Nightingale: Industrial Mayhem

 

General disclaimer: The lack of real information in this week's blog says nothing about how the night went, or that we stumbled from one mishap to the next like a group of inept wannabe realm-walkers.

Which, for the avoidance of doubt, we did.

Disclaimer – Although the blog would beg to differ, Dave is not trying a new literary style to see if the blog can be written as a series of disclaimers; it's purely a strange coincidence, like given infinite time and a typewriter, Craig could eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare.

There is, however, some concern that Dave has discovered the legal principle that if every paragraph begins with Disclaimer, nothing that follows can subsequently be used against him.

This is not how disclaimers work.

Disclaimer – Dave denying Myles editorial rights has nothing to do with last night's events, which may, or may not, but probably do, make Myles look bad; it is purely a kind gesture to save Myles from writer’s cramp.

Editor’s note — Myles retains editorial rights. This is particularly important when the principal witness is also the accused.

---

Hewards Reach Royal Commission – Why Did It Take So Long to Progress the Main Quest?

Disclaimer – Despite the whole spider, pig, horse measuring debacle thing from last week, at no point did Dave say “Goddamn it, I have just been jumped by a wild pig the size of a spider”

This statement has been entered into evidence exactly as supplied by Dave.

Its suspicious specificity has also been entered into evidence.

Disclaimer – Any unfortunate side effects Craig suffered from following Dave’s instructions are purely coincidental and can in no way be considered punishment for missing the previous week's adventures. Side effects such as death, quest progression failure are just things that happen …. To Craig, randomly, and Dave telling Myles to SHUT UP as he tried to warn Craig was purely due to the stress off the situation, but at least it confirmed the death lasers are still working.

Editor’s note — Correction, Dave.

For the benefit of the Royal Commission, a somewhat less defence-counsel-shaped description of events is available.

Craig had missed the previous week.

Craig therefore did not know about the Death Dome.

Dave did.

Dave gave Craig the instructions.

Craig, displaying the touching faith of a man who has somehow learned nothing during nearly three decades of gaming with us, followed them.

Myles realised what was happening and attempted to warn Craig.

Dave told Myles to SHUT UP.

Craig flew in.

The Death Dome did what Death Domes have traditionally done since the earliest days of Death Dome engineering.

Craig died.

Dave would now like the court to accept that these events were unrelated.

The court may take as much time as it requires.

On the positive side, the experiment conclusively proved that the death lasers are still operational, Craig remains willing to follow instructions without asking why, and Dave should never be permitted to use the phrase trust me while standing near a portal.

Disclaimer – Craig’s failure to get through a gear level locked doorway should in no way be taken as an indication that we spend a lot of time making nice things for Craig, and he just ignores them and runs around in a roughly woven sack. Although the evidence suggests otherwise, no-one could be that naïve.

Craig has apparently approached the Victorian gaslamp survival genre with the firm conviction that armour is a bourgeois affectation.

We craft.

We enchant.

We improve.

Craig wears sackcloth.

Somewhere, an entire Nightingale crafting system quietly wonders why it bothered.

Disclaimer – Making Zaph and Craig jump into the boss fight with the giant stink beetle was truly a sign of how much we trust in their ability to overcome adversity, and in no way an attempt to make Dave and Myles feel better about how badly they sucked in the same encounter a few weeks ago.

Editor’s note — No objection. This explanation is sufficiently implausible that further editorial intervention would only weaken it.

---

The Magwyth Marsh Royal Commission – Did Someone Turn Up the Difficulty?

Disclaimer – at no point did Nightingale decide the bound just weren’t kicking our arses, so perhaps a few mortar bound, and boss bound would be just the thing for newly arrived realm walkers, who haven’t even had time to get their bearings. Oh snap – that totally happened.

We arrived in the marsh.

The marsh examined us.

The marsh apparently found us insufficiently miserable.

Mortar Bound appeared.

Boss Bound appeared.

The Realm Walkers briefly became Realm Casualties.

Welcome to Magwyth.

Disclaimer – The opening marsh quests did not suggest we over-levelled our gear before heading to the marsh, because the facts (our dying) strongly suggest otherwise, even though the quests hint we should craft gear (guns) that we already have.

This presented the group with a difficult philosophical question.

If the game tells you to make better guns, and you already have better guns, but everything is still killing you, are the guns actually better?

The answer, according to the corpses scattered around Magwyth Marsh, was apparently no.

