This was, on the surface, a reasonable complaint.
Last week Dave had nominated Craig for the Achieved Something award, which might sound faintly sarcastic but was nevertheless recognition. Craig felt that his many contributions to the group were not receiving the detailed historical treatment they deserved.
And Craig had a point.
Sometimes he does get the rough end of the blogging.
This is completely unrelated to his inability to follow verbal instructions, his refusal to read written instructions, his general disregard for lore and backstory—apparently that's Dave's job—his tendency to build ladders that lead nowhere, his enthusiasm for creating traps specifically to prank the others, and the peculiar statistical anomaly whereby Craig is suspiciously close to almost everything immediately before it goes wrong.
Pure coincidence.
Clearly the historical record needed correcting.
So this week Dave committed to giving more blog space to Craig's contributions.
The universe, as it turned out, had heard this request.
The universe also has a sense of humour.
Craig may not enjoy the result.
Particularly because, had Craig actually read all of last week's blog, he might have noticed that Dave and Myles had already hatched a plan to prank him.
It was not an elaborate plan.
There were no blueprints.
There was no need for a PowerPoint deck, a risk register, a Jira epic or a steering committee.
The entire plan could be summarised as:
Craig yelling WTF as he plummeted to his death from a great height.
A simple plan.
An elegant plan.
A plan which, importantly, relied upon Craig not reading things.
So confidence was high.
But we digress.
A day earlier...
Thursday Night: Responsible Adults Doing Housekeeping
Friday was a public holiday, which meant the obvious and mature response was to add another Nightingale session on Thursday night.
Zaph was unavailable, so rather than advance the main quest without him, the remaining three agreed that Thursday would be devoted to housekeeping.
This is the sort of thing that happens to gaming groups after nearly thirty years.
There was once a time when extra gaming meant charging heroically into unknown dungeons, slaying dragons and acquiring legendary weapons.
Now it means:
"Perhaps we should reorganise the storage."
Myles began by teaching Craig how to enchant gear.
Craig had spent all his magic essence.
Or that's what he says.
The exact fate of Craig's essence reserves remains a matter for forensic accountants, several regulatory bodies and possibly a Royal Commission.
Whatever had happened to it, Craig had none.
So Craig talked Myles into using his essence to craft charms and enchantments for Craig to apply to his gear.
This arrangement had many benefits.
For Craig.
Craig added stamina and damage-boosting invocations to his clothes and armour while Myles stood nearby in the traditional role of Adult Supervising Someone Who Has Been Explicitly Told Which Button To Press.
Under Myles's eagle eye and instructions, Craig also applied a charm to his umbrella.
This detail is not important.
There is absolutely no reason to remember it.
Please move along.
Meanwhile Dave was organising the inventory.
This involved opening storage chests and discovering everything Craig had dumped into random locations rather than putting it in the correct chest.
For clarity, it is not just Craig who does this.
Myles does as well.
This is one of those minor domestic incompatibilities that have destroyed lesser civilisations.
Dave believes items have categories.
Myles and Craig believe a chest is a chest, and if the lid closes the system is working.
After recovering ores from food storage, fibres from metal storage and whatever other acts of inventory terrorism had occurred during the previous week, Dave restored order.
The group then processed the raw materials.
Ore became ingots.
Sand became glass.
Wood became lumber.
Industry flourished.
Smoke rose from furnaces.
The base briefly resembled a functioning Victorian industrial enterprise rather than a shed occupied by four heavily armed men who spend most evenings arguing about where someone put the coal.
Eventually Myles surveyed the timber reserves and made a serious tactical error.
He declared that two tons of wood was enough.
Craig immediately replied:
"So we need more wood then,"
He grabbed his axe and headed out to clear-cut another forest.
Somewhere in the distance, an entire ecosystem whispered, "Oh, bollocks."
Dave upgraded his tools.
Then Dave lost his climbing picks.
Which is impressive because the purpose of organising everything had ostensibly been to know where everything was.
Apparently the storage system had become so efficient that even Dave could no longer defeat it.
With the chores complete, the group considered what to do next.
Zaph was away, nobody wanted to progress the main quest without him, and there were only so many times three grown men could admire neatly stacked ingots.
So everyone logged off for the night.
A sensible, restrained session.
The last one of those for a while.
Friday Night: Side Quests, Because Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong
Friday evening arrived.
Craig had still not been pranked.
This administrative oversight would shortly be corrected.
With Zaph away, the group decided to clean up some side quests instead of progressing the main story.
This produced an unexpectedly productive opening.
Two Bastilles were solved: one musical and one involving symbols.
