Icarus: The Great Hunt, the Great XP Scam, and the Great Lake Platform Unbuilding

 

There are weeks in Icarus where the group strides boldly across the alien wilderness, armed with purpose, discipline, and a clear operational plan.

This was not one of those weeks.

This was one of those weeks where the phrase “housework” somehow escalated into wildlife intrusion, industrial fish rot, XP class warfare, elephant-based radar testing, a failed desert hunting expedition, and Craig threatening retribution because Dave discovered that gravity still works.

It began, ominously enough, with Myles and Dave logging on an hour early to get the housework done. Not “housework” in the domestic sense, although given the state of Winchester that distinction is becoming harder to maintain. This was the frontier version: finishing the exotic mining, refuelling every automated mining project, collecting the resources, and generally keeping the increasingly absurd Winchester industrial complex from collapsing into its own spreadsheet.

For a brief and dangerous moment, things looked productive.

Naturally, that could not be allowed to continue.

The Bridge Folly

Unbeknownst to the group, Craig had been busy extending the jetty across the lake and connecting it to Dave’s building project.

This was discovered in the traditional Craig manner: not through planning approval, structural inspection, or any verbal announcement, but through the consequences of it having already gone horribly wrong.

The group had also not noticed that the local wildlife had begun using Craig’s magnificent aquatic infrastructure as a shortcut across the lake. Animals, being smarter than the average building inspector and considerably more direct than Craig, had worked out that the jetty led straight to the back door of Winchester.

The back door had, of course, been left open by Craig.

Myles went AFK, leaving his toon standing safely on the second floor. This seemed reasonable. Winchester had walls. Winchester had doors. Winchester had, in theory, a defensible structure.

Five minutes later, Myles returned to find himself dead.

Wild horses were busy destroying Winchester.

This raised several important questions. How had the horses got in? Why were they so angry? At what point had the house become a wildlife corridor? And, most importantly, why is it always Craig?

The answers, in order, were: the jetty, unknown, Craig’s bridge, and because the universe has a sense of humour but poor risk controls.

The Fish Extermination Project

Meanwhile, Dave had turned his attention to the fish problem.

Specifically, the lake piranha problem.

The piranha had long existed as one of those environmental features designed by developers to remind players that even shallow water can contain poor life choices. Dave, however, had developed a plan. Not a plan of revenge in the simple sense. Dave does not merely kill something when he can fold it into a multi-stage production chain and call it operational efficiency.

Dave converted platinum ingots into platinum sheaths, and those into platinum weave. This produced enough material to make eight advanced fish traps.

These were installed in the lake to catch fish, which were then left in the sun to rot, so the rotten fish could be fed into the biofuel composter.

At long last, the piranha were useful.

Not dignified, perhaps. But useful.

Four more cans were made to fill with biofuel. Unfortunately, the fish alone were not enough to keep up with demand. The group’s automated mining empire had grown hungry. It needed fuel. It needed constant fuel. It needed the sort of fuel demand usually associated with minor nations and doomed space programs.

So one wheat field, half a forest, and all vegetation within a mile radius were fed into the biofuel composter.

Still, the fuel supply could not keep up.

And what about the other half of the forest?

An excellent question.

That was fed into the mortar and pestle to be turned into tree sap, which was then used to fuel the biofuel composter.

It was at this point that Winchester began to feel less like a homestead and more like a biomass crimes tribunal.

Why Is Dave 15 Levels Ahead of Everyone Else?

Zaph logged on and immediately demanded an explanation for why Dave was fifteen levels higher than everyone else.

Normally, this sort of thing can be explained by Dave playing on the server during the off days. Dave is, after all, a man who treats “weekly gaming session” as a loose social construct and “resource gathering” as something that can happen at any hour short of an intervention.

But not this time.

Myles was hosting the server. Dave had no secret midnight access. No unsupervised agricultural sabbaticals. No illicit Wednesday mining retreat.

Dave’s explanation was simple.

“it's not my fault that you guys suck at maximising XP opportunities.”

Myles, representing the committee for the prevention of Dave getting away with that sort of statement unchallenged, demanded an explanation.

“Please explain.”

Dave thought about it.

This was already suspicious. Dave thinking about how to explain something usually means he has either already done the thing, is currently doing the thing, or has prepared a moral defence for doing the thing.

