Whatever the Wither?

[Six]

So with renewed relevance of beacons, and by extension the Wither, I was wondering if people have thought through theories of how the Wither fits into the lore of Better Than Wolves?

Summarising the aspects of it:
- It appears skeletal, with a backbone, rib cage and 3 skull like heads, but no limbs.
- It is formed from the skulls of skeletons which only appear around Nether fortresses,
- And from the soul sand, which in BTW is able to filter souls from ground Netherrack / Soul Dust, and absorb dragon orbs to turn them into raw experience.
- It has massive destructive power and causes the 'withered' effect, which constantly damages you and makes it very hard to see just how injured you are.
- It attacks any nearby creature that is not undead (skeletons, zombies, zombie pigmen, Wither Skeletons and other Withers), which means it will actually attack the Ender Dragon given the chance.
- It has a whole bunch of health, regenerates the health fast, and can even gain an immunity to arrows and splash potions.

And in reading over that summary I've hit upon another related question: What the heck IS 'soul sand' anyway?

[Arandia]

Hmm, i don't have an answer for the first part, but I have a bit of a narative for soul sand at the least. I see it as being the compounded chitonous remnant from an eon's worth of souls, their principle body having finally decayed and left only a compound built essentially out of their empty husks. The fields of soulsand we see in the nether are actually the result of innumerable hosts, built up in much the same way that today's limestone cliffs are the final resting place of untold trillions of tiny crustaceans.

Given its high frequency of occurence around lava leads me to believe that nearby lava accelerates the process; perhaps the high heat catalyzes the reaction in the souls present in the netherrack, and causes them to degrade more quickly?

Furthermore, if the soulsand is built up of the remnants of whatever used to comprise the body of the souls, then it naturally allows souls to pass through it while blocking other matter.

[Wafflewaffle]

Kinda agree with Arandia. I always thought Netherack were the remenescents of the tortured souls of the damned, thats why we can extract souls from it. Soul Sand to me always was pretty much what coal dust are to trees. Countless years of preassure and heat compressed the souls into a "harder" form, that then was eroded by the harsh elements of the nether, turning it to sand. This sedimented element lets the souls from netherrack through it while holding of anything "material", hence why Soul Sand makes you move slower, Steve's soul is steping a lot deeper then his feet is.

Now on the topic of the Wither, i think its not a natural entity of the nether. Its a construct ("our" construct), built from three ancient habitants the nether and the eroded souls of soul sand. Wither skeletons are not new to the nether like Pigmen, whose flesh is still rotting away, the skelies were picked clean ages ago, bringing from their passed lifes the tools they used (big fucking stone swords that show just how ancient they are) and wandering aimlessly seeking to bring upon the living the scorn of the dead.

The nether is really interesting, i could stay here all day describing what and who are the entities we are so used to see in the nether, like how i think growstone the hopes and dreams of the dead sent to the nether who inevitably lost it after eons of dispair and pain, slowing coagulating into cristaline form much like the cristal from salt in hipertonic water.

[Benanov]

Kinda agree with Arandia. I always thought Netherack were the remenescents of the tortured souls of the damned, thats why we can extract souls from it. Soul Sand to me always was pretty much what coal dust are to trees. Countless years of preassure and heat compressed the souls into a "harder" form, that then was eroded by the harsh elements of the nether, turning it to sand. This sedimented element lets the souls from netherrack through it while holding of anything "material", hence why Soul Sand makes you move slower, Steve's soul is steping a lot deeper then his feet is.

Now on the topic of the Wither, i think its not a natural entity of the nether. Its a construct ("our" construct), built from three ancient habitants the nether and the eroded souls of soul sand. Wither skeletons are not new to the nether like Pigmen, whose flesh is still rotting away, the skelies were picked clean ages ago, bringing from their passed lifes the tools they used (big fucking stone swords that show just how ancient they are) and wandering aimlessly seeking to bring upon the living the scorn of the dead.

I see 'rack as more of an infected or infused rock - everything in the nether is infused with the souls of the damned - it's not a remnant of a soul, but where that particular soul has taken up residence.

Your comment about "pressure and heat" is rather entertaining when I look at the mechanism for making Soul Sand in BWR - *especially* when you consider the source block is no longer sand (it was originally, but we had to change it), it makes the entire process that much more diabolical.

[Wookieguy]

Indeed, the Nether is quite interesting. Does anyone have an explanation for why you can make redstone from hellfire dust and gold? Seems to me that hellfire dust is just Netherrack with the souls removed. Add gold to that, and you get an completely different substance. Is Redstone gold that has been corrupted by the power of the Nether? What do you think?

