norsecraft

[norsecraft]

I’ve started another large & unnecessarily ambitious project because I hate myself 🙃

I’m putting 9-block-tall Elder Futhark runes inset with glowstone around the whole circumference (where possible) of my mega base.

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And here’s the completed Raven statue! It took me a while to decide what I wanted to do here, but with buildings on the north & south ends of the base and a gate on the east, I knew I wanted something here. Realistic statue-building in Minecraft is pretty new to me but I’m happy with how this turned out.

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I’ve been working more lately on my mega-spawn-base, part of which involved making a large Raven statue/gargoyle, but I just had to grab a picture with the absurd network of scaffolding I’d constructed to do it all.

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I’ve used this idea to create a digital altar to Odin in my main survival world! I’ve been playing on this world for years, so I’ve amassed enough resources and wealth to do it all in survival, which felt nice, to know I’ve dedicated some time to making this.

I chose a lone snowy peak just east of my spawn base for my building site. There was a cooler looking mountain range closer but it didn’t have much room for a structure of any size.

I use the Minecraft Norse Mythology texture pack, which added some nice textural elements like knotwork and runes to the blocks. I was also able to use a Futhark Unicode keyboard to make a nice dedicatory sign (and yes, my primary weapon of choice is a maxxed-out trident I’ve named “Gungnir”).

I chose materials and colors that I felt had a connection to Odin, or that would convey a sense of respect (for their rarity/value)—so things like warm wood tones, chiseled quartz, gold & lapis blocks, and stained glass windows. The central piece is a statue of Odin himself, with his two ravens (the texture pack recolors one of the parrot varieties into a raven). Blue candles and potted flowers, bookshelves and lecterns, and blue raven banners finish off the space.

Minecraft + Magic

I’ve been playing a lot of Minecraft recently and it’s really got me thinking on/about it being used as a sort of like an altar/e-shrine that one could use if they were still a hidden witch or even a beginner witch. When playing I know that most players enjoy building a home so I figured why not build a home with rooms of worship inside it? Each room would then be dedicated to a god/dess and then i would go out into the world looking for the devotional items or things that would symbolize that god/dess.  Inside the game there are many potential representations Torches - Candles Lava - Fire Element Rivers/Lakes/Waterfalls/Oceans - Water Element Dirt - Earth Element Feathers - Wind Element YOU CAN MAKE AN ENCHANTING TABLE WITH A FLOATING SPELL BOOK. YOU CAN BREW POTIONS TOO!

There’s so much potential for Magical workings in this game. Seriously guys go check it out or try it for yourselves~

I’ll try to take pictures of my house to show you what i mean, hopefully it’ll work… Anyways talk to me about it! What are your thoughts?

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The End Has Low-Gravity (or at least it should):

1.21 is looking fire, but 1.22 has got to be an End update.

Minecraft has always had really good lore and story-telling, but does anyone else feel like the End is just missing something?

It's to be expected, it hasn't been updated for the last 7 years and the last update added more questions than answers. I feel like it's just on the cusp of being as clear as the rest of the game.

It's a dimension that's supposed to feel off, and uncanny. Literally the only track that plays is 15 minutes of warped mash-ups of Overworld tracks. End stone is just inverted Cobblestone.. etc. But even then it's still wrong.

I just have to know, Minecraft lore is built off of head canons but I'm just unable to form one that makes sense regarding the End. Endermen make sense, I believe they're warped and "evolved" humans. Eating only chorus makes them teleport, their long arms and bodies to reach the high snaking chorus plants, their larger eyes to see in perpetual darkness, etc. Their aversion to water is a wrench in that but I'm not perfect and my head canon isn't right. Endermen could have nothing to do with humans.

Shulkers and End Cities are what confounds me. Are Shulkers natural living organisms? The Dragon and Ender-men both have black skin and dark purple eyes but this thing has yellow skin and an almost magenta shell. I think they're some sort of automatons, but built by who? The ancient builders, the ones who evolved into Endermen? But the spiral staircases in the End Cities don't seem designed for humans (or maybe I just suck at climbing them) and the ceilings aren't really high enough for Endermen. Maybe Shulkers are another protector mob of their area. But protecting what? Protecting the means of personal flight maybe, but that looks nothing like the rest of the end - its literally made from the wings of the Phantoms of the Overworld.

End Cities themselves do kind of make sense to me, their architecture mimics the branches of a chorus plant. But whilst chorus seems to be the only natural thing in the End, the cities very much aren't. There's no way that structure would work under normal gravity. But surely the End just has weak gravity? Nope, it's the same as the Overworld.

Everything in the End just feels so artificial. The central island; with Obsidian pillars punching through the whole thing, a material that can only be made using 2 fluids that don't exist in the End, topped with a crystal made partially from the tears of a creature in another dimension and some sort of Eye which we can only make by killing an Enderman and fusing it's remains with the ground up remains of another creature from said other dimension. Also, it is so far away from the rest of the End, as if someone destroyed or moved these other islands away. The Dragon itself to, she works like no other mob. People say that she's a machine which I don't agree with, her erratic behaviour is because she is the only mob of her type and hasn't been updated like ever. I don't think she's native to the End though; Endermen, the only other creature in existence that looks like her, can be hostile to her.