“Here is a great example – Myles takes the full biofuel cans, runs around collecting the mined resources, refuels the drills, comes back and stocks the furnaces to make ingots. All very important – net XP gain 0, nada, zip.”

A silence followed. Not because anyone disagreed, but because the horrible shape of the truth had begun to emerge.

Dave continued.

“While he does that, I water the crops – net XP 10,000, then I harvest the crops, net XP 10,000, then I take raw materials and set the alchemy machines producing resin, organic resin, gunpowder, steel bloom – net XP heaps. I also get the fabricator making gold and copper wire, electronics, mining drills, beacons, and net XP heaps. Then I go back and harvest the crops again – net XP 10,000.”

This was not a confession. This was a TED Talk for agricultural villainy.

Dave was not merely farming crops. Dave was farming the XP system.

Myles took the coffee crop to the trader to sell. This was important. Dave, after all, had made it very clear that he did not work for free.

But the XP result?

Nada.

In conclusion, automation was great. It improved efficiency. It produced far more resources than could be obtained by mining with a pick. It allowed the group to build a sprawling, semi-functional, extremely needy mining empire.

But there was no XP in it.

Then came the dagger.

“Oh, Myles, could you go unjam the water wheel? Our platinum drill has stopped.”

There it was. The entire economy of Winchester in one sentence.

Myles mused that Dave had delegated all the important tasks that provided no XP to him, while reserving all the high XP tasks for himself.

Dave nodded.

“when you put it like that, it sounds kind of planned, but it's not my fault you put me in charge of manufacturing and farming. I just optimised the opportunity. Whereas you optimised not doing grunt work, which is clearly not valued by the developers.”

It was, in its own horrible way, elegant.

Myles nodded.

“so it's like the over-encumbered bag exploit and the greenhouse 4-pieces-of-glass exploit. You are just making the best use of the system provided by the developers.”

“Exactly,” Dave replied. “You burn wood to make charcoal – XP 0, I take charcoal and sulphur to make gunpowder, or charcoal and Iron ore to make steel bloom – XP heaps. But hey, don’t feel bad, I couldn’t be where I am today without the valuable work you do.”

This was the sort of thing said by a man standing on a pyramid built from unpaid labour and plausible deniability.

Craig, having absorbed the full economic horror of the moment, offered his own analysis.

“This game sucks.”

And so, in the spirit of justice, accountability, and redistributed suffering, Craig was placed in charge of watering the plants and harvesting the crops until further notice.

This may not have solved the XP imbalance.

But it did feel morally correct.

The Titanium Mine

With Craig reassigned to agricultural labour, Myles and Zaph set off to do the important task of setting up an automated electric drill on a titanium site.

Net XP: 0.

They also used the radar to triangulate the next exotic deposit.

Net XP: 0.

This was valuable work. Essential work. Infrastructure work. The sort of work upon which empires are built and spreadsheets are later blamed.

Meanwhile, Dave built another exotic extractor.

Ding.

Dave levelled.

Craig was very quiet.

This could mean several things. He might have been reflecting on the unjust structure of labour in a survival crafting economy. He might have been planning revenge. He might have been watering crops and reconsidering his life choices.

Most likely, he was building something somewhere that would later be described as “technically connected to the house.”

The Exotic Adventure

No, not exotic dancers.

No, not secret spy missions in a tropical country involving cocktails, espionage, and someone wearing linen irresponsibly.

This was the other kind of exotic: meteor showers, mining drills, bad weather, and the constant sense that the planet would prefer everyone to leave.

The triangulation had worked. The group found another exotic deposit close by. Dave set up the two drills, connected biofuel generators for power, and wired everything together.

When Myles and Zaph returned, the system was turned on, and another 220 exotics were mined.

This went astonishingly well.

There was only one small timeout required to hide in a cave while the weather attempted to murder everyone. By Icarus standards, this counts as smooth execution. A professional operation. Practically NASA.

Flush with success, and therefore vulnerable to overconfidence, the group decided to do more scanning.

Myles and Zaph headed off to a nearby possible site while Dave packed up all the equipment.

The location Dave provided was a bust.

This surprised no one and yet was still disappointing.

So Myles and Zaph headed into the desert to do another triangulation. They set up the radar beside a lake, placed some railing, and turned on the scan.

