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They stand in a circle around the nether fortress hub room, lit by the lava feature in the center, and take a deep breath. Grian challenges them all to stand still for the introduction, so they don’t block each other’s view–and calls Mumbo out by name. Everyone laughs.
Keralis rustles a stack of papers, clears his throat, and verbally begins Season 11. In three sentences - welcome in, have fun, that’s it. (No one knows what the rest of the papers are for.)
In the first moments of the circle breaking, Joel punches Scar up onto the platform, and Scar stumbles back into the lava, burning to death. Doc cheers in victory as Scar reappears next to him, singed and shaking his head. And with a death, the season truly begins.
Nobody is really sure whose idea it actually was to start the new season in the Nether. Half the Hermits are adamant it wasn’t them, and the other half are trying and failing to remember if it was or wasn’t them. There’s a lot of fingers pointed at potential candidates–Xisuma or Hypno as the traditional admins, Gem as the planned creator of the coming Nether hub, Mumbo mostly because it’s fun to hear him protest–but that’s more because the Blame Game is fun to play. A month apart and missing each other has them jostling for reasons to complain like no time has passed at all.
At the very least, there’s nowhere for the season to go from here but up. Because the beginning is…rough.
None of them expected differently, honestly. Any of them who’ve done a Nether escape recently, for speedruns or for testing the feature, are aware of how luck-dependent it is to get the obsidian you need to leave; and the rest have no idea how long it’ll take. It’s a long process, from making tools to getting the gold to bartering. Dying means dropping everything, possibly into lava, where nothing they have yet can survive.
And they’re all dying. A lot.
Joel punches Skizz off a cliff, forgetting Tango’s right behind him and heard Joel tell Mumbo he was on one heart. Cleo digs up, and the lava rushing out burns Pearl behind them. Bdubs gets skewered by the pork he’s trying to enchoppen.
It’s chaos.
But finally, finally, they do the math, and they have enough. Xisuma has 6 obsidian, and Gem has 4, and Etho is too sick to protest them skipping the corners. They just need to coordinate placing it in the same spot, since no one can pick up the obsidian once it’s placed, and so many people have flint and steel and fire charges to light the portal. How many people does it take to make a single Nether portal?
Zedaph eggs Gem into placing the obsidian down in her spot, and she does. And they both immediately panic as they realise Xisuma might have done the same, and they both agree wordlessly to blame Mumbo for this, even as he’s running off to try and stop Xisuma before it’s too late. A cry of agony that rings from the group as the worst case reveals itself to be true; it’s too late.
Six blocks in one spot, four in another. They have to go back to bartering.
Thankfully, somehow, the last few obsidian are far faster to find–just enough time for Xisuma to die before the portal is lit, and the Hermits are flocking to it. They rush for chance at Overworld air, pushing and jostling each other to be first through the portal frame. Some of them forget they’re holding swords. Several more deaths happen.
It’s night when they emerge. Zombies begin to swarm. Several people are wearing each other’s heads, because they can. There’s pigs nearby, so no sheep, and no beds to make quickly to let them catch their breath.
Madness. Complaining. Murder. Everything going wrong.
And they’re together again.
So, it’s as perfect as a season opening can be.