Rip Hollow 3

Rip Hollow 3

By: Bwm117 July 2019 Yup, we're doing this again.

I play on an underpopulated multiplayer server. It's a bukkit server, but there weren't many functions to this server from what I heard. You only ever see a few people on it. You'll be lucky to see more than 5 players in the server. The admin and moderators rarely ever get on, so it's hard to get greifers and other rule breakers punished. I'm surprised the server is still even up and running. It's probably not worth having it up due to the small amount of people that play on it.

For me, I still liked playing on here. I had a couple people to talk to in chat. Although I know nothing about them, it's interesting to see what they have to say about any random topic. My base is extremely far away from anyone else's, so no one really comes to me or my base. It's in a plains biome next to other average biomes like deserts and the average forest. My base goes underground. It has multiple floors and connects to multiple caves. Things seemed pretty normal for me. One day however, things started to change.

Occurrence #0

This wasn't really abnormal, but it's worth being "documented" or talked about. One day I found multiple dark oak trees planted at the edge of the plains biome I was living in. I asked in chat if anyone did this. All of them said they didn't do it. We all thought it was strange because this world was made way before the newer biomes like dark forests were added. You would have to travel far to find the newer biomes. I chopped down some of the trees and went on with my day. I have grown suspicious because of this. No one would travel that far to my area just to do that.

Occurrence #1

Logged on a couple days later. I went outside and found that there were patches of coarse dirt scattered around. Mostly, they were where the dark oak trees were in the beginning. There were some in the neighboring biomes as well. Even the desert had some of these blocks. I didn't know what to think of this, but I got more confused when I saw that there were more dark oak trees planted close to the same area from last time. Not only that, but there were these trenches dug into the ground. They were about 5-7 blocks long, 1-3 blocks deep, and 2-3 blocks wide. There was one pretty close to my base which concerned me. I patrolled around the area to see if anyone was there. I typed a message in chat that said that I will let anyone live and build near me but they shouldn't break blocks so close to my home. Everyone in chat was confused and I explained what I saw. They didn't know what to do about it and became confused like me. I came to the conclusion that someone is hiding around here somewhere and was messing with me. I grew more suspicious and started to get a little paranoid.

I ran through my base to make sure no one was hiding anywhere. Then I searched for the flint and steel in my chest and ignited some of the trees. This would get rid of them quickly and efficiently. I didn't really care for them. I logged off after my arsenic actions and waited for the lag from the fire to subdue.

I got back on 10 minutes later. The trees were mostly gone. The remainder of them were just a few logs that survived the fire. I decided to leave the remains there to let the culprit know that I don't want them here. I also took the time to cover up the trenches.

Occurrence #2

I log on the next day to find that my acts of destruction were futile. My confidence was struck. The bottom floor of my base was in ruins. The lights were gone. The walls and floor were mostly dug out. I checked the final room down there and I saw what had to be a threat. There was one light source, a torch. It was on one of the surviving parts of the floor. Next to it was a sign, also on a surviving block. The sign read one word: "inevitable". And below the floor was dirt with a lone dark oak sapling planted.

This partially scared me. I was also mad too because part of my base was destroyed. I still don't exactly know what this guy was up to. I felt like I started a war with some kind of plant virus. One that kept taking over despite your destructive efforts to stop it.

I relit the bottom floor to prevent mobs from spawning. I checked the caves connected to my base to make sure nobody was hiding in them.

Occurrence #3

This next occurrence happened a week after occurrence #2. I would've logged on way sooner, however my internet failed and had to get the router replaced. But now that I had internet connection again, I logged back on quickly.

Big changes were made. First of all, the surface of the plains were almost completely changed. There were dark oak trees everywhere. The biome was practically converted. There were patches of coarse dirt everywhere. And the desert was covered almost completely by coarse dirt. The cacti were left alone, but the place still looked like a new biome. As for the caverns connected to my base, they were larger. I could tell. They had way more room. It was enough room to build something down here. But something else was way off. There were grass blocks that made up the entire ground of the caves.

I felt anger. But soon... I became more dumbfounded than angry. I had no idea who was doing this. And I didn't have a clue of what they were trying to do. I'll be honest; I felt a little fear from this too. Someone was doing all of these things and I couldn't catch them in the act. I decided to get out of there and see what else was being overtaken. I didn't exactly feel safe in that cave area anymore. I went into one of the biomes next to mine. It was the regular forest but I saw that it was being overtaken by dark oak trees too. In addition, I saw buildings. They were cube-shaped and made of dark oak logs and cobblestone. These obviously belonged to the guy behind all of this. I cautiously looked through the large structures. I slowly navigated around with my sword still equipped. Unfortunately I found nothing, nothing that could help me.

