1 – The Beginning

Herobrine’s Guide to the Between Dimension

Remarks of a Well-Traveled Cartographer

💙  🧡  💚

“When the Between dimension came into the world, there were no dragons, but there were soon carrots, and that’s almost the same thing.”

These were the first words spoken by a dear friend of mine when I told him I intended to pen down all I had since learned of this land. I am a foreigner to this realm, as he once was, though we have lived here longer than all of the native-born. The early days were filled with whispers, for back then, we did not understand the language spoken by those who did not play, and we had not yet learned to read.

I have always been a man of passion and study. I was born in a different world and apprenticed as a cartographer. For many years, I painted maps I remember by heart, but which do me no benefit anymore. How curious, the parallels I see between this new world and my ancient own. Now that I have set my roots, content to make a life for myself in this new realm, I find myself eager – not reluctant – to write the things I have learned. For years, I have gathered information from outside parties and arranged them alongside my firsthand accounts. It is my pleasure to share them now.

I am not the first to stumble into this land. My arrival results from the use of a Totem of Undying. I have had two pass through my hands, but the first I gave to the woman who became my wife. When she lost her life, only her body was spared, and her mind was altered despite the Totem’s trusted powers. We went our separate ways, but when my time came to pass, by some miracle… my body touched the universe. It threw its light on me and I was spared.

I awoke in this peculiar, empty world that sprawls wide and far. From my studies, I have concluded it to be a realm of its own, with features as unique to its existence as the Nether and End possess. For many years, I traveled alone, and it was a joyous day when I was reunited with my wife and her newfound friend, who had many of his own adventures to share. I consider myself an incredibly fortunate man. This universe is kind and has spoken “I love you” time and time again.

For the sake of privacy, I shall withhold the names of my companions. However, the three of us have compiled what I hope will be a well-rounded starter guide for those who, like me, pursue learning with great passion.