Large quantities of tin and copper were mined.
Another druid was assisted in building a camp.
There was gathering.
There was construction.
There was puzzle-solving.
There was, briefly, competence.
Unfortunately Nightingale's quest system has ideas about co-op play.
Most multiplayer games work on the principle of "someone solves the quest, and we all complete it".
Nightingale prefers individual accountability.
Everyone must personally complete the quest.
This is admirable in the same way that making every passenger on a commercial flight personally land the aircraft would be admirable.
So the current quest situation looked like this:
Cure a corrupted Canute: Myles could do it. Craig and Dave could not.
Puck's quest: Dave could do it. Myles and Craig could not.
The team had therefore reached that advanced stage of cooperative gaming where everyone is standing next to the same quest objective while inhabiting subtly different bureaucratic realities.
Craig Makes a Critical Perception Check
The group headed toward the marker Dave had placed on the map for Puck's quest.
The marker sat on top of a hill.
The objective, however, did not.
There was nothing there.
Dave looked around and announced:
"It looks like its below us, there must be a cave"
This was strong deductive work.
The marker was below them.
Therefore: cave.
The search began.
Craig found the cave.
Inside the cave was the corrupted mushroom they were looking for.
Dave searched for runes or ruins and couldn't find them.
Craig looked around.
Craig found the runes.
They were above everyone, sitting on a ledge.
Myles was astonished.
Not performatively astonished.
Actually astonished.
Myles asked Craig multiple times how he'd spotted them.
There are events that force historians to reconsider long-established assumptions.
The fall of Constantinople.
The discovery of penicillin.
The first powered flight.
Craig noticing something before everyone else.
For the official record—and it genuinely pains everyone involved to write this—the group could not have completed Puck's quest without Craig.
There.
It is documented.
Craig has been given credit.
Everyone may wish to bookmark this section because normal service will shortly resume.
Our Bad: We Completed the Main Quest
With only half the night gone, a problem emerged.
Everyone was bored.
The side quests were finished.
The inventory was squared away.
Myles had built several lodestar fast-travel points.
There were no immediate chores left.
Three gamers found themselves in the terrible position of having efficiently completed the things they had specifically planned to do.
There was nothing for it.
They accidentally started doing the main quest.
This was unfortunate because the whole point of not doing the main quest was to avoid doing it without Zaph.
They would simply have to repeat it with him next week.
Nobody saw any problem with this.
The group found Desma at the Site of Power and dropped a lodestone there to enable fast travel.
Craig picked up the Puck quest.
They told Desma how they had tested her purity potion, and Desma sent them off to cure the corrupted Canute.
Desma needed them to test and improve the potion so she could cure a colleague suffering from a mysterious ailment.
She supplied some additional ingredients.
Those ingredients were turned into cleansing potions.
The cleansing potions were then tested on corrupted roots inside a ruin.
They worked.
So far, excellent.
Science had happened.
The group had followed a method.
There were ingredients, experimentation and observable results.
This was practically a peer-reviewed clinical trial by CCF standards.
Next they took the potion and fixed the Realm Transmuter.
Myles played a minor card so everyone could gain more essence.
The group then returned to Desma and reported their success.
From there they spoke to her sick colleague.
The colleague was sceptical.
He didn't think the potion would work.
This is where medical ethics took a brief holiday.
The group held him down and waterboarded him with the potion until he drank it.
The patient had not exactly provided informed consent, but he had provided an opinion, and the team had decided that his opinion was inconvenient.
Unfortunately, the patient was correct.
The potion didn't help.
Having survived an experimental treatment administered by four adventurers whose bedside manner largely consisted of pinning him to the floor, he suggested they find someone in Welkins Rest.
This seemed like excellent advice.
Particularly the part where they went somewhere else.
Opening the Portal
There was still nothing better to do.
So the group climbed the Fae tower beside Desma's camp to cleanse the Site of Power.
They descended into the ruins beneath it.
And descended.
And descended some more.
There were puzzles.
There were Boundless.
There were multiple underground levels.
The cheerful Victorian gaslamp adventure gradually turned into one of those situations where nobody has seen natural daylight for half an hour and Dave is cheerfully saying things like, "There might be another room down here."
Eventually, deep underground, they found the big bad boss.
Azazel the Penitent.
A giant corrupted bear.
Azazel was apparently asleep.
The group looked around for some mechanism that might awaken him.
A lever.
A rune.
A ritual.
Perhaps an ancient inscription explaining the careful ceremonial process necessary to summon the beast.
Nothing obvious presented itself.
