Player #3: Security Log 1

Security Log 1-01:


Last Assignment Location: Tannahah
Current Assignment Location: WOOT
Current Job Assignment: assess current survival needs and address any shortcomings




Notes (provide photographic evidence where possible):




nice little shelter here, welcome sign,

bookshelves, indoor pool,

 minor food production room,

everything seems generally in order


Survival Needs:


Security: nothing needed of note
Food:     mushroom based, needs improvement




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Security Log 1-02:


Last Assignment Location: Tannahah
Current Assignment Location: WOOT
Current Job Assignment: assess security needs and address any shortcomings




Notes (provide photographic evidence where possible):

Jesus's ghost on toast! What the hell was that?! I know I owe Frimtanklin a solid favor but seriously?!? This is what woke me up in the middle of the night:

He said he wanted me to come assess the survival needs here. He didn't say anything about zombies. What the hell!? He pulls me off Tannahah for this? That was a sweet gig, not a single monster in Tannahah. He could have at least told me that the monsters were active on this world. 


Yeah, well pisser. The giant holes in the ground out front tell me there's a creeper problem too:

And the giant hole in the side of the shelter that wasn't there last night tells me it's a pretty serious creeper problem:

I don't know who built this thing but this shelter is made of wood. And there are exploding creepers everywhere. We're going to need something I little sturdier than this. This wooden fence isn't really going to help anything, either. 


Okay so now I have to fix the lack of food production and I have to fortify the shelter. 


Also, there needs to be some more light outside too there because we've got zombies spawning out back:

And creepers running around the side yard:

And spiders on the roof:

Sweet mother Mary, why did I agree to this? 





Survival Needs:


Security: 1) wall to surround completely
             explodable shelter
          2) enough lighting to prevent monster 
             spawns
Food:     expand mushroom cultivation OR start
          wheat production

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Security Log 1-03:


Last Assignment Location: Tannahah
Current Assignment Location: WOOT
Current Job Assignment: assess security needs and address any shortcomings


Notes (provide photographic evidence where possible):

Okay, I have the wall up:

And I've started a tree farm to start cultivating some wood for charcoal so I can make some torches to put up (I know that I could just go digging for some coal but there's no way I'm going down below the surface of a monster active world):

So I guess at this point I should go out and find some creepers to test the structure of the wall. I'll wait for nightfall and then give it a go.... In case I get killed tonight, I just want you to know that I love you. I know you're reading this and I'm sorry. I made mistakes, I said things. I just hope you can forgive me. 



Survival Needs:


Security: test wall for effectiveness against 
          creepers
Food:     Still need to address food issue



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Security Log 1-04:


Last Assignment Location: Tannahah
Current Assignment Location: WOOT
Current Job Assignment: assess security needs and address any shortcomings


Notes (provide photographic evidence where possible):

Still alive. I found some creepers. I didn't have to look far:

One explosion later, and it looks like the wall needs some thickening: 

Also, I'm out of cobble up here. Looks like I'm going to have to go down to get some supplies. Unfortunate. Let's see if I can do something about that food problem first. After I patch that hole in the wall. 




Survival Needs:


Security: make wall thicker
Food:     check mushroom growth, make plans for 
          expansion


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Security Log 1-05:


Last Assignment Location: Tannahah
Current Assignment Location: WOOT
Current Job Assignment: assess security needs and address any shortcomings


Notes (provide photographic evidence where possible):


Yeah, I should have seen that coming. I got lanced in the head with an arrow as soon as I went into the 'shroom room. 

I've decommissioned the space until further notice. 

Okay, so it looks like we're going to need to go with wheat cultivation.


I also took some time to go down to get some more cobble for the outer wall. Thankfully that went without any incident. And I found some coal for more torches: 

Survival Needs:


Security: still need to thicken outer wall
Food:     build wheat farm




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Security Log 1-06:


Last Assignment Location: Tannahah
Current Assignment Location: WOOT
Current Job Assignment: assess security needs and address any shortcomings


Notes (provide photographic evidence where possible):


Okay. Farm built and processing (located under the shelter, at the base of the ladder, next to the storage depot):

While the wheat was growing I managed to fix up the wall. I also built stairs up to the roof and fenced it off as an observation deck. Then I added a watch tower just to be on the safe side:

I think this will prove a much safer base of operations. I was able to spend several nights out collecting wood without ever noticing any monsters. I was able to sleep through the night without being woken up by anything trying to kill me. 


There's still the possibility for spider infiltration. I'm calling that beyond the scope of my contract. Now I can finally go home. 


Lord willing, I'll never have to come back to this place again. 



