The Chained Watcher

The Other Side

~~~

The landscape of this strange world stretched out beneath him.

Most of the time, it was just assortments of forest biomes and plains, but in the distance there was a looming mountain range. It was a bit off his current flight path, so he'd have to check it on his way back to avoid messing up his map.

Someone in the hacker community had made an automatic mapping feature for their communicators, and after multiple strenuous antivirus tests it was installed onto the devices of the Exploration Team. It wasn't perfect, but as long as you go in a relatively straight line it'll compensate for any discrepancies. This let Grian admire the scenery more, since he didn't need to pause to mark down what he'd seen every couple of minutes.

The air in this world felt... fresher, somehow. Taking a deep breath, he could smell the mix of scents from many different plants from the forest below, far more complex a scent than on Hermitcraft. Even the flower shop didn't have this many different types of flowers, and he was pretty sure they had them all.

Another half an hour passed before he saw something weird. There was a village up ahead, but it didn't look like an ordinary one populated by the naturally spawned villagers. It was much more varied, with the houses looking a little different from each other, and he could see a couple of the inhabitants outside in the fields. These villagers did not wear the same brown outfit most of the server spawned villagers wore, instead looking to be wearing handmade outfits like a player would.

None of the subdimensions connected to the portal hub had ever had true deviations from its theme, so was this... not a pocket dimension? There was no way the hub had linked up to one of the main planes, right? No Watcher magic could be felt nearby at the moment, but if this really was a main plane, he should stay on alert.

Turning back towards base, Grian left the village alone to go inform more responsible people about its existence. As much as he wanted to check it out right now, he had been told in no uncertain terms by both those in charge and Xisuma that if he found something unusual he was to not interact and report back to base immediately. They knew him so well.

~~~

Back at base, Grian went to the central command area to give his report. Xisuma wasn't here at the moment, so he just walked into the map room to update it with his information and mark the village on it. One of the official-looking people was in there analyzing the information, so he wouldn't even need to go find someone to talk to!

"Hey, just got back from scouting and I found something weird. There was a village, but it didn't look naturally spawned. The villagers also looked more like players than the big-nosed things spawned on the servers."

The person turned around. "You're saying there's an unnatural village populated by what might be players? Do you have any thoughts on this, as the one who found it?"

How to phrase this without sounding weird... "Well, I noticed that there's more wood types out here than we see back home, plus the villagers felt like, well, farmers. Could it be possible that this isn't a server?"

"Not a server? Then what... wait... could it be? There's no way, right?" The man started shuffling through various anomaly reports from the other scouts, some with pictures of flowers and trees, others of snow falling off a mountain face in a massive avalanche. They slowly placed them down, and pulled out their communicator to send a message. Turning back to Grian, they spoke shakily. "Thank you for your report, we are going to be in a meeting for a while, so feel free to rest or go out and map more land. If you plan to contact the village, please bring someone skilled at negotiation with you."

Was that the go ahead to talk to the villagers? That sounded like the go ahead to talk to the villagers. "Aye Aye, captain!" Saying that, he sprinted out of the map room with a big grin, only to almost crash into Philza. Falling over in an attempt to stop, he barely missed the startled avian as he tumbled to the ground.

"Are- are you ok mate?"

Sitting up, Grian grinned at him. "I found villagers and got given the go ahead to talk to them. They said bring a negotiator, so wanna come?" Standing up, he grabbed Phil's hand and started dragging him towards the door.

"I need to update the map first!"

"Fiiiine."

~~~

Back out at the village, Philza remarked on the structures. "These look handmade, is this really a natural spawn?"

Grian kept his eyes on the buildings below. "Who said they had to be spawned? It's been... Honestly, I can't remember how long it's been since I was outside on the main planes, but I don't think this is a server."

"You're saying... that this is the world we all got taken from?"

"Not necessarily, but it could be. The study of dimensions was never really my thing, but I at least learned about the main planes. There's a couple that it could be, with the main difference being levels of magic. This plane looks to be a low magic environment, so depending on local culture we might not be welcomed warmly with our wings."

"Why would they be off-put by our wings? Hybrids aren't all that uncommon even if normal humans are the majority."

"Well, I did say main planes, not plane. There are the elemental planes, fire, water, etc. , and then there are the actually livable ones. I think there are two or three of them, with one high magic, one low magic, and the last has almost no magic. Hybrids are magical in origin, so while a high magic environment usually has at least one for every ten or so humans, in a low magic area it's quite rare to find one in the first place. TLDR, less magic, fewer hybrids. Fewer hybrids, more discrimination."

"Sorry to interrupt, but I think they're going to bed."

Sure enough, the travel time had ended up with them arriving shortly before sundown, and now all the villagers were going inside to sleep. Does that mean they need to come back tomorrow? Is it even worth the time to go back to base and then come back, or should they just sleep here?

Slowly spiraling down, Grian aimed for a nearby forest to land and make an underground hidey hole. "Well, if they're not out, there's no point in staying up in the air. I'm gonna make a little spot to rest while we wait for morning."

It's not a big or particularly complex base, but he spent the little bit of extra effort to swap the walls to wood for that cozy feeling. He had also taken to bringing wool with him to make beds ever since the farm raiding incident on Hypixel. Small base completed, he laid down to rest, checking to see if his communicator had a signal. No such luck, though not surprising.

~~~