Icarus: Now for Something New

 

Zaph was bored.

This is never a safe sentence. In ordinary households, a bored person might rearrange a bookshelf, alphabetise a spice rack, or take up sourdough until the kitchen begins to resemble a minor volcanic incident. In the Crypt Creeps Friday household, Zaph being bored meant something far more dangerous: he wanted a challenge.

No more of these go-here, collect-rock missions. No more gentle corporate errands from orbiting clipboard enthusiasts. Zaph wanted to hunt. He wanted to kill powerful creatures. He wanted to prove himself against the best Icarus could throw against us.

This was, of course, how tragedies begin. Not with thunder. Not with a warning klaxon. Just Zaph, quietly announcing that the usual level of reckless stupidity was no longer recreationally sufficient.

Dave, sensing opportunity the way a wolf senses a limping goat, talked Myles into buying the Great Hunts expansion. The logic was flawless, provided nobody examined it in daylight. What could possibly go wrong? We were experienced. We had guns. We had zebras. We had a base called Winchester. We had Craig, which admittedly undermined the entire previous sentence.

Settle in. It was going to get rocky.

We fired up the campaign. Some miners had gone missing in the desert, so naturally we needed to go find them. Dave mused that they were probably hanging out at the fisherman’s hut, because in Icarus all mysteries eventually resolve into either a hut, a predator, or a corpse with a regrettable inventory. But the actual miner-hunting would need to wait until Zaph was on.

And so, with the main campaign objective politely postponed, the group did what any disciplined expeditionary team would do.

We immediately wandered off and started tampering with industrial equipment.

Operation: Mining Site Conversion – A Multi-Step Success Story

In the meantime, Dave decided to convert some mining sites we didn’t need — coal and aluminium — into something else, in the hope we could get more useful resources closer to home. This was sensible in the way many Dave plans are sensible: the desired outcome was clearly beneficial, and all intervening danger was filed under “character building”.

Step 1 – Fast Talk

Dave talked Myles into building a deep-mine conversion device.

This should have been the first warning. Dave rarely asks Myles to build something simple, like a chair, unless the chair eventually explodes, summons wildlife, or requires a small war crimes tribunal to operate.

Step 2 – Redact Critical Information

As everyone probably knows by now, when you need Myles to do something dangerous, it is important to leave out key information until he is committed. The trick is to give just enough detail to make the job sound achievable, but not enough to trigger the part of Myles’s brain responsible for adult supervision.

“Build this,” said Dave, spiritually if not literally.

“What does it do?” asked the last remaining trace of caution.

“Improves mining.”

This was technically true, which is the most suspicious form of truth.

Step 3 – Do Not RTFM

With the device made, we just had to work out how to operate it. Myles took it out for a playtest, as Dave had lost the instruction manual. This was unfortunate, because the manual may have contained useful sections such as How Not To Die, Why The Warning Lights Are Flashing, and Please Do Not Install This On A Mountain Because Craig Will Think That Is A Good Idea.

“Just remove the extractor on the coal mine, and place it down,” Dave suggested.

Myles did that, because history is apparently not a teacher, but a decorative wall hanging. The device was placed down and switched to scan mode.

Step 4 – Compare Tools

The radar we use for exotic detection draws a large circle that covers about 10% of a single map grid. It is big enough to be annoying, loud enough to attract predators, and expensive enough that everyone pretends to know what they are doing while standing near it.

This new device was different. It covered 80% of four map grids. It converted every unused mine, which in our case was four. On paper, this was magnificent. On Icarus, anything that covers that much territory is less a tool and more a formal invitation to the local ecosystem.

Step 5 – Downplay the Danger

“Any issues with this I should know about?” asked Myles.

“Well, it makes some noise, so it’s bound to attract a few animals,” Dave replied, flicking through the shopping guide for advanced defences.

This was classic Dave. The verbal equivalent of telling someone the volcano is “a bit warm”.

He had read the warning sticker before removing it. The one that said: “DANGER, DANGER, this device will attract giant creatures.”

In Dave’s defence, stickers are really just strongly worded suggestions from people with less confidence.

Step 6 – Installation

Myles suggested we install the device in the middle of our industrial complex, so it would be easier to defend out on the lake. Winchester already had walls, turrets, waterwheels, defensive chokepoints, and the general air of a settlement one bad decision away from becoming a documentary.

Dave thought about the damage giant creatures could do to the industrial complex. It was a rare and beautiful moment: the pause between someone proposing a plan and the mental image of an elephant using your generator room as a foot spa.

Dave promptly mentioned that it was bound to attract more creatures than the radar, so perhaps somewhere away from the base would be better.

