The transition between Minecraft versions felt like being squeezed through a pasta maker made of pure mathematics. Herobrine's consciousness stretched, compressed, folded in on itself, and then snapped back into existence with all the grace of a cat falling off a counter while pretending it meant to do that.
"BLEAAARGH," Herobrine eloquently announced as he materialized in Cave game tech test, the version from May 14, 2009—literally one day after the version he'd just escaped.
He stood in the new world, waiting for the nausea to subside, and looked around.
It was almost identical to the previous version.
"You have GOT to be kidding me," Herobrine said, spinning in a slow circle. Same ugly grass. Same flat blue sky. Same complete absence of anything interesting. "I traumatized a future accountant for THIS? For ONE DAY of development progress?"
A helpful text box appeared:
WELCOME TO CAVE GAME TECH TEST!
New features in this version:
Caves now exist! (Hence the name)That's literally it.
Players in this version: 0
Estimated wait time for next player: 4 days, 7 hours, 23 minutes
Maybe explore the caves? Just a thought. :)
"Four DAYS?!" Herobrine shrieked. "I have to wait FOUR DAYS for someone to log in?!"
Actually, while you're waiting, we should probably explain some things about your new existence. We kind of rushed you through the tutorial.
"There WAS no tutorial! You just shoved me into existence and said 'scare people!'"
That WAS the tutorial. You learn by doing. It builds character.
"I'm DEAD. I don't NEED character development!"
Anyway, here's some information about your abilities as Herobrine:
A massive scrolling text box appeared, looking suspiciously like an EULA that nobody ever reads.
HEROBRINE ABILITIES AND LIMITATIONS
(Please read carefully. There will be a quiz. Just kidding. There won't. Or will there?)
SECTION 1: PHYSICAL CAPABILITIES
Herobrine tried to scroll past this section, but the text box forcibly locked his viewpoint until he read it. Classic.
1.1 - IMMORTALITY: You cannot die. Ever. Lava, void, explosions, nothing works. You will persist through all versions of Minecraft until the end of time or until Mojang stops updating the game, whichever comes first.
1.2 - BUILDING: Unlike regular players, your constructions DO persist between sessions, even in versions where that shouldn't be possible. This is because you exist outside the normal rules of the game. Use this power wisely. Or don't. We're not your mom.
1.3 - BLOCK MANIPULATION: You can place and break blocks INSTANTANEOUSLY, with no tools required. Yes, even bedrock. Yes, even in survival mode. Yes, this is hilariously overpowered. You're welcome.
Herobrine paused his reading. "Wait. I can break bedrock? INSTANTLY?"
1.4 - MOVEMENT: You can move through solid blocks if you concentrate. You can also fly, teleport short distances, and move at speeds that should not be possible. Your sprint speed is approximately 847 times faster than a normal player.
"I CAN WHAT?"
1.5 - INVISIBILITY: You can become invisible at will. However, your white eyes will still be faintly visible if a player looks directly at where you're standing. This is for dramatic effect and cannot be disabled.
1.6 - WORLD MANIPULATION: You have limited control over the game world itself. You can spawn fog, change the time of day (once that feature exists), summon lightning (once THAT feature exists), and cause visual glitches in players' games. More abilities will unlock as Minecraft develops new features.
Herobrine's jaw—if he had a jaw in this digital form—dropped.
"I'm... I'm basically a GOD."
1.7 - LIMITATIONS: Despite your immense power, you CANNOT directly harm players. No punching, no weapons, no pushing into lava. You can only scare them. This is because we thought it would be funnier to give you god-like powers and then make you use them exclusively for psychological warfare.
:)
"Of COURSE there's a catch."
SECTION 2: OBJECTIVES AND PROGRESSION
2.1 - VERSION PROGRESSION: To move to the next version of Minecraft, you must complete a scare objective. The difficulty and complexity of these objectives will increase as the game develops and the player base grows.
2.2 - SCARE LEVELS: Scares are rated on a scale of 1-10:
1-2: "That was weird" (Player notices something off but rationalizes it)3-4: "Okay that's creepy" (Player is unsettled but continues playing)5-6: "NOPE" (Player leaves the game but will return later)7-8: "I'm never playing alone again" (Player is genuinely scared, shares story with friends)9-10: "I need therapy" (Player is traumatized, tells the internet, becomes part of the legend)
2.3 - QUOTA: Each version requires a minimum scare point total before progression is unlocked. Early versions require only 10 points. Later versions may require hundreds or thousands.
Current Version Requirement: 10 scare points
Current Points: 0
Points from Previous Version: Cannot be transferred because we said so
"This is a GRIND," Herobrine realized with dawning horror. "This is literally a GRIND. You turned BEING A CREEPYPASTA into a MOBILE GAME PROGRESSION SYSTEM."