Disclaimer – The completely random direction Myles chose for us to travel had nothing to do with the Factory of industrial sewing machines that needed saving. Pure coincidence, and if you believe that we found a nice, only slightly ruined weapon factory in the swamp that you can purchase.

Myles would like it noted that navigational instinct is a recognised professional skill.

Dave would presumably like it noted that blindly wandering through a swamp until something useful appears is also a recognised professional skill.

History will judge.

Disclaimer: Dave wandering off in a random direction was purely because he was waiting for Craig’s PC to restart and had nothing to do with the previously unseen swamp lilies he was collecting.

Editor’s note — Dave is the Gatherer.

The prosecution rests.

Disclaimer – When Zaph says “my backpack's full, and so is my followers, and I don’t know what to keep”, this is not a deliberate attempt to trigger Dave’s OCD for comedic value, even though you knew that was going to happen, because this is NOT the first time we have had the TALK!!!

There are certain phrases that should never be spoken around Dave.

I threw the resources away.

I don’t know where I put the ore.

Do we really need all these storage boxes?

And, apparently:

“my backpack's full, and so is my followers, and I don’t know what to keep”

Somewhere deep inside Dave, an inventory spreadsheet opened itself.

Again.

Disclaimer – Climbing picks – don’t leave home without them, or if you do Zaph, stop asking how we climbed the tall tower. It’s not like Myles can build a waystar on the fly so you can join us in the main quest, he is always missing a component, springs, lumber, or that one time his follower put everything in a box and we had to go back to get it.

The official expedition checklist now reads:

Gun.

Ammunition.

Food.

Climbing picks.

Emergency Waystation components.

Emergency components for the emergency Waystation components.

Check that Myles’s follower has not helpfully placed the emergency components in a box forty minutes away.

Proceed.

Disclaimer – No Harpies were hurt in the making of this blog, as when they are dead the hurting stops, and we killed those poisonous horrors, to the immortal words uttered by Myles – Now I understand why you hate them.

And Craig we totes didn’t complete another step in the main quest without you 😊

Editor’s note — We absolutely completed another step in the main quest without Craig.

In fairness, Craig was probably safer wherever he was.

Particularly while Dave knew where the Death Dome was.

Disclaimer – In no way were the shiny rare clothes handed out as quest rewards better than the crap Myles has been making for us. The fact that we're all wearing the new clothes is purely coincidental, and a sign of the high esteem we hold for Myles’s tailoring ability, and our not wanting to damage the amazing stuff he provided. Dave totes didn’t equip his follower with the Myles gear, because that would be a cruel and totally unjustified punishment for a hard-working follower who carries all the rocks Dave picks up.

Myles’s tailoring operation had, until this moment, been considered the height of Realm fashion.

Then the game handed everyone shiny rare clothing.

There was a brief pause.

Everyone changed clothes.

Dave’s follower inherited the old collection.

Nothing says we value your contribution quite like making the employee carrying six hundredweight of rocks wear the boss’s discarded trousers.

Disclaimer – the fact that Myles proceeded to make a single set of tier 3 clothes, is in no way related to the previous disclaimer. We love your tailoring Myles, it’s the best, no really, the only thing that would make it better is if you used better components than the tier 1 cloth and fibre. Does that come in red?

Myles accepted this constructive feedback in the mature and professional manner for which he is known.

And immediately started making better clothes.

One set.

For reasons entirely unrelated to spite.

---

The Homebase Royal Commission: Is Myles Inept, or Is He Just Punishing Dave for Years of Manufacturing by Remote Control?

This inquiry has been independently commissioned by Dave, chaired by Dave and supplied with evidence prepared by Dave.

Its findings are expected to be impartial.

Disclaimer – Charms, invocations, enchantments are to be used, not stored in the magic box, they boost your gear level so you can get through those annoying doorways. Not that anyone in our group would ever have a problem with that.

Craig.

The Royal Commission would like to remind the witness that sarcasm is still sarcasm when preceded by the word Disclaimer.

Disclaimer – Stopping at 10 pm in no way means we are getting old. Also, when Zaph says I built a shiny new stove, but we are out of spices and logs for the night, it was not a trick to force Myles and Dave to play until midnight to stock the cupboards with spices.

At 10 pm, sensible adults stop playing computer games.

At approximately 10:01 pm, Zaph mentioned that the shiny new stove had no spices and no logs.

At this point Dave and Myles apparently discovered that sensible adulthood was more of an aspirational framework than a binding agreement.

Production resumed.

Disclaimer – When Dave says I am just going to make some spices, offering to improve efficiency is an unnecessary distraction.

