Theorizing about the Invasion of the Overworld
I wanted to yap a bit about the way I interpret Minecraft's often ambiguous lore in this reddit post and possibly expand this into a YouTube video if I feel that it warrants further discussion.
I would also like to disclaim that I have not consumed Minecraft dungeons or legends because I don't have very much interest in them so the sources of my theories will primarily be coming from the game of Minecraft itself and what I choose to interpret the lore as. I am taking ideas out forth by the mobestiary into some consideration when making theories so long as they are significantly supported by the base game and I am not taking social media posts from Mojang into account either due to the inconsistencies and utter Pandora's box situations that this would create.
End portals/Stronghold
I first will talk about the end, portals, and stronghold because those are the areas that I have the most to talk about.
To preface it's abundantly clear that an ancient civilization that is separate from the illagers and villagers once ruled over most of the Minecraft world and across all three dimensions. With their structures containing end portals and implying end access as well as blocks having the wither chiseled into them implying nether access. I also believe that these same individuals created the ocean monuments and end cities as well as now being the undead we see across the world but that will come up later.
Hence forth I will be referring to then as "The Civilization"
First of all, I would like to reject the popular notion that The Civilization created the end portals. This is largely informed by the fact that the end portals are clearly made of end stone, a resources that can only be found within the end.
And in this same train of thought I will be rejecting the popular notion that the builders became the endermen. Considering that it is impossible for the builders to have obtained end stone before already going to the end, This means that they couldn't have become the endermen because ender pearls are needed for the activating of the portal. Meaning that endermen had to have existed before the portal was created.
This all leads me to the conclusion that someone else or something else opened the portals from the end into the overworld, something else originating from the End. I will be referring to them as "The Others" hence forth.
I also firmly do not believe that The Others are the Endermen, seeing as how endermen exist in every dimension and are implied to be able to travel between them at will by the game and the mobestiary. So why would they ever build a portal to get to the overworld? Because the endermen aren't the ones who built it. The Others did.
Time to justify what I just said now on top of the fact that endermen don't have any kind of civilization and don't appear to be very intelligent like Villagers. The endermite is the only mob in the game that Endermen are outright hostile to. The only way endermites come into existence is through the use of an enderpearl. According to the mobestiary, the endermite is a trans dimensional parasite that latches onto players and endermen whenever they use teleportation powers to go from place to place. Not only does this provide evidence that the endermen are capable of trans-dimensional travel beyond the in-game implications of spawning patterns, but it also supports the existence of a 5th dimension in the Minecraft lore. This is also supported by the fact that the endermites do not take contact damage or flee from water like the other "end" mobs, proving their origin lies outside of the dimension. You might be asking what the fourth is. Keep the tinfoil hat on and we'll talk about it later.
Ok, you got all that? Now time for some more crazy stuff
So, we now have established what I interpret the end and portals as and this leaves us with the pieces of some huge conclusions that I will now put together.
Since the end portals were created by The Others, why does the stronghold look like something that was built by The Civilization and look nothing like the end portals? Because it was. Because the end portals look so alien and the strongholds look so down to Earth, it's now clear that The Civilization built the strongholds around the end portals they discovered deep underground. It's very likely that they would have discovered such things since they keep tools everywhere and have mineshafts.
This also helps to explain the rooms and structure of the Stronghold. They're underground unlike all the other Civilization Structures because they were built around something that could not be broken apart and moved to another location. The Libraries were built so that they could catalogue their findings and research from the end and the portal.
So what happened to The Others?
Judging by the fact that the portals were found underground and whatever structure was originally around the indestructible portals had long weathered away, The Others had likely entered the overworld millennia before The Civilization would discover their portals. I don't believe that The Civilization or Villagers are the descendants of The Others because neither the player, their undead counterparts, or any sort of Villagers are allergic to water like the end mobs all are.
So maybe they just faded away into history?
I don't have concrete or justifiable inclinations as to the destiny of The Others yet so I'll have to come back to this one in a different session of psychotic raving.