CHAPTER TOPICS

• 1 – The Beginning
  • Intro
  • Table of Contents
  • Creation Story
• 2 – The Digital World
  • The Game of Life
  • Minecraft: Between Worlds
  • Languages
  • Ticks and Time
  • Defining Mobs
  • A Comment on Mob Appearances
  • Mob Behavior Cycles
  • Mate Selection & Breeding Styles
  • Defining Ambient Non-Mobs
  • Ore in Modern Times
  • A Comment on Gender
  • A Comment on Sexuality
• 3 – An Overview of Dragons
  • Names of Dragons – Critical Warning
  • Defining Dragons
  • A Dragon’s Role
  • Egg Production
  • Egg Anatomy
  • Addressing a Dragon
  • Commands
  • Dragon Farms
  • A Dragon’s Death
  • Star-Bearing Hybrids
• 4 – An Overview of Hybrids
  • Defining Hybrids
  • Defining Anivores
  • A Comment on Phantoms
  • Online and Offline Status
  • Survivor-Spectator Pairs
  • Physical and Ethereal Planes
• 5 – Hybrid Biology
  • A Comment on Mentality
  • A Comment on Code
  • Account Creation
  • Syncs and Bleed
  • Transition to Between
  • Eggs
  • Address
  • Spawnlings
  • Early Levels
  • Vision
  • Moon Phases
  • Hearts
  • Respawning
  • Variants
  • Chimeras
  • Skins
  • Dressing in a Skin
  • Pixel Manipulation
  • A Comment on Experience (XP)
• 6 – Server Hubs
  • What Is a Server?
  • Types of Servers
  • Hub Flowers
  • What Is a Server Hub?
  • Online Activity
  • AFK Servers
  • Trapped Offline
  • Dissolve Resets
  • Unthreading
  • The Role of Anivores
• 7 – The Soul
  • Overview
  • Species
  • Soul Wounds
  • Soul Temperature
  • Player Files
  • Coding and Mods
  • Species Modding
  • Soul Slot (Inventory)
  • Sharing Souls
• 8 – Hybrid Behavior
  • A Comment on Wandering
  • A Comment on Setting Roots
  • Hybrid Play Behavior
  • The Full Moon
  • Collective Behavior
  • Targeting
  • Hunting
  • Allogrooming: Preening
  • Allofeeding: Food and Kisses (or Lack Thereof)
  • Courtship
  • Bonding
  • Nesting
• 9 – Carroting, Co-Spawning, and Flares
  • What Is Carroting?
  • The Biology of Carroting
  • Flaring Soul Traits
  • Defining Love Mode and AI Sparks
  • Co-Spawning
  • Concerning Carrot-Related Behaviors to Watch For
• 10 – XP, Magic, and Tables
  • Intro
  • Overworld Tables
    • Crafting Table
    • Enchanting
    • Workstations
  • Between Tables
    • Skill Table
    • Artifact Table
    • Coding Table
  • Adjusting Code via Allogrooming
  • Definitions
• 11 – Between’s Landscape
  • Overview
  • Between’s Layers
  • Sky and Seasons
  • Void Layers
  • Small Water Sources
  • Large Bodies of Water
  • Bullet Paths
  • Tunnel Travel
  • Unique Biomes
    • Darkwater
    • Atoll
    • Tropical Rainforest
    • Maple Mountains
    • Emerald Savanna
    • Epic Peaks – Dry, Mild, Icy, Rainy, Tropical
    • Tallgrass Prairie
    • Chaparral
    • Dry Valley
    • Volcanic Coast
    • Lowlava
  • A Comment on Hybrid Distribution & Raiding Urges
  • Notable Landscape Changes
    • Ruined Lands
    • Consumed Lands
    • Tattered Lands
    • Maintained Lands
• 12 – Important Points in History
  • Division of Territory
  • Livestock Distribution
  • Recognition of Little Sun Valley
  • Hub Flower Distribution
  • Early Recordkeeping
  • Magical Awareness
  • Rise of First Moon City
  • Bullet Path Corruption
  • Death of the Cluckshroom Dragon
  • Widespread Use of Coding Tables: Mods, Escorts, Deliveries
  • Public Servers & Server Downloads
  • Nightwander Development
  • Fall of the Grand Library
  • Fall of First Moon City
  • The Scattering
  • Modern Discovery of Lowlava Ruins
  • Rise of East Verdant Oasis
  • Increase in Griefing
  • Death of the Allay Dragon
  • What’s to Come
• 13 – Between’s Culture
  • Notable Lifestyles
  • General Observations
  • Social Dynamics
  • Behavior Mimicry and Roleplay
  • Travel
  • Nudity
  • Valuables
  • Media
  • Help and Luminary Office
  • Treatment of Mobs
  • Agents
  • Holidays and Seasons
  • Illager Culture Observations
  • Piglin Culture Observations
• 14 – Overview of Kin Categories
  • Notable Definitions
  • Enderkin
  • Netherkin
  • Aquatic
  • Overkin
  • Tweenborn
  • Tradebonded
• 15 – Enderkin Report
  • Enderspawn, phantoms, shulkers, silverfish, skeletals, wardens, and wraiths
• 16 – Netherkin Report
  • Blaze, ghasts, hoglins, magma cubes, piglins, striders
• 17 – Aquatic Report
  • Axolotl, cod, dolphins, guardians, pufferfish, polar bears, salmon, squids, tropical fish, turtles
• 18 – Overkin Report
  • Armadillos, bats, bees, breezes, camels, chickens, cows, creepers, donkeys, horses, foxes, frogs, goats, mooshrooms, ocelots, pandas, parrots, pigs, rabbits, sheep, slimes, spiders, vultures, wolves
• 19 – Tweenborn Report
  • Alligators, badgers, barnacles, cluckshrooms, crabs, deer, ducks, ferrets, fireflies, glares, great hungers, hedgehogs, marmots, meerkats, moles, monkeys, mooblooms, ostriches, otters, penguins, raccoons, ravens, red pandas, skunks, termites, toucans, unicorns
• 20 – Tradebonded Report
  • Villagers, wandering traders, zombies, witches, pillagers, mountaineers, illusioners, geomancers, wind callers, mages, evokers, vexes, allays, wisps, sniffers, soul wizards, rascals, glares, whisperers, llamas, ravagers, big beaks, brilliant beetles, regal tigers, emerald cheetahs, golems
• 21 – Additional Info
  • Exploring Dimensions
  • The Hels Dimension
  • Helsians
  • Landscape of Hels
  • Additional Meta
  • Further Readings
    • Closing Citations

Some mobs are considered variants of the above species. Ex: Vindicators are discussed in the pillager section, dogs with wolves, and cats with ocelots. Strays are in the skeletals section. Drowned, husks, and bogged are considered zombies. The frog category covers tadpoles, standard frogs, and fearless frogs.

Additionally, a mob’s spawning zone is no guarantee of classification. Ex: Phantoms and wardens are Enderkin despite spawning in the Overworld.

💙  🧡  💚

The Beginning  

The origins of playerkind have long been debated, and perhaps the three of us are not qualified to speak on such matters. What is a player? And are we, who approached this universe from the outside looking in, spared the pain of death in a foreign world where Totems have more value than all you possess, deserving of this title at all?

Before there were players, there once floated a realm of dust and starlight. This is where the universe ran the thinnest and the seams in the code become clear. You will find them deep down in the Void, though many have been driven mad in pursuit of answers. We call this dimension The End. Here, the universe was as milk and the children of dust began to feed. These were the endermites.

In the beginning, they were without shape and number. Tiny mouths latched onto the universe and suckled there until they learned to bite. They gnawed through this separation between worlds, and when they did, the dust and starlight drained out of The End and touched heat and sunlight. Elements came into contact… hydrogen of the End and oxygen of the Overworld and all important things. Great energy took shape above the yawning Void that had always existed below. It flowed widely and filled the cracks that run between all our accessible worlds, and it hung suspended by the elements that were created. We now call this dimension Between.

