Dune the Awakening – Climb Every Mesa (and Crash Every Thopter)

🎵 Climb every mesa, ford every quicksand… 🎵

  Climb every mesa, scour high and low, 
  Follow every byway, chase where winds may blow. 
  Climb every mesa, ford every quicksand, skim over every drumsand, 
  Follow each spice eruption till you find your team’s grand stand. 
  A role that will take all the nerve you can spare, 
  Every day of your life, in a rift, gasping for air.  

By the time we were done, the only thing we hadn’t forded was Craig’s patience, and even that was wearing dangerously thin.

Between sessions, Dave channelled his inner Frank Lloyd Wright—if Wright had been fuelled entirely by caffeine and bad ideas—and unveiled his Mighty Pyramid of Power. All generators? Inside it. Fabricators? Moved to “a more convenient spot,” which is Dave-speak for “somewhere you’ll trip over them on your way to bed.” Two extra hangars appeared for his and Craig’s thopters, which prompted Myles to ask the obvious:
“Who authorised this?”
Dave, without missing a beat: “It’s implied in your request for more mighty hanger space.”
And thus, Dave found his official team role: Den Mother & Part-Time Architect Dude.

Myles locked his own thopter, borrowed Zaph’s, and left Zaph stuck at base—thus discovering his role: Thopter Repair Dude. Craig’s thopter-building escapades? Redacted, mostly out of kindness.

Following the song lyrics, we flew north to “climb” mighty mesas—by which I mean we landed on top, looted the chests, and fled. Aluminium mining resumed until Myles fell off a mesa, leaving his thopter stranded like an abandoned shopping trolley on a freeway overpass.

We practised gliding our thopters for speed and fuel efficiency. Most of us improved. Craig perfected the art of dune-crashing and hitching rides on Myles’s thopter… until Myles learned the ejection manoeuvre.

Westward we went, where we found the Pallas, sliced through doors, and ran Atreides faction quests. House Atreides got our loyalty (because the Harkonnen “shaved head and smell like regret” aesthetic is a hard pass). Then north again to ruin a slaver outpost—water tanks sabotaged, fuel depot torched, crane wrecked—before they emptied a full can of whoop-arse on Craig. We killed their boss, but not before Craig cemented his team role as: Crash Test Dummy & Target Dummy.

Back at base, we built Zaph a mighty sniper rifle, because of course Sniper is always Zaph’s role. Then came rebel-hunting and blood extraction in a massive rift base. Craig—lacking a working anti-grav belt—jumped down the stairwell and added Vampire to his résumé.

Naturally, Dune wouldn’t be Dune without a few 10,000-year-old imperial testing stations. We ran a couple, unlocked our inner Sword-Masters, and were heading home when Dave’s squirrel instincts kicked in.
“OOOH SHINY—purple sand!” he yelled, cutting power and barrel-rolling into a death spiral. It was almost enough to challenge Craig’s crash test title.

Myles—apparently colour-blind to purple—could only see spice sand while hovering and scanning. Dave demonstrated spice collection and worm evasion. Craig tried to distract the worm with interpretive dance while Zaph harvested. Close calls were had. Photos exist. And since there’s an achievement for collecting 2,000 spice, this nonsense will be repeated.

Till next week—remember: climb every mesa, ford every quicksand… and if you can’t fly it, crash it spectacularly.

Dune: The Awakening – Dave and the Agave of Madness

 

They say the desert reveals who you really are. For Dave, it revealed a man willing to cross half a planet on a dodgy bike, risking worms, warlords, and warranty voids—for mood lighting.

It began, innocently enough, with a minor garage upgrade. Dave, standing atop our recently refurbished base, admired his architectural triumph: “You can now fit two buggies.” Naturally, this revelation led to the spontaneous crafting of a second buggy to confirm said claim. It fit. Barely. The trikes were promptly evicted to make room, and a second storey was hastily slapped onto the garage like a badly written sequel. Dave’s bedroom was sacrificed for a new ramp. Safety barriers were added, mainly to stop Craig driving into the power generators—again.

But the pièce de résistance? Lighting. Specifically, those glowing CHOAM ceiling panels everyone else seemed to have. Our place looked like a bunker-themed cave rave hosted by a mole. Dave’s IKEA manual, tragically, had nothing on “desert chic.” So he did the unthinkable: he asked for directions.

