The Ancient Lands

The Ancient Lands is a separate expedition world from The Forgelands.

It is not a district, biome, continent, or lost region inside The Forgelands. It is a distant world-scale setting located 49,820,000 blocks from Savanna Villa, Andy's home in The Forgelands.

The Ancient Lands is built around discovery, archaeology, ruins, lost civilizations, buried structures, dangerous expeditions, and the search for Donaldson.

Core Premise

More than twenty years ago, Andy traveled to The Ancient Lands by sailing ship with his friend Donaldson. Donaldson was an equally skilled explorer, but far more willing to take risks.

During that first expedition, Andy made his first fortune by exploring the ruins, caves, spires, and ancient structures of The Ancient Lands. He returned to Savanna Villa with a ship full of treasure, including hundreds of blocks of deepslate ores, diamonds, emeralds, totems of undying, and other rare finds.

Now Andy is returning with his own sailing ship after learning that Donaldson has disappeared.

Current Story Hook

During a recent visit from a wandering trader, Andy learned that Donaldson had discovered something inside an ancient volcano in The Ancient Lands.

Donaldson was expected to return to the local villagers, but more than five months have passed with no word from him.

The message reached Andy through the Wandering Trader network, which maintains fast but extremely expensive long-distance communication between worlds using enderpearl cannon relays, allay couriers, and written books.

Character of the World

The Ancient Lands feels older, denser, stranger, and more archaeologically overwhelming than The Forgelands.

The Forgelands is a civilization Andy is building while uncovering old history beneath it. The Ancient Lands is a civilization graveyard so vast that history is the landscape itself — ruins are not rare here. They are constant, layered, and ancient.