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Soul Sand Valley
The entire biome consists of soul sand, soul soil, and large bone formations, as well as the spawning of ghasts, dried ghasts, and skeletons. The valley has a cyan-blue aura encapsulating it throughout the biome.
Let’s look at the bone structures, they can range from a single rib to an entire ribcage. But what were they? Some say they’re ghast remnants, but that feels off, since some of the bone formations can be as large as seven blocks across. All of the bones that generate are in the shape of ribs… only ribs. So what creature would have mostly ribs?
I believe it was a giant worm. But that’s only a guess, I doubt we’ll ever get a real answer on what it was.
The next thing about the valley, and the main feature of it, is soul sand itself. So what is it? When moving on top of soul sand (not soul soil), you’ll be slowed down and sink a single pixel into it, as its model is slightly altered. If fire is burning on soul sand, the flame appears blue rather than the usual orange. Like netherrack, it burns indefinitely, but gives off a dimmer light.
But why blue?
In the spin-off game Minecraft: Dungeons, a new system called “Soul” is introduced, a blue resource collected from defeating foes. Soul is used to power certain abilities and artifacts in the game. We can’t take everything from the spin-offs as canon, since Mojang has said those games aren’t part of the main Minecraft universe. But if “soul” is indeed a real thing in Minecraft, then that could explain the blue fire.
Why is soul stored in soul sand and soul soil? My theory is that it comes from the large Soul Sand Valley worm, specifically, from how it stored its soul energy. It’s possible the worms excreted soul after death, and the sand is the dust or ash that came from raw, air-exposed soul (like soot or ash from a wood fire). Or perhaps the soul worm itself burns after death, and over time, the remnants still contain trace amounts of soul, only truly showing its presence when ignited.
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