So, that was fun I suppose. I knew I wasn't going to win after I ran my mouth off the way I did.

It was interesting though. Since I accepted a alliance with LM I had to spend the better part of the set-up phase running across the entire freakin' map. I actually saw force_unbleached along the way.

Once I finally caught up with LM, we made little progress the first couple "days". Eventually we just milled about looking for an actual cave system when I came across force's little base. We made our way through extremely slowly and eventually found the ravine where he was holed up.

We were watching him for what felt like forever, unsure of what to do. We didn't see any obvious path down to where he was and I really don't know when he finally figured out we were there. Didn't help matters when we failed to kill one creeper before it exploded, surely giving our position away. xP

Anyways, eventually force began to ascend a set of dirt/stone stairs we didn't see before, undoubtedly planning to confront us. With all the armor and stuff that force had, he actually might have stood a chance. LM and I barely managed to get enough iron for two swords. I don't remember if either of us were even wearing any amount of leather armor. In any case, I knew we probably wouldn't last long in a prolonged duel, so I did the only sensible thing.

We dash attacked him and knocked him over the edge, sending him to meet his maker on the obsidian river below.

I'm actually surprised at how much stuff we recovered from the body. He landed pretty much RIGHT next to some lava, but it looks like very little of it burned (I can't say for sure though, obviously). Either way, we got a lot of stuff.

After that, not much really happened. We mined iron until we had full armor, swords, buckets and we barely managed to find enough diamond to make a single sword. After that we destroyed what we left behind and just head for the surface.

Then it got really boring. We wandered around a long time just looking for someone to kill. We did find a patch of sand so that we could make three blocks of dynamite, but that didn't come of much use. However, I did get the idea to start using the flint & steel I had on hand to burn the forest down. Yeah, I knew that fire doesn't spread infinitely anymore, but I wasn't trying to burn people out.

MatoroIgnika was actually the one to prove my strategy successful. He saw the fire and called it out, just as I was hoping someone would. At this point, we knew that he was in the area somewhere. It took quite a while actually, but eventually I saw him trying to sneak up behind us.

By this point, it was pretty late. What was it, midnight? 12:30? Somewhere around there. Either way, it was two or more hours later than I'm usually up AND I had to be up early this morning. So between the fact that I was tired and wanted to just get it over with, I didn't even try to be crafty in the fight like I had planned. I fired a single warning shot from my bow and then bum-rushed him. I wound up terribly disoriented and easily lost a couple hearts to lava (water bucket saved me though). I then tried to jump in where he was dueling LM but wound up taking too much damage. Down to a single heart, I ran as fast as I could. I knew MI was chasing me, so I tried to deter him with some TNT. That didn't go so good. Tired and, ergo, poorly coordinated as I was, I couldn't light the darn thing. When I finally hit it I clicked the wrong button and destroyed it instead of setting it off. I ran a little further to create distance, but I could do more than place the second block. Before I was able to center my crosshair on the thing MI dealt the final blow.

And then he killed LM.

Yeah, I lost, but I'm glad I did, especially hearing now how late it went. I'd have wound up forfeiting soon anyways, so I'd rather have gone out with a (groggy) bang. So that's that.

Oh, two more things...

First off, thanks pal.

And secondly, the service I rent my Minecraft server from dropped their prices ever so slightly since they're doing so well. Between that and the growing popularity of BZPCraft, I upgraded to the next tier. Future BZPCrafts will be able to support at least TWELVE participants now! (yay)