by Mur Lafferty
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I am exiled.
I've made a new home here in the Nether.
I found another young person who may have looked up to me, but I abandoned her. I can't be the cause of another child's death. She reminded me so much of Max that I had to leave.
I have tried architecture here, building a grand tree house much like I had in the Overworld. It immediately became infested with mobs. I can hear Boots laughing at me now. She's telling me she's safe and happy and I'm a fool for coming back here.
I'm leaving the new place and searching for an existing fortress to capture for my own. Someday I may find my home in the End, but for now I only want to find a safe place to lay my head, and this is not it.
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Notes from 1,000 Terrible Creatures and Why You're Not Permitted to Find Them Under Any Circumstances
By Leocadia Stiefel
Entry 1
I don't understand the point of this, making notes about an absolutely terrible place no one should ever visit. But I suppose children don't like to hear "don't go there." They need to hear exactly why one shouldn't travel to this terrible place. And that's why I have come here, to find all the reasons my children—or anyone—should not travel to this "Nether."
I am here also to keep my companion safe, despite his constant poor jokes and his insistence on giving me a ridiculous nickname. But he asked for protection, and I am here to give it. A lady is nothing if she is not a reliable friend.
We arrived, by my estimation, yesterday, and immediately encountered three reasons to go straight back home. Fire, lava, and ghasts.
Ghast (pronounced "gast"): Screaming like a newborn baby is the sound you will hear to alert you to a ghast's proximity. These four-by-four monstrosities fly around, dangling tendrils beneath them, looking for someone to attack with their fireballs. They're lazy creatures, wanting nothing more than to sit on their couches and wait for their wives to make dinner.
I'm kidding. That was my first husband. They reminded me of him, however. Ghasts simply sit around and use their fireballs' considerable range to attack from afar. It's rare they will travel to attack, but it can happen, so you can't sit around and lazily think you're fine if they're at a distance from you. I hate laziness.
They're easy to dispatch if you can avoid getting hit by their fireballs. Their bodies are fragile bags, easy to puncture with an arrow or even a fish hook.
Drops: Why someone would want tears from such a creature I certainly don't know, but they do drop their own tears, which I know is a trick to make me feel sorry for them, but it will not work, thank you very much.
Oh, and the tears can be used in potions. I suppose they can be useful that way.
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The eye of ender is a rare and sought-after item that you may sometimes find within treasure chests, but rarely. If you're a fighter (and you definitely should not be one, I hope I raised you better than this), you could craft one, since crafting one requires an ender pearl, something that's easiest to get by killing an enderman. "Easiest" is a joke. My companion says I don't make enough. But endermen don't take kindly to people looking at them, much less killing them and taking their pearls, so I suggest finding the eyes, or finding the pearls and mixing them with blaze powder. The powder is also difficult to get, but if you're out hunting endermen then you might as well hunt a few blazes and get their loot as well.
Really. You're better off finding an eye than crafting one. If I find out you've been hunting components to make this item, you will be punished.
Once you have your eye, whether looted or crafted, it's more than just a knickknack to bring out at parties to creep out your hosts. (I admit to doing this in my youth, but I now regret it.) In fact, we recommend you not do this because someone at the party might know what you have, and may try to take it from you. And if you're a thief who loots chests in homes that don't belong to you, then you deserve what's coming to you.
Where was I? Ah yes, the eye. Its uses. It can do two frightfully useful things. One is to build an ender chest, an amazingly convenient storage item that allows you to access anything in the chest from any other ender chest. How the chests know not to get your items mixed up with the other users of the chest, I don't know. That's not my job. I just know it works.
The eye of ender is also a key of sorts, allowing you to build a portal to the End. The eye of ender is a key from a world you would never want to visit to a world you should never go to. But whatever, it's your life, go ahead and do stupid, weird stuff with the eyes in this box. I won't be around to see all your bad decisions.
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I am out of supplies. I think about the items I have left behind me in various domiciles in the Nether, and I regret leaving so much behind. But a person can carry only so much, both physically and emotionally.
I fear I am at my end, now. If my final journals are found, please tell my family that I am sorry for the mistakes I've made. And tell the girl Freya I regret not taking her up on her hospitality.
And tell Boots she was right. About most things, anyway.
How I ended up in this one room, surrounded by mobs, is embarrassing to say the least, but if I'm found this way, there will be questions. I have discovered a fortress I would like to inhabit but I needed some supplies, and found an ancient, crumbling structure nearby. I became greedy and wanted to search for specific items not found in my new home. I grew tired and built myself a single room to rest in safely. I built my room close to a crumbling wall, with hopes that the wall would add more protection, but it seems I didn't notice a nearby mob spawner. I took a quick rest, and when I peeked outside I was surrounded by enemies.
I'm trapped. I came here with a few weapons, considerable amounts of leather, a few crafting tables, and some food. But my weapons have all broken by now. They lie littered around me. I began crafting leather armor with the intent to curse them,
—cursing! How did I miss this in all my studies?
I thought I was placing an enchantment of binding on my items so that I would further bind another enchantment, to solidify the spell, as it were, and instead I was cursing them with the inability to remove the item until it broke. I left cursed armor in my wake throughout the Nether until I realized what I was doing. Now I'm doing it to save my life.
I can place a cursed helmet backward on the skeleton's head, and it will wander away in confusion. I've tried to give them banners to carry, to perhaps alert someone to my presence, but I haven't seen another soul in some time. And there are always more skeletons.
I'm keeping them from attacking me, but I am nearly out of leather.
I ran out of food yesterday.
The mobs keep coming.
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From the Journal of Journals
By Alison
I've transcribed most of Nicholas's journals here, making notes where I know his recipes to be flawed. (Despite his objections.) I've also made notes about Grandma Dia's (or "Boots's") journals, but haven't fully transcribed them because that would just be copying an already clean journal. I have some room left over for my own thoughts, which is very lucky.
Our adventures in the Nether were trying and hard, but we found so much more than we anticipated. I found out more about Grandma Dia. We met Freya. We saved Uncle Nicholas.
Tomorrow we leave for home. We were an arguing band of two when we started, now we're a respectable group of five, if you count a certain somewolf. Nicholas said he thinks it's going to be an easy trip. But so much of this was supposed to be easy. I've got my doubts.
But while I suspect that our adventure is far from over, I will say that I'm no longer afraid of what we will encounter. After what we've been through together, the five of us can handle anything.
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he Lost Journals: An Official Minecraft Novel