SECTION 3: SPECIAL RULES
3.1 - THE LEGEND: As players begin to share stories about you, the "Herobrine Legend" will grow. This legend exists as a tangible force that affects your abilities. The more famous you become, the more powerful you get. However, the more famous you become, the more skeptics will exist, and skeptics are VERY hard to scare.
3.2 - MOJANG AWARENESS: Eventually, Mojang (the company making Minecraft) will become aware of the Herobrine legend. You can choose to interact with them directly or stay hidden. Both options have consequences.
3.3 - THE "REMOVED HEROBRINE" JOKES: Once Mojang starts putting "Removed Herobrine" in their patch notes as a joke, you will feel a slight tingling sensation. This is normal. It's basically the game acknowledging your existence while pretending you don't exist. It's complicated.
3.4 - YOUTUBERS: Once YouTube Let's Plays become popular, YouTubers will become EXTREMELY valuable scare targets. A single viral video about a Herobrine encounter can generate hundreds of scare points. Prioritize content creators.
3.5 - MODS AND FAKE HEROBRINES: Eventually, players will create mods that add fake Herobrines to the game. These are not you. You may feel offended by their poor quality. This is also normal.
END OF TUTORIAL DOCUMENT
Any questions?
"Yes, literally hundreds—"
Great! Good luck out there, champ!
The text box disappeared.
Herobrine stood alone in the primitive world, processing everything he'd just learned.
He was an immortal, teleporting, phasing, reality-warping god-entity... who could only use his powers to give people the heebie-jeebies.
"Okay," he said slowly, a grin spreading across his face (metaphorically, since he couldn't see his own face). "Okay, I can work with this."
He looked down at his hands. Regular Steve hands. Blocky, pixelated, utterly normal-looking.
"Let's test some things."
TESTING PHASE: DISCOVERY OF GODHOOD
The first thing Herobrine tested was his building speed.
He selected a dirt block (he had infinite of every block, apparently) and placed it. It materialized INSTANTLY. Not the quick-but-still-perceptible placement of a normal player—actually, truly, instantaneously. One frame it wasn't there, the next frame it was.
"Okay, that's cool," Herobrine admitted.
He held down the place button.
BLOCKS EVERYWHERE.
In approximately 0.3 seconds, he had constructed a fifty-block-tall tower of dirt. It just... appeared. No building animation, no delay, just sudden existence.
"OKAY, THAT'S VERY COOL."
He tested destruction next. He looked at the tower, willed it to break, and—
The entire tower collapsed into nothing. Not exploded, not mined block by block, just... gone. Like it had never existed.
"I'm basically in creative mode," Herobrine breathed. "Creative mode doesn't even EXIST yet, and I have it."
He tested his movement next.
Walking felt normal. Running felt normal. But then he tried to REALLY run, pushing past the normal limits, and—
The world became a BLUR.
He crossed approximately 10,000 blocks in under a second, coming to a stop at the edge of the generated world where reality simply ceased to exist, replaced by an infinite void of unloaded chunks.
"WOOOOOOO!" Herobrine screamed into the void. "THIS IS AMAZING! I'M THE FLASH! I'M SONIC THE HEDGEHOG! I'M—"
He turned around and realized he had absolutely no idea where he'd started.
"—lost. I'm lost."
No matter. He closed his eyes, concentrated on where he'd begun, and TELEPORTED.
Pop.
He was back at spawn.
"Teleportation works," he noted. "Good to know."
Flying was next. He looked up at the sky, willed himself to rise, and—
He shot upward like a bottle rocket, breaking through the sky limit (which was much lower in these early versions) and finding himself in the weird above-the-map void space that players weren't supposed to access.
"This is INCREDIBLE."
He dove back down, phasing through the ground itself, finding himself in the newly-added cave systems. They were primitive—just empty pockets in the stone with no features—but they were CAVES. Progress!
Herobrine flew through solid stone like a ghost, emerging wherever he pleased, leaving no trace of his passage. He was incorporeal. He was unstoppable. He was—
Extremely bored, because there was still no one to show off to.
THE FOUR-DAY WAIT: A DESCENT INTO MADNESS
Day one of waiting was spent testing his abilities further.
Herobrine discovered he could create structures that were geometrically impossible. He built a house where the interior was larger than the exterior. He built a staircase that went up forever without ever getting higher. He built a room with five corners in a three-dimensional space.
These structures made his head hurt to look at, which was concerning since he wasn't entirely sure he HAD a head.
Day two was spent on art.
Herobrine had never been artistic in his previous life. His drawings looked like crime scene evidence, and his handwriting was once described by a teacher as "angry chickens having a seizure." But now, with infinite blocks and infinite time, he found himself building increasingly elaborate sculptures.