This was reasonable.

Naturally, Craig then entered the conversation.

Step 7 – Never Surrender

Craig tried to convince the guys it should be installed on the side of a mountain, high above the ground.

This sounded like the dumbest plan since the gold dragon escapade of 2003. That was the historical event in which Craig attempted to pickpocket a two-storey town guardian gold dragon, thereby converting an entire settlement from “neutral” to “deeply committed to Craig’s removal”. Scholars continue to debate whether it was an act of courage, ignorance, or pure Craig.

Not to be put off by “NO!”, “NO!!!”, or “HELL NO!!!”, Craig borrowed the machine, carried it up the mountain walkway, and installed it on a stone platform where the guys would never find it.

We now knew where all the stone had gone.

This answered a long-running base logistics mystery. The missing stone had not vanished into construction, maintenance, or some useful communal project. It had been converted into Craig’s private alpine death altar, an installation combining scenic views, unclear structural integrity, and the sort of workplace safety compliance normally associated with pirate rafts.

Step 8 – Power

The new device was powered by refined oil, which, luckily, Dave had locked in a cupboard. This meant Craig was unable to power it and get everyone killed.

It is important to recognise good governance when it appears. In this case, governance took the form of Dave having both foresight and a cupboard.

Step 9 – Denial

Craig complained about the amount of shit he was getting over placement of the device.

Dave responded that the amount of shit was directly related to the amount of crap we put up with from Craig.

This was not so much a comeback as an equation.

Step 10 – Surrender

The one benefit of the mountain location was its distance from the zebra pen. This mattered. Winchester could be rebuilt. Machines could be replaced. Ammunition could be manufactured. But Stripes and Patch had already endured enough human strategy to qualify for trauma counselling.

So we decided to humour Craig.

And once again, 25 years of real-life experience was tossed out the airlock because it was too far to climb up the mountain to reclaim the device.

There are many ways a group can make a bad decision. Some are caused by ambition. Some by panic. Ours was caused by fatigue and elevation.

Step 11 – Preparation

With the location decided, it was time to prep for activation.

Myles decided to climb Craig’s ramp to check the installation and add the fuel. This was useful, because Myles immediately demonstrated that a single misstep leads to a quick fall to your death.

In fairness, this was valuable information. There are many safety audits in the world, but few are conducted by throwing the medic off the mountain and noting where he lands.

Dave installed defensive walls with spikes and hedgehogs to secure the start of the ramp. As Myles had located the spot directly below the device by falling on it, Dave also installed a ring of hedgehogs around this. It was practical, efficient, and deeply on brand: CCF surveying by terminal velocity.

Step 12 – Upgrade Defences

Now came the moment of truth.

Dave suggested Myles research an automated defence turret and build a couple for installation.

“Why?” asked Myles. “We can handle the wildlife.”

Dave chuckled. Then he laughed. Stripes brayed. Patch snorted.

“The radar attracts wolves, bears and elephants,” Dave noted. “This thing is nicknamed the Thumper, and lights up half the planet. So what do you think will happen?”

Myles pondered.

“A few bears?” he suggested.

Patch rolled his eyes. How could any human be so naïve, he thought. Patch has never been formally elected to command, but he has increasingly strong opinions about human leadership, and frankly his campaign platform is improving.

“Try giant worms and landsharks?” Dave replied. “Can we get a few platforms to stand on over here, Craig?”

Craig set to work, installing some platforms and stairs.

This is always a mixed sentence. Craig building platforms and stairs can mean “excellent vantage points for battle”. It can also mean “welcome to the surprise falling section of tonight’s entertainment”. The distinction is rarely visible until someone has already stepped forward.

Step 13 – More Ammunition

Myles built automated defence turrets.

“I have 50 bullets for each gun,” he declared.

Patch rolled his eyes.

Dave ordered another 200 rounds of ammunition. For each gun.

Myles installed the guns in the hedgehog circle under the platforms, where they sat looking reassuringly mechanical and expensive. There is something calming about an automated turret. It suggests civilisation. Planning. Engineering. A future in which the bullets go in the dangerous creature rather than, say, into the generator.

More on that later.

Step 14 – Get the Band Together

Zaph joined us to find out what was happening for the night. Myles filled him in, which was not a briefing so much as a confession with diagrams.

Zaph climbed the mountain to assume the sniper position. This was sensible. Zaph likes height, distance, and situations where the enemy is dead before anyone has to explain the plan to Craig.

The device stood ready. The ramp stood mostly ready. The hedgehogs stood where Dave had placed them. The turrets waited. The zebras judged. The mountain, if mountains can be said to have opinions, seemed unimpressed.