Seconds later, Myles asked whether elephants were hostile.

“Nope,” declared Dave. “not a problem.”

Dave, as usual, was wrong.

The elephant charged.

Myles swore as the elephant thundered toward the radar. Zaph opened fire, landing multiple shots into the elephant while it attacked the equipment with the professional outrage of a building inspector discovering Craig’s lake bridge.

Then a cougar, seeing Zaph distracted, did what cougars do best.

It pounced.

Zaph went down.

The cougar then attacked his horse, Mr Speedy.

Myles jumped on Patch and fled.

Patch, who has endured repeated indignities and constant references to being a stripey horse, finally lodged a formal objection by bucking Myles off.

Myles picked up Zaph. Zaph dusted himself off, grabbed his gear, and killed both the elephant and the cougar.

Myles healed Mr Speedy.

It was, all things considered, a remarkably compressed demonstration of the food chain, poor advice, equine resentment, and why “piddly little railing fences” are not an elephant policy.

Take two did not go much better than take one.

Dave rode across the desert to assist. Naturally, by the time Dave arrived, everything was already under control. This is one of the great laws of group survival games: help arrives precisely when it is no longer useful, but still in time to offer commentary.

Myles packed up his toys and went home to Winchester.

Craig asked if anyone needed help.

This was received with the cautious silence normally reserved for unexploded ordnance.

The group regrouped at Winchester so Myles could select a real job.

Desert Mission — Part 1

Some haughty executives wanted a nice camp built in the desert.

The group has learned something about these missions: they do not tell you the specifics until you are on site. This is apparently because the station prefers to operate like a corporate escape room designed by people who hate clarity.

Zaph rode out so the group could find the details.

Dave started up the fabricator to make the required equipment: a skinning bench, a trophy bench, and a decoration bench.

This was not camping.

This was a hunting expedition wearing a camping hat.

The equipment was installed. The group cashed in. Myles dialled up the next mission.

It is important, at moments like this, to remember that progress in Icarus often resembles victory right up until the next task explains what it actually wants.

Desert Mission — Part 2

With all the hunting happening, the station sent down an order for meat.

Not some meat.

Not useful meat.

Not the perfectly good cooked and salted meat already sitting around like the group had prepared for exactly this sort of nonsense.

No.

The order required dried meat, dried white meat, dried gamey meat, and dried giant meat.

Dave rode out to the drop pod to get the details.

Craig, speaking for common sense and pantry management, demanded an explanation.

“What is with all this dried meat – demanded Craig. We have cooked and salted meat, I can bring that?”

Zaph replied with the bleak calm of a man who has already accepted the shape of the misery.

“Nope Zaph replied, hunt some animals and bring the raw meat here, we will have to dry it on racks to match the orders.”

The customer had at least provided details of which animals needed to be hunted for each type of meat.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that every animal on the planet had apparently heard a great hunt was in progress and vanished.

Normally, the group cannot move ten feet without cougars, jackals, antelope, zebra, bears, elephants, or something with teeth deciding that humans are an invasive species. But now that specific animals were required for a mission, the entire ecosystem had developed witness protection.

The cougars disappeared.

The jackals disappeared.

The antelope disappeared.

The zebra disappeared.

Dave and Zaph both made trips through the snow and out to the river looking for bears, polar or brown, and found none.

No bears.

No useful meat.

No dignity.

If only the group had the animal-attracting radar.

Myles had left that at home.

As for giant meat, the group killed three elephants and got nothing but tusks. This was less “great hunt” and more “ivory-themed disappointment.”

After a couple of frustrating hours, the group had filled half the order and called it a night.

Still, it was not a total loss.

While hiding from a storm, the group found another cave of wonders.

So that will be plundered later, obviously. It would be irresponsible not to strip mine the place in the name of morale.

Jenga

Before logging off, Craig continued work on his lake platform project.

This should have been a peaceful moment. A gentle return to Craig’s personal architecture movement: Vertical Nonsense With Aquatic Access.

But Dave had other ideas.

Dave pulled the pin on the project.

Literally.

He removed the lowest ladder section.

The developers, in a rare moment of firm but fair judgement, had accounted for gravity.

Craig’s entire project collapsed into the lake.

It was less a demolition and more a physics-based editorial comment.

Craig was not impressed.

He vowed retribution on Dave.