This sentence should be engraved above the entrance to every engineering department on Earth.

Dave wanted spices.

Myles saw a process.

This was the first mistake.

Disclaimer – Failure to read the manual Myles, is not a valid excuse for introducing a so-called process improvement that requires a complex, multi-step process using multiple new crafting benches, consumes vital resources, and takes 2 hours to produce paper foil, just so you can finish building an Augment that doesn’t actually improve spice production

The proposed efficiency improvement involved new machinery.

The new machinery required additional machinery.

That machinery required processed materials.

The processed materials required paper foil.

Paper foil required two hours.

At the end of this elegant industrial revolution, spice production remained exactly where it had started.

Dave still needed spices.

Myles had, however, successfully invented middle management.

Disclaimer – Myles could not have avoided the industrial debacle by simply reading the manual, as Craig had obviously used it as fuel for the stove.

Editor’s note — This allegation against Craig has not been substantiated.

It is, however, extremely believable.

Disclaimer – Building a unicycle, and moving it to different locations every time Dave leaves the building, just to distract him from the industrial improvement prank you are putting over him, will earn you the 1000-watt death stare.

This was less a manufacturing process and more a behavioural experiment.

Every time Dave left, the unicycle moved.

Dave returned.

Dave noticed.

The unicycle moved again.

Dave returned.

Dave noticed again.

By this point the unicycle had become less a vehicle and more a psychological weapon.

The 1000-watt death stare confirmed the experiment had achieved full production capacity.

---

Tonight's Campfire Song – Sung by Dave

We were going to have a song about lawyers, and disclaimers but the lawyers threatened to sue, so Dave did it anyway.

The Royal Commission Campfire Song

Truth we seek,
The oppressed we defend,
Rights we protect,
Justice we serve.

That lasted thirty seconds,
Which is longer than expected,
So now we need a Royal Commission,
And several facts corrected.

Every tale needs a disclaimer,
Every disclaimer needs a song,
No lawyers were inconvenienced,
And somehow Craig came along.

For the record, Your Honour,
The gold dragon’s merely lore,
No resources were squandered
Near a badly labelled door.

Nobody skipped the manual,
Nobody built pointless gear,
And the bicycle’s an antique
That appreciates each year.

Its value may keep rising
Long after Myles is dead,
Assuming Craig has not dismantled it
To build a ramp instead.

We’ll use everything Dave collected,
Every flower, stone and pear,
And Zaph certainly shot neither pig
Nor any passing bear.

The evidence is flawless.
The witnesses concur.

We rest our case.

Editor’s note — The defence should absolutely not rest its case.

---

Did We Learn or Achieve Anything This Week?

We learnt

• The laser grid is still working.

• Myles never reads the manual; that’s what Dave is for.

• No one reads the blog when they miss a week.

The first of these findings was established through rigorous empirical testing involving Craig.

Craig was not informed that he was participating in the test.

Dave was.

Editor’s note — This distinction remains important.

We achieved

Dave made spicy potatoes to boost Myles’s stamina by 50 for 30 minutes, which he now regrets after the industrial augmentation prank.

A fair response.

Never improve the stamina of the person currently converting your straightforward spice-making operation into the Industrial Revolution.

Dave achieved – Sucker
Spend 2 hours building stuff that does nothing.

This achievement was technically earned by Myles, but the suffering belonged to Dave, so the committee has allowed the wording to stand.

Myles achieved – Build a bike
It is bound to be useful.

There is currently no evidence supporting this claim.

There is, however, a unicycle.

Sometimes that is enough.

Zaph achieved – Spice up your life
Hint that we are missing desperately needed ingredients, triggering a manufacturing emergency before logging for the night.

And thus another entirely normal Friday evening concluded with death lasers, poisonous Harpies, inventory interventions, industrial over-engineering, a mobile unicycle, several Royal Commissions and Craig discovering that when Dave gives navigational advice near an unexplained glowing structure, the correct response is no longer Where do I go?

It is:

“You first, Dave.”

Nightingale: A Matter of Pigs, Ponies and Poison

 

The Shelob Question: A Matter of Pigs, Ponies and Poison

In which three Realmwalkers conduct a scientific investigation into arachnid dimensions, discover that poison is generally bad for one's health, and revisit the great polar bear debacle of 2297.

Choosing a title for this week's adventures in Nightingale proved surprisingly difficult. Dave, having been entrusted with the literary equivalent of recording the final moments of the Titanic, proposed three candidates:

• We haven’t died this much since the polar bear incident

• Myles and the ginormous spiders

• Bunker (expletive deleted).