So Dave hit the bear with his sword.
Because that always works.
It worked.
Azazel woke up.
There followed the traditional exchange of views between heavily armed adventurers and an enormous corrupted animal.
We came.
We saw.
We kicked its corrupted arse.
For defeating Azazel, the group received a Major Realm card for Welkins Reach.
They made a quick trip to the crossroads.
Myles activated the portal mechanism.
And a gateway opened into a new realm.
This was exciting.
New scenery.
New enemies.
New resources.
New mysteries.
And, as Craig would soon discover, an entirely new relationship with gravity.
Welkins Reach: Nightingale Turns the Difficulty Knob
The first thing everyone noticed upon arriving at the ruined observatory was the floating landscape.
Chunks of rock hung impossibly in the sky.
Ruins sat on top of them.
Imagine Avatar without the Na'vi.
And with more Victorian umbrellas.
Dave immediately recognised the underlying game-design philosophy.
Jumping puzzles.
Excellent.
The map was also different.
Instead of politely revealing most of the interesting nearby locations, it displayed only a couple of points.
Everything else would have to be discovered through exploration.
The Boundless had also upgraded their equipment.
There were now riflemen.
Because apparently being mobbed by supernatural creatures wasn't sufficient.
And there were flying gargoyles.
Because apparently being shot by supernatural creatures wasn't sufficient either.
Welkins Reach also contained instant-death traps.
Just in case anyone remained optimistic.
Finally, the entire realm was a desert.
Exposure to the sun caused UV damage.
Travellers therefore needed to keep their umbrellas up to avoid slowly roasting beneath the desert sky.
The umbrella had gone from whimsical Victorian accessory to essential survival equipment.
This would shortly become relevant.
The First Umbrella Incident
Welkins Reach contained blue magical springboards.
Stepping onto one launched the traveller high into the air.
At the top of the trajectory, the traveller could open an umbrella and glide across enormous distances.
It was ridiculous.
It was glorious.
It was exactly the sort of traversal system that Nightingale had been building toward.
And it worked wonderfully.
Provided Myles hadn't sabotaged your umbrella.
With almost nothing marked on the map, Myles asked Dave to choose an objective.
Dave looked around.
A Zeppelin was floating above a distant rock in the sky.
There are times when careful strategic planning is required.
This wasn't one of them.
Obviously they were going to the Zeppelin.
Myles stepped onto the magical springboard.
The springboard hurled him high into the desert sky.
At the top of the arc he opened his umbrella, caught the altered gravity and glided toward the distant Zeppelin camp.
He made it.
Dave followed.
Springboard.
Sky.
Umbrella.
Glide.
Zeppelin.
Easy.
Then Craig stepped onto the springboard.
Craig shot upward.
Craig opened his umbrella.
Craig began gliding toward the Zeppelin camp.
Craig continued gliding toward the—
Oops.
Craig ran out of stamina.
Craig dropped out of the sky.
There is a particular moment in any failed glide where controlled flight becomes falling with accessories.
Craig passed through this transition.
Rapidly.
Some distance below, the desert waited.
Craig plummeted to his death.
There was concern.
There was confusion.
There was also the immediate and unanimous conclusion that Craig must have done something wrong.
The group blamed Craig for being unable to follow simple instructions.
This was plausible because history had provided an extensive body of supporting evidence.
No further investigation was considered necessary.
Zeppelin Camp and Other Sensible Activities
Myles built a lodestar fast-travel point at the Zeppelin camp so Craig could rejoin everyone without needing to perform another aviation demonstration.
Craig arrived.
The group picked up some quests.
They stole everything that wasn't locked down.
Civilisation had been restored.
One of the new objectives sent them toward a crashed Zeppelin site.
Fortunately the wreck was nearby.
More importantly, it was lower down.
Craig could reach it.
The group headed over to investigate.
The Boundless ambushed them.
The new riflemen opened fire.
Flying gargoyles joined in.
Dave was knocked out.
Fortunately Dave's follower rescued him, proving once again that computer-controlled companions can occasionally demonstrate better situational awareness than the actual players.
Dave recovered.
Then Dave found lots of new flowers to pick.
Life was good in the desert.
Some men recover from near-death experiences by reassessing their priorities.
Dave sees a new reagent.
The Second Umbrella Incident
Eventually the group found another blue magical springboard.
Dave chose an observatory as the next destination.
There turned out to be two observatories.
Dave went to the wrong one.
Myles went to the correct one.
Craig went upward.
Craig opened his umbrella.
Craig started gliding.
Craig ran out of stamina.