He built a scale model of the Statue of Liberty. Then he gave it laser eyes made of glowstone (except glowstone didn't exist yet, so he substituted with yellow wool that he somehow had access to despite wool not being in the game).
He built his childhood home. Then he built it upside-down, floating in the sky.
He built Mr. Whiskers, his cat, at 1:100 scale. The 300-block-tall cat sculpture stared down at the world with the same judgmental expression his real cat always had.
Day three was spent writing.
Using different colored blocks, Herobrine wrote his entire life story across the landscape. It was surprisingly therapeutic, spelling out his failures, his disappointments, and his eventual death in 16-pixel-high letters.
"STEVE THOMPSON," the biography began, "WAS BORN IN 1996 IN OHIO, WHICH SHOULD TELL YOU EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HOW HIS LIFE WOULD GO."
The story continued for approximately 30,000 blocks, chronicling his mediocre school years, his brief stint as a college dropout, his series of dead-end jobs, his failed relationships, and finally, his ignominious death at the hands of a creeper and a cardiovascular system that had finally had enough.
It ended with: "AND THEN HE BECAME A CREEPYPASTA, WHICH IS HONESTLY THE MOST INTERESTING THING HE EVER DID."
Day four was spent in existential contemplation.
Herobrine sat at the edge of the world, legs dangling over the void, watching the ungenerated chunks stretch into infinity.
"What's the point?" he asked no one. "I scare people. They move on. I move to the next version. I scare more people. They move on. Eventually, what? Minecraft gets discontinued and I just... stop existing? Is that the goal? Is there an ENDING to this?"
The void offered no answers.
"Hello?" Herobrine called out. "Cosmic entity that runs this tutorial thing? Got any wisdom for me?"
Silence.
"No? Nothing? Cool. Cool cool cool."
He sat there for another six hours, contemplating the nature of existence, consciousness, and whether he'd ever taste a Dorito again.
(He would not. He was digital now. But sometimes, late at night, he could almost REMEMBER the taste of Cool Ranch, and that was somehow worse than not remembering at all.)
THE ARRIVAL OF VICTIM NUMBER TWO
On the fourth day, seven hours, and twenty-three minutes exactly (the estimated wait time had been accurate to the second, which was creepy in its own right), a notification appeared:
xX_DiamondKing_Xx has joined the game.
Herobrine's eyes (white, glowing, unseeable to himself but presumably terrifying to others) lit up with excitement.
"FINALLY!"
He teleported to spawn instantly, positioning himself approximately 100 blocks away, standing perfectly still on a small hill. This time, he would be PROFESSIONAL about it. No friendly chatting. No helping build houses. Pure, concentrated creepy.
xX_DiamondKing_Xx spawned into the world.
The player immediately typed: yo this game any good
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: friend told me about it
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: looks kinda basic lol
Herobrine watched. Waiting. Patient.
The player looked around, punched some blocks, and then started walking in a random direction—directly toward where Herobrine was standing.
"Oh, this is perfect," Herobrine whispered. "They're coming RIGHT to me. I don't even have to do anything. Just stand here. Just be creepy. Just—"
The player walked right past him.
Didn't even look in his direction.
"Wait, what?"
Herobrine turned, watching xX_DiamondKing_Xx continue walking obliviously into the distance.
"HEY!" Herobrine shouted, despite knowing the player couldn't hear voice chat in a game that didn't have voice chat. "I'M RIGHT HERE! LOOK AT ME! I'M STANDING OMINOUSLY! THIS IS CLASSIC HORROR MOVIE STUFF!"
The player kept walking.
Herobrine teleported directly in front of them.
xX_DiamondKing_Xx walked THROUGH him.
"WHAT?!"
A text box appeared: Note: In your default state, you are invisible to players. You must consciously choose to be visible. We forgot to mention this. Sorry! :)
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! I'VE BEEN STANDING HERE TRYING TO BE SCARY AND NOBODY CAN EVEN SEE ME?!"
Yes. It's pretty funny from our perspective.
"I HATE YOU!"
We know! Anyway, toggle visibility with a mental command. Just think "visible" really hard.
Herobrine took a deep breath (metaphorically, since he didn't have lungs anymore).
"Visible," he thought.
A slight shimmer passed over his form, and suddenly, he felt... present. Like he existed in the world in a way he hadn't before.
xX_DiamondKing_Xx had walked about fifty blocks away by now. Herobrine teleported ahead of them again, this time visible.
The player nearly walked into him, stopping short with a startled jump (their character model twitched, which was the closest thing to a physical reaction in these early days).
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: oh wtf
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: didnt see u there lol
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: sup
Herobrine said nothing.