All three were accurate. All three were deeply troubling. And all three suggested that somewhere along the way, our little expedition had departed from the traditional business of exploring enchanted Victorian realms and entered the considerably more specialised field of dying repeatedly while arguing about livestock.

As you might suspect, there is a story behind each of those titles.

Unfortunately, there is also a story behind the stories.

And most of them involve Dave.

The Great Arachnid Controversy

The evening began, as so many evenings do, with Dave and Myles engaged in a spirited disagreement over something that should not, under normal circumstances, require arbitration by the Royal Society.

The dimensions of a spider.

Not an ordinary spider, mind you. The swamps of Nightingale are home to an exceptionally disagreeable species of enormous black-and-yellow arachnid, resembling a golden orb weaver that has undergone a frankly irresponsible amount of genetic enhancement.

They are aggressive, territorial, highly venomous and, mercifully, solitary. Even Mother Nature apparently recognised that allowing more than one of these things in the same postcode would constitute a breach of several international treaties.

Myles maintained that the spiders were approximately the size of horses.

Dave insisted they were closer to feral pigs.

When pressed on precisely what sort of pig, Dave eventually conceded that perhaps a large pig might be a more appropriate comparison.

This was apparently intended to be reassuring.

The difference between being attacked by a venomous spider the size of a horse and one the size of a large pig is, admittedly, considerable from a zoological perspective. From the perspective of the individual being attacked, however, the distinction is largely academic.

Particularly when the spider is expressing its territorial rights by attempting to inject its entire venom supply into your trousers.

Myles, determined that history should record the previous week's events accurately, proceeded to recount the incident for Zaph.

According to Myles, Dave and Craig had abandoned him to the spiders while they went frolicking through the swamp, presumably picking flowers and discussing the weather.

With each retelling, the circumstances grew more dramatic.

By the third account, Dave and Craig had deliberately thrown Myles to Shelob as a sacrificial gumby, buying themselves time to escape while the enormous arachnid enjoyed what it presumably considered a light afternoon snack.

Readers familiar with the works of Tolkien will recognise Shelob as a giant spider of considerable unpleasantness.

Readers familiar with Myles will recognise the possibility of some modest embellishment.

Disclaimer: You may remember this from last week's blog. At no point did Myles scream like a little boy, say words that can't be put in the blog, and demand Craig and Dave return from the next tower to help with a spider the size of a pig.

This is the official account.

Any witnesses suggesting otherwise are clearly unreliable.

With Craig unavailable for the evening, the burden of defending their collective honour fell entirely upon Dave.

"Fine, back to the swamp we go!"

And so it was decided. The Shelob Question would finally be settled through rigorous scientific investigation.

After all, future generations of Realmwalkers deserved to know the truth. Unfortunately, nobody had taken a screenshot during the original encounter, leaving us without a reliable frame of reference.

There was simply no alternative but to return to the swamp and obtain empirical evidence.

Disclaimer: This decision had absolutely nothing to do with the abundance of rare flowers growing in the swamp that Dave desperately wanted to harvest.

The scientific community thanks him for his integrity.

A Rifle, Several Ingots and the Collapse of Civilisation

Before embarking upon our botanical expedition disguised as zoological research, Zaph announced that he wanted to manufacture a lever-action rifle.

This was a perfectly reasonable request.

Why fire one bullet at something when you could fire several in rapid succession?

Zaph's approach to hostile wildlife has always been refreshingly straightforward. Identify the threat, establish a suitable firing position, and introduce the threat to a sufficient quantity of high-velocity metal.

Unlike Dave, he does not normally attempt to harvest it first.

Making a rifle should have been simple.

We had the materials. We had the forge. We had the necessary equipment.

What we apparently lacked was a sufficiently intimate relationship between the forge and our storage chests.

The various rifle components needed manufacturing, which required ingots, which were stored in chests, which the forge couldn't access because they were too far away.

Thus began an entirely predictable exercise in reorganising our storage infrastructure.

There are civilisations that have collapsed over less.

Eventually, after rearranging enough furniture to satisfy a particularly demanding Victorian interior decorator, Zaph acquired his rifle.

He also manufactured what he considered to be a sufficient quantity of ammunition.

The significance of the word considered would become apparent later.

The Long and Winding Road to Somewhere Unpleasant

Travelling to the swamp required a relatively simple sequence of operations.