Survival Needs:


Security: possible spider threat
Food:     continuous cultivation of subterranean 
          wheat farm

Player #2: That which eternal lies Pt 3

From the notes of Dr. Daniel McGoohan, Woot Project Researcher:

I awoke this morning with plans for a most curious device bubbling in my mind. I suddenly understood that the strange purplish stone I had encountered on my first trip into the mines MUST be capable of transmitting the human form over long distances... The singing I had heard were simply the voices of distant people, calling to me from the stone. But laying in the ground, they were too diffuse, incapable of focusing. If I could place them in the proper arrangement, though...

The material (I have named it Ongoing Broadcasted Static Information Distribution Interface Antennae - Natural, or "B.L.A.C.K.S.T.O.N.E.") is remarkably durable. Luckily, I had the diamond pick-axe I had crafted. Even then, digging out a large enough amount to produce the designs I had begun sketching took the better part of the day.

Still, I realized that this might be my last chance to explore these caves before this new project took over my mind entirely. And so I ventured into the depths, tracking my progress by leaving torches wherever I passed. And after not too long, I stumbled across a most amazing sight...

A natural ravine, hundreds of feet deep, lit by lava, and by the strange pale light that can be found in the deepest reaches of these caves. I stood, for a moment, transfixed by the natural beauty.

Which was when, surprise surprise, an arrow clanged off of my helmet. Because there is NOWHERE ON THIS PLANET FREE FROM THAT CLASSIC CHILDREN'S GAME, BONES AND ARROWS. Interesting note: A ravine of incredible beauty is also FULL of little ledges for skeletal snipers to poke at you from. Isn't that interesting? IT'S VERY INTERESTING.

Sometimes they fall, though. I have tried to get a recording of the sound of their bones snapping as they hit the floor, but this microphone is very hard to aim. Still, it is important to savor the small joys in life.

Stumbling around in a semi-blind panic, I came across this bizarre room. Wait, I have a better picture.

I placed the torch. I did not place the chest. And I CERTAINLY didn't place the thingy in the middle of the room. It's not the sort of thing I would place in a room. I like bookshelves, or credenzas, not magical boxes out of which an infinite number of spiders can crawl.

Did I not mention the infinite number of spiders crawling out of it? You must forgive my lapses as a narrator. I was suddenly pre-occupied. By the spiders.

Moving past that (the magical spider box, I mean), this was also the very first evidence I had found of human civilization in Woot (besides all the animated corpses, of course). Although it was possible that my predecessor frimtanklin had built it, I was doubtful. This was a nicely constructed room (arachnid horde aside), not a stomach-turningly grim hovel erected as much by blind chance as by direct malice. Totally outside his style.

The chest, oddly enough (although not as odd as a direct conduit to some sort of horrible spider dimension), contained a few fresh sheaths of wheat, a few handfuls of cocoa beans, and a strange leather contraption. The only hints to its purpose were the reins on either side, and a brief inscription in old Wootish reading "Insert Pig Here," with an arrow pointing to the collar.

I don't, on the whole, think I want to know.

Back on the surface (after killing another 20 spiders and eventually smashing their magical hate-nest with my pick-axe), I resolved to increase my home's security before immersing myself in my new project. I quickly constructed the fence pictured above, which should serve as a perfect defense against any creature that might attack. As long as they don't explode. Or climb over it. And lightning doesn't hit it.


Sigh.

I also constructed a gate, using a small amount of the iron I had mined to act as a beacon to guide travelers to my door. After all, I'll be coming back here some day, once my Portal Project is complete! The voices singing from the stones I've collected promise it. That we will all return some day. That all debts will be paid.

Speaking of iron, I've managed to collect quite a supply. There are so many things I could make with it. Railroads, weapons, armor, giant arrow-proof skeleton-crushing robots... But I think that those projects will have to be left to those who have not found a higher calling. I commend you, small-brained ironworkers of the future! Have fun with your lack of vision. And all that iron!

This is the last free night I expect to have before I'm consumed by my work. A gentle rain fell over the world as the sun slipped below the horizon. I do not regret coming to this place.

I deposit most of my equipment into the storeroom. I keep only a few useful things for myself. My diamond sword, Skeleton Bane. My bow, and arrows. My faithful M.A.G.I.C. M.A.P. And the weird leather thing. Not because it will be useful, but because I REALLY don't want someone else finding it in the chest and thinking it was mine.