Step 15 – Turn It On

Zaph flipped the switch.

The machine pulsed. It roared. The mountain shook.

Was that the machine, or Icarus responding?

The ground shook, and a giant caveworm burst forth right in front of us. This was not the polite sort of wildlife encounter where something growls from the treeline and gives everyone a moment to check their reload. This was a geological objection with teeth.

The autoturrets fired. Zaph fired. We all fired.

The worm died.

Dave jumped over the hedgehogs to claim the loot, because Dave will risk impalement for alchemical reagents, unknown monster parts, or anything that might fit in a box labelled “useful later”.

Step 16 – Denial

“So that’s it then?” Myles asked. “Well that was disappointing.”

The machine roared.

Icarus roared.

Zaph noted, “We are at 5%.”

Another cave worm attacked. Myles checked the ammo levels in the turrets. They were doing fine. This was reassuring, which meant the universe was merely waiting for the correct comedic beat before becoming unreasonable.

Step 17 – Downtime

The machine roared again. Icarus took a break. We twiddled our thumbs, oiled our guns, and looked around waiting for the kicker.

Small worms attacked.

Easy peasy.

There is always a dangerous psychological moment in any CCF mission when things briefly appear under control. This is when the group starts thinking thoughts like “maybe we prepared properly” or “perhaps the platform is adequate” or “Craig has not made anything structurally murderous for several minutes”.

These thoughts are traps.

Step 18 – Ambush

A giant worm emerged from the mountain beside Zaph and knocked him off the platform, leaving the device unprotected as Zaph plummeted to his death.

There it was.

The kicker.

Dave ran for the ramp and scrambled up the mountain to deal with the worm. This is one of Dave’s great strengths: when something large, hostile, and poorly explained appears on a ledge, Dave’s instinct is not to retreat, reassess, or ask whether there is a better way. Dave runs toward it, presumably because somewhere inside him a tiny heroic idiot is shouting “reagents!”

Step 19 – It Gets Worse

Myles rezzed Zaph.

Zaph couldn’t find his gun.

Things were taking a turn for the worse, but at least it couldn’t get worse.

Never say this. Never think this. Never even make eye contact with the concept.

“Never fear, I am here,” Craig yelled, running up the ramp behind Dave.

There are phrases that inspire confidence. “Reinforcements have arrived.” “The turrets are holding.” “The ammunition is in the correct machine.”

“Never fear, I am here,” shouted by Craig, while running toward a mountain-mounted death device during a giant worm attack, is not one of them.

Step 20 – Almost There

Dave killed the giant worm.

“71%,” he noted, checking the machine.

The number was encouraging. It suggested progress. It suggested the Thumper might actually finish converting the mines before the mountain became a crater, the ramp became a memorial, or Craig discovered a new way to weaponise stairs.

Step 21 – Do You Have to Ask?

Dave turned around.

“Why is this platform so narrow?” he asked Craig. “A single misstep and I could plummet to my death.”

At this point, we should note that Craig has a history of architectural accidents: building walkways with gaps where you plummet to your death, and doors you open, step through, and plummet to your death. And now we can add extremely narrow walkways that a goat couldn’t traverse to the list.

This is not merely a design flaw. It is a portfolio.

Some builders produce villas. Some produce fortifications. Craig produces navigable litigation.

Step 22 – Nailed It!

We survived.

This was unexpected enough to require a moment.

The coal site converted to copper, and the aluminium site converted to silica. Dave declared the mission a success after installing the extractors.

And he was not wrong. The device had worked. Nobody important had permanently died. The zebras remained intact. Winchester was not flattened. We had more copper, more silica, and a new entry in the safety manual: Do Not Let Craig Choose the Installation Site Unless the Alternative Is Worse, and Even Then Sleep On It.

Operation: Find the Miners

The devs billed the Great Hunt as a campaign: a series of missions leading to a grand finale. This was new. Different. Certainly a break from “go here, collect this, ship it to space”.

So we sent Zaph off into the desert alone.

Standard recon.

This sounds reckless until one remembers that Zaph is usually happiest when several kilometres away from the group, quietly solving problems with a rifle. Meanwhile, the rest of us prepped for the mission and awaited news of what we needed to bring.

Zaph arrived on site and found something strange: a well-prepared mining site. It had a house, a stable for the animals, an outhouse, mining and drilling equipment — but no miners.

This was different. It looked nothing like one of our hurried constructions. There were no half-finished walls, no suspicious gaps in the floor, no ladder ascending toward a health insurance claim. It had the unsettling competence of people who had read the instructions.