First, travel to the Crossroads.

Then take the portal to Welkin's Reach.

Then fast travel to the Swamp Lodestar.

Three straightforward steps. Practically impossible to get wrong.

Unless, of course, someone accidentally selected the Stargate Lodestar instead.

Myles.

This minor navigational discrepancy confused Zaph, who had been operating under the wildly optimistic assumption that everyone was travelling to the same destination.

An additional step was duly inserted into an itinerary that already contained more steps than a particularly sadistic tax return.

Eventually, through a combination of magical transportation, navigational correction and the sort of patience normally associated with Buddhist monks, the expedition arrived in the swamp.

Our scientific investigation could begin.

The Shelob Question: Exhibit A

The first spider appeared almost immediately.

An excellent opportunity to examine its dimensions.

Unfortunately, Dave was somewhat distracted by the business of screaming and dying.

Accurate measurements are notoriously difficult to obtain when one's subject is attacking, one's health is rapidly diminishing, and one's scientific assistant is busy becoming a corpse.

There was also the unfortunate absence of reference pigs.

Every suitable feral pig in the region had apparently received advance notice of the expedition and elected to remain elsewhere.

Cowards.

Undeterred by death, we continued our research.

Which is to say, we died some more.

At this point, memories began surfacing of the infamous polar bear incident of 2297.

For those unfamiliar with the episode, it occurred during our adventures in Icarus and has since become the internationally recognised CCF benchmark for catastrophic expedition mortality.

We haven’t died this much since the polar bear incident of 2297.

A phrase nobody ever wants to hear twice in the same evening.

The Swamp Rat Hypothesis

Our next discovery was a population of swamp rats.

These were rather substantial rodents, approximately the size of pigs, and therefore potentially useful as a comparative measuring instrument.

This was a genuine breakthrough.

A spider could be compared to a rat, the rat could be compared to a pig, and the resulting measurements could be presented to the Royal Society with appropriate diagrams and a minimum of shouting.

There was, however, a minor complication.

The rats were also poisonous.

Apparently, the local ecosystem had decided that being unpleasantly large wasn't sufficient. Everything also needed to possess some form of chemical warfare capability.

Taming a swamp rat for scientific comparison was briefly considered.

Unfortunately, we were too busy dying to conduct the experiment.

The Harpy Amendment

Further exploration revealed harpies.

Unlike the spiders and rats, harpies could fly.

They were larger than pigs, larger than rats, smaller than horses and larger than spiders.

They were also poisonous.

Of course they were.

At this point, the swamp appeared to operate according to a simple ecological principle: if something moves, it is probably poisonous; if it flies, it is definitely poisonous; and if Dave approaches it carrying a basket, someone is about to require medical assistance.

The harpies would have provided an excellent additional point of comparison, had anyone survived long enough to record the observations.

Unfortunately, scientific note-taking and screenshots continued to take second place to the more pressing business of being dead.

The Official Verdict

Following extensive fieldwork, multiple fatalities and precisely no reliable measurements, Dave presented his findings.

He conceded that the spiders were, in fact, larger than pigs.

This was a significant development.

However, he maintained that they were smaller than ponies.

Ponies, as everyone knows, are smaller than horses.

And because one apparently rounds down when making comparisons of prices and enormous venomous wildlife, Dave concluded that his original assertion had been vindicated.

The logic was impeccable, provided one ignored most of it.

Thus, the Shelob Question was officially settled in Dave's favour.

Myles had only slightly overstated the size of the spiders.

Dave had only slightly understated them.

And Zaph had spent the better part of the evening shooting at things that were considerably larger than anything that should reasonably be classified as a household pest.

History would record the verdict.

The spiders, having been unavailable for comment, continued trying to kill everyone.

This Isn't Even the Proper Swamp

It was at this point that a particularly disturbing realisation emerged.

We weren't actually in the main questline swamp.

This was merely some random, low-level swamp.

A recreational swamp.

The sort of place one visits for a gentle afternoon stroll, perhaps a little birdwatching, and the occasional near-fatal encounter with a venomous creature the size of agricultural machinery.

And yet our mortality rate had already exceeded several small wars.

If this was how we performed against the introductory swamp wildlife, what awaited us in the actual main questline swamp?

Presumably spiders the size of elephants.

Or perhaps the horses themselves would be poisonous.

Nobody particularly wanted to find out.

Fortunately, we had no immediate quest objectives and nobody in the realm required our assistance.

Which meant it was time to pursue the usual CCF system of exploration.

