With Zaph away for the evening, the group entered that rare and dangerous phase of civilisation known as Dave Being Allowed to Set Priorities.
This is usually when sensible people log off, mute Discord, or fake a medical emergency. Sadly, Myles was already online.
Dave, freed from Zaph’s tactical efficiency and Craig’s usual ability to convert any plan into a public safety investigation, decided that the evening would be devoted to house improvements. And by “everyone,” Dave meant Myles. Craig, naturally, refused to have his artistic nature restrained by anything as dreary as chores, indoor plumbing lines, basic load-bearing principles, or gravity.
So Myles and Dave logged on early to get some work done around Winchester without distractions. This was optimistic, because “without distractions” in this group means “Craig has not yet found the button that makes the world worse.”
The evening began respectably enough. New technology was researched. There were plans. There were pipes. There was the faint, heady smell of a settlement about to crawl one rung higher on the ladder of civilisation, unaware that Craig was already building several literal ladders elsewhere for no helpful reason.
An electric water pump was installed. An electric water purifier followed. The base now possessed clean water, which meant dysentery had been formally asked to leave the premises. Dave finished laying the floor on the lake construction, adding dignity and probable future trip hazards in equal measure, while Myles ran water pipes to the water troughs.
Then came the plumbing spree.
Myles hooked up the optional water connection to the cement mixer, the concrete furnace, the biofuel composter, the fabricator, the electric furnace, the glassblowing table, and the advanced masonry bench. It was the sort of job no one appreciates until it stops working, at which point everyone immediately asks Myles why the cement mixer is thirsty.
And then came the miracle.
Lighting.
Actual lighting.
Not torches. Not “stand near the fire and hope.” Not navigating the crafting room by the red glow of Craig’s latest forest incident. Proper electrical lighting.
The group faced one of the great aesthetic decisions of the modern age: smoked glass lights or clear glass lights. Dave, applying the sort of practical wisdom usually reserved for grizzled lighthouse keepers and insurance assessors, pointed out that clear glass was pointless because it would simply get covered in smoke from the strangely recurring forest fires.
No one looked at Craig.
Everyone looked at Craig.
Craig was unavailable for comment, possibly because he was up a ladder.
Myles ran wiring around the house and connected the lights. Winchester entered the electrical age. The base could now operate twenty-four hours a day, which was especially useful at night, when previously the crafting area had the atmosphere of a medieval tax office being haunted by wolves.
It was progress. It was beautiful. It was almost suspiciously competent.
Which brings us to the question every responsible adult was asking.
What was Craig doing while all the house improvements were happening?
Craig had, in theory, been given simple and helpful tasks.
Water the crops, Craig.
Weed the crops, Craig.
More wood and stone, Craig.
These were not complex requests. They were not metaphysical koans. They did not require a philosophy degree or a hydraulic engineering certificate. They were the sort of tasks one might give to a reasonably bright goat.
But Craig muttered to himself as the chores piled up, and when Myles became distracted by asking Dave a question about plumbing aesthetics, Craig saw his moment. Like a raccoon slipping out of a kitchen window with a stolen sandwich, he escaped.
Craig’s contribution to the evening can be summed up as follows: he spent the entire session making six-storey ladders that went nowhere.
Not somewhere unusual.
Not somewhere dangerous but potentially rewarding.
Nowhere.
These were not ladders in the practical sense. These were monuments. Vertical mood boards. Wooden expressions of Craig’s inner landscape, which apparently resembles a workplace accident report with delusions of grandeur.
Dave, in what historians will surely describe as “a mistake,” had taught Craig how to build stone foundations. Armed with this terrible knowledge, Craig built a walkway across the lake. Then, drunk on structural possibility, Craig used the wondrous new foundations to build a ramp up a mountain in an attempt to reach the top.
There were also a few forest fire outbreaks.
Craig claimed these were due to the frequent lightning storms in the area.
This was accepted in the same spirit one accepts a toddler’s explanation that the jam simply climbed onto the ceiling by itself.
Meanwhile, back in the house of actual work, Myles and Dave had used an alarming amount of resources to bring the wonder of electricity to Winchester. Everything required copper wiring. Iron was converted into steel. Gold and copper vanished into electronics because apparently the future runs on precious metals and quiet despair.
Soon the copper and iron cupboards were empty. Titanium was gone. Only a few bars of platinum remained. This was the sort of inventory screen that makes Dave start saying things like, “We should just do one quick mining run,” which is how groups vanish into the wilderness for four hours and return with nine berries, frostbite, and a story about a bear.
