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Day 88: Wet and sandy

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 88:

Most of the riverbed was sand. The current’s not fast, but it ‘s not something I want to have to swim across constantly either. Plus, should I spot a town on the other side (which is what I’m hoping for), I’ll need a way to get Stupid across.

So the sand needs to be dealt with, and that means removing it as much as possible and getting to the bedrock below it. That’s not too much of a challenge – I’ve gotten pretty good at mining sand out of the water near my home base – but since there are trees all around, it’s harder to stay warm in the water than when the sun’s beating on me relentlessly.

Anyway, found some bedrock, so now I can build up from there and have a slightly more stable bridge.

Sketch of the riverbed. Tree on the left, river in the middle, thick sand under the river, tree on the right.

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Day 87: Hello River!

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 87:

Now that I’m tunneling in the correct direction again, I’ve made progress. By “progress” I mean I dug straight up to get my bearings today, and discovered that the river’s only a few meters away!

That means I did it! I made a safe passage between me and the river!

Now I get to build a bridge, I guess.

And figure out how to get Stupid and Dumb into the tunnels so they can haul the lumber for the bridge.

Well, or I could cut the trees down by the river. I need to take a better look at them in the morning.

WHICH I CAN TOTALLY DO, BECAUSE I HAVE A TUNNEL THAT GOES TO THE RIVER.

Yano, there’s a lot of things about this trip that are just flat-out depressing. The monsters, mostly, but the total lack of food, tools, refrigerators, showers… But accomplishing this goal means a lot to me!

Think I’ll go to sleep for a change and see how the world looks in the morning!

map with some watercolor indicating the path from the main cave up to the river to the north.

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Day 86: Darkness

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 86:

Spent the day chopping down wood. Left late, because it was hard to see the sun’s position through the trees. Result: I got jumped by a zombie, and then a pony-sized spider, on my way back.

(Thank cod none of these creatures have learned how to work together or I’d’ve probably been fighting a zombie on a pony-sized spider.)

(I wonder if I can harness and ride the spiders.)

Anyway, no major harm done, just embarrassed. And anxious.

I understand much better now why my ancient ancestors may have been totally on board for not going outside at night.

Line drawing of a zombie riding a spider like an adult riding a miniature pony. Captioned "this would be bad".

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Day 85: Off-course

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 85:

I’ve gotten a lot of valuable stone out of the hills lately, but since I’ve started drawing a map of where the cave chambers are going, I’ve realized I’m digging in the wrong direction.

Time to turn things around I guess. Can’t get to the mountain by digging north.

A sketch of the artist's paper-making setup. The artist spreads cane pulp in the center of a rectangular stone with a ridge cut into its top, then sets a much larger rectangular stone on top.The liquid gets pressed out of the pulp, runs through the ridges, to a spigot that drains into a bowl that will hopefully crystallize into sugar. When the paper is dry and flat, the author removes the stone and collects the paper to dry further. Labeled "how I make paper".
Oh hey! By the way, making paper seems to be working. Here’s my setup.
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Day 84: sigh.

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 84:

What’s tall, green, skinny, has four tiny feet, and explodes you and your fence while you’re trying to chase off skeletons?

I never should’ve gone outside today. That’s what I get for trying to keep the skeletons out of my cows.

All cows still accounted for. Some duckens missing, but hey, now I have some seed to feed them (since the giraffe corgi blew up some nice wild wheat in the process) so that will be fixed shortly.

Line sketch of a fence, collapsed in the middle, with a cow looking out of it. Below, a human, leaning her head on her right hand and trying to put her left hand on her right knee. But in the image, the legs are so badly drawn they look broken or displaced or something.
Wow. I am lousy at drawing people when there are none to look at but me.