Or: How Endermen Came To Be
Long ago, when the world was new, long before the Players and long before the Gods, there were the Folk. The Folk lived at peace with the world, doing magic and building glorious structures, creating impenetrable strongholds and portals to other realms. There were other beings, but none so advanced. The Folk knew the world top to bottom, from the void below the bedrock to the high place where no more blocks could go lest they simply vanish. They were peaceful and kind and fair, with no interest beyond continued advancement. Most notable was their magic, powerful and diverse. Healing and harming, flame and ice, the Folk worked the magic of every last bit of the world with their skilled hands.
One day, strange things began to happen. A new disease began to sweep the land, infectious and deadly. At first they held it off, magic keeping it at bay. Bit by bit though, it became resistant, and deadlier still. Catching this Plague was a death sentence, and with the speed it spread things looked hopeless. A Council of the most powerful mages among the Folk formed, and cast great spells in hope of stopping the disease. There were three great spells that lasted: The first was the weakest, and cursed large swaths of land to be barren save for huge spikes of ice, frozen forevermore. Then came the Reviving, which raised the dead into a new form: That of zombies and skeletons and other warped monsters, fragments of what they once were. Finally the Council tried to erase their mistake, these monsters that were what became of those infected by the Plague. Instead they erased all else, casting the world to bare plains. The dark still came and the monsters rose, and the Folk, defeated, fled.
In their desperation they ran to their strongholds, going through portals to uncharted territory where they hid. At first, they went back and forth frequently, making regular runs to the Overworld and Nether for supplies, but the longer they spent the less they wanted to leave. Their bodies changed too, became longer and more slender, adapting to the timeless End. Some were disgusted by what the End made of them, and had no desire to wait and see how it ended. Others embraced the End’s safe haven, and all that came with it. They loved these new forms, delicate but strong, and did not want to return to the Overworld’s dangers. And so the Folk split, some remaining in the End.
These Ender Folk lived much as they did in the Overworld, at peace with the land and the Void below. They built cities too small for them, and gave them to the Shulkers who lived there before in exchange for caring for great treasures. They built devices that could grant the ability to fly, created warm glowing rods to light the End’s sunless dark, built bricks and pillars and ships that flew through the air. Untouched by time and unmarred by death they lived on until they grew bored, and so the Enderfolk wandered the wastes forevermore.
The Returned Folk sealed the portals up behind them, and set out in search of a home. The Plague had grown worse than ever before, and now even the potions that had once harmed healed the undead creatures. A few too cowardly to face the surface stayed behind in the caves, building mineshafts as they went along and cities in the Deep. They went too to the deep waters of the oceans, and built monuments there, but as the transformation set in motion by too much time in the End took them the water became unbearable to touch. Those who’d gone on to the surface found nothing there for them, but they had no place else to go. And so the Folk walked. Centuries slipped by like sand in a timer but still they wandered on, fleeing monsters of their own creation. After many long years they stumbled across a place too distant for the Plague to touch, too uninhabited. They called it the Farlands, and some chose it as home. A few found this fate too terrible to bear, living in a shattered semblance of their beloved home, and they left to the harsh expanses of the Nether. The Nether dwellers built fortresses and bastions as tribute to their once-beautiful strongholds, but couldn’t handle it and relegated themselves to a warped sort of forest where no other life could be found.
So the Folk had their factions, and their places to spend their long years. Slowly the worst of the Plague subsided, and the cave dwellers emerged to live on the surface normally again. They made villages and currency, a meek semblance of what they once had, but day by day the End’s influence melted away under the sun and they became Folk again. These were the villagers, and the wandering traders bearing exotic goods, and the pillagers who attacked them, and they soon began to forget about all the business with the End. They had a little magic for books and armour, but no need for more. And the villagers had their homes.
One day a ringing sounded through the world. A new arrival. The Gods, Jeb and the Terrible One and Agnes and Herobrine, who began shaping the world. Another ring, years later, signalled the appear of the Players. Day by day and year by year, the Gods peeled away the ancient curses laid by the Council of Folk, and the world grew alive again. From there, dear Player, I believe you know the rest.