Craig plummeted to his death.
Again.
This created a delicate communications problem.
Dave had chosen the wrong observatory.
Craig had died.
These two facts could potentially create awkward questions.
Fortunately the group acted quickly.
Everyone blamed Craig.
He had obviously gone to the wrong observatory.
This explanation had the important advantage of arriving before Craig had enough time to construct an alternative narrative.
Momentum is everything.
Who Locks Doors With Magic?
The observatory was magically locked.
Apparently whoever had built it felt that an ordinary deadbolt was insufficient.
To unlock it, the group needed to solve several Bastilles.
This was placed on the to-do list.
Another magical springboard nearby offered access to a floating ruin.
Myles installed another lodestar so they could return later and use the location as a jumping-off point for further exploration.
And speaking of jumping off...
The springboard sat on a nearby floating rock.
Dave jumped toward it.
Dave missed.
This needs to be formally recorded because Dave is NOT the master of jumping puzzles.
That title remains vacant.
Or possibly cursed.
The Third Umbrella Incident
Myles asked Dave to choose the next objective.
Dave selected a ruin barely visible in the distance.
Myles looked at the gap.
Myles looked at Dave.
Myles declared that it was too far away.
Dave said it was easy.
Then Dave demonstrated.
He jumped onto the magical springboard.
The springboard threw him high into the air.
He opened his umbrella.
He began gliding.
It was a long way.
Very long.
Dave kept one eye on his stamina as the bar slowly ticked downward.
The distant ruin got closer.
The stamina bar got shorter.
The ruin got closer.
Eventually Dave reached it.
He landed with half his stamina remaining.
Perfect.
This was exactly the sort of demonstration required.
Sometimes, if you want to persuade Craig to jump to his death, you simply need to prove that something is possible first.
Craig jumped onto the springboard.
The springboard launched him skyward.
Craig opened his umbrella.
He began gliding toward the distant ruin.
And his stamina started dropping.
Quickly.
Very quickly.
Suspiciously quickly.
The ruin remained far away.
Craig's stamina vanished.
Gravity reviewed the situation and decided to become involved.
Craig fell to his death.
Again.
For the third time.
Myles followed.
Myles launched.
Myles opened his umbrella.
Myles glided to the ruin.
Myles landed successfully.
Dave had made it.
Myles had made it.
Craig had become terrain.
After clearing out the Boundless occupying the ruin, the group held a serious discussion about why Craig was having so much trouble with his umbrella.
There had been three attempts.
There had been three deaths.
The variable appeared to be Craig.
Myles considered the evidence.
Then Myles noted that he must have mistakenly installed the wrong charm on Craig's umbrella.
Ah.
Craig probably would have accepted this explanation.
A simple enchanting mistake.
Tragic.
Unfortunate.
Nobody's fault.
But Dave, displaying the sort of loyalty normally associated with Crown witnesses negotiating immunity, pointed out one additional fact.
This was exactly the gliding-death prank that Dave and Myles had discussed doing to Craig the previous week.
Not something vaguely similar.
Not merely a prank involving an umbrella.
The exact plan.
Sabotage Craig's gliding.
Get him to leap from somewhere high.
Watch him discover the problem after it was much too late to do anything about it.
And not only had the prank worked.
They had managed to get Craig to fall for it three times.
The first death could be considered an accident.
The second death suggested a pattern.
By the third, the experiment had reproducibility.
Peer review was unnecessary.
Tonight's Campfire Song: A Chaunting Lay by Myles
As the desert night settled around the realm walkers, someone produced the traditional campfire instrument used by adventurers since antiquity: unjustified confidence.
A suitable chaunting lay was required.
So, in the spirit of the evening:
Through the Fae gate, off we go,
Where floating rocks ignore below.
Zeppelins tumble, gargoyles fly,
And riflemen explain exactly why.
Minor cards twist season and air,
Major cards send us gods-know-where.
Blue springs launch us toward the moon,
Then umbrellas turn the fall to swoon.
Hold it high and watch stamina drain,
Ignore the rapidly approaching plain.
Did someone charm that brolly wrong?
Best not ask; just glide along.
Myles says surely Craig missed a step,
Dave demonstrates with stamina left.
The ruin is close—well, close-ish, perhaps—
Until Craig begins his atmospheric collapse.
What did you do this time, Craig?
Perhaps the instructions were slightly vague.
One fall, two falls, three in the sand:
Plausible deniability is going exactly as planned.
There was probably applause.
Or litigation.
Did We Learn or Achieve Anything This Week?
Against expectations, yes.