Myles would examine the map, identify an unexplored location, place a marker, and establish a route.

The party would then leap from a suitable height, deploy their magical umbrellas, and glide gracefully toward the chosen destination.

At least, that was the theory.

In practice, Myles and Zaph would head toward the marker while Dave's umbrella experienced another mysterious steering malfunction.

These malfunctions were remarkably selective.

They never seemed to direct Dave toward empty fields, uninteresting terrain or places where nothing could be collected.

Instead, his umbrella invariably developed an irresistible attraction to any building, structure or botanical curiosity visible on the map.

Dave maintained that these deviations were entirely accidental.

Myles maintained that the laws of probability had filed a formal complaint.

An Observatory, Some Sigils and Nobody Home

Our first diversion took us to an observatory.

A magnificent structure, promising astronomical knowledge, arcane mysteries and perhaps some explanation for why anyone would choose to establish an observatory in a swamp full of aggressively venomous wildlife.

Unfortunately, nobody was home.

The occupants had either departed, been eaten, or simply decided that living somewhere else was a better career choice.

We did, however, find a sigil puzzle.

This required considerably more time than anticipated.

There is something uniquely frustrating about standing inside an abandoned observatory attempting to decipher magical symbols while knowing that somewhere outside, a spider is probably arguing with a harpy over which of them gets to poison you next.

Eventually, after enough experimentation to qualify as an independent research programme, the puzzle yielded.

Victory.

Or at least the sort of victory that involves several grown men feeling disproportionately pleased about having correctly interpreted a collection of glowing squiggles.

The Agility Bastille and the Problem of Distractions

Next came an Agility Bastille.

Strictly speaking, this wasn't part of the plan.

However, it had the misfortune of being interesting enough to distract Dave.

And once Dave becomes interested in something, the itinerary becomes more of a historical document than an operational plan.

The Bastille was duly investigated and its agility challenge solved.

There was undoubtedly a perfectly sensible reason for doing so.

Nobody could remember what it was.

The Zeppelin That Never Flew

Our travels eventually brought us to an enormous zeppelin launch tower.

Naturally, we climbed it.

Not because we needed to. Not because a quest demanded it. Not even because there was any evidence of a useful reward.

We climbed it because it was there.

This is the same reasoning that has driven mountaineers, explorers and Craig for generations, although Craig usually dispenses with the reasoning altogether.

Unfortunately, the zeppelin tours had been suspended.

Due to nice weather.

Apparently, Victorian aviation operates according to a set of rules that would be considered unusual even by modern airline standards.

With Craig absent, responsibility for the tower's jumping puzzle fell to Myles.

This was a significant departure from established procedure.

Ordinarily, Craig would already have scaled the structure, jumped from something unsuitable, discovered an undocumented route and alerted every monster in the surrounding countryside before anyone else had finished reading the instructions.

Instead, Myles had to tackle the puzzle himself.

With considerably less enthusiasm and rather more regard for personal survival, he eventually negotiated the jumps and retrieved the chest.

The expedition then launched itself from the tower.

The zeppelins might have been grounded, but our umbrellas were still operational.

Mostly.

Dave's, naturally, continued attempting to navigate toward interesting buildings.

The Druids and the Environmental Health Emergency

Next, we encountered some druids whose camps required attention.

Helping druids seemed like an entirely appropriate activity for three experienced Realmwalkers.

After all, druids are generally associated with nature, harmony and the delicate balance of the living world.

Unfortunately, the living world in this particular swamp had taken a rather confrontational attitude toward visitors.

The poisonous harpies were especially enthusiastic.

While we attempted to repair the camps, they repeatedly expressed their objections through aerial assault and chemical warfare.

We responded with gunfire, magic and an increasingly colourful vocabulary.

And death.

Considerable quantities of death.

Helping the druids became a lengthy exercise in restoring their facilities while periodically restoring ourselves to life.

At least the druids had the satisfaction of seeing their camps repaired.

We had the satisfaction of confirming that our equipment, health and patience were all considerably less durable than anticipated.

Disclaimer: No swear words were used in the making of the druid camps.

And if you believe that, we have some lovely swamp real estate to sell you.

Magnificent views. Abundant wildlife. Excellent opportunities for botany.

Previous owners deceased.

Once again, comparisons were drawn with the infamous polar bear episode on Icarus.

The fact that a single historical disaster was being referenced this frequently suggested that the evening had developed into something of a medical emergency.

There was also the small matter of Dave's collecting habits.