Occurrence #4

I know this is out of nowhere, but I wanted to burn the trees down again. I wondered how the guy would react if I did it again. I had diamond armor and a diamond sword, which reminded me of my status in power. I spawned back where I was yesterday; those perfectly cubed buildings. There were more of them built in this establishment. I glanced at them, but didn't bother to look inside. Now that I remember, I probably should've searched them. I rush to my base and retrieved the flint and steel once again. On the way to the base, I noticed that the trenches were back. I also put on my armor to protect and prepare myself, just in case. I rush outside and decide which tree to burn. But before I could click, I saw something. I moved the crosshair down and to the right to directly face him. It was a player.

They were 4 or 5 chunks away from me. It was dark because it was becoming night, but I could still see him. This player had a bizarre skin. It had a bark texture, similar to oak wood. There were grey lines or patches of pixels scattered on the body. There was a jagged black crevice going down the middle of its torso. It reminded me of a ravine. The most noticeable part was it's "eyes". They were jagged lapis blue lines going down the face. They looked alien. One thing that was even more abnormal was the fact that there was no username above the player's head. We stared at each other for 5 seconds before I looked at what it was holding. It had a dark oak sapling that looked like it had been enchanted. I realized that perhaps, this was the culprit behind all of this. I got out my sword and rushed at him. He had a weapon of his own; an enchanted iron sword. I felt more confident. My weapon would kill him faster. I hit him as many times as I could. But he wasn't getting hurt. He didn't turn red and get knocked back like anyone else would. But instead I heard the awful sound of wood snapping and cracking. The sound was loud and clear. I immediately cringed at the noise. Then he hit me 3 times, sending me at least 12 blocks back on the third hit. He took away 7 in a half hearts in total.

He could've been in creative mode, but players don't make that kind of sound when you hit them. I booked it after I got knocked away. I immediately lost my courage to fight and realized that there was something wrong. I had some potion effect on me. The swirl particles risen above my view repeatedly. After running for who knows how long, I looked back to see that he stopped following sooner than I thought. While resting, I looked in my inventory and I saw the broken spoon symbol. I had fatigue II. I was mostly sure I was dealing with some kind of hacker. A player can't legitimately put that potion effect on another one. I couldn't damage him either. Maybe he could use commands?

I held down the tab button to show the list of players in the server. I wanted to see the hidden username and I wanted to see if I could call someone for help. There was no one except for my username in the list. The player could've possibly left. Or the server didn't list him... or didn't count him as a player. I logged off because that thought scared me. I had enough of this for tonight.

Occurrence #5

I was back in the next 2 days. It was a miracle to see that a moderator was online. I begged him to teleport to me to help me with my situation. He teleported to me and I walked him over to my home biome and explained everything, especially what happened to my underground base. When we looked inside, we went to the caverns connected to my rooms and was shocked. The caverns were even more spacious than before. They all connected to each other. There were dark oak trees growing down here. Grass, ferns, and mushrooms grew down here as well. There were blocks of glowstone in the ground and walls. Some were in the trees.

This became an underground forest.

I thought about the trenches, the trees, the coarse dirt, the cubed structures, the cave expanding, the threat. All of that led up to this? Only some of it made sense. Questions still remained. What were the trenches for? What is any of this for? What will happen down here?

The moderator used CoreProtect (a plugin for bukkit servers) to track the player who had been doing all of this. The moderator told me the player's username, the one I couldn't see before. He said the culprit's username was 'Rip Hollow'. I asked if there was any significance behind the name. He said he didn't know but there had apparently been things like this going on before in an isolated area. He came across it by coincidence. He saw the mysterious player and tried banning him, but the server said "player does not exist".

I asked why he tried banning this 'Rip Hollow' player before this incident. He said that Rip Hollow was doing things that players couldn't do; he seemed to be hacking. The moderator told me this player was able to instantly grow trees with the click of 1 sapling. He also was able to make trenches instantly. It seemed to be very similar to world edit. Attempts of communicating with the player were ignored. The moderator explained that once he tried banning Rip Hollow, he noticed. Then he somehow removed his own username.

The moderator recommended me to move out from my now infected home. He also said make sure I move FAR AWAY. Not only that, he said that if I see any trenches, cover them immediately and to cover the entrance to caves if they start becoming bigger and start experiencing forestry. I'm definitely moving out of there. I'm not sure what to do after that. But if I continue playing on this server, I'll know what to look out for.