A Crown of Broken Runes (ACOBR)

A Myth...?

As Ren alighted on the ground, the sun warmed his back, and the tall grass around him rustled softly. He unlatched his elytra and tucked it away into his inventory, the shiny silver webs flowing through his hands like a liquid.

In the distance, a small group of wild horses roamed the plains, tossing their manes and stomping their hooves. Their dark coats gleamed in the sun, pitch black and silky.

Ren found a nice shaded spot at the edge of a forest, and lay down on the soft green grass. This part of the world was untouched, no bases or shops as far as the eye could see. Only waving hills of grass, trees gently rustling, a mountain range far in the distance, towering over the world.

The ground was pleasantly cool and, as he lay there with his eyes closed, Ren sighed happily.

After a few moments, he opened his eyes again and gazed into the sky.

Clouds lazily drifted across it.

That one... looks like a pumpkin. And those ones...

A bow...

A piston...

A squid...

And that last one, the darker one, resting upon the horizon...

A bird...

Ren sighed. He had needed this little break. The events on the server had been getting quite frightening, frankly.

He rubbed his arm and scratched behind one of his ears. His elbow popped as he pushed himself upright, and he winced a little. After stretching, he reached down and pulled out his communicator, but the screen was blank.

These creatures... these strangers...

I didn't think that they were real...

He thought back, remembering an old legend he had once been told.

Long ago, there were few worlds, and those that existed were small.

People lived alone, in realities only limited by their imagination.

But as more and more people began to generate more and more worlds, a creature began to form alongside them. It was said that they started as glimmers of light, simply wisps that floated on the wind.

Some player, no-one knows quite who, found a way to connect worlds to multiple people. You could now open little gaps, let others visit your magnificent world.
Players revelled in this newfound connection, rejoicing together.

However, this new system was flawed. When the original player of a world went offline, all of the others would be forced to do the same, pushed back into their own realities.
Eventually, people found a solution. One of the most well known entrepreneurs of the time was a man named Riot. He and his right hand man, Rune, founded a new type of world, and became some of the first admins ever to exist. They maintained the world, kept it alive. Riot and Rune unknowingly started a revolution. More and more players ascended to the role of admin and manufactured their own worlds, worlds that others could access as they pleased.

But when ever more players joined in, these admins did not have the power to maintain servers on their own, and it was beginning to take a toll. So, as a solution, they began to utilise the wisps, the strange creatures that guard over their worlds.

These wisps were happy to be needed and helped willingly, but only barely provided enough energy to keep the servers alive.

Eventually, the admins began to grow stronger, their worlds growing more complex, and more and more people continued to join these worlds.