The endermites were born in the Void and equipped to survive with very little, and as they weaned from the universe, they fell into Between. They lived, reproduced, and died a thousand times in the early energy pool that filled that realm. Their matter became the skulk, which spread in the floating ooze to become like algae or a thin crust. Their souls returned to the universe and became love and milk again. With oxygen, hydrogen, and organic matter, the first floating plants grew there in liquid energy. They secured themselves to each other and to bits of organic matter drifting past them in the universe. The endermites multiplied, and all the throbbing energy that existed between worlds was overrun.

Still, the floating plants fought to thrive. They took root. In clumps of matter, they grew. They made themselves strong to resist the endermites, who always lapped at dust and starlight and the energy of the world. They carved gashes in the edges of the Between dimension, bringing magma and warmth from lava-filled dimensions scattered in the code, and in their gnawing, they created pathways some of us still walk today.

The elements flourished. The sun took form and stronger plants fed from this light above instead of the energy below. New, early creatures took their rotation in the universe. Only those who evolved to consume limited nutrients could survive. These fed on endermites and became the early endermen, and the plants grew taller. The endermen devoured the endermites and ancient organic material that had fallen over the years, now floating in the Void. The ‘mites burrowed blindly for safety. They hid in the tunnels they made between the strings of source code that were a billion years old, which would hang forever above the Void.

Plants waved their leaves towards the sun. They nursed their seeds and released them to the world. Organic matter thickened to form a crust in the river of energy that made the shape of Between. Water trickled between the land. Early creatures – creatures which have no code and go unnoticed by the game – took their shapes. They found their place. Some chose warmth. Others chose ice. Then came the moon, and this is where the trouble begins.

Between is a realm of energy, which rolls like the tide. The moon commands this energy, and when it pulls, it can create. It is, of course, on full moon nights that lightning sparked energy among volcanic dust and sculk. Many thin scraps of souls writhed in the sculk and bound together, giving life to three separate beings who caked themselves in dirt. Foresight, Knowledge, and Action crawled until they walked, and walked until they ran, and explored this realm when it was nothing at the start. They left no mark, they made no maps, but learned many things that could someday be passed on.

Before there were dragons, there existed carrots and gold. An endermite once nibbled on the gold and on a carrot and created a great energy. An enderman devoured the ‘mite. The full moon cast down its light and dragged the energy of the golden carrot and the endermite and the enderman together with the dust and starlight and organic matter and elements and the leftover bits of sculk and souls the three caretakers did not touch, and the Ender Dragon was formed. She became the first of all dragons that would be.

With her great teeth, she ate of the code. She gathered the atoms of the world – of the grass, the rivers, the air, the ground – and swallowed them with her breath. Organic material took form inside her, and this was the first player. She ate to nourish him and assemble his form inside of her. She laid the first egg. When he hatched, players came into the world born of milk and love. He was born something like an endermite and something like a dragon. He was in fact something all his own.

The Ender Dragon swooped beneath the floating crust that made up the landscape of Between. She fed him the energy of the Void below. She fed him code. The universe touched his soul. He ate carrots and berries picked fresh from the world. He ate plants and endermites and creeping things. With his teeth, he carved paths in the energy. Now all our worlds make contact with Between.

As the player grew, the caretakers Foresight and Knowledge and Action visited to teach the things they knew. He crafted tools and built with atoms and organic material. He formed the first mob, which had no face. These were given life by the breath of the Ender Dragon, the spark of golden carrot energy, and the moon above. These kept him company, but had no souls. They wandered from him, unguided, and not even the three caretakers could keep them from falling from Between’s edge and into the Void.

Seeing his loneliness and shame, his caretakers encouraged him to build again. They taught him of many creatures and plants across the land. He built dragons of sculk and the life trapped within them, hoping they would be like his mother- a being of intelligence who showed kindness to the creatures of the realm. These dragon shapes were consumed with golden carrots under moonlight and the Ender Dragon laid a clutch of 99 eggs. Foresight, Knowledge, and Action taught them things, left their wisdom in the form of a communication tool and recipe book and the magic that binds them to every player, and went their way. Some say they now guide the moon across the sky, or else dwell upon its back to watch the world.

These are the dragons who live as sisters and frolic in Between. Each bears offspring in their own image. At times, a clutch of eggs is divided, and a portion are set aside to hatch and populate the world in their wild form- as mobs undaunted by human nature. But when the eggs are warmed and nourished, they hatch into hybrids. The hybrids are players, and they suck from the bellies of their mother dragons or feed from their mouths until they gain enough XP to wean, stand, and wander on their own. Millions and millions have come together to build the dimension we now call home.

The brother of the dragons is named Steve. He is loved, though he speaks little and has spawned no children. The last I knew, he considers himself an endermite hybrid. He is the one who forged the veering path in floating source code where myself, my wife, and all others who fell from our neighboring universe were caught up in energy and pulled into Between. Now, our Totems of Undying are broken. We know of no way back to our homeland, but I am content to stay.