The Known World. Not actually that much Knowing, but.... Well, I'm not a cartographer. I'm a scientist of ill-defined interests! And vision. Also, the B.L.A.C.K.S.T.O.N.E. is getting very insistent that I construct The Device. I build a prototype near my home, but some strange instinct stops me. While it is completely incomprehensible that this project could in any way be dangerous, it still might be prudent to locate the reality-warping Device SLIGHTLY further from my bed, food, and water sources.

I know just the place.

Before I go, I briefly construct a scaffold to take one last picture of my home. Goodbye, home! I will not be back for some time. But not even death will stop me from coming back to you eventually. It's like my grandmother sang to me as a child (and as the rocks sing to me now. In fact, every time I try to think of my grandmother... or anything before I came here, all I see are rows after rows of staring stone.) "That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons, even death may die."

A comforting thought, no?

On the way to my chosen spot, I see a most curious sight. I would feel slightly bad for damaging the sheep's DNA so thoroughly by spilling an apparently toxic dye on them, but you have to admit, it's a pretty shade.

The device is quickly constructed in my hidden lab. Remarkably simple, given what it will do. It will change the world. Perfect it. It must. I have been promised.

I feel no trepidation as I approach. No fear, no doubt. I go now to a better place, a higher world. I will return some day, bathed in light, with angels at my side.

All the kings of the earth will bow before us. And all the petty scientists will kneel before me as I pour unvarnished truth into their ears. They will see. As I have seen. A prophet in his kingdom.

And as I pass into the Portal, it is only now that I smell the stench of death and decay that leaks from the hole I have made in the world. That I have cut into the fabric of existence, an axe murderer whose victim is the universe itself. But it is too late to turn back. It has been too late for some time, I realize, as the scent of brimstone fills my nose.

My only consolation is that some day, I will return.

They have promised me.

**END OF RECORDING**

Player #2: That which eternal lies Pt 2

From the notes of Dr. Daniel McGoohan, Woot Project Researcher:

It is a staggering thing to face your own death. To feel yourself slipping away into the darkness, to know that this is the moment when your existence will, forever, cease.... And then to suddenly find yourself sitting up in your own bed.

My pockets were empty, my body was intact. It was early morning, and I had been awoken by the gentle screams of the zombies burning to death in the rosy fingers of dawn.

And yet... The items I had been carrying were gone. And when I looked into the tunnels below, the stones I had mined away weren't there. It seems that Woot had granted me another chance... somewhere between a dream and a death.

Perhaps it was incautious of me to plunge back into the underworld, given the way my previous foray had ended. But if I refused to face the depths, if I blocked up the tunnel and contented myself to explorations of the surface, I would never really know Woot. I would be little better than a tourist.

And so, re-arming myself with the few supplies I had not used up before, I descended once again into the mineshaft. More cautious this time, I quickly chanced upon the mysterious stones pictured above. When mined away with a sufficiently hard pick-axe, they dissolved into a clump of mysterious glittering red powder. Had I found "redstone" at last?

Of course, I was not alone in the maze. You would be AMAZED what sort of angles a brainless sack of bones can find to shoot you in the back with an arrow. It is amazing. I was amazed. And angry.

Oh, and the whole water-lava harmony thing is a lot less poetic when the current keeps shoving you backward toward the lava. Stupid essential harmony of nature.

Oh, and these things EXPLODE. Sure, why not, Woot? It absolutely makes sense for a lifeform to exist whose only purpose is to explode. To grow, fight, love, laugh, until the day it sees an overweight scientist clutching a pick-axe, which is its cue to detonate. PERFECT SENSE. You will note that by this point I had used the last of my available iron to form some simple protective garments, on the grounds that THE ENTIRETY OF THE PLANET WAS DESIGNED TO MURDER ME.

Back on the surface, I manage to kill one of the creepy weirdos before he can blow himself up. As wasteful as this seems, given their penchant for inevitable suicide, I manage to dig through the corpse and extract what appears to be biologically manufactured gunpowder. Because... yes. Obviously they explode because they are full of gunpowder. Of course.

Following some notes left behind by my predecessor, I craft a small lever and connect it, via redstone, to the door of my house. With bated breath, preparing myself for a spectacle that may rival the very powers of the gods themselves, I flip the switch...

Oh my. The door opened. No wonder "frimtanklin" was so enamored of it. Very impressive, if you have the kind of mind that thinks a 3x3 room is sufficient to act as living space...

However, the stuff is not entirely useless. Applying basic ingenuity, I managed to craft a compass, which, perhaps owing to the non-scientific properties of the redstone, and Woot in general, I was able to integrate with several sheets of paper... into this. I have dubbed this extremely useful piece of equipment, which fills itself in with the local terrain as I travel, the Manifested Aetheric Geographical Integration Cartography Multi-Access-Parchment. Or, um... M.A.G.I.C. M.A.P.
Giant cave spider, I find you horrifying and menacing, but at least you are not completely stupid, and I thank you for that rare blessing in the world I am forced to toil in, desperately seeking knowledge.