And so ends another chapter in the long-running civil engineering cold war between “Craig builds something alarming” and “someone else eventually discovers the load-bearing mistake.”

Tonight’s Campfire Song — by Craig

Craig, still processing the emotional wreckage of Dave’s act of ladder-based sabotage, produced the evening’s campfire song.

In the interests of not summoning copyright lawyers from orbit, the original spirit has been preserved while the words have been dragged through the biofuel composter and reassembled into something legally less flammable.

Can’t believe it, Dave, you clearly framed it
Built my masterpiece, then you unmade it
Lakefront vision, flawless elevation
Then you yanked the base from my creation

Don’t you smirk there holding that candle
I’m a walking hazard when I lose the handle
One small ladder, one loud collapse
Now my whole grand plan is fish food scraps

You pulled the pin on my project — that’s sabotage
Dave, that’s sabotage
Winchester saw it
The lake remembers
Craig does not forgive
Craig does not forget

There are times when a song becomes more than a song.

This was not one of those times.

But it did rhyme with blame, which is the important part.

Did We Learn or Achieve Anything This Week?

Yes.

Unfortunately.

The group learned that when animals are not required, they are everywhere. When animals are required, they vanish into the trees like unionised actors during an unpaid callback.

The group also learned that piddly little railing fences do not stop elephants.

This feels like something that should have been obvious. But in fairness, most health and safety policies are written in hindsight, and occasionally that hindsight is shaped like a furious elephant attacking a radar.

Last week, the group said to tune in this week to see if:

• We can finish mining the exotics without mishap.
  Done.

• We can convince Myles to harvest exotics from a geyser.
  Nope.

• Dave takes revenge on the lake piranha by installing fish traps.
  Done.

• Dave converts the entire planet into an enormous coffee-growing conglomerate.
  Replaced soy bean plots with coffee.

• Dave can produce biofuel fast enough to keep up with the automated mining.
  Not a chance.

• Craig can connect his ladders into a death-defying puzzle designed to kill Dave.
  It was going well until Dave intervened.

Achievements

Dave achieved Jenga: remove the key piece to make Craig’s construction collapse.

Dave also achieved Aladdin: discover another cave of wonders.

Myles achieved WQE: pick the worst quest ever.

Craig achieved Limited: blocked during construction by game limits, and Dave.

Zaph achieved Cougar Bait: get slaughtered by a cougar whilst fighting an elephant.

Sturnim achieved Pr0n: unable to join due to watching dubious content with family.

A lesser group might view these as failures.

The Crypt Creeps understand them as progress markers.

Tune In Next Week

Tune in next week to see if:

• The group can find the animals required to finish the meat mission.

• Cave of Wonders 2.0 is stripped of every useful resource and several decorative ones.

• Dave apologises to Craig for the epic Jenga disaster.

• Sturnim joins before the group finishes.

Given the evidence, the animals will remain hidden, the cave will be emptied with industrial precision, Dave will not apologise in any meaningful legal sense, and Sturnim will arrive just in time to ask what everyone is doing.

Meanwhile, Craig will be somewhere near the lake, rebuilding.

Possibly higher.

Possibly wider.

Definitely without a permit.

Icarus: Request Denied, Zebra Rescue, and the Tragic Ballad of Patch

 

Last night’s expedition began, as so many great endeavours do, with paperwork, delusion, and Craig attempting to smuggle a future catastrophe through the approvals process.

“What’s this then?” asked Dave, examining the request form Craig had submitted with the weary suspicion of a man who had seen forests, houses, and probably basic social contracts go up in flames.

“It’s for the new Timber Extraction unit,” Craig replied, already vibrating at the frequency of preventable disaster. “The schematics have just been released, it’s legendary — think of what I could do with a legendary timber extraction unit.”

Dave did think about it.

He looked out the window at the smoking, charred ruin that had once been a thriving forest, before Craig had apparently decided that photosynthesis was a personal insult.

“Request Denied!!!”

Craig, realising his chances were somewhere between Buckleys and None, hurriedly scratched out “extraction unit,” wrote “chainsaw,” and resubmitted the form with the innocent expression of a man who had merely renamed the war crime.

Dave looked at the form again.

“Let me see if I understand your request: you want us to build a petroleum extraction and refining industry so you can have a chainsaw?”