We learnt:
The corruption in Sylvans Grove was caused by someone breaking a contract with the Fae.
So this one was not Craig's fault.
The Fae, apparently, take their contracts seriously.
This is useful information for future interactions with magical beings.
Read the agreement.
Check the termination clauses.
Never assume immortals regard "we forgot" as a valid defence.
We also learnt that you can prank the prankster.
This is significant.
For years Craig has operated under the assumption that asymmetrical prank warfare favours the attacker.
He has dug holes.
Built traps.
Constructed ladders whose relationship with useful destinations could best be described as theoretical.
He has enjoyed the comfortable certainty that if something was going to explode, collapse or inconvenience someone, he would know about it in advance because he had probably built it.
Welkins Reach changed the strategic balance.
We also learnt that if you talk quickly, you can convince Craig it's his fault he fell to his death.
Speed is essential.
Once Craig hits the ground, there is a brief window before suspicion activates.
This window should be filled immediately with confident statements about instructions, stamina management and user error.
Do not allow silence.
Silence encourages questions.
Finally, we learnt that magic blue springboards are the best when combined with altered gravity and boosted umbrellas.
Ideally umbrellas that have actually been boosted.
Disclaimer
Myles's enchanting notes were mysteriously destroyed in a fire.
Tragic.
No one knows how it happened.
As a result, there is no proof that Myles deliberately, with malice aforethought, applied the wrong charm to Craig's umbrella specifically to enable Dave's ingenious make-Craig-fall-to-his-death prank.
There is simply no documentary evidence.
Only circumstances.
And motive.
And opportunity.
And prior discussion.
And three bodies belonging to the same person.
But no notes.
Similarly, no proof exists showing that the prank was Dave's idea.
Accordingly, any attempted retribution will be dealt with harshly.
Legal counsel has advised that this statement is both necessary and probably useless.
Coronial Investigation
Craig subsequently declared that his falling deaths were not his fault.
He demanded an investigation.
This was granted.
The investigation was conducted with all the rigour, independence and procedural fairness traditionally associated with inquiries where the suspects write the final report.
After reviewing the evidence, the coroner has ruled the causes of Craig's three deaths as follows:
Death One: Umbrella failure, most likely caused by Craig.
Death Two: Craig didn't read the instructions, leading to a second umbrella failure.
Death Three: Craig never learns.
The findings are final.
There is no avenue of appeal.
Particularly because the appeal tribunal's notes have also been destroyed in a fire.
We Achieved
And now, because this whole episode began with Craig complaining that Dave wasn't adequately recording everyone's epic accomplishments, the official achievements for the week.
Dave
I can fly
Glide a thousand metres with an umbrella.
A significant accomplishment and definitive proof that crossing vast aerial distances with an umbrella is perfectly safe provided nobody has quietly tampered with your equipment.
Myles
My Bad
Apply the wrong charm to Craig's umbrella.
An innocent crafting mishap whose timing, consequences and striking similarity to a previously discussed prank are entirely coincidental.
I can't believe you saw that
Be astonished by Craig's perception.
Earned after Craig located the runes that everyone else had missed and without which Puck's quest could not have been completed.
History must record the truth.
Even when inconvenient.
Craig
Punked
Fall to your death repeatedly from the same prank.
Not once.
Not twice.
Three times.
This is the sort of commitment to a running gag that cannot be taught.
I saw the runes
(And I did not kill the deputy)
And there it is.
Craig asked for his achievements to receive more coverage.
They have.
Extensively.
In the interests of fairness, the record now clearly establishes that Craig successfully found the cave, discovered the runes everyone else missed, helped make Puck's quest possible, learnt how to enchant his equipment, bravely embraced the new aerial traversal mechanics of Welkins Reach, and personally performed extensive field testing on the consequences of incorrectly charmed umbrellas.
Three times.
Future historians may debate whether this was an heroic week for Craig.
What they cannot claim is that Dave failed to write it down.
Footnote — A Brief Note on Gravity: Welkins Reach’s gravity is noticeably lower than in the realms we had come from. Moving around has a faintly lunar quality to it: jumps carry further, falls take longer, and everyone bounds about like Queen Victoria has somehow annexed the Moon and immediately required umbrellas.
This makes Craig’s achievement considerably more impressive. The realm had quite literally turned gravity down to a more forgiving setting, giving him additional time to reconsider his decisions on the way to the ground. He nevertheless managed to plummet to his death three times. Low gravity, magical springboards and an enchanted umbrella should have been a recipe for graceful aerial exploration. In Craig’s hands, it became an unusually prolonged coronial matter.
