Minecraft Forums

Once upon a time, the world of Minecraft was a world filled with man-made and naturally generated wonders.

You had the Desertians, a group of people with great knowledge on how to survive with few resources.

They had big cities in the desert, that spanned as far as the eye could see.

They where religious, so they created big temples. Now, after the wind has blown sand around where their kingdoms once were, those are the only things that are high enough to not be buried completely.

Even though the desert people were the richest and had the most welfare of all the empires, because deserts lack resources they heavily relied on trade with the Florans, a group of people who lived in the resource-rich forests.

They were very close to nature and lived a humble life.

This didn't really matter though because the forests had so many resources and they had such big numbers that even if a tiny percentage of their resources went to other kingdoms they would still have more than enough emeralds to support the economy.

However, them being so in sync with nature did eventually lead to their downfall as a way smaller and weaker empire could still quickly become stronger than them if they didn't care so much about nature and took all resources they could find.

Because of their size, the Florans did survive a few attacks but weakened and tired from many battles, they eventually faced an opponent that was just a little bit stronger than them:

The Xodals. A warmongering faction that destroyed everything in their path.

After having destroyed the Desertians and the Florans they build villages everywhere. After the big collapse, a few of them survived, and you can still find them as villagers.

A few mages of them lived in dark oak forests, where they gathered in big mansions and practiced dark magic.

Now let's move on to the big jungles, where tribes lived without even knowing about what was happening outside of it.

They were primitive, but with all the resources in the jungle, they had much stuff and they built great temples filled with traps.

That was until the sea people came. A clan, that lived on islands, that have died out long ago.

They appeared suddenly at the shores, plundered, killed, and left. Their existence is still doubted by many historians since the only evidence of them having existed came from old scrolls found in temples.

So the tribes were destroyed, and after a while, the Xodal empire collapsed because their empire was too big to control. When the monsters came, the empire had already collapsed so there was no army to protect them and almost anyone got killed.

Now, a few thousand years later, the only humans remaining are living in the shadows of the old empires, having to hide every night because they can't do anything against the monsters.

But there is some hope for the worlds left. There is a small faction called the rebuilders. They live far away from each other, and travel the world, helping wherever they can. The world is big, and their numbers are small, so you will likely never see one. But you will see where they have been. Those mineshafts you find? Made by rebuilders. The ones made by the Xodals can still be found in the mesa, but anything deep underground has collapsed by now. Find librarian villagers? They can read, which has probably been thought to them by the rebuilders. If you find an igloo, there's a cactus inside, which shows that the person who built it has come from far. That person was a rebuilder. You're also one of them. You traveled far from the others, so you could help a region advance and become something that could maybe be compared to one of the ancient empires. So the next time you see a village, don't plunder it. Protect it, maybe build a wall or create a farm in any crop they do not have yet, because that's what you're here for.

I hope you liked it.

Well done but does minecraft really need a backstory?

An interesting question, @SonicJDF, and one that I've been pondering, myself. For my own upcoming Minecraft fanfic writing, I'll be developing my own lore and backstory to Minecraft, to help explain some of the interactions of my protagonist in the worlds they visit. I wouldn't presume, by any means, to try to write an "official" backstory for Minecraft, and I don't think that is @Djarogames' intention here either. This thread is entitled "A backstory to Minecraft", and not "The backstory to Minecraft", so I presume the author here is not intending this to be in any way canonical.

If we are writing a wider Minecraft fanfic, it seems necessary to fill in the blanks, as it were, explaining some of the canon mobs which our fanfics borrow from Minecraft lore, because, as you have implied, there is no real backstory to Minecraft (the game) itself. A backstory only becomes necessary as we explore fan fiction based on Minecraft. There is no intent (not on my part, anyway) to have such user-generated content be recognised or accepted as part of the game itself. Our backstories for the canon mobs etc are purely for the purpose of writing fan fiction / literature based on the game.

Other fanfic-specific sites which I have belonged to in the past expect that such user-generated content must carry a disclaimer, something like ...

"This is a work of fan fiction, written because the author has an abiding love for the works of xxxxxx. The characters, settings, places, and languages used in this work are the property of xxxxxx, except for certain original characters who belong to the author of the said work. The author will not receive any money or other remuneration for presenting the work on this archive site. The work is the intellectual property of the author, is available solely for the enjoyment of xxxxxx readers, and may not be copied or redistributed by any means without the explicit written consent of the author.

... while many don't believe this is even necessary, nor does it obviate the risk of prosecution for copyright and/or trademark infringement (see, for example, this TechDirt article from 2012 on the subject), it is still considered impolite to borrow someone else's work (whether canon or fanfic) without acknowledging their effort and creativity. While creating a unique backstory for the mobs in Minecraft, we need to acknowledge the creativity of their origins. IMHO.