So who built all that stuff in the end then? And what's this business about a 4th dimension?
Alright. I hear you.
My next claim, is that the End Cities are still created by The Civilization. This is due to the fact that they incorporate phantom membrane elytras, brewing stands filled with water based potions, and glass from sand. All of which are objects not able to be found within the end.
Interestingly enough, the figurehead of every end ship is an ender dragon. And based off the fact that a dragon egg exists, I believe that there were once many ender dragons but they were all hunted to extinction by The Civilization.
The return portal is also guarded by the Ender Dragon. The last Ender dragon.
The dragon's island is isolated and surrounded by a circle of obsidian pillars. Huh. Neither water nor lava can be found in the end. Or any of the ingredients to make the end crystals for that matter. That means to me that those things were created by the Civilization. A way to keep the dragon alive and heal it during a fight.
But why would they want that? And why is there only one central island? And why is there that big void around it?
Because The End is a prison
This is where I'm getting really insane. I believe that once the Civilization finished scouring The End and realized that it was a barren hellish dimension devoid of life or useful resources, they turned it into a prison of sorts.
That would explain the dungeons underground on the overworld. And all of those holding cells in the strongholds.
I believe that the Civilization using the End as a way to exile their prisoners is a likely solution to these things.
Although I of course can't be sure.
As far as the end goes, I've now reached a logical brick wall with the content of my sources.
It's very hard to tell what the Civilization would want to do with the End islands or the End.
To me, it's also possible that the Ender Dragons and The Civilization were in a war, leading to the closing of all of the end portals, abandonment of the end ships and cities, and the last Ender dragon guarding the only portal out of the end. This is also lightly supported by the fact that the Ender dragon only attacks the player and not any other mobs. Maybe the ender dragons were The Others? Who knows?
Now that I've finished raving about The End, it's now time for me to talk about the Deep Dark. Oooooh aaaaaah. Spooky.
The first and most important part of looking at the deep dark is to take a closer look at the ancient cities and most importantly the clear timeline and logic of the structures.
In the state that we now see the ancient cities in, the situation looks dire. There's carpet and wool put everywhere to avoid detection from skulk, furnaces with tools being used as fuel, chests containing the items needed to combat the skulk, and all of the buildings are destroyed or half consumed by the skulk.
Wait... The carpet, wool, and adaptations to the presence of skulk can only mean one thing. The skulk wasn't here when the city was built. It arrived here afterwards.
It arrived through the giant portal structure in the center of the city.
And considering how skulks spread, through the souls and experience of dead creatures, it looks like it killed everyone who used to live down in the Ancient Cities. All of The Civilization members who lived there.
But why would they do such a thing? Why would they open a portal to a random awful dimension? One filled with monsters as awful as the Warden?
Humbris and maybe fear
Notice how the reinforced deep slate blocks that make up the portal in the Ancient City are breakable in survival? Notice how they are made with both overworld and what looks like endstone! Notice how they are in the same portal orientation as the Nether portals, portals that are less advanced and were accessible to The Civilization?
This all means to me that the Deep Dark portals are an immitation of technology from The Others. A pitiful attempt to make something as perfect as the End Portals to another, totally separate dimension. Not two that are intrinsically linked like the Overworld and Nether. an experiment just like their Redstone science contraptions contained within the ancient city. The ancient cities were scientific and magical research facilities.
They opened portals to a dimension they didn't understand and were invaded by a lovecraftian force of horrors beyond their imaginations. The skulk. And the wardens.
Ok That's hubris, but what about fear?
Maybe, The Civilization was driven to open these ancient city portals before they were ready because of the zombie plague that was clearly ravaging their civilization and was infecting villages, leaving them abandoned, spreading to the nether, creating infinite armies of the dead from their companions.
Ok that's enough. For now
I hope you enjoyed my tinfoil hat wearing post. Please share your two cents or any logical leaps I havent attempted yet.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading.