I have gotten many an ask, so I give a single answer in this form.
When they first woke up, Steve knew nothing but their own name and basic survival skills. With time, they met creatures, developed skills, created recipes and discovered strange structures scattered around the world.
Structures that they hope would fill in their apparent 'amnesia'. Temples, Strongholds, Fortresses, Trail Ruins, Bastions... and the creatures themselves too.
Zombies, that wear the same clothing and resemble their anatomy. Endermen, that they swear they could've heard speak but unsure if they've imagined it (Endermen tend to make their mind go fuzzy...). But no attempt at curing works and no attempt at communication is recognised.
Even the V/Illagers recognise this, in their clothing and in their deep purple eyes. Some have dubbed them the 'Living Zombie'.
Where did the structures come from? Where did everyone go? Why can't Steve recall anything? Major extinction event? War? Natural catastrophe? The Dragon? They seek the answer. In the world residents, in the engravings on pottery sherds, books of the Stronghold, the portal...
Everything leads to The End. Because everything ends. Surely.
And there they meet Jean, and they hear their own name said in another's voice for the first time ever, and for a moment it felt like everything they've ever wanted. For a moment.
Idk if someone else has thought of this before, but hear me out on this new worldbuilding headcanon for Minecraft. Phantoms pose the same ecological role as IRL vultures. That being, they eat dead bodies. The reason a lot of them swarm (and even attack) the player when they haven't gotten sleep is because they sense lack of energy (which, for a lot of animals means death is nearby) and assume the player is either dead or dying.
The fact that zombie villagers and villagers are a thing but regular zombies, skeletons, et cetera are all the same species as the player is fucking haunting. Imagine you’re a villager and you’ve heard stories of a long-dead race of skilled warriors and artisans and the only thing left of them is their crudely reanimated corpses. Hell, imagine you’re STEVE and you’re quite possibly the last member of your race, but you have to destroy the carcasses of your own people every night if you want to survive.
So Piglins occasionally give you bottles of water when you barter with them, and I've seen people asking 'where do they get the water?' and my thought is that the water in the Nether can be found in the fungal trees of the crimson forests and warped forests. Essentially my idea is they tap the fungus for water, like tapping a maple tree for sap.
Since my other Nether worldbuilding post was received pretty well... I'm back on my bullshit!
This time featuring zoning and biomes of the Neath: Lore below cut
Nether (noun): the formidable hellscape straddling the boundery between the Fragments of the Overworld and Death's Realms.
Derived from Beneath -> Neath -> Neth -> Nether.
The Nether is most easily accessable through outer regions of the nether, regions that are comparatively closed-off, and lacking in biodiversity compared to the Deep Nether where most Neath civilizations are centered.
The Neth is divided into three primary zones, distinguished by altitude and general climates.
The Calfactory Zone: the largest and most iconic of the three, the Calfactory zone is blisteringly hot and bone-dry, it's most prominent features are its abundant seas and lakes of magma, and the massive Supermagmas atriums that are common above the magma. In the largest of these atriums, the ceiling may be so high above as to be completely invisible from the ground, obscured by an ever present smog of toxic vapor and minerals formed in the self-generated micro-climates that are generated from the rising heat of the lava that begins to cool at a higher altitude.
In the Basalt Deltas and other biomes around the edges of these lakes, massive pillars of rock and crystals bulwark the more-visible ceiling.
The most common of this zone’s biomes is the Crimson woods, home to hearty thermal-philic fungi and plants that grow on the minerals and vapors of the lakes. Many are carnivorous in their lack of access to water or sunlight, and these forests contain many sub-biomes and ecosystems of flourishing life.
The Wastes are perhaps the most desolate regions of the Neath, irradiated deserts of red-rock, brimstone, and sharp sand. Even the vast majority of nether-folk avoid these deserts due to the leftover radiation that rots and destroys anything that waits too long. The only forms of life are particularly robust lichens and bacteria that are happy to sit by the boiling pools of sulfur and mud and toxic sludge that dot the landscape. Growing within the rocks themselves are colonies of amorphous fungus, called geocorpus molds, they get their spores into cracks in the soft netherack and slowly feed on it; the ‘rock meat’ is considered a delicacy in nether cuisine.
The Temperate Zone: Cradled in the heights of the Neath’s atriums and sat below the roof is the temperate zones; the rising heat of the zone below begins to cool and by doing so, distinct weather patterns form within this zone, leaving it, while still sweltering, a cooler though much more humid climate.
The main biome are the luminescent warped-fungal rainforests that collect the high-rising minerals and odd moisture from the lakes. Liquid is actually present here, though, if it’s not safely filtered through the innards of the various plants and fungi, this water is usually aggressively corrosive, and it is best to shelter from the acidic precipitation to avoid chemical burns. The nether folk and ender local to these rainforests are suited to deal with these conditions and the ender especially do not have trouble with the extreme pH of the water here like they would in the overworld. The zone is lit almost exclusively by the biolumincense of the organisms there and have often been described as false-stars.
In the Deep Nether, the ceiling may give way, allowing one to pass onto the plateaus of the Nether Roof and the yawning void above. The bedrock of the nether roof is jagged and layered in huge slabs, sometimes broken up my mazes of pillar-like structures and shallow, thermal pools of crystal-clear liquid. The kind you don't want to touch of course. fogs may hang low to the ground, but when its clear, or above the fog, the entire universe seems to spill out into the sky. The nether roof was culturally significant and a source of much knowledge and inspiration in the early days, but I'll get more into that in a later post 0.0
The Rime Zone: Plunge deep enough and one might find themselves bellow the lava beds. Here, where the heat can't quite penetrate, the temperatures will drop rapidly to sub-zero.
Namely, the Rime Zone is made up of the soul valleys, flat steppes of cinder and clotted sand, you can imagine it almost with the blindness effect, a fog that pools by your feet, and a heavier darkness hanging from the sky, it feels massive and endless and claustrophobic all at once. Frost collects as crystals on the irradiated, soul-soaked barrens, and the bones of the massive nether wyrms lie fossilized, breaking up the landscape. The sands are also split with patches of crazing on the ground and vents of blue fire that spills out and sets the sand ablaze.
These same wryms can be found sometimes, ancient things that dig through sand and soft rocks and the magma lakes, far and few between and treated with both fear and reverence.
And in the deepest pits of the Neath are the glowing frozen lakes that are colloquially and rightfully called the Gates to Death, glowing blue from beneath their surfaces. Indeed, any further down and you pass into limbo, the edge of Death's Realms.
Extra Notes??:
Soul sand/soil is tread on carefully or not at all, is one form of remnants from the apocolyspe. Like the general radiated rubble present through the Nether, it's a fault of nuclear fallout. Unlike other areas of radiation, its also been infused with the souls of those who didn't survive the joining of worlds. That said, unlike soul sand, soul soil is used productively to grow certain nether crops. It’s minerally and magically dense.
This infused quality is also precent in Nether Debris, resulting in a material that takes magic particularly well.
Iron cannot be found in dense veins and crystals like gold or quartz in the nether, but it's a pretty rich mineral a lot of netherack, giving it its ruddy coloring.
Sorry for this massive rant that no one asked for. If you have questions please feel free to send an ask, I may not have an answer yet but I'll certainly come up with one if I can.
I'm also hoping to do a pass on my headcanons about history and culture in the Nether and then we might start talking about character headcanons since this is also an actual AU.
If you read this far, here's some notes on striders and ghast
"I'm Starving to Death in the Nether": A Cookbook for Avoiding Certain Doom
Renowned chef and piglin-player hybrid Ghàkùàg-Ayg̀ìkh (player name gu_Aykix19) introduces their favourite Nether cuisine to the world in this sensational collection of recipes.
I find the idea of players being allergic to certain potions or things in the Minecraft world to be fascinating. Player 1 and 2 being PVP enthusiasts but Player 2 breaks out in hives if anyone uses a Potion of the Turtle Master near them. Or a player entering a lush cave sneezing and coughing their way through the mining expedition because they are allergic to the flower spores.
It isn't an actual function in the game, but I also think that it could be interesting if players used a mechanism to negate or neutralize all allergies. Perhaps the magic that allows people to enchant (XP) can be used in miniscule increments to suppress immune responses to allergens.