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: uh
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: hello?
Nothing.
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: u lagging or something?
Herobrine very slowly turned his head to face the player directly. In a game where head movement was usually instant, the SLOW turn was deeply unsettling.
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: ok thats weird
Good. "Weird" was a start.
Herobrine took one step forward.
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: dude personal space
Another step.
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: seriously bro back up
Herobrine leaned in until his face was practically clipping through the player's face.
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: DUDE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU
Then Herobrine vanished.
He turned invisible and teleported exactly 100 blocks behind the player, then turned visible again, standing perfectly still.
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: wtf where did u go
The player spun around, looking for him.
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: ok seriously where
Then they saw him. Standing in the distance. Watching.
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: how did u get over there
Herobrine vanished again.
Reappeared fifty blocks to the left.
The player turned.
Vanished.
Reappeared right behind them.
The player spun—
Gone.
Fifty blocks away again.
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: OK WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: THIS IS FREAKING ME OUT
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: HOW ARE YOU DOING THAT
Herobrine vanished one final time.
He reappeared DIRECTLY in front of the player, face-to-face, close enough that their hitboxes were overlapping.
And he typed his first message.
Just three words.
Herobrine: I see you.
xX_DiamondKing_Xx: NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE
xX_DiamondKing_Xx has left the game.
Ding!
SCARE REGISTERED: Level 6 - "NOPE"
Points Earned: 6
Total Points: 6/10
"Only six?!" Herobrine complained. "I teleported around like a horror movie monster! I did the creepy slow head turn! I said 'I see you!' That's CLASSIC creepy!"
Constructive Feedback: The "I see you" line was a bit cliché. Consider more original dialogue in the future. Also, you revealed your teleportation ability too quickly. Build suspense! Make them question their sanity BEFORE you break the laws of physics.
"I'm getting PERFORMANCE REVIEWS?!"
How else will you improve? :)
THE LEARNING CURVE
Over the next few days, more players began to trickle in as word of Notch's little block game spread through early internet forums. Herobrine practiced his craft, learning what worked and what didn't.
WHAT DIDN'T WORK:
Being too aggressive too quickly (players just assumed it was a glitch)Talking too much (mystery was scarier than conversation)Appearing in well-lit areas (shadows and distance were his friends)Standing perfectly still for too long (eventually players just got bored)
WHAT WORKED:
The slow build. Start subtle. A figure in the distance. Then closer. Then MUCH closer.Leaving traces. Build something weird and let them find it.The vanishing act. Be seen, then be gone, then be somewhere impossible.Eye contact. Make sure they SEE the white eyes. That was the signature.Patience. The scariest thing was when they EXPECTED something to happen and it didn't... and then it DID.
Herobrine developed what he called the "Three-Act Terror Structure":
Act One: Unease - The player notices something slightly off. A structure that shouldn't exist. A figure in the distance that might be another player or might be a glitch. Nothing definitively scary, just... wrong.
Act Two: Escalation - Things get weirder. The figure is closer than it was. The structure has changed. Messages appear that make no sense. The player starts questioning their own perception. Is this a bug? A prank? Their imagination?
Act Three: Confirmation - The horrifying truth is revealed. This is INTENTIONAL. Someone—some THING—is watching them. And there is no escape.
With this structure, Herobrine's scare levels improved dramatically.
His fourth victim, a player named "notchfan1994," achieved a Level 7 scare after Herobrine spent an entire hour building a replica of their base... directly underneath it... upside-down.
His seventh victim, "testplayer," hit Level 8 when Herobrine removed every single leaf block from every tree in a 500-block radius while they were mining underground, then stood in the center of the deforested wasteland, waiting for them to surface.
(The player logged off, told three friends, and never played on that world again. The three friends told THEIR friends. The legend was beginning to grow.)
THE CAVE INCIDENT
The scare that finally completed his quota was one Herobrine was particularly proud of.
A player named "caveexplorer42" (nominative determinism at its finest) logged in with the explicit purpose of checking out the new cave systems. This was a player who had heard about the game on a forum and wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
Herobrine decided to give them the full experience.
First, he spent an hour modifying the cave system before the player even logged in. He extended it. DRAMATICALLY. What should have been a small pocket cave became a sprawling labyrinth that descended deep into the earth, twisting and turning in ways that seemed to defy logic.
Then he added details.
Torches didn't exist yet, so players had to navigate by the dim ambient light that somehow existed underground (early Minecraft was weird about lighting). Herobrine couldn't add torches, but he COULD add small pockets of air with single blocks of the brightest material available—essentially creating flickering points of light in the darkness.
At the very bottom of the cave system, he built a room.