Trying to piece this together as I'm writing this is making me think of a new head canon: The End is just a melting pot of travellers who got lost and stuck. Think of something like the Void from the Loki show. I think the End was initially just a mass of floating islands with the chorus fruit, in the Void between dimensions. Then the ancient builders arrived, constructing the obsidian pillars and the bedrock portal frame. I think they found something, maybe it could be whatever made the End Cities. But regardless, something dangerous. Something that made them separate the only way out of the dimension by several kilometres of Void, that made them create a Dragon to guard said way out. Something that made them sacrifice themselves by sealing themselves into the End.

There are a few holes in this. Maybe the ancient builders did build the End Cities before/after becoming Endermen. Maybe the danger was the Dragon, but why would it guard the exit portal? And I've kind of ignored the fact that Endstone is inverted Cobblestone, maybe the whole dimension if artificial? Built by the ancient builders entirely? Or maybe the End was spawned from ancient humanities collective mind, like a sort of yin to their yang.

I would love an End update to add a few things. I don't like most popular ideas or mods for an End update, as they often stray too far from what the End is. I would like to be able to find whatever gravity-defying sentient race built the End Cities, maybe they could also be warped into Endermen like the ancient builders were - but could still have a sense of self and humanity, or maybe they're some sort of Phantom People. I would like to find this danger that caused the ancient builders to sacrifice themselves, a new huge boss at the edge of the End would be awesome. I would also like, if they made them less annoying that is, for Phantoms to spawn in the End just normally. They feed on Insomnia right? What's more insomniac then an entire dimension where it's always night and nothing can sleep?

I would also like purple chorus wood lol.

[norsecraft]

When you spawn in to the Jungle Realm, you arrive in this decorative archway. I tried to make a rough approximation of a Quetzalcoatl head out of prismarine at the top, & used this build to kind of establish the build palette I wanted for the rest of the city.

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The fist structure I made in the Jungle Realm was this massive mesoamerican-style pyramid. I first built it incredibly plain—just stone bricks and no decor or anything—but then I went back over it and added more detail and colors. It was doing this that I decided I wanted the rest of the builds I made here to be vibrant and colorful, too.

The “jade” altar at the top has a command block that teleports players back to spawn.

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The jungle realm has been one of my favorite ones to develop on this map. I wanted to do sort of fantasy-ancient-Central-American inspired builds, but not in ruins like they are today. I wanted these builds to be bright and colorful and vibrant like they would have been long ago.

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My kids have never even heard of Steven Spirlberg’s ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ (1977), so the fact that the flying saucer plays the same tone as the spaceships in that movie is a little lost on them. But it was fun to make. And my old boomer dad loves it.

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Took a little redstone work but the flying saucer now has lights that spin around it’s middle.

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In the Red Rock Desert Realm, I decided that the landmark I would build for my kids to find their way back would be a Flying Saucer wrecked precariously on the tops of the spires.

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The desert realm I built Egyptian-inspired pyramids and ruins. Later I’d like to build a large Hanging Gardens.

Inside the main pyramid is a set of 3 tunnels that go to a cursed tomb with arrow-booby-traps, the tomb of the Pharaoh with all their treasures, and a tall staircase that leads to a drop off into a pit of lava, but under the lava I have fence gates and the return teleport command block on pressure plates.

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Can I interest you in a sinkhole in the middle of the ocean?

Seed: 4325227337

Coordinates: (97, y, -194)

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For the ice spikes and tundra biomes, I decided to make an enormous derelict pirate ship that wrecked in the ice of the frozen river.

My kids got a kick out of the cannons that actually fire.

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The Mega Spruce Forest Realm needed some kind of large landmark to house the return command block, and a volcano seemed like a fun idea.

Fun story—when I first started playing minecraft nearly 10 years ago, I was into it for a few years but got bored and busy with life and kinda gave it up for several years. But when I did, I had begun building a volcano and never actually finished it. So it was kinda nice to finish this one.

The floating islands were inspired by the album art for ‘Assassins Creed: Valhalla - Wrath of Muspelheim’.

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Easily one of the hardest biomes to find naturally, the mushroom island was at the top of my list for biomes that I wanted my kids to be able to play in.

Each of the realms they can teleport to has command block that will teleport them back, and over the course of a couple months, I’ve been building a very large, themed structure in each realm that houses that command block, to act as a landmark so they don’t get too lost. The mushroom island had an exceptionally large red mushroom as its landmark.

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Lately I’ve been playing exclusively in my kids’ creative world where I’ve been building things in for them to explore. We named it ‘The Nine Realms’ because right next to spawn I built this floating hub. I call it ‘Himinbjorg’, after a reference to the home of the Norse god Heimdallr, and each of the 8 rainbow-colored-towers has a command block that will teleport them to a different far-off biome, or “Realm”. Each Realm in turn has a command block that will teleport them back to Himinbjorg, allowing them to explore and play in a variety of different biomes without having to physically travel there.