History 6: The y Steaks

If you've been around the cities of Mercia, you may have ran into some chests of food, probably a miracle for the beginner's, but if you've really looked around, you'll have noticed something strange about certain items. Their names have been changed to just.... y? Why? What's the point? To many people, this would be a minor detail completely overlooked. However, those interested in the history of Mercia, these are among their favorite items. Bones, bread, iron, and many more have been renamed to y, but the steaks are the most iconic, so we'll focus on those.

The y Steaks were introduced in the middle of the Second Age, a time when players went out to complete quests and level up their 'skills'. Skills were added to give the players a sense of achievement for their dedications to any given tasks. It was a peaceful time, due to many restrictions in place. No PvP, no griefing, and no stealing; a much different world than today.

To ensure that players didn't steal, they were told to put their uncooked items in a furnace at special locations, called Skill-Hubs, marked by their prismarine. Once cooked, the admin would refer to the color code, and take out the steaks; manually counting and adding experience to the players counter. After giving players experience, the admin would then mark the items with 'y' so they couldn't be mistaken and therefore could be sold to other players. This means that there were thousands of y steaks in the world at one point, and at least 100 still exist. Fakes have been made; But those in possession of real y steaks can know that they're holding on to pieces of history, over two years old.