My brothers and I play Minecraft on the Nerd.nu Survival server, a rather large one with dozens of players online at any given time. Unlike players who spend all their time hunting for massive quantities of diamonds and grinding for experience to get high-level enchants, we prefer to build impressive fortresses and attempt to defend them when the occasional PVPer shows up.

During world revision twelve, we built a castle known as Winterspyre. Or, at least, we built part of it. The admins reset the map before we could finish…

Winterspyre, in terms of the progress we attained before the reset, is a large and detailed tower. We finished it, both exterior and interior, but it was intended to be only part one of a larger structure.

The plan was to build four walls (with interior hallways, of course) ending in four smaller towers, the walls being like wheel spokes coming from the center hub tower, known as The Spire. Then rounded walls would be built to connect the outer towers, forming a complex that would look something like the targeting symbol on a rifle scope if viewed from above.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time. But here’s what we managed to accomplish before the server reset, the product of many hours of mining, crafting and building.