Miner's Log, day one:

Built a house in the desert. My door faces the faraway hills, brimming with resources. On the opposite wall is a grand window, facing the rising sun. My house is a comfort after countless nights of fighting for my life. Upon completing it, though, I found myself famished, and went to the wooded hills hoping to track a few wild hogs. As my hunger grew, I ran deeper into the woods, desperate for any prey. As I sprinted through the empty woods, paying little attention to my surroundings, the day wore on. Finally, at a bend in the river, I found the herd of pigs I had sought, with chickens and cows for good measure. At this time, night had fallen, but I thought myself prepared. I set up a field kitchen and feasted for a while in the glow of the setting sun. Inevitably, though, the groans of the land’s angry dead emerged from the woods. I hastily threw together a boat, packed up my supplies, and set off at full tilt downriver, fully confident that it would return me home. Despite my speed, the river became a gauntlet. Skeletal archers assailed me at ever turn, and a few spiders swam out towards me. I gave thanks that at least the strange new black creatures kept their distance. At about midnight, the river emptied into the sea. Judging myself fully lost, I abandoned mine craft and attempted a different angle. I will never know how I survived the onslaught in those woods. In the dim light, every branch seemed like one of the green creeps that give their lives in trade for an attempt at mine. In fact, there were many that night, but my sword struck true each time, amassing me a respectable supply of black powder. Upon sunrise, I resolved to go east, assuming the desert to be in that general direction. I seemed vindicated after a short walk, seeing the telltale sand and scrub on the horizon. After navigating the dunes, I saw pure joy ahead: The telltale slanted roof I had painstakingly crafted. Overjoyed at my salvation, I rushed at the structure. In my haste, I failed to take into account what I was truly seeing. Not one roof, but many. I had stumbled across a small town in the land I once thought pristine. I approached it, perhaps to ask the locals for aid, but no one came to greet me. The town proved as lifeless as the desert. I did not stay long. The place was eerie, and a good spot for an ambush. Setting out again, I broke free of the desert and into a forest. This one was swampy and thick with vines, and it took me no closer to finding the path. As the sun set again, I chose to cut my losses and retrace my steps while I still could, rather than lose myself in a panic running from the monsters. And so, in the light of the setting sun, I returned to the abandoned village and picked a small building with a working door to make my stand. I would have been driven mad by the noises if I had endured them all night. I had barely the room to lie down, and no bed to ease my slumbers. I was tortured by the knowledge that the next day would dawn not with hope, but with fear; fear of losing my way even further, perhaps not even making it back to this one known landmark. And so in my torment, I began to do the only thing I had left to do: I dug. First, I dug straight down, breaking the first rule without a second thought. After I got deep enough to be comforted by the quiet of the earth, I relaxed, and began to tunnel diagonally down. I had heard tell of a substance that lay deep within the earth with mysterious properties, including perhaps navigation. A rumor that led me to something I could put effort into was all I needed. The journey down was steady and uneventful, so unlike my travels that began with a fruitless hunt. As I dug deeper, I found bounties of iron and coal. The more I dug, the greater the stakes became of my returning safely. Finally, I hit an open cave, bright with lava. This was not a rare occurrence, but something seemed off about the structure of the cave. There they were, rotten almost to pieces, but unmistakably artificial: Wooden support beams. I was not the first to behold this cavern. I journeyed deeper, and found a series of tunnels with similar supports. There were undead down here as well, no doubt the remains of the builders. I had no desire to meet my end among them, so I took the first exit tunnel that led back to a small natural cavern. At the floor: Bedrock. At the side: a glimmer of gold. I planted my last torch, and dug out the nuggets. Was I at the end of my quest now? No. I dug laterally in the direction of the gold. I tunneled long and far, stopping to use some of my newly-mined coal to make more torches. It could not have been 20 meters further when I found it: The red ore. It glowed with an unearthly light as I pounded the surrounding rock. I collected the precious dust, and then, just when I was about to return to my bench to make sense of it, I mined one more stone block. Fear seized me when I saw what lay behind it. Diamond. Now I had to survive at any cost. Six large gemstones, each worth more than my house were weighing down my bag as I walked back down the tunnel. I reached at last my portable workbench, to find a use for the strange red dust. As I dropped my findings on the table, they aligned themselves together in a way so beautiful and orderly that I almost cried at the simplicity of it. I repeated this again and again, to the same effect each time, dust particles aligned in the same direction. I then built the device. It harnessed the power of the red stone into an iron needle which remained stationary even as I turned the casing every which-way. Feeling suddenly lucid, I hurried robotically through the corridors, both my own and those carved by the ancient miners. As luck would have it, I returned to the surface at dawn, although I know not how many dawns had passed since I descended. I followed the needle single-mindedly, bounding as fast as I could, stopping only to refresh myself from my (luckily still ample) supply of steaks. I soon lost myself in a deep wooded hill. As darkness gathered, my blessed needle betrayed me, flipping without warning to indicate the reverse direction. I suddenly came under assault, freeing me from my obsession with my machine and demanding action. I dove off the cliff and spent the night treading water miserably. The night was the longest yet. Nearly mad from cold and exhaustion, I crawled out onto the shore the next morning a broken man. After much trial and error, I found the exact point in the woods where my metal god abandoned me. It was not out of any survival instinct that I was saved. Rather, it was the combination of my two vices; greed and curiosity, which I stumbled across the escape. A tunnel, not two meters from me but well hidden, was gaping at me, inviting me in. I am never one to turn down a challenge that may reward me, so I entered, cautiously lighting the way. A small family of creeps inhabited the cave, this I could see from a light that burned at the back of the cave. There was danger here, but also promise. Light meant lava, and lava meant valuable ore. Spurred by this knowledge, I quickly dispatched the beasts and recklessly drove towards the lava. But I was wrong. The light came from torches mounted on the walls, torches of my own design. I had stumbled into the dangerous honeycomb of tunnels I refer to as my quarry, and was only a short distance from the river home. Hardly daring to believe my luck, I followed the path I had memorized, and saw my home as I crested the ridge. There it sat, solid and safe among the ever-shifting dunes. Knowing that I would take care of my new-found wealth later, I spent only the time required to build a bed before I fell into a deep sleep.