On the plus side, Winchester had a cupboard and a half of aluminium ingots, lots of charcoal, and coal.
The group was, in short, rich in the wrong things.
It was time to go exploring and scavenging.
Myles headed out, following rumours from Dave about possible mining locations. Dave stayed at the house fabricating excavators, beacons, and fuel cans, which sounds like preparation until one remembers that Dave’s rumours about possible mining locations are usually delivered with the confidence of a man pointing vaguely at the horizon and saying, “Probably over there.”
Still, the expedition paid off.
Myles found six mining sites: several platinum sites, oxite, gold, iron, and copper. Extractors were installed and powered by biofuel. Beacons were added so the sites could be found again, because “we’ll remember where it is” is one of the foundational lies of survival games.
One site was close to a stream, so the group installed an electric extractor powered by a water wheel. This was pleasingly renewable and made everyone feel like responsible planetary settlers, right up until the water wheel began collecting every stray plant in the biome like a compost-themed fishing net.
With ten extractors working day and night, powered by biofuel, Winchester entered a new economic era: the Biofuel Panic.
Everything became fuel.
Furs. Fibre. Rotten plants. Vegetable oil. Wheat.
If it could be stuffed into a composter and converted into combustible optimism, it was sacrificed to the machine.
This also placed Myles on the hamster wheel of resource collection and extractor refuelling, with occasional diversions to remove all the plants clogging the water wheel. It was less “base support and medic” and more “municipal utilities department during a fungal apocalypse.”
The renewable energy supply was amazing. There was even a battery for night use. Winchester was becoming a beacon of progress, industry, and questionable zoning.
Unfortunately, with all the lights and devices consuming power, the battery could not supply the required output. Frequent blackouts followed.
There is a special kind of comedy in installing lighting so the base can work twenty-four hours a day, only to discover that the base can now work for several dramatic minutes before everything shuts off like a haunted motel.
More research was required. More resources were required. Eventually, the group built and installed an advanced battery rack.
There may or may not have been some wiring problems during installation, leading to half the facility shutting down.
Myles refuses to speculate on the cause.
This is not an admission of guilt. It is simply a legal position.
At this point, the evening had already contained plumbing, lighting, water purification, lake construction, biofuel logistics, resource extraction, Craig’s alpine ladder theatre, and enough electrical problems to make the house smell faintly of burnt ambition.
But Zaph was away.
And because Zaph was away, Zaph was also spiritually present as a future complaint.
The group knew he would return and ask, with quiet sniper judgment, why there were no riches. He would look at the electric lights, the plumbing, the extractors, the advanced battery rack, the new crop infrastructure, and the general miracle of industrial progress, and somehow communicate that none of this counted because it was not shiny enough.
So the decision was made.
They would find and mine exotics.
This meant inventing radar.
Radar, of course, was powered by biofuel, because by this point biofuel had become less a resource and more a religion. The base no longer ran on technology. It ran on whatever Myles could shovel into the hungry green maw of the composter monster.
Having heard Dave’s tales about wild animals attacking new technology, Myles ordered the construction of a narrow walkway out into the lake. This was intended as a defensive measure. Sensible. Controlled. Minimal.
Craig mysteriously appeared and took charge of construction.
This is never a sentence that leads to a safe outcome.
Still, the walkway was built. Myles installed hedgehogs and the radar, then switched it on.
The local wildlife immediately objected to science.
Wolves and wild horses attacked the house, perhaps offended by the electromagnetic implications. Fortunately, Sir Stripes defended the yard and soundly defeated them. A few creatures attacked the radar installation and were defeated by the hedgehogs. Hedgehogs may not be as glamorous as Sir Stripes, but they got the job done with the blunt professionalism of a spike-covered accountant.
The radar provided a general direction to search. Dave and Myles set out on a scouting expedition.
Craig said not to wait for him; he would catch up.
He did not catch up.
They stopped frequently.
He still did not catch up.
This is because “I’ll catch up” in Craigish roughly translates to “I have found a new angle from which to endanger myself.”
Dave and Myles continued checking nearby locations. Dave kept insisting on “just one more spot.” This is one of Dave’s most dangerous spells, ranking somewhere between Summon Side Quest and Detect Reagent. It always begins innocently. One more hill. One more cave. One more glacier. One more reason Myles starts calculating sunset and body temperature.