Craig nodded enthusiastically, sensing victory, because Dave did love new technology. Dave loved new technology almost as much as Craig loved misunderstanding why he should never be allowed near it.

“Request Denied!!!”

Dave scratched out “chainsaw,” wrote “platinum axe” on the form, and stamped it approved.

“Here, you can have a shiny axe made possible through Myles’s platinum mining expedition.”

Craig snatched the form from Dave and headed to the forge to get his new axe before Dave could remember that Craig with any axe, even a manual one, was still Craig with an axe.

Dave then turned to the latest requisition list from Myles for the evening’s desert Zebra rescue mission.

“You want what now? Airconditioning? Request Denied!!”

He scratched out “air conditioner,” wrote “insulated water bottle” on the form, and stamped it approved.

Next form.

“Concrete fortifications — Request Denied!!!”

He scratched out “Concrete fortifications,” wrote “Hedgehogs & fencing,” and stamped that approved too.

Thus did Dave establish himself not merely as House Builder and Farmer, but as Quartermaster-General of the Petty Tyranny Division. The man had discovered bureaucracy and immediately weaponised it.

Then, with the administrative business concluded and several people now significantly less prepared than they had hoped, Dave pulled out a blank requisition form, wrote “Greenhouse” on it, and stamped it approved.

Apparently when Dave wants something, democracy blooms.

The Greenhouse Project

Dave happily got to work. A greenhouse would mean faster crop growth. Faster crop growth would mean more trips to the trader. More trips to the trader would mean sweet, sweet Ren, which Dave now regarded less as currency and more as a moral philosophy.

He laid the foundation: four stone walls at one corner of the plantation. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been enough steel to make all the reinforced glass required for a proper greenhouse wall and roof.

Instead, he had four sections of reinforced glass.

A lesser man might have called this “not enough greenhouse.” Dave called it “strategy.”

By placing the four sections of reinforced glass with the confidence of a man bluffing both botany and physics, Dave managed to trick the plants into growing faster.

“How the mighty have fallen,” he thought, surveying his work. “Dave: Tricker of plants.”

Finally, he checked the crops.

Yep. Plants are dumb.

They were now growing 40% faster.

Then a horse ran through the plantation, trampling the seedlings.

“Craig!!!!”

It is important to note that Craig may not have been directly responsible for this particular incident. It is equally important to note that this has never stopped the established legal framework from assigning blame correctly in spirit.

The Zebra Rescue Mission

“So what are we doing tonight?” Myles asked.

Stripes’ ears perked up.

This was the first warning sign.

The zebra trotted over to Myles and nudged him towards the contact device. Myles switched it on. Stripes daintily lifted a hoof and tapped the buttons with the precise menace of a union delegate lodging a formal grievance.

Myles peered at the operation.

Zebra rescue mission.

Stripes nodded.

Myles looked at the target location on the map.

“I have never been there before. It could be dangerous.”

Stripes thumped his hoof on the ground emphatically, then glared at Myles.

“Right — locking that in,” said Myles, backing away from Stripes.

And so the mission was chosen by a zebra, approved by fear, and prepared for with the kind of calm professionalism usually seen immediately before a workplace safety documentary.

It was almost as if the group had foreknowledge of the challenges ahead. We brought prebuilt ramps, beds, hedgehogs, rails, house parts, and, critically, switched off Craig’s flamethrower.

This last step may have saved a biome.

As usual, we spent an hour prepping, making gear, packing for the mission, and generally doing the sort of careful preparation that suggests lessons had been learned.

By the time Myles declared everyone ready to leave, Zaph was already in the desert.

Because Zaph does not wait for the group. Zaph materialises ahead of the group, like a tactical rumour.

The journey through the forest and riverlands was uneventful, although at one point we had to sit out a storm in a mine.

Naturally, we stripped it bare.

On the way, we passed the broken-down wooden remains of former buildings used during the great bear hunt of ’26. We even fixed one of them up to its former glory, then immediately pilfered the fire pit.

We did not burn any of them down, due entirely to the fortuitous disabling of Craig’s flamethrower.

This counts as progress.

We reached the desert without incidence. As Zaph scouted ahead, Dave marked the potential location of a world boss to be avoided on the map.

Zaph avoided the boss.

He then rode straight across a giant sand worm lair and complained to Dave for not marking it on the map.