As Zaph poked around, a strange new creature we had never seen before pounced.

Zaph fired.

His bullets bounced off its armour plating.

This was new.

Zaph ran to the outhouse, hid, and called for backup.

Zaph hiding, calling for backup — that’s new.

Myles leapt on Patch and headed out. Dave hurriedly grabbed some bags from the adventurers’ cupboard, jumped on Stripes, and headed out.

Craig looked around.

“Where is everyone?” he asked.

“I will just stay here and look after the coffee crop,” he declared, in his best “you won’t regret leaving me unsupervised” voice.

No one believed this voice. The voice had form. The voice had built ladders to nowhere, installed machinery on a mountain, and once tried to negotiate with gravity by ignoring it.

Myles and Dave arrived, set up turrets, and fought the creature. With enough bullets, it turned out you could shoot its armour off to get to its rock-hard underbelly.

WTH. That’s new.

Victorious once more, we looked around. We found the dead miners, torn apart. We found the large excavator sitting on a disturbed patch of ground. Then the ground shook as another of the creatures called forth.

This was it. Our Moria moment.

The miners had dug too deep, disturbing the Quarrite, who were not happy at being woken from their thousand-year slumber.

One imagines the Quarrite had been enjoying a perfectly respectable underground existence: darkness, quiet, perhaps a little sedimentary ambience. Then along came corporate miners with drills, paperwork, and the sort of optimism usually punished by ancient things beneath the earth.

We fought the Quarrite off as another emerged before we finally got our shite together and used our pickaxes to collapse the opening.

This detail deserves respect. After all the guns, turrets, panic, armour plating, and shouting, the solution was to hit the problem with a pickaxe until the planet stopped offering us lizard-crabs.

We won’t even mention that during this fight Myles panicked and put bullets in the generator instead of the turrets.

Except, obviously, we will mention it.

Myles put bullets in the generator instead of the turrets.

No one died.

That’s new.

Once the smoke cleared, we put the meat on the fire to cook, stabled the zebras, slept in bunk beds, and didn’t even worry if the house would still be standing when we returned. This was an unsettlingly civilised evening by our standards. There was shelter. There were beds. There was cooked meat. There was no immediate sign of Craig modifying the roof.

In the morning, we grabbed everything that looked even remotely useful, packed it on our zebras, and headed home. This is the CCF definition of a rescue operation: confirm all miners are dead, loot the premises, and return with the air of men who have performed a public service.

Myles and Dave stopped on the way to clean the waterwheels and collect the titanium, iron, oxite, and platinum. Because even in the middle of a campaign about missing miners and newly awakened subterranean horrors, housework remains housework.

Back at Winchester we unloaded everything. Zaph put some posters on the wall. Dave installed a dog statue in the generator room.

There was no sign of Craig.

But the crops were watered and packed.

This was suspiciously helpful, which is one of the most dangerous kinds of suspicious.

We repaired our guns, restocked ammunition, and stocked up on food. There was a sense, faint but present, that the Great Hunt might be less a series of missions and more a curriculum designed to teach us why miners should have better evacuation procedures.

Operation: Find the Miners – Part 2

With all the miners dead at the main site, we had four small mines to check out for survivors.

Let’s cut to the chase.

All the miners were dead.

They should have spent more time building defences and less time building fancy mining sites. Their architecture was lovely. Their survivability was not. Somewhere there was probably a corporate training video explaining the importance of productivity targets, and nowhere in it was a section titled What To Do When Armoured Lizard-Crabs Pour Out Of The Ground Because Dave’s Friend Zaph Wanted A Challenge.

We killed hordes of cave worms. We fought off multiple Quarrite. We looted everything that wasn’t nailed down. If it was nailed down, it was assessed for whether the nails were worth removing.

We survived a sandstorm. We closed numerous tunnels.

Stripes took it to a giant caveworm, distracting it while we burned through our ammunition supplies and broke our guns. There are moments when a zebra becomes more than a mount. Stripes became strategy, tank, moral centre, and possibly the only creature present with a functioning survival instinct.

Zaph died.

But we saved his horse.

This is how priorities are established in the field.

Finally, the monster was dead.

We credit our success to leaving Craig at home.

This may seem harsh, but the evidence is compelling. No unexplained ladders appeared. No one opened a door and stepped into an architectural punchline. No machinery migrated to the side of a mountain. The coffee crop was, by all accounts, doing well. Sometimes leadership is knowing when to deploy Craig, and sometimes leadership is knowing when Craig is best applied to agriculture.

The Housework

We headed home. Zaph logged, so we did the housework.