The scouting expedition became a long, arduous journey through snow-covered passes to the sound of “it’s just over the next glacier,” while Myles demanded they return home before dark.
This continued with the grim rhythm of an Antarctic buddy comedy.
They checked six possible locations.
They found nothing.
So the radar would need to be moved to different locations to triangulate a fix, because even the future apparently requires cartography, patience, and Myles sighing heavily into a headset.
There was, however, one upside to the trip.
Dave picked every berry and soybean in sight to turn into rotten plants to feed the biofuel composter monster the group had created.
This is Dave in his purest form: heroic, distracted, and somehow turning a failed expedition into agricultural hoarding.
Along the way, they hid in a few caves, mined some exotics, and Myles took the crops to the trader for cash. So there was profit for the evening, even if the expedition’s main result was frostbite, plant theft, and a renewed understanding that Dave’s “nearby” is a flexible term.
Then the coffee economy made itself known.
Looking at the coffee returns, Dave installed thirteen more plots and planted coffee.
This is how Winchester works now. Discover indoor plumbing? Fine. Install electricity? Good. Invent radar? Useful. Learn that coffee makes money? Immediately restructure agriculture around caffeine.
Future technology would require new materials, so the group researched composites. These were, naturally, complex formulations requiring gold ore, iron ore, silicate, and organic resins. Because nothing says “the future” like spending all evening emptying the copper cupboard only to discover the next phase of progress wants the gold cupboard too.
The newly discovered composites, plus a ton of concrete — and by “a ton,” the recap means one hundred concrete — were used to build an electric composter to produce biofuel faster.
This was less a quality-of-life upgrade and more an arms race against the group’s own energy addiction.
Winchester had become a machine designed to consume the planet in order to power the devices needed to better consume the planet.
A perfect little civilisation, then.
This Week’s Campfire Song
Sung by Dave and Myles over a campfire, with Craig nowhere to be seen.
There’s a Craig who believes every glittering thing
Means a secret the devs must be hiding.
So he stacks up a staircase with no earthly use,
And calls it “experimental climbing.”
If he reaches the top and there’s nothing up there,
No treasure, no loot, no achievement,
Dave will stare at the missing resources below
And begin his long speech on bereavement.
There’s a sign near the wall, but Craig squints at it twice,
Because words can be tricksy and loaded.
By the brook stood a tree, before someone lit flames,
And the local birdlife exploded.
There’s a feeling one gets when looking west,
Past smoke, ramps, and timber disorders.
Myles sees ladders rise up where no ladders should be,
And updates the risk register borders.
And it’s whispered that soon, if we all survive night,
The composter will hum like a furnace.
But the tune that we hear through the crackle and sparks
Is Craig, building more things without purpose.
What Did We Learn?
The evening produced several important lessons, all of which will be forgotten at the exact moment they become relevant.
Electricity makes everything better, right up until it makes everything turn off at once.
Purified water stops dysentery, which is a considerable improvement over the previous settlement health plan of “try not to think about it.”
Let Myles do all the cabling. It is neater that way, and also gives everyone someone obvious to blame when half the facility shuts down.
Never teach Craig how to do something. It will be misused. This is not pessimism. This is longitudinal research.
Never leave Craig unsupervised.
If Craig is quiet, it is not peace. It is the calm before the storm, or the sound of him calculating how many foundations it takes to offend a mountain.
Achievements Unlocked
Dave achieved: Housework
Convince at least one other person to spend the entire session doing chores, then somehow make it feel like destiny.
Myles achieved: Indoor Plumbing
Hook all crafting stations up with water and become the unwilling patron saint of pipes, cables, refuelling schedules, and suspiciously avoidable outages.
Craig achieved: Led Zeppelin
Build a stairway to heaven, or at least to a point several metres above practical usefulness.
Zaph achieved: Coffee Break
Take the night off and still somehow exert enough pressure on the group that they invented radar to avoid future disappointment.
Stripes achieved: Protector of Animals
Defend the yard from a wildlife incursion, proving once again that Sir Stripes is one of the few members of the team whose combat priorities are both clear and helpful.
Tune In Next Week
Tune in next week to see if Dave can speed up crop production.
If Myles can triangulate the exotic deposits.
If Sir Stripes can talk the group into the Zebra rescue mission.
If Craig can connect all the ladders without deforesting the planet.
And if Zaph can put up with the shenanigans.
On current evidence, the answer to that last one is “technically yes, but not quietly.”
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