This was unfair, but efficient, and therefore very on-brand.

Eventually we arrived in the general area to check on the previous rescue squad. Their house, DustWater, was located at the end of a large lake.

The house appeared to be full of cougars.

Not metaphorical cougars. Actual cougars. Angry, toothy, home-invading cougars. The sort of real estate issue not usually covered in the inspection report.

Not to worry. We built a small pillbox and installed a single bed for respawning purposes. Then we built a ramp up an outcrop and moved our mounts out of harm’s way, because even by our standards we were not letting the animals watch us die from ground level.

We found a place to set up, installing prefabricated fencing and hedgehogs to slow and kill the cougars.

Now we just needed to let the cougars out of the house.

We needed someone brave. Heroic. Not afraid to die.

Instead, we got Dave.

Dave opened the door.

The cougars roared.

Dave fled, leaving puddles behind.

Zaph shot the cougars as they approached. Craig snuck out and skinned them.

It was all going to plan, which immediately made everyone suspicious.

Then the cougars got stuck and started destroying the house to get out.

Dave, who had already completed the “open door and flee screaming” portion of the operation, ran back and shot a cougar to get their attention.

This worked.

A bunch of cougars ran out.

Unfortunately, cougars run faster than Dave.

It was brutal.

They caught him just as he was trying to reach safety beyond the hedgehogs, and Myles had to sneak out to rescue him.

Which, to be clear, was not in the original plan. Myles’s plan was mostly “map, supervise, and remain unchewed.”

Finally, the cougar crisis was resolved. The group had a beautiful new home made from sandstone, with a lovely raised animal shelter, some beds, a fireplace, and a solar-powered chemistry bench.

Nothing says “rescue operation” like moving into the disaster zone and installing mod-cons.

While the rest of the guys explored the house and installed the essentials — mortar and pestle, bedrolls, crafting bench, and the usual collection of items that suggest we might accidentally colonise the place — Zaph got on with the actual mission.

Zebra rescue.

Zaph rescued two zebras. He walked out to one, saddled it up, and rode back.

No fuss. No muss.

This was the dangerous moment, because success made Zaph cocky.

He decided to collect two zebras at once.

One zebra: no problem.

Two zebras: the local wildlife objected to mass migration.

The cougars swarmed. Zaph fought bravely, but the fight was going badly. He jumped on a zebra and rode back towards the group.

The other zebra, Patch, followed behind, distracting the cougars.

Dave jumped on Stripes and rode out to the rescue.

Halfway to Zaph, the news came in.

Patch didn’t make it.

RIP Patch.

There are moments in history when everything changes. The fall of empires. The signing of treaties. The invention of plumbing.

And then there was Stripes learning what happened to Patch.

Stripes, infuriated, stomped five cougars into the desert sand, pounding their corpses until only bloody stains and visages remained.

This was less “mount behaviour” and more “biblical judgement with hooves.”

Zaph got back to the house, dejected.

There was still one zebra left to collect.

This one was trickier. It had somehow got itself stuck on a Mesa, because apparently even the zebras had started taking inspiration from Craig’s architectural philosophy.

Not to worry. We came prepared.

Zaph grabbed the prebuilt ramps and headed off. As he worked his way up the side of the Mesa, he stopped to admire his progress, stepped back to get a better view, and fell to his death.

There is a lesson here, and it is not a subtle one.

Myles rode out to rescue him.

Zaph finished the ramp and rescued the last zebra.

The Iron Mining Project

Given our desperate shortage of iron — the cupboard was bare — we decided to find some nearby mines and gather ore.

This was successful. So successful, in fact, that the cupboard is now almost full again, which means Dave will soon be able to deny higher-quality requests with even greater confidence.

Myles tried to get Dave to exclude the deplorable wrong-cave bee incident from this report.

Request Denied!!

The wrong cave was entered. The bees were real. The shame was documented.

The Triangulation Project

On the way to the Zebra rescue, we stopped halfway, set up the radar, and did another scan.

More time was spent fortifying the location than it took to run the scan.

Dave had clearly overhyped the expected animal response. Somewhere in his mind, he had prepared for a full-scale planetary uprising. What we got was closer to mild ecological disapproval.

After the Zebra rescue was completed, we ran another scan from the desert house. We set up atop a rock outcrop, with hedgehogs protecting the path up.