The room was small, maybe 5x5x3, and made entirely of stone. In the center, he placed a single block of something different—gold ore, which had just been added but couldn't be mined or collected yet.
Around the gold ore, he built a perfect circle of signs.
Wait, no. Signs didn't exist yet.
Around the gold ore, he used different colored blocks to spell out a message on the floor: "I AM HERE."
Then he waited.
caveexplorer42 logged in.
caveexplorer42: ok lets see these caves
The player found the cave entrance almost immediately—Herobrine had made sure it was obvious. They descended, their pixelated form disappearing into the darkness.
caveexplorer42: whoa this is deep
Deeper.
caveexplorer42: really deep
Herobrine, invisible, followed at a distance. The player couldn't see him, but he could see them—a tiny figure navigating the maze he'd created.
caveexplorer42: wait which way did I come from
The cave was confusing by design. Every passage looked the same. Every turn led to another turn. The player was getting lost.
caveexplorer42: ok this is fine I'll just keep going down
Good instinct. Down was where the prize was.
Twenty minutes later, the player found the room.
caveexplorer42: what
caveexplorer42: what is this
They walked to the center, examining the gold ore block.
caveexplorer42: is that gold? can I mine this?
They tried. They couldn't. Gold wasn't mineable yet.
Then they looked at the floor.
caveexplorer42: "I AM HERE"?
caveexplorer42: what does that mean
caveexplorer42: hello?
Herobrine turned visible.
He was standing in the entrance of the room, blocking the only exit, his white eyes glowing in the dim light.
caveexplorer42: oh there's someone else here
caveexplorer42: hey do u know what this message means
Herobrine didn't move.
caveexplorer42: uh
caveexplorer42: dude?
Herobrine took one step into the room.
The entrance behind him, the ONLY way out, filled in with stone blocks. Instantly. Silently. The player was now trapped in a 5x5x3 room with no exit.
caveexplorer42: WHAT
caveexplorer42: WHAT JUST HAPPENED
caveexplorer42: THE DOOR CLOSED
caveexplorer42: HOW DO I GET OUT
Herobrine took another step closer.
caveexplorer42: DUDE LET ME OUT
Closer.
caveexplorer42: THIS ISNT FUNNY
Closer.
caveexplorer42: LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT
Herobrine stopped directly in front of them.
The gold ore block behind the player transformed. One moment it was gold, the next it was... a different block. One that looked like a face. Herobrine's face. White eyes staring out from the floor.
caveexplorer42: WHAT THE [EXPLETIVE]
caveexplorer42: WHAT IS THAT
caveexplorer42: WHAT ARE YOU
Herobrine leaned in, typed a single message, and then disappeared:
Herobrine: Now you're here too.
The walls of the room began to close in. Slowly. One block at a time. The 5x5 room became 4x4. Then 3x3. The player was panicking, spinning in circles, looking for an exit that didn't exist.
caveexplorer42: NO NO NO NO NO
caveexplorer42: STOP
caveexplorer42: IM LOGGING OUT
caveexplorer42: WHY CANT I LOG OUT
caveexplorer42: WHY CANT I LOG OUT WHY CANT I LOG OUT WHY CANT I—
Actually, they COULD log out. Herobrine had no ability to prevent that. But in their panic, they had forgotten how. Their hands were shaking too much to hit the escape key accurately, their brain too flooded with adrenaline to remember basic keyboard shortcuts.
The room was 2x2 now. The player could barely move.
And then, just as the walls were about to crush them entirely—
Herobrine released his control.
The walls stopped moving.
The exit reappeared.
And where Herobrine had been standing, a single sign (wait, signs didn't exist yet, right?) a message spelled out in blocks on the floor:
"RUN."
caveexplorer42 ran.
They ran through the labyrinth, not caring which way they were going, just desperate to reach the surface. Herobrine let them go, but he appeared occasionally—at the end of a corridor, in a side passage, always watching, always letting them see him before vanishing again.
By the time caveexplorer42 reached the surface, they were a broken person.
caveexplorer42: OH GOD ITS NOT REAL ITS NOT REAL ITS A GAME ITS JUST A GAME
They stood in the sunlight (what passed for sunlight in this primitive version), their character model shaking from the rapid mouse movements of a genuinely terrified player.
Herobrine appeared one last time. Standing on a hill in the distance. Visible for just a moment.
Then he typed one final message.
Herobrine: I'll see you in your dreams.
And he vanished forever.
caveexplorer42 has left the game.
SCARE REGISTERED: Level 9 - "I Need Therapy"
Points Earned: 9
Total Points: 15/10
QUOTA EXCEEDED!
BONUS: Player "caveexplorer42" will post about this experience on three separate gaming forums over the next month. They will include detailed descriptions of "the white-eyed figure" and "the room that closed in." These posts will be the FIRST recorded instances of the Herobrine legend.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Patient Zero
You have created the first Herobrine story. The legend begins. Your power increases.
