The First Age

Age of Horse Tamers

At the start of the first age players found themselves in a new world, one as wild as horses galloping on the plains. It was fickle in offering relief from hunger and then taking that away just as soon. It was ferocious, with hostile mobs that sensed players through dirt, wood, and stone, and mined towards them. In this turmoil, safety and progression were short lived: the threat of death ever-present. In order to advance, players banded together to tame the horse, to tame the world.

Capitalists & Communists

Players found themselves in a coastal taiga biome with rivers cutting through it: the spawn area. Starvation was an immediate threat for many, and when night fell the monsters came out to hunt. To avoid the dangers, players came together anywhere they could and placed torches to fend off the creatures of the night.

A group of players dug a hole into the east side of the West River and sheltered there. During the day they searched for berry bushes and created farms from them. This provided some relief and gave time for advances particularly for their blacksmith. The growing settlement became known as Berrywood Commune BERRYWOOD: its members choosing to combine two options for their name. They ran by group consensus, with food available to all.

Each night the hostile mobs returned to the land, able to mine through the walls of houses and cave-dwellings alike. Up river, the similarly named Berry Town settlement suffered as well. No one on the ground was safe. The ground-dwellers occasionally looked up to see platforms suspended in the sky like clouds of wood and stone: some players had found lofty refuge from the mobs. A home was built on platforms above the taiga forest. Expeditions to the ground were carried out during the day for resources; during the night players would fish in nearby rivers or simply watch the carnage below.

As well as height, another possible barrier to mobs was water. Some players had fled to a nearby island with steep cliffs on two sides. They survived off of kelp and fish from the ocean, and meat and berries from the mainland. Each night was chaotic as mobs swam across to them on one side, and drowned emerged from the depths on the other. Gathered around campfires, the vocal players among them chose the name Capital Hill. Later, votes were called to elect a President to lead the group into capitalism. A currency was found through a bug in the class screen which allowed players to get uniquely named emeralds.

The rise of an ostensibly capitalist state was met by the announcement that Berrywood Commune BERRYWOOD was a communist one. This conflict of ideas between the two settlements resulted in only a few minor skirmishes and trade still happened between the two.

The leadership of the capitalists weren't interested in a fight with the berry farmers, they looked out across the ocean. For a world existed beyond the taiga forest of spawn. Across the sea players searched for islands and distant shores to make a home.

Sea Traders

The Marinas started as players on man-made islands east of the spawn area, then they spread northward to hilly islands where they could set up farms more easily. Further eastward, players originally from Capital Hill sailed out and found a forest island, they brought sheep, cows, and chickens to this island for food (although the sheep were killed by a wolf). This place was known as the Eastern Archipelago, planned to be a colony for the capitalists at spawn.

Along the mainland coast to the south east of spawn, small groups formed who stayed in skybases or bunkers at night, then made a safe land area during the day. Fort Red Berry was one such group, they realised that berry bushes and lava pits could be used to slow down or kill hostile mobs, so they used this to fortify their river side base.
Further along the coast, Brightiom was a group who placed torches all around their base and the surrounding land, to prevent hostile mobs spawning anywhere nearby.

Elsewhere, players discovered a group of mushroom biome islands. These islands offered food security in the form of mushroom stew from mooshrooms, and relative safety from hostile mobs who couldn't spawn within the biome. The danger came from drowned, who would spawn in the coastal waters and then climbed ashore. The players on these islands formed a group called Mycelia, and built a moyai statue upon it.

These groups were not isolated. Players travelled between them trading in food, ores, and other resources. The open sea proved much safer for travellers than the land, especially at night.

Total Berrylocation

Back in the spawn area, the young settlements faced dire problems. Changes to plugin meant dried kelp could poison players, bringing them down to half-a-heart. Separately, the class menu bug was fixed, cutting off access to free unique emeralds. These two changes forced residents of Capital Hill to reconsider their food supply and their currency.

Along with Berrywood Commune BERRYWOOD, they suffered from players raiding their supplies or killing their members: notably the aforementioned blacksmith. Being within the spawn area, neither settlement could protect their borders, as respawning players could appear inside them. The berry farmers were also grinded down by nightly raids from hostile mobs, destroying their chests and beds.
To escape this, the group decided to move onto the skyplatforms, now mostly abandoned. Rumours spread regarding who made them, possibly a mysterious group called the Loft who vanished into the night. The berry farmers called their new location New Berrywood, the ground became Old Berrywood.

The leadership of Capital Hill also planned a moved to an undisclosed location: actually their planned colony on the Eastern Archipelago islands. However, these plans went awry as the next session saw Capital Hill abandoned of its members before the move could be facilitated. A lack of strong bonds between players and the whole doomed Capital Hill to fizzle out as soon as the location became untenable, due to proximity to spawn. Berry Town, having previously split so some of its members could join with the capitalists, similarly disappeared.
As for the leaders, some made their way to the Eastern Archipelago as planned, but it would not bend to their will, instead becoming a new group called Loup Land with no affiliation to capitalism.

New Berrywood wouldn't fare much better. Now elevated above the ground they weren't endangered by mobs, but were separated from their food sources of berries and waterside farmland. Some tried to move these into the sky, to keep the dream of Berrywood alive. Others abandoned their old homes and followed skybridges south, where another settlement had formed: Dead Horse.

Sound of Horses

At the start of the world a group of players followed a prophet southward down the river. They found a plains biome and decided to make it their home. They struggled through night and day like everyone else. On one such night, their bed was destroyed, sending dead players back to the spawn area. Returning players were greeted by a skeleton trap during a lightning storm, which turned into four skeleton riders. After killing the riders, only one skeleton horse remained, and so the group had a name: Dead Horse.

They made a house on stilts to raise it above the hostile mobs, taking inspiration from the skyplatforms to their north. Torches were placed in the caves under their home, to prevent mobs spawning there.
Their determination came with rewards as they were able to level up classes, and players began joining them from the collapsing spawn settlements. The nights were passed with song and music, and discussion of the great society that would be created on the grassy plains. They were taming the world around them, and growing to become the biggest group by population.
The last holdouts in New Berrywood soon joined the others in the south, as they had too few players left to sustain their spawn settlement. An immigrant quarter called Little Berrywood was formed within Dead Horse. With the end of Berrywood, the once bustling spawn settlements had collapsed, the players had distributed across the world.

Two Tribes, One Island

Across the sea, members of the Marinas were concentrating on mining deep below the surface, so that they could attain diamond gear as soon as possible. They became allied, through trade, with Loup Land further east. Both groups laid claim to an island north of Loup Land, called Turtle Island, but decided instead to share it and have a casino and cathedral built on the island. Plans were made to connect the Marinas and Loup Land with Turtle Island.

Elsewhere, Mycelia had grown in numbers as players from spawn joined them. Plans for a town hall, a blacksmith forge, and a brick wall surrounding the island were made. These plans were interrupted by the arrival of a charlatan and their compatriot, who wished to take over the island nation. The advances were rebuffed, but the charlatan instead made a home on the northern island, at that time uninhabited. Invitations were sent to all players to join them in their group, The Jestocracy, even those previously involved in griefing incidents.

The first age came to an end as the players settled into the flow of the server, and learned how to live in it. However, the path to future turmoil had already been chosen, and could not be avoided.