levels. Hmm. I duck into a guard tower and check. Yep, the stairs go underground. Interesting.

I'm finally at the keep. It's not much to look at. The walls are terrible scorched and crumbling and it looks like it's partially collapsed. It hardly seems indestructible.

It was only because I was standing there thinking that I heard it. A very faint sound like a footstep. I wait and hear it again. It's coming... from the keep?

I try, but with how quiet it is I fail miserably at sneaking. They have to have heard me, but don't react. When I get to the walls that changes.

I hear a shriek and gaunt figure steps through the doorway. It's human, I think, but has greyish skin and is horribly thin, like a starvation victim. It's features are sharp and elongated, giving it a predatory bird-like look. It's wearing tattered clothing that are matted with blood and dust that might have once been robes.

It reaches into its clothing and removes what looks like a small balloon. The hell is that? It's dripping too. Is that an organ? It throws it at me and I duck out of the way. That's disgusting!

I hear a hiss behind me and my eyes grow wide. The organ had burst and the liquid was steaming. I see an icon appear in my view. Crap, I've been poisoned. What the hell was that?

I see something out of the corner of my eye and reflexively duck. Another organ balloon sails by me and I realize there's another one of these things. I need to get out of here. I hear them both shriek as they give chase.

Holy crap am I glad I have a stack of dirt blocks in my hotbar. I quickly build a pillar under me up onto a wall and run off. They stop following pretty quickly. As soon as I lose them I sit down and eat. That's some nasty poison, it's still going. Finally it runs it's course. What the hell have I found?

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I don't seem to have a very well developed sense of survival. I blame it on being a child. As soon as I healed up I went back. For the next few hours I play tag with the creatures in the keep, which I've decided to call hags.

First off. They're tough. An arrow, even in the head, doesn't kill one. Their healing doesn't help either, but that's another thing. Two they're not very bright. They sort of work together, but they don't learn. They also stay within the area marked by the walls of the keep for the most part. They act a lot like undead or construct guardians do in video games.

Lastly, they cheat. That organ balloon? They don't run out. They also seem to be able to control what it does. It's ridiculous all the things they can use it for. So far I've found they can use it to slow me down, poison me, weaken me, burn like acid and heal themselves. I bet that's not all they can do too, the cheating bastards.

I've got their number now though. I built a trap. Mostly just a simple set of wall that lead to dead end I can get out of by building a pillar underneath myself. Since it looks like I'm going to be using the tactic a lot I ended up naming it. Pillar jump. Nice, simple, easy to understand.

The narrow corridor loops though so I can block off the entrance and trap it. If I can trap them they'll be much easier to kill. Hopefully.

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The trap works. Sort of.

First I shot at one of the hags. It splashed itself and sped up. Bullshit. But that's fine. Still have a lead. The plan can still work.

I start running down the corridor. I can hear it shrieking. Damn, it's right behind me. Pillar jump out and now I'm slowed. Doesn't matter, only a few steps to reach the entrance. Drop down and fill in the entrance. Done!

Nope.

I hear a splash and the hag jumps onto the wall. Oh come on! That wall was twelve feet tall!

I stumble to the nearest maze wall and pillar jump over it.

...

A few minutes later I return to alter the trap. By that point the hags have both wandered back into the keep. See? Dumb.

I remove the pillar I used and add a roof. If they can break through three fee of stone I'm giving up.

...

Success! I actually trap one.

I decide to trap the second just because. A bit of testing shows they can jump or climb any wall less than fifteen feet high. Just one block short. I hate these things.

...

Killing them is annoying. They heal themselves fairly quickly. I'm reduced to filling them with arrows. It's slow. And painful. Mostly because they sometimes don't heal themselves and attack me instead. But finally I kill one!

Only took an entire quiver. Thank god I can recover arrows.

Well, let's get a closer look at these things. As I roll the body over it's already dissolving. As if it's rotting but time lapsed and no smell. It decays completely, not even bones are left. The body doesn't completely disappear though. A few small piles of powder are left.

I have no idea what they are so put them in my Inventory.