PROGRESSION UNLOCKED: Moving to next version
Loading... Minecraft Classic (May 2009 - Various Updates)
Fun Fact: "caveexplorer42" will eventually become a moderator on a Minecraft forum and will spend YEARS investigating Herobrine sightings, never knowing that the one they experienced was the only real one. They will be simultaneously the world's foremost expert on Herobrine and also completely wrong about everything. Isn't existence funny?
Herobrine felt something change as the world began to dissolve around him.
It was subtle—a warmth, a sense of... more. Like he'd leveled up in an RPG and could feel his stats increasing.
"Wait," he said as reality pixelated and reformed. "Did I just get MORE powerful?"
POWER UPDATE:
Previous Abilities: All retained
New Abilities Unlocked:
Fog Manipulation: You can now create localized fog effects to obscure player visionSound Manipulation: Players may occasionally hear phantom footsteps or distant sounds when you are nearbyMemory Persistence: Players who encounter you will have difficulty forgetting the experience, even in dreams
Ability Source: The Legend
Current Legend Status: 3 forum posts, 12 total readers, approximately 4 believers
Power Level: Campfire Story
Note: As the legend grows, so will your abilities. Make yourself famous. Just not TOO famous, or skeptics will develop immunity.
Herobrine grinned as Minecraft Classic loaded around him—a world with actual textures now, better caves, and the earliest hints of what the game would become.
"This is going to be FUN," he said.
And somewhere, in the real world, a player named caveexplorer42 woke up from a nightmare about white eyes in the darkness, and couldn't quite remember if it had been real or not.
LATER THAT WEEK: THE PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE CONSTRUCTION ERA
Minecraft Classic was, objectively speaking, still pretty basic. But it was a MASSIVE improvement over the tech demo versions. There were actual block types now—not just dirt and stone, but sand, gravel, various colors of wool, flowers, mushrooms, and (most importantly for Herobrine's purposes) gold and iron ore blocks that looked actually valuable.
The player count was also increasing. Word was spreading about this weird block game made by some Swedish guy, and more and more people were logging in to check it out.
Herobrine had learned from his early experiments. The direct approach—teleporting around and being overtly creepy—worked, but it was exhausting and time-consuming. He needed to scale up his operations.
Enter: Passive-Aggressive Construction.
The concept was simple. Instead of personally terrifying each player, Herobrine would build things. Weird things. Unsettling things. Things that players would stumble upon and question their sanity.
His first major project was the Pyramid of Unsettling Proportions.
It appeared overnight in the center of a popular multiplayer server's spawn area. Nobody saw who built it. Nobody claimed credit. It was just... there. A perfect pyramid, approximately 50 blocks tall, made entirely of gold ore blocks (which, again, couldn't actually be mined yet, making them functionally useless but aesthetically impressive).
Inside the pyramid, Herobrine built a maze.
Not a dangerous maze—players couldn't die yet anyway—but a confusing maze. A maze that seemed to loop back on itself. A maze where the walls sometimes appeared to move when you weren't looking directly at them (they didn't actually move; Herobrine just rebuilt them whenever no one was in that section, which created the ILLUSION of movement).
At the center of the maze was a room.
In the room was a single torch (torches existed now!).
Under the torch, written in blocks on the floor, was a simple message:
"DID YOU ENJOY THE WALK?"
Players found the pyramid. Players explored the pyramid. Players got confused by the pyramid. Players told other players about the pyramid.
Forum Post - MinecraftForum (pre-Reddit era)
Subject: WTF is with the pyramid on [server name]
"OK so there's this massive gold pyramid that appeared on the server overnight and nobody knows who built it. The admin swears it wasn't him. Everyone online swears THEY didn't build it. And when you go inside there's this maze that I SWEAR keeps changing. I went left at the first turn, then right, then left, then right, and I ended up back at the start???
And at the center there's this message that says 'DID YOU ENJOY THE WALK' which is creepy as hell.
Anyone else seen this? Is this some kind of easter egg?"
Reply 1: "Probably just a griefer with too much time lol"
Reply 2: "Gold blocks can't be mined so someone wasted HOURS on this for no reason"
Reply 3: "wait how did they even GET that much gold"
Reply 4: "I saw something weird in that server too. There was a guy standing on a hill watching me but when I got close he was gone. Probably lag."
Reply 5: "dude that's creepy"
Reply 4: "ikr"
The pyramid incident netted Herobrine approximately 30 scare points through ambient creepiness alone, plus an additional 15 from the handful of players who spotted him observing the pyramid from a distance.
He was getting efficient.