By this point, the expedition had accumulated enough materials to require not one but two separate trips back to our main camp to unload everything Dave had persuaded us to carry.

The man had turned a dangerous scientific expedition into an interdimensional freight operation.

Somewhere in the swamp, a rare flower remained unpicked.

Dave was undoubtedly troubled by this.

The Bunker Incident

There are moments in every expedition when one encounters an interesting structure marked on the map and feels compelled to investigate.

Perhaps it contains treasure.

Perhaps an ancient portal.

Perhaps a secret underground complex filled with forgotten technology and unimaginable riches.

Or perhaps it's a bunker.

A bunker with no treasure.

No portal.

No mysterious machinery.

Not even a basement.

Which is a particularly impressive achievement for a bunker, given that being underground is traditionally one of its defining characteristics.

Nevertheless, we explored it.

Thoroughly.

Because apparently we had nothing better to do than investigate buildings whose principal architectural feature was disappointment.

Bunker (expletive deleted).

Enough said.

No, really.

Enough.

A Sword, At Last

After many sessions of patient encouragement, Dave finally achieved something that had previously seemed impossible.

He persuaded Myles to enchant his equipment with healing magic.

This had been an ongoing discussion.

Dave believed that enhancing Myles's equipment with healing abilities would be extremely useful.

Myles, who was already responsible for navigating, organising, healing, and generally maintaining some semblance of adult supervision, had been somewhat less enthusiastic about adding another item to his administrative workload.

However, the evening's repeated encounters with poisonous wildlife had provided compelling evidence that additional healing might not be an entirely foolish investment.

And so Myles crafted a sword.

Yes, a sword.

After all the magical exploration, extensive crafting, elaborate equipment upgrades and increasingly sophisticated weaponry, Myles finally discovered the ancient martial art of manufacturing a pointy piece of metal.

Not content with this technological breakthrough, he added both fire and healing enchantments.

The result was a weapon capable of burning enemies while assisting with recovery.

A rather elegant solution to the problem of creatures that insist on poisoning everyone.

Disclaimer: This shall in no way be taken to mean Dave nagged Myles to a breakdown.

The sword was entirely voluntary.

Much like a confession obtained after several days of persistent questioning.

Reducing Gravity, Increasing Complexity

With the sword completed, Myles turned his attention to improving our exploration capabilities.

The traditional method of travelling through Nightingale involves climbing something tall, jumping off it, opening an umbrella and hoping that the laws of physics remain sufficiently flexible to prevent an unpleasant landing.

Myles decided that gravity itself was the problem.

A minor realm card was deployed to reduce gravity slightly, allowing us to travel farther and more easily while exploring.

This was an excellent idea.

Unfortunately, we also needed somewhere convenient to return to.

The location seemed suitable for a new Lodestar, providing a fast-travel point for future expeditions.

Myles therefore set about constructing one.

Or would have, had Jeeves not apparently taken all the required components and distributed them into boxes across the known universe.

Jeeves, our storage system's unofficial representative of Victorian domestic service, had once again demonstrated that the principal skill of a competent butler is putting things somewhere nobody can find them.

The Lodestar needed materials.

The materials needed processing.

The processing required benches.

The benches required other materials.

Thus began another bout of industrial infrastructure development in the middle of a poisonous swamp.

We constructed the necessary benches to process stone and manufacture lumber.

And then, because there is always one missing ingredient, we travelled all the way back to the main base to collect wire.

Somewhere, a civil engineer was nodding approvingly.

Somewhere else, Myles was wondering why building a fast-travel point required so much actual travelling.

Tonight's Campfire Entertainment

There was supposed to be a song.

Dave, our resident gatherer, farmer, miner and occasional threat to the musical arts, had apparently been considering a suitable mining number.

Unfortunately, tonight's campfire performance was cancelled.

They simply don't make good mining songs for Dave to sing anymore.

A sad indictment of the modern entertainment industry.

Possibly also a tremendous relief to everyone else.

Housekeeping, Smelting and Eight Hundred Kilograms of Berries

As the evening drew toward its conclusion, the party returned to the deeply unglamorous but essential business of maintaining the base.

Dave had accumulated an impressive quantity of ore.

This was hardly surprising. Give Dave a sufficiently good mining pick and a map containing mineral deposits, and he will eventually remove most of the local geology.

The ore needed smelting into ingots.

Lots of ingots.

While the furnaces performed their industrial duties, we also manufactured a roughly improved umbrella for Myles.