[SterlingRed]

I would say the wither is an abstract version of a creature from Home. Home is a place Steve wants to return to, thus logically it is a place with more resources and power. Steve figured out how to use the resources of minecraft to summon something from his Home. But the summoning isn't precise or controlled and the end result is something not quite like the creature from which the wither originated. However Steve still finds it contains some remnant of power that he can put to use in the form of beacons to aid him on his quest home.

[Six]

Indeed, the Nether is quite interesting. Does anyone have an explanation for why you can make redstone from hellfire dust and gold? Seems to me that hellfire dust is just Netherrack with the souls removed. Add gold to that, and you get an completely different substance. Is Redstone gold that has been corrupted by the power of the Nether? What do you think?

The explaintion I've heard for that comes in part from one of the paintings in BTW. Redstone is where that 'essence of Netherrack' has seeped through the cracks between the Nether and Overworld and infused into what used to be gold ore. Hence why gold + hellfire dust gives the same result

[Thorium-232]

I believe the Wither is best explained by its components. I really like Arandia's explanation of Soul Sand, so we'll go with that. As for the Wither Skeletons, they are the animated corpses of the strongest warriors who were fielded to combat the Ender Dragon (their size speaks to their physical strength, as does their massive stone swords) when it ravaged the world. Rather than just absorb them, the Dragon has cursed them to wither inside their own bodies, trapped there forever in undeath. Forced to guard the nether fortresses for the rest of time, they have let their hate consume them and attack the living on sight, spreading their curse and trying to change Steve into one of them so he can share in their suffering.

Steve has found that, while inert, the skulls of the Withers retain both the seeds of the curse and the seat of the soul, though they lack the strength they once had. By collecting enough skulls and "restoring" their bodies with the shattered and eroded remains of countless other souls, the raw fury contained in them reaches a kind of critical mass and fuses the three beings into a single hate-filled, tortured avatar of decay. The strength of the curse becomes so great that the Wither can project it outwards from itself, infecting everything within range as its rage punches holes in the land wherever it touches. The three souls chained together are wrought with confusion, fear, and hate as each one fights to control their single body, resulting in a being that will indiscriminately attack all targets. The only thing that can prompt any kind of unified action from it, is its old foes:

If spawned in the End, it will prefer to attack any nearby Endermen, but will attempt to pursue and attack the Ender Dragon if there are no nearby targets.

So why would Steve even bother summoning such a dangerous and uncontrollable creature? Something so deadly that it was actually kept and used by the Dragon as its servant? Well, that's simple. Power does not come from thin air; there must be a source, something that drives such phenomenal strength, such pure and dark emotion. Steve went looking for it in the Withers themselves, where he first felt it. But after days upon days of killing them, he had only sackfuls of coal and skulls that weakly radiated the strength he was trying to capture. The secret, he found, lies in the heart of the Wither itself, in something that became more than just the sum of its parts...

[DaveYanakov]

Redstone is a signaling element. Gold is used to bind the souls in a usable form and then you whip them with a level or button in order to excite the souls and thus pass along a signal.

[RalphKastro]

this talk about the why of creating the wither made me think: do you think withers and golems have any relation?

[Elevatator]

Redstone is a signaling element. Gold is used to bind the souls in a usable form and then you whip them with a level or button in order to excite the souls and thus pass along a signal.

Didn´t the Netherrack get more power when you cleaned it from the souls through the hopper (and put them into an urn)?

[dawnraider]

Redstone is a signaling element. Gold is used to bind the souls in a usable form and then you whip them with a level or button in order to excite the souls and thus pass along a signal.

One issue: You use concentrated hellfire, which has been procssed, meaning the souls are gone (bottled or released).

Gold is a great conductor, and the hellfire binds to the gold, making it react easily to environmental changes, and this high level of activity causes it to be a digital signal, as once the metals are partially excited, the rest starts to react, though less vigorously as the source gets farther away.

[chaoticneutral]

this talk about the why of creating the wither made me think: do you think withers and golems have any relation?

I think both snow golems and Wither are previous knowledge Steve had from Home, but he learned about Iron Golems with Testificates (by observation or by teaching).

Gold is a great conductor, and the hellfire binds to the gold, making it react easily to environmental changes, and this high level of activity causes it to be a digital signal, as once the metals are partially excited, the rest starts to react, though less vigorously as the source gets farther away.

My "internal lore" is something like this: pure silicon is useless to transmit signal, it must be beforehand doped with some other elements to be useful. The same happens with gold - it must be doped with hellfire dust to transmit signal, not just electricity (two distinct things in Minecraft but not in our world).