I immediately can feel a number of recipes flooding my brain, more than when I first picked up some iron. I hit the mother load. The powders were two of the most important things I needed. Glowstone for brewing potions. Redstone though. It was useful for almost everything. Powered rails, traps, harvesting. I need to find more hags.

Sadly the other hag wasn't as useful. It died just leaving behind gunpowder. Why gunpowder? I don't really care for TNT, but the brewing option is nice. Maybe I'll make a gun for myself?

Now all I need are diamonds.

I'd include obsidian, but it seems the Scorching of Lorath made that unnecessary. All of the melted portions of the maze walls, those were dragonglass. I bet the former towns that were burned down also contain a good amount. I'm flush with the stuff now.

It was when I was exploring the keep that I decided that I was definitely going to stay here.

I heard a sound like shattered glass. When I looked I saw the air warp and three hags appear next to each other. I barely made it out. On the other hand, I eventually got more powders. Sadly it seems I was very lucky the first time. Two other powders drop and they are much less useful. Sugar might be useful later on but sand is something that's everywhere.

It only seems to take a few minutes to spawn more hags. There isn't always three, it seems to vary between one and three. Eventually I grew a few trees and built a chest just to store the pallets of powders I plan on eventually gathering.

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Since the hags never ventured far from the keep I probably should have wondered why the rest of the island was barren of all animal life. I didn't though, which was pretty stupid. In fact I was dumb enough to think the sounds I heard meant everything here was nocturnal.

Not my brightest decision.

I was just lucky the moon was full. If it had been any darker I probably would have died. As it was, it was still close. The fire didn't help.

The sounds of chittering and skittering rose up all around me. I only really paid attention when it started to get near me. When I did I almost panicked.

Giant spiders easily several feet across were flowing out across the maze. It was a flood of crawling death. The spiders were pale and translucent as if they were made of crystal or ice. They were also all coming from the guard towers.

Oh shit. I suddenly realized how much danger i was in. Frantically I pull up my Inventory and start walling myself in. I barely finish before the spiders reach me.

So an interesting fact about placing stone blocks. If you place two blocks next to each other they join together seamlessly as if they were a single stone. However if they are only touching at the corners they don't join. Instead a minuscule gap is left.

The gap is good. I means that I was able to leave a decent gap along parts of the roof so I could breath. What was not good was that it let me see the spiders frantically trying to chew through stone to reach me. At least until there were enough piled up to block the light. Then I just could hear them.

I'm no coward, but there was no way I was going to be able to sit there in the dark listening to a horde of spiders all night without going crazy. I quickly made a furnace and fashioned some torches to light the place.

Sadly torches are not everlasting. They lasted what I estimate were a few hours, but I still had to put up an new pair twice before the night was over. When I could finally make out the gleam of sunlight I wanted to cheer. It was finally dawn!

When the sun rose I fully expected the spiders to all retreat. I couldn't have been more wrong. They continued mindlessly attacking until I thought I was going to have to chance fighting them.

Just when I was done psyching myself up I felt liquid splash over me. Are they spitting poison now? I look up and see water start pouring down through my air vents. The sounds start dying down too.

Are they melting?

By now there was enough light to see and I watched in fascination as the spiders I can see melt. As soon as I can't hear anything I start to make a doorway for myself. I had barely removed the first block when I bit.

A spider had lunged through the hole and into my bunker. I summon a sword and start hacking away at it. It's not doing much damage, but I can feel more poison being injected each time it bites me. Even as I killed it I could see two other spiders crawling through the hole behind it.

I managed to drop a pallet of stone to block the hole. The next few minutes were blur of constant dodging, slashing. I had to take time to eat in order to keep my healing going as well. When I looked around and saw both spiders on the floor melting I was stunned.

I was alive.

After processing that thought I spent a few minutes just relaxing. I sat there snacking as I watched my healing fight against all the poison in my system. I'm pretty sure the only reason I didn't die was that poison can't kill you in Minecraft. As long as I had spent at one health I'm fairly certain anyone else would have tied.

It was while I was relaxing that I realized that the spiders hadn't melted completely. Instead they had left behind a few body parts that looked like they had crystallized. Loading them into my Inventory was an interesting experience.