Again, we overprepared. Only four hyenas objected to the scan, and Myles and Dave quickly dispatched them.

Using the three scans, we determined three possible locations and finally found an exotic deposit.

We set up rails, built a stone house to protect the mounts, installed the extractor, and powered it.

It hummed merrily, pulling valuable exotic material from the ground.

For a brief, shining moment, the operation looked competent.

The only mishaps were Stripes setting himself on fire on the indoor campfire, then running through the forest and setting the undergrowth alight.

Also, lightning storms set the forest on fire while we hid in the house.

“Craig!!!”

Again, was Craig responsible for lightning? Technically no.

But he has created a climate of expectation.

It was going so well that Myles and Craig headed back to Winchester to unload their stuff. After an hour, with half the exotics extracted and shipped, we called it a night.

Nobody died in the extraction phase.

This should be recorded somewhere in case it never happens again.

Tonight’s Campfire Song — Started by Zaph

Zaph began the evening’s musical offering with a jaunty frontier-style number about home, wildlife, and the persistent hope that Craig might go one full day without converting woodland into decorative ash.

There were verses about buffalo, deer, cougars, and the rare dream of a land where discouraging words were few and Craig was not setting forests on fire all day.

Craig then contributed a verse, because of course he did.

His was about standing proudly on top of a mountain, the wind at your back, ember and ash in the air, and Myles’s house burning to the ground.

It was less a song and more a signed confession with a melody.

Stripes added a verse too, which raised several questions about desert canyons, floods, planning decisions, and the alarming number of zebras involved in what had originally sounded like a simple rescue operation.

Myles then looked at Dave and burst into song, demanding to know whether any of this had been thought out at all, whether the whole base design was just paint thrown at a wall, whether there were blueprints, whether there were plans, and whether anyone might be permitted to speak to the architect.

Dave, unable to help himself, sang lovingly of wildflowers, coffee crops, dear lands, and the stars glittering at night.

Zaph brought it home with a final verse about the lake house, the bears, the wolves, the absence of discouraging words, and the desperate hope that Craig was not building ladders all day.

It was, in its own way, beautiful.

Not musically.

But sociologically.

Did We Learn or Achieve Anything This Week?

We learnt that Dave is a petty tyrant and should have had a career as an army supply sergeant.

We learnt that you can make a plan Dave will follow. All you have to do is let Dave make the plan.

We learnt that two zebras are one too many to rescue at the same time.

We learnt not to step backwards when admiring the ramp you are standing on.

We learnt that it’s not always Craig’s fault, although 99.99% of the time it is.

We learnt that it’s not always Craig who isn’t listening to instructions. Sometimes it’s Myles.

We learnt that Stripes is awesome, but not fireproof.

Last week, we said to tune in this week to see if Dave could speed up crop production.

Done.

If Myles could triangulate the exotic deposits.

Done.

If Stripes could talk us into the Zebra rescue mission.

Done.

If Craig could connect all the ladders.

Request Denied.

And if Zaph could put up with the shenanigans.

Nope.

We also mined enough iron to refill the cupboard, which means Dave can now return to denying requests from a position of industrial strength.

Achievements Unlocked

Dave achieved: I Forgot — “Who packed this mining equipment on my Zebra?”

Myles achieved: Did the Bees Respawn? — Go to the wrong mine.

Myles also achieved: I Am Craig — Ignore Dave’s explanations, then ask questions that have already been answered.

Craig achieved: Scapegoat — Be blamed incorrectly for everything that goes wrong.

This remains one of Craig’s most reliable contributions to group cohesion.

Zaph achieved: Patchwork — Get Patch eaten by cougars.

Zaph also achieved: Seeking Support — Need a friend’s help to avoid dying, and to recover from dying.

Stripes achieved: Rescuer — Save your zebra buddies from the cougars.

Stripes also achieved: It Burns — Set yourself on fire.

Tune In Next Week

Tune in next week to see if we can finish mining the exotics without mishap.

If we can convince Myles to harvest exotics from a geyser.

If Dave takes revenge on the lake piranha by installing fish traps.

If Dave converts the entire planet into an enormous coffee-growing conglomerate.

If Dave can produce biofuel fast enough to keep up with the automated mining.

And if Craig can connect his ladders into a death-defying puzzle designed to kill Dave.

Request pending.