“A trader west of the barrier sells the plans,” said a suspiciously chill drifter.

Dave nodded, sprinted to his bike, and packed supplies like a man going on a milk run: water, fuel, and a bit of Solaris cash. Myles, performing his sacred Mentat duty of maintenance, warned, “I haven’t serviced that bike yet.”

Dave dismissed him. “It’s fine.”

It was not fine.

🚨Desert Odyssey, Chapter One: Worm, Meet Dave

He passed Thor’s Hammer, zipped past the spaceship wreck, and hit the borderlands at full throttle—at which point the planet’s ecosystem attempted to murder him. A sandworm the size of optimism in a Zaph strategy meeting rose from the dunes. Dave screamed, swerved, and barely reached rocky safety.

He detoured north, skirted cliffs, and days later stumbled into the fabled trading post, panting, sunburnt, and bug-eyed. He bought the CHOAM lighting instructions and, broke but victorious, caught a thopter ride home.

Then he read the instructions.

“Requires: Salvaged metal – check.
Agave seeds – 5 per light.”

Dave blinked. “Wait—seeds?”

The guide helpfully noted: Agave grows near cacti.

Cacti? We’d never seen a cactus. Just bones, rocks, and Craig’s abandoned quest markers. Dave returned to the Anvil, bribed a trader with spice beer, and was told, “Go west. Far west.”

🚨Desert Odyssey, Chapter Two: Agave or Bust

Dave prepped again. “Just collecting flowers!” he called as he left.

“Get plant fibre!” shouted Zaph.

“Get evil black rocks!” added Craig.

“Let me service your bike!” begged Myles.

“No time!” Dave roared, vanishing in a cloud of overconfidence and unserviced treads.

He flew to the Pinnacle post, leapt on his barely-functional bike (now blinking red like it was having a heart attack), and tore westward. He picked up fibre. He mined black rocks. He explored cactus-filled valleys teeming with scavengers and glow panels mocking him from other players’ bases. He looted. He climbed. He grapple-jumped and faceplanted. He waited through entire moon cycles hoping agave would bloom.

Nothing.

Finally, in a cactus grove surrounded by corpses and broken dreams, he found it: one agave plant. Five seeds. One light.

“ARE YOU @#%&ING KIDDING ME!?” echoed across the sands.

🚨Desert Odyssey, Final Chapter: The Return of the Lightbearer

Dust-choked and sun-fried, Dave eventually staggered into the Crossroads outpost, pack overflowing with goods and bitterness. He didn’t even wait for pleasantries—just slapped Solaris into the pilot’s hand. “Fly. Anvil. Now.”

Back at base, Friday night arrived.

We gathered to admire his labours.

Myles: “The entrance is too narrow. I can’t get the buggy through.”
Craig: “Where’s the bike park?”
Zaph: “Where’s my supersuit? Where’s anything? Why are the crafting stations gone?”
Dave: sobbing in the buggy storage bay

Salvation came in the form of ornithopter licenses. Zaph trained Myles in an adrenaline-fueled certification run over Haga Rift—Zaph weaving through crevasses like a Fremen pod-racing ace. Myles invoked the God-Emperor and banned Zaph from stunt-flying forever.

We returned to our warlike duties:

• Slaver extermination (10 required, we overachieved).

• Strategic sniping (Zaph), head ducking (Slavers), and terrain-crawling (Dave).

• Looting every chest en route to help our friends (also Dave).

• Zaph getting bored and flying off solo to get murdered (Zaph).

In the final showdown, we split our approach: Dave on foot, Zaph sniping from the south, Craig and Myles pulling a dramatic rooftop landing that alerted every single enemy in the base. Dave got pinned. Zaph couldn’t see him. It all went sideways until Dave finally shot his captor and squirrel-looted his way into the fight.

Zaph died. Dave ran back. Craig was possibly redecorating. Myles was swearing.

Somehow, we won. We handed in missions. Raided labs. Explored caves. Lied to a stoned Harkonnen. Made progress toward becoming Swordmasters of Atreides.

Next week, we journey westward—toward the wreck of the Pallas.

Probably via cactus.

Probably looking for lights.

Probably driven by Dave.

---

Agave count: 20. Number of functioning lights: 4.

Number of times Dave was told to service his bike: infinite.