The sea is cold and surprisingly full of life.
Do not call this body of water an ocean. It is too small to be an ocean and too large to be a lake. It hovers in-between as you dart betwixt its long, meandering strands of kelp, sopping wet, teeth grit, hunting and hunting for hands much like your own but bloated by the sea.
You've been at this for three days and three nights. At this point, you feel prepared to consecrate your own Noah.
The Drowned speak. Most of them don't talk in a language you understand, of course. Their words are bubbles and growls, raspy throats corroded by the salt water. Very few remain to tell stories at all, but the ones who do and the ones who can and the ones who share name you player and name you hunter.
"What do you seek?" one asks, voice barely a whisper above the roiling bass of the sea. You pause, sword suspended at their neck.
"What?"
"The still-hearted do not come to the sea," they say, dragging you closer to them to rasp in your ear. You let them. "What do you seek?"
Long, ruined limbs wrap around your torso. You shake yourself loose. "I need a weapon," you say, voice honed sharp to cut away the lingering strings of enchantment binding you close to the doomed soul. "Something I can throw."
"And after that?" the drowned drawls. "Will you enchant it?"
"Yes," you say. "To summon lightning."
"For what cause?"
"I am crafting," you say, continuing to swim backwards and letting your arms drift outwards a bit as if to suggest grandiosity, "a set of armor so great and so powerful that none shall touch me when my work is done. I shall use it to protect my friends and defeat my enemy. It needs to be struck by lightning before it works, though."
"And after that?" asks the drowned, voice eerily pleasant. This is a trap. There is no life behind those eyes, no soul behind that voice. If it is, it's rotted, stinking of dead fish and decaying kelp and the salt-stained piers of long gone seaside towns. There is nothing for you, a living player, here. Still, you linger, momentarily paused in your journey to trade words with a long dead wraith. "What will you do when you've conquered the world and swallowed the sun, player? You can fly. I've seen you do it. What comes next, hunter, when all of your friends are safe and all of your needs sated?"
You pause. "I do not know."
The drowned smirks, mouth twisting oddly and cruelly, as if the movement pains it somehow. "You are of the land and sky," it says, kicking forward to place one clammy hand on your cheek in a gesture that is the very shadow of tenderness. "But I? I pledged my love to the sea and she gives me all I need. The ocean is eternal, and I am the ocean's."
"That's no way to live," you say, not exactly thinking before speaking.
The drowned laughs at that, a raspy laugh of ruin and salt. "I died long ago," it murmurs, standing up straight and aiming its trident at your heart. The kelp that you did not realize was twining itself around your limbs and sword cinches tight. With a twisted grin, the trident pierces.
You wake with a strangled gasp on the shore, freezing and soaked to the bone. It's nighttime and raining. You run as fast as your legs will carry you home and half-collapse inside your house, teeth chattering, head full of eerie words, not giving your stolen trident a second glance.
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hey, minecraft tumblr, can we talk about something for a second?
this is what "horror mods" in minecraft look like right now. some long-limged oogabooga creature, usually black and with a big mouth, that chases you down while flailing and does a bunch of damage.
and yeah, i know that there are differences in mechanics between them, but in the end it still comes down to "you see an oogabooga in the distance, and then it chases you"
i'm not saying that this can't be scary. i'm just saying that it's getting a little oversaturated at this point, and there's other kinds of horror than just being chased by a model from spirit halloween's big & tall
if you want to stand out, you need to bring some new spooks
let me give you an example from a mod i've thought up, but probably won't end up making
i call it "The Innocent"
The Innocent looks like a baby villager with black eyes and a tattered robe in the nitwit colors. that's it. it doesn't even chase the player normally. in fact, it doesn't even move except to turn and face the player if they look at it. and that's where the fun begins...
The Innocent naturally spawns in uninhabited biomes, far away from both villagers and illagers. if the player looks at it for more than a second (so, long enough to be actually looking at it, and not just mousing past without noticing) it "bonds" to that player. once bonded to a player, it will keep appearing near them at random intervals, never under solid blocks (so not in caves or your house), spawning out of line of sight, watching them. it can and will watch through windows.
whenever it watches the player, The Innocent is also judging them. if the player kills living mobs, hits villagers, tramples crops, or other "bad" actions, this lowers an invisible karma score, while trading, building golems, breeding animals, and other "good" actions raise it.
if the player attacks The Innocent, it disappears in a puff of smoke, and this naturally lowers their karma a lot.
as The Innocent becomes more displeased, and it will over time become more displeased, bad things start to happen.
the sounds of crying, and eventually screaming children can sometimes be heard in the distance
baby zombie spawns become more common
nearby plants may turn to dead bushes when the player sleeps
paintings may change to others of the same size
rain and lightning become more frequent
zombies detect the player from farther away
etc...
if the player's karma is too low, then The Innocent may even turn into a (still black eyed) Drowned version of itself and attack. it's actually weaker than a regular baby zombie, though just as fast, so killing it isn't too hard. however, killing it doesn't make it stop, it just lowers your karma more, whereas dying to it is a Very Good Act. after all, you deserve it
but if killing it doesn't work, how does one get rid of The Innocent, i hear you ask. well, that's simple, after a certain number of encounters, every time you have a positive gain in karma by the time it disappears - that it to say, your karma at the end of the encounter is higher than it was at the start - there is a chance that The Innocent will be satisfied, meaning it will stop being bonded to you, and won't come back. there's just a couple of catches.
the number of encounters before it can be satisfied is random.
the player won't always be aware of when an encounter is happening.
"neutral" encounters - ones with no net change in karma - don't count towards the number.
the player doesn't get any direct indication of when The Innocent has stopped haunting them
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