Minecraft Monster Month Part 5: Nether Nasties

Of course we'd be talking about the Nether eventually! Most consider it the quasi-G-rated Minecraft equivalent of hell, but the way players casually venture forth into it to get resources like Blaze Powder and Nether Wart (ok, maybe not casually) makes it seem to me more like the equivalent of, for example, Mordor, or Mustafar, or wherever Bowser's Castle is located. It feels like it should be the domain of a "Dark Lord".

Legend does tell of the Lava Fiend, the ironclad self-styled lord of the Nether. People think he's the Stronghold Monarch's brother, but there's no evidence of this, because nobody's ever had the presence of mind to ask either of them.

In any case, he definitely seems to imitate the Monarch (or perhaps the Monarch imitates him), in that he inhabits a network of fortresses and appears to be responsible for some of the resident monsters. In fact a case could be made that he's the necromancer responsible for every monster in the Nether. In particular, the fact that Blazes only come from spawner cages in said fortresses does suggest they're not naturally occurring.

Details on his fighting abilities are scarce. People talk about a "Flaming Sword", and that he has a knife that can slay Zombie Pigmen in a single hit. And with all that Nether Wart being cultivated, he's got to have potions, right? It's generally agreed though that setting him on fire won't do anything, nor will pushing him into lava. Even if he's 100% fire resistant, there's a theory that the green gem on his chestplate is actually an enchanted Ender Pearl that will let him escape drowning in lava. Just to make the terror complete, he's commonly depicted with elytra, which seems to suggest he's skilled at traversing the Nether and an experienced combatant to have obtained those wings in the first place. Don't let the remote possibility of epic loot tempt you to fight this one, no matter what you hear about the lava-resistant "Phoenix Armor."

A more obscure rumor claims that he's the artist behind the mysterious painting Birth of Wither, that he was the first to discover how to construct this horrific creature.

There are rumors of other "cryptid" mobs in the Nether, which makes sense given that most visitors just want to get in, get what they came for, then get out again; nobody dawdles in the Nether.

The visibility is low, and fire and lava are everywhere, so it's easy for your eyes to deceive you. Some speak of a "Nether Banished", whose descriptions vary from a Blaze that escaped a fortress and decayed as it got lost in the wilderness, to an unlucky explorer who caught fire but through a very tragically specific combination of enchantments, could never die.

Others think it's just a block of Netherrack on fire combined with an overactive imagination. But you can't confirm a negative...if you should venture into this volcanic wasteland, trapped between two layers of bedrock, remember that the only monsters we know of are the ones people have lived to tell about...