Yes, I was once more traveling the Halls Below (clever phrase, yes? It just came to me) in search of useful materials. Nature and the open air are nice, I suppose, but they contain very little in the way of smeltable iron.

Or GOLD. SHINY, BEAUTIFUL GOLD which is weaker than iron and less versatile and which I will not be allowed, under any circumstances, to bring back from Woot. Well.

I mined it anyway. It is so very shiny, after all.

Although not as shiny as this! Diamond, that most fabled of minerals! There are those scholars of the Royal Academy who claim diamond is simply coal, compressed over millions of years. These obvious idiots never seem to have a good response when a scientist of my caliber reminds them that coal is black and sooty, while diamond is BEAUTIFUL.

I should be able to make several valuable tools with this! Also, a sword, which I will drive into the heads of so many STUPID DAMN ANNOYING SKELETONS ARGH I HAVE NEVER HATED CALCIUM SO MUCH WAIT WHY DO I HEAR CLUCKING

WHAT IS A CHICKEN DOING IN THIS GARGANTUAN CAVE SYSTEM, THAT IS LUDICROUS, THIS WORLD IS LUDICROUS, NOTHING HERE MAKES SENSE, wait is that the sky?

A natural ravine, water flowing down it. Another entrance into the truly vast system of caves I have found myself exploring. Woot is strange, and at times infuriating. But sometimes it will offer the careful explorer a vision of true beauty... and a chicken.

Climbing the walls, I find myself in an unfamiliar but beautiful bit of terrain. I would be quite lost, if not for a recent acquisition...

The M.A.G.I.C. M.A.P. proves its worth already! Now, all I needed to do was follow it to make my way home... across half a mile of monster-infested desert.

The next morning I crafted myself a full suit of armor.

Still, there is nothing like the sight of a burning human skeleton to fill one with a sense of rightness with the world. I had had no more strange visions, no more disturbing singing. Just hundreds of corpses trying to kill me until I bashed them in the brains with a sword forged from diamond. Perhaps today I would take a break from the caves, explore my surroundings a bit.

This cow refused to give me any milk, which made jumping into this pond to try milking him somewhat unnecessary. I have developed two hypotheses as to why this noble beast would be so stingy. Hypothesis 1: This was a boy cow. Hypothesis 2: This was some sort of milk-less Water Cow, a species I have dubbed the Danielmcgoohan hydrobovis.

Brief aside: Danielmcgoohan hydrobovis is delicious when properly cooked.

While exploring near my home, I saw this cave in the distance. The darkness of its interior seemed to call to me, but I ignored its eldritch summons. I just felt so good today. Like laughing. Like I hadn't in years. Such a beautiful day. A beautiful day.
Hello, improbable suicide monster! You will not ruin my mood today! I am too full of laughter and joy today! Ah ha ha! Ha ha! You have an arrow through your head, because I shot an arrow through your head! Classic Comedy! Ah ha!

Oh! I dropped some dye on the sheep, and now the sheep is entirely blue! AH HA! Makes sense to me! Pretty funny joke! BLUE SHEEP! AHA HA HA HAHA! HA!

PIG UP A TREE! FUNNY! MAKES PERFECT SENSE! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! PROBABLY CLIMBED UP THERE OR THE TREE SUDDENLY GREW UNDER IT WHY NOT AHAHAHA HA HA HA HA

HEIGH-HO, HEIGH-HO, I MINE IN THE HALLS BELOW. THE WORLD UNRAVELS AND THROUGH SPACE I TRAVEL HEIGH-HO, HEIGH-HO

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

WE HAD A STARING CONTEST. HE WON. NOW I OWE HIM. HA. HA. HA.

Wait, how did I get underground? Oh... another pit. I swear, these caves riddle Woot like a hollow cancerous tumor. At times it feels like I will never escape them.

Climbing back out of the cave (where did I get these scratches?), I found that it was nearly nightfall. Following the M.A.G.I.C. M.A.P. (which had significantly more area covered than I could remember exploring - some sort of auto-mapping process?), I made my way home.

Of course, no homecoming would be complete without a welcoming committee.

One battered breastplate, five cracked skulls, and an arrow in my arm later, and I was home and in bed.

I had a beautiful dream that night.

Everything was right where it was supposed to be.
And all my debts were paid.

HA. HA. HA. HA. HA.