Good evening, from a new participant.

Hallo, everybody; I had the curious pleasure of playing on your server today. I'd been looking for some time for a server to suit my preferences, and finding one that not only does, but is run by voluntaryist anarchs, has brought a real grin to my face.

I found the server through the reddit thread; I've upvoted it.

Now, since flat introductory threads leave something to be desired, I'll offer a story, only mildly dramatised.

My first spawn found me in a bizarre biome- at a glance, it appeared to be ordinary treeless plains, but greater exploration proved that these 'plains' were littered with massive holes.

When I say 'holes,' I don't mean sinkholes or ravines. I mean ginormous frakking 160-tile diameter pits with jungle vines and 40-tile-wide waterfalls spilling down into them, from Y 252 to lake level at Y 64.

No matter how far I walked in any direction, the biome seemed interminable, so I decided to ride one of the waterfalls to the bottom. At the time that I did this, due to my computer's lag and short render distance, I could not see the bottom of the falls. I could only hope that if I controlled my fall, taking breaths every so often before diving back into the waterfall, that there would be a safe place to land at the bottom. Once I reached the bottom, I could no longer see the top of the falls at all. A single massive oak, laden with vines, coiled up one wall of the pit. The other walls were speckled with five of the largest glowstone veins I've ever seen. My first glowstone harvest produced more than 10 full stacks.

Eventually I made my way over to the narrow stretch of dirt along the lake's edge. Earlier foresight while in the plains section meant that I had six wheat seeds and three pieces of raw oak. I used the oak to create a crafting bench and pick, and with the pick I got enough cobble for furnaces and a hoe. By this point, I was on the brink of starvation, so I used the hoe on the meager adjacent dirt and set up my first tiny wheat farm. Lacking enough wood now to build a chest, I instead built half a dozen furnaces, and I used these as storage for my glowstone. After awhile, my wheat finished growing, and I made my first bread. This saved me from starvation, so my next mission was to obtain more wood, and above all, to obtain saplings. I climbed up the pit wall with extreme caution, until I reached the giant oak that wound up its face. Behind the oak, I found another pit, an area rich with iron and enemy mobs. I hurriedly obtained my wood and prepared a dirt 'diving board' to make my descent back to the lake.

I miscalculated the safety of the fall, and my computer lagged out just as I made the leap. When I logged back in, my avatar had stricken land instead of water, dying instantly.

I found this frankly to be confounding: where first this biome had frustrated and even angered me (for how was I to escape these sheer cliffs, on such limited resources? How was I to find civilization? I came here to be a librarian and set up book exchanges, and I was spawned so remotely!), now it bothered me that I had respawned far from it. Such effort had gone into scraping together this tiny settlement, and I'd be damned if it was going to be wasted!

I remembered, within about an error of 700, where the X and Z for my homestead were.
I remembered the exact look of the biome.

I suicided my avatar over and over, no doubt calling down a bemused eye from anybody else online at the time. Several times I respawned in a mushroom biome; several times I was in some kind of extreme oak forest. Whether by drowning, enemy mobs, magma, or spectacular swan-dives off the sides of buildings and cliffs, I found a way out of every respawn.

Finally, success! I found the biome again, perhaps twelve attempts later. I found the colossal waterfall. I wrote down the coordinates to be more certain of them, and then I began the descent.

No luck this time: unfortunate lag caused me to hit turf instead of surf.

My luck did hold up in another way: fewer than seven more attempts found me once again within a forty-tile jog of the waterfall. Along the way, I found the inventory drop of some poor schlub who had died nearby mere minutes before. I harvested his drop and made this descent more delicately, and finally I was home! This time I had wood with me, and more seeds. I planted and harvested and constructed chests for everything. I securely stowed the inventory drop, just in case I meet that person someday.

Now all I need are three wool, or twelve string, and I can establish a permanent settlement here at X 20407, Y 64, Z 10886. If anybody cares to pay a visit, do take care and bring plenty of ladders and dirt for pillaring upward: it is much harder to get out of the pit than to get into it!

Furthermore, if anybody cares to bring sugarcane, melon, pumpkin, cactus, carrot, potato, leather, and/or 3 wool or 12 string, I am willing to pay generously with glowstone or whatever other local resources you find desirable. At this Y-level, the pit has an abundance of redstone as well as glowstone, and there are several hostile-mob-rich caves for exploring. I welcome peaceful neighbours and traders.

It is a pleasure to meet you all! ^_^

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