Minecraft Monster Month Part 6: Fearsome Fossils and Sinister Sounds

As I've said before, the scariest thing you can describe is the thing that nobody knows anything about, because it means that nobody has ever seen it and lived to tell about it. Too often we fall into the assumption that we know every creature that exists in the world. But unfortunately if you really stop and consider the evidence, it's clear that that's not true...

Unknown Fossils

Exploring the underground, miners and explorers have periodically encountered massive structures of bone block. When a responsible person gets to them first, they are excavated properly instead of being immediately harvested for bone meal. In all the years of surveying the world's caves, eight unique structures have been identified: four types of skulls and four types of spinal chords.

The implications of these skeletons is disturbing. It's generally assumed that the largest creature across all known dimensions is the Ender Dragon, but the scale of these bones does not bear that out. Neither humans nor Villagers have any record of these creatures, so it is unlikely they were hunted to extinction. They could have evolved into smaller mobs we know today, like cows, pigs, or even Guardians (one of the skulls does appear to have only one eye socket), but evidence of species evolution in the Overworld, Nether, or End is actually non-existent, and the Minecraft world/universe/multiverse is actually believed to be no more than 600 or 700 years old.*

So that leaves us with the uncomfortable but likely prospect of giant creatures roaming the underground. For all we know they, whatever they are, are responsible for the abundance of caves in the first place! Perhaps these are the fabled "Red Dragons" that can be tamed as mounts? Or something else entirely...like giant salamanders, or "Megamanders," if you will?

Unknown Sounds

But they're just bones, right? It's a stretch to think there's unknown monsters running around in the dark solely because of some rare skulls and ribcages, right?

Wrong. Very wrong.

In years of spelunking, many if not most explorers have heard sounds not associated with any known creature. Some have even managed to capture these creepy sounds on records. And periodically travelers will compare notes and agree that yes, they have heard the same sounds. And these sounds aren't just the wind whistling through narrow passages.

The speculations of what those sounds mean are varied and diverse...
...A giant Blaze escaped from the Nether?
...An underground geyser going off?
...A Red Dragon or a Megamander, splashing into an underground lake?...A reptilian Troglodyte, employing echolocation or signalling its pack?
...A Grue, about to pounce and eat you in the pitch blackness?
...An abandoned Redstone trap?
...A Spectre wailing?
...A Gargoyle trapped in a stone cocoon at bedrock level?
...A Rusty Golem, an Iron Golem abandoned, weakened, and gone crazy?

Whatever is down below the world's surface, remember to never let your guard down. You never know if the first time you see something new will also be the last time you see anything at all...




*This merits an "out-of-universe" explanation: the first public version of Minecraft was released on May 17, 2009, roughly 8 1/2 years ago at time of writing. Because a full day-night cycle in-game takes 20 minutes instead of 24 hours, a factor of 72. Thus, 8 1/2 years in real life corresponds to a little more than 600 years in-game.