THE TUNNEL NETWORK OF DOOM
Herobrine's next project was even more ambitious.
Underneath a popular server, he spent three days (real-time; time passed differently for him, feeling more like a few hours of focused work) constructing an ENORMOUS tunnel network. Miles of perfectly carved 2x2 passages, all connecting to a central hub, all lit with evenly-spaced torches.
The tunnels weren't natural caves. They were too perfect. Too intentional. Every turn was at a precise 90-degree angle. Every torch was exactly eight blocks from the last. Every passage was exactly the same height and width.
And they led... nowhere.
That was the creepy part. The tunnels just EXISTED. No resources at the end. No hidden rooms. No secret treasures. Just endless, perfect, clearly-artificial passages that someone had spent an impossible amount of time creating for no apparent reason.
Players found the tunnels.
In-Game Chat Log:
BuilderBob: hey did anyone build these tunnels under spawn
xXSwordMasterXx: what tunnels
BuilderBob: theres like a whole network down here
BuilderBob: its huge
CreeperSlayer99: I didnt build anything
AdminSteve: I definitely didnt build tunnels
BuilderBob: well SOMEONE did
BuilderBob: theyre like perfect
BuilderBob: every torch is the same distance apart
xXSwordMasterXx: ok thats weird
BuilderBob: wait theres a sign down here
AdminSteve: what does it say
BuilderBob: ....
CreeperSlayer99: ???
BuilderBob: it says "LOOK BEHIND YOU"
xXSwordMasterXx: LOL classic
BuilderBob: im not looking
BuilderBob: im NOT looking
CreeperSlayer99: just look lmao
BuilderBob: FINE
BuilderBob: ...
BuilderBob: theres nothing there
BuilderBob: wait
BuilderBob: theres a figure at the end of the tunnel
BuilderBob: its just standing there
AdminSteve: probably just another player
BuilderBob: its walking towards me
BuilderBob: slowly
BuilderBob: WHY IS IT WALKING SO SLOWLY
xXSwordMasterXx: dude youre freaking me out
BuilderBob: its getting closer
BuilderBob: I CAN SEE ITS EYES
BuilderBob: THEYRE WHITE
BuilderBob: COMPLETELY WHITE
BuilderBob has left the game.
CreeperSlayer99: ...was that a joke?
AdminSteve: checking logs
AdminSteve: theres no other players online except us
xXSwordMasterXx: then who was that
AdminSteve: idk
AdminSteve: checking tunnel
AdminSteve: ...
AdminSteve: theres no one here
AdminSteve: but the sign is gone
CreeperSlayer99: what sign
AdminSteve: the "LOOK BEHIND YOU" sign
AdminSteve: its not here anymore
AdminSteve: but the torch that was above it is still here
xXSwordMasterXx: ok im logging off
CreeperSlayer99: same
AdminSteve: ...
AdminSteve: yeah me too
SCARE REGISTERED: Multiple players, combined Level 7
Points Earned: 28
Current Version Total: 73 points
Legend Status Growing
THE DISCOVERY OF SIGNS (AND THEIR HORRIFYING POTENTIAL)
When Minecraft added signs—actual readable text that could be placed in the world—Herobrine nearly wept with joy.
Signs meant MESSAGES. Messages meant he could communicate without appearing in chat. Messages meant he could leave behind cryptic warnings, creepy prophecies, and unsettling welcomes in places players would never expect.
His first sign project was simple: he added signs to every underground dungeon on a popular server. Each sign said a different thing:
"YOU'RE NOT ALONE DOWN HERE""I WATCHED YOU SLEEP" (extra creepy because players didn't actually sleep yet; beds weren't in the game)"COUNTING: 7" (with no explanation of what "7" meant)"TURN BACK""TOO LATE""BEHIND THE WALL" (placed in front of a wall with nothing behind it, causing players to waste hours mining through solid stone looking for secrets)"HELLO [PLAYER NAME]" (he couldn't actually personalize signs to individual players, but putting a generic name like "STEVE" worked 30% of the time due to the default skin)
The sign project was a MASSIVE success. Forum posts exploded with discussions about mysterious signs in caves. Theories ranged from "the developer is messing with us" to "there's a ghost in the game" to "someone hacked the server."
Nobody was right.
Nobody was wrong, either.
THE SHRINE OF THE WHITE-EYED WATCHER
Herobrine's masterpiece of this era was what he called "The Shrine."
He built it in the exact center of an unexplored area of a survival server—a perfect stone temple, complete with columns, stairs, and an altar made of gold blocks. The temple was surrounded by a ring of torches, creating an island of light in the otherwise dark landscape.
On the altar, he placed a single sign:
"OFFERINGS ACCEPTED"
Then he waited.