Spider Eyes unlocked a host of potential brewing options along with a few other recipes. Spinnerets were new, but the recipe showed it was just something that converted into string. Not sure why my powers put in that extra step.

Screw it, I'm fully healed now. I ready myself and once again start to leave my bunker.

This time I'm not met with any attacks. I pillar jump fairly high to get a view and all across the maze I can see the remains of the horde of spiders melting under the light of the sun. Going underground might not be feasible for quite awhile.

I notice that the water is all flowing along the paths and realize that the maze is sloped, letting the water run out into the sea. That has to be deliberate. I guess I know why the maze is so clean now.

I see a few spiders huddled inside the few remaining shadows thrown by some of the walls, but otherwise the maze seemed clear. Seeing that even some of the crystallized parts were slowly melting I ended up racing out to gather as many as possible before it was too late.

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I now have mountains of silk. Another addition to the game, four of the spinnerets make silk cloth rather than wool. In the recipes though, silk and wool were pretty much interchangeable. Ironically, I am now pretty set to go into business back in Lorath if I so wished.

I ended up tearing down my bunker and building an actual proper keep. It was a large stone tower set right next to the wooden keep. It was three stories high with a small grove of trees on top and a large garden on the third floor. The second was set aside for storage and I setup the bottom as my workshop with a bed in the corner.

My keep started off as a large perfect square but didn't stay that way. Two of my looping hag traps were incorporated into one side. Then a water collection site using trenches and a small moat. Even if it never rains the morning flood would ensure a steady supply of water.

By the time I was finished I had run out of daylight. I had also pretty much run through the majority of my stockpiled supplies. Specifically the stone and metal. Without a new source I was going to be in trouble.

My keep was thoroughly tested that night. The spiders swarmed across it tearing at every part of it. Thank god I didn't use any doors on the ground floor. As it was I forgot about the roof door and had to block off the top two floors. That was going to be fun to clear out in the morning.

Soon enough the night ended and I cheated. Instead of fighting the spiders I tore down the east wall and let them melt. So much safer.

The next few days were spent resource gathering. I extended the keep, incorporating the remains of the wooden one. That turned out to just need it's own miniature maze for containing and farming hags.

I managed to peek inside the remains of the wooden keep and what I found only raised more questions. Next to a potted mushroom sat a Crafting Table. I also didn't find any kind of spawner block. Not sure what was going on I left the whole room alone. The hags were too lucrative a resource to chance losing.

I ventured out to the site of the one of the closest former towns. Just as expected, it was made of dragonglass. I strip mined the entire area. I went deep too. I had plans of eventually extending the quarry and turning it into a set of docks. But that was for much later.

Dragonglass was much easier to gather than in the game. Even a wooden pickaxe was capable of gathering it. It was also much weaker than normal stone. Just like real obsidian. On that note I even tore down and replaced the sections of the maze that had been converted to dragonglass. They were the only parts to show any damage and I really didn't want any part of my eventual base to look shabby.

I now had a fair amount of obsidian stockpiled and an unlit Nether Portal setup in a fortified location. I really didn't want to use it until I had access to more iron along with enchanting. I might have chanced if if I had potions. However brewing actually required resources from the Nether, so that was out too.

Knapping is a very tedious, boring and most of all slow process. Extremely slow for me since I didn't have much practice. I took hours but I managed to create a recipe for obsidian arrowheads though. I was almost tempted to make obsidian version of other items. Almost.

Now that I was finally set up I found myself stuck. I had plenty of food and almost all of my resources were renewable or at least not anywhere close to exhaustible. The problem was with the resources I lacked.

Iron. So much hinges on having a large and ready access to this metal. The problem is I can't exactly mine down when I know the land below me is containing hordes of ravenous monsters. Lorath is also poor in iron so mining there is also not an option. Anywhere else would basically have me better off moving my entire operation.

Diamonds and leather. I'm going to need both for enchanting. Diamonds, like iron will probably require trading. Leather is something I'm going to need a lot of in the future. I need to find my own source. Looks like I'm heading back to Lorath.