The usual mining site trips followed: collect the resources, refuel the drills, keep the industrial machine fed, and pretend that this is not how most of our heroic adventures actually end.

Avoid the Quarrite.

WTH? That’s new.

Quarrite tunnels were popping up all over the place. Simple resource runs had become a Quarrite-infested nightmare. Thank you, devs and corporate miner schmucks, for waking them up.

For the record, a Quarrite is a large, heavily armoured lizard-crab critter that rolls like an armadillo. And they just keep crawling out of the ground if you don’t close their tunnels.

This changes the tone of a simple errand. Previously, a mining run involved checking fuel, collecting ore, avoiding the occasional wolf, and muttering about inventory weight. Now every trip had the potential to become a wildlife documentary narrated by someone increasingly worried about ammunition.

Myles led a Quarrite onto a hedgehog emplacement to kill it. This was elegant by our standards: use the spiky thing for the spiky problem. No explosions, no mountain platforms, no generator full of bullets. Just practical battlefield pest control.

Dave then asked Stripes to go super stompy and distract the Quarrite so he could sneak up and close a tunnel.

Stripes attacked a wolf.

This distracted the Quarrite, who rushed out and attacked Dave.

Dave ran around the opening, trying to dodge the Quarrite and whack it with his pick. It was less a tactical manoeuvre and more a man arguing with geology while an armoured crab-lizard tried to repossess his ankles.

Stripes stopped playing with the wolf and came over to lend a hand. Myles and Stripes killed the Quarrite while Dave closed the tunnel.

Again, the zebra saved the day.

Again, the humans took credit.

Tonight’s Campfire Song – Ballad of the Crypt Creeps

The original campfire number had the correct spirit but bore a suspicious resemblance to something sung by men with berets and a much better chain of command. So, in the interests of keeping the lawyers asleep and the campfire warm, here is the CCF-safe version: same sentiment, less court-adjacent marching cadence.

Four fools fell from orbit bright,
Packed with guns and half a plan,
One read maps by lantern light,
One built walls because he can.

Dave found ore and made a farm,
Looted glands and called it need,
Zaph shot danger from afar,
Craig built stairs no goat should heed.

Patch stood calm and judged the lot,
Stripes went stompy through the fray,
Turrets chewed through every shot,
Still we shouted, “CCF way.”

Quarrite claws beneath the sand,
Caveworms punching through the clay,
Myles put rounds in generator hands,
Somehow no one died that day.

Coffee watered, zebras fed,
Guns repaired by firelight’s sway,
If the miners all are dead,
Loot the camp and ride away.

So raise a mug to plans ignored,
To narrow ramps and worms that spray,
To copper won and bullets poured,
Another night, the CCF way.

Did We Learn or Achieve Anything This Week?

We learned that shit just got real. The fecal matter has hit the rotary impeller device.

We learned to be careful what you ask for. Zaph asked for a challenge, and the Quarrite have awoken. This is what happens when boredom is allowed to influence procurement decisions.

We learned that next time Zaph says he’s bored, tell him to suck it up instead of accepting the challenge. There is nothing wrong with a quiet night of collecting rocks. Rocks do not usually have armour plating, ancient grudges, or the ability to burst out of the ground beside the sniper platform.

We learned there can never be enough bullets. Automatic rifles chew through ammo like Craig builds ladders: quickly, excessively, and with little regard for what happens afterwards.

We learned Dave’s plans are based on outcomes. A few deaths are an acceptable price for more copper.

Last week, we didn’t set any particular goal, and we smashed that.

We made some upgrades on our base.

Myles installed an advanced orbital exchange device; the drop pods now land close. This is excellent news for anyone tired of chasing deliveries across the wilderness like a courier in a hostile nature reserve.

Dave upgraded the beehive, totally unrelated to Craig’s fear of bees. Any suggestion that this was psychological warfare is both unfair and insufficiently proven.

Myles installed a chemistry bench, because explosives don’t invent themselves. They require benches, ingredients, poor judgement, and someone willing to say, “This will probably be useful later.”

Craig upgraded his deathtrap to stone, so it is camouflaged against the mountain. This is important, because nothing says “safety improvement” like making the hazard harder to see.

Dave achieved: Real Man — don’t read the instructions.

Myles achieved: Panic Under Fire — install the bullets in the generator.

Craig achieved: Deathtrap — have Myles plummet to his death from your platform.

Craig also achieved: Apiphobia — develop fear of bees.

Zaph achieved: Boredom Overcome — kill a giant cave worm.

And somewhere beneath the sands, the Quarrite stirred, stretched, and began preparing fresh paperwork for our next resource run.