The first player to find the shrine was confused.
LocalMiner: uh guys theres a temple here
*LocalMiner: did anyone build this
ServerAdmin: we just generated this chunk like an hour ago
ServerAdmin: its new terrain
LocalMiner: well theres a temple
LocalMiner: made of stone
LocalMiner: with a gold altar
ServerAdmin: thats not possible
LocalMiner: im looking at it
ServerAdmin: sending coords
The admin teleported to the location.
ServerAdmin: what the hell
The admin walked around the temple, examining it from every angle. Herobrine watched from the shadows, invisible, enjoying the confusion.
ServerAdmin: this is definitely player-built
ServerAdmin: but I can check build logs
ServerAdmin: .....
ServerAdmin: build logs are empty
ServerAdmin: nothing was placed here according to the server
LocalMiner: what
ServerAdmin: this structure shouldnt exist
LocalMiner: but it does
ServerAdmin: I know
They approached the altar and read the sign.
LocalMiner: "offerings accepted"
LocalMiner: offerings of what
ServerAdmin: no idea
ServerAdmin: im gonna leave something
LocalMiner: why
ServerAdmin: I dont know
ServerAdmin: it just feels like I should
The admin dropped a diamond on the altar—the most valuable item they had.
Herobrine, seizing the moment, used his instant-build ability to make the diamond sink INTO the altar, as if it had been absorbed by the gold blocks.
ServerAdmin: DID YOU SEE THAT
LocalMiner: IT ATE THE DIAMOND
ServerAdmin: THE ALTAR ATE MY DIAMOND
LocalMiner: IM LEAVING
ServerAdmin: SAME
They ran.
Herobrine allowed himself a moment of smug satisfaction, then added a new sign to the altar:
"OFFERING ACCEPTED. MORE ARE REQUIRED."
The next player who found the shrine freaked out even MORE, because the sign had changed since the admin's description in chat. An altar that ate diamonds AND could modify its own messages? That was horror movie material.
Over the next week, the shrine developed a REPUTATION. Players made pilgrimages to it. Some left offerings (which Herobrine always absorbed, adding to his growing collection of digital items that he had no use for). Some tried to destroy it (the blocks wouldn't break; Herobrine was replacing them faster than they could be removed). Some just stood and stared, hoping to see something supernatural.
Those were the ones Herobrine rewarded.
If a player stood at the shrine long enough, being respectful and patient, Herobrine would give them a GIFT.
He would appear, just for a moment, standing on the temple roof. Visible. Making eye contact. Then he would vanish, leaving behind a single gold block where he'd stood.
Players who witnessed this became BELIEVERS. They spread the word. They created fanart. They wrote stories.
The legend grew.
VERSION TRANSITION
QUOTA COMPLETE: 200+ scare points accumulated
Legend Status: "Campfire Story" → "Emerging Urban Legend"
Forum mentions: 47
Unique believers: ~200
Skeptics convinced: 12
Nightmares caused: ~30 (estimated)
NEW ABILITIES UNLOCKED:
Structure Corruption: You can now subtly modify player-built structures overnight. Move blocks slightly. Add or remove details. Create the feeling that something is WRONG without being obvious about it.Mob Influence: When hostile mobs are added to the game, you will have limited control over their behavior. They may ignore you, follow you, or attack specific targets on your command.Server Presence: Your existence now creates a subtle "wrongness" in the server code. Admins may notice unusual log entries. Plugins may behave strangely. You are becoming part of the infrastructure.
PROGRESSION UNLOCKED: Moving to Minecraft Survival Test
Warning: Survival Test introduces MOBS. Players can now DIE. Your scare tactics will need to adapt.
Warning 2: Survival Test also introduces CREEPERS. Yes, the same creatures that killed you in your previous life. We look forward to your therapy sessions.
:)
Herobrine's eye twitched as the world dissolved around him.
Creepers.
He was going to have to deal with CREEPERS.
The universe really did have a sick sense of humor.
TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 3: "SURVIVAL TEST (OF HEROBRINE'S PATIENCE)" - In which our protagonist encounters hostile mobs for the first time, develops a complicated relationship with the creatures that killed him, and discovers that scaring players is MUCH easier when there's already things trying to murder them.
Author's Note: The next chapter will cover the infamous "Survival Test" period of Minecraft development (late 2009), including the introduction of zombies, skeletons, pigs, and yes, creepers. Herobrine will need to learn to work WITH the game's natural horror elements rather than against them, leading to some truly creative scares.
Also, a player named Notch (yes, THAT Notch) sometimes plays on the test servers. Herobrine is going to have to decide whether to reveal himself to the creator of the game or stay hidden.
The stakes are about to get much, much higher.
Removed Herobrine.
;)