This was a worthwhile investment, given that umbrellas in Nightingale serve the dual purpose of providing personal weather protection and preventing their owners from becoming decorative craters at the foot of tall buildings.

And then there were the berries.

Disclaimer: At no point did Dave try to carry 800kg of berries, then get confused, blame the game for not being able to walk, logged out, logged in again, still couldn’t walk, found the berries on a different tab in his inventory, and cook more berries than we can ever consume.

Naturally, since none of this happened, there is no reason to examine it in detail.

There is certainly no reason to speculate about why a man carrying approximately the weight of a small automobile might have difficulty walking.

Nor why he might conclude that the game was malfunctioning.

Nor why restarting the game failed to resolve a problem caused by attempting to transport an industrial quantity of fruit in his pockets.

The inventory system, having been blamed for the incident, was eventually exonerated when Dave discovered the berries lurking in another tab.

The subsequent cooking operation produced enough food to sustain the expedition through several lifetimes, assuming the party could survive long enough to eat it.

Which, judging by our performance in the swamp, was far from guaranteed.

Lessons from the Swamp

As midnight approached, the surviving members of the expedition considered what they had learned.

There were several important discoveries.

First, when Zaph announces that he is down to his last bullet, this is not an invitation to debate ammunition management.

It is the universally recognised signal to run.

Preferably immediately.

Second, Myles had only slightly exaggerated the size of the swamp spiders.

The creatures were not, strictly speaking, horse-sized.

They were, however, considerably larger than anything with eight legs and venomous fangs has any reasonable entitlement to be.

Dave considered this a vindication.

Myles considered it a technicality.

Zaph considered whether he should manufacture more ammunition.

Third, giving Dave a better mining pick is an excellent way to ensure that every ore deposit on the map is eventually reduced to a collection of portable ingots.

It is also an excellent way to create a storage crisis.

And fourth, when casting an enchantment, holding down the key to boost the effect produces significantly better results than simply tapping it and hoping for the best.

A useful discovery.

Particularly for someone who has only recently been persuaded to put healing magic on a sword.

Achievements of Questionable Distinction

Despite the death toll, the poisonous wildlife, the navigational errors, the failed scientific investigation and the bunker that wasn't even particularly good at being a bunker, the evening was not entirely devoid of achievement.

Dave — Oberon's Bounty

Use an enchantment to shatter an ore rock for increased loot.

An entirely appropriate achievement for a man who regards the natural landscape as an inventory waiting to happen.

The ore never stood a chance.

Myles — Swords?

Make a sword.

A modest but significant milestone in the career of a Realmwalker who has spent much of his time attempting to keep everyone alive through organisation, medicine and increasingly desperate appeals to common sense.

Now equipped with fire and healing magic, Myles has a weapon suitable for both injuring enemies and repairing some of the consequences.

Zaph — Last Bullet

Tell everyone you are down to your last bullet so we can run.

While perhaps not officially recognised by the game's achievement system, this remains one of the evening's most valuable tactical contributions.

Knowing when to stop shooting and start running is an underappreciated survival skill.

Especially when everyone else is arguing about pigs.

Final Reflections: The Verdict Is In

And so concluded another evening of Nightingale.

Three Realmwalkers entered a relatively low-level swamp in search of scientific truth.

They emerged having established that the spiders were larger than pigs, smaller than ponies, possibly somewhere in the vicinity of small horses, definitely poisonous, and entirely uninterested in participating in a formal zoological survey.

We also discovered that swamp rats were poisonous, harpies were poisonous, and the general environment had apparently been designed by someone who considered the polar bear incident of 2297 insufficiently challenging.

We solved puzzles, explored an empty observatory, conquered an Agility Bastille, climbed a zeppelin tower without a zeppelin, repaired druid camps, visited a thoroughly disappointing bunker, manufactured a magical sword, modified gravity, struggled to build a Lodestar, processed mountains of ore, and investigated a theoretical incident involving 800 kilograms of berries.

Craig, having missed the entire evening, somehow managed to remain blameless.

A statistical anomaly unlikely to be repeated.

Dave emerged triumphant from the Shelob Question, having successfully established that a spider smaller than a pony cannot possibly be the size of a horse.

Myles maintained that the practical distinction was irrelevant when the spider was attempting to eat someone.

Zaph maintained that everyone should stop talking and reload.

And somewhere in the swamp, a solitary black-and-yellow spider continued its evening patrol, blissfully unaware that its dimensions had become the subject of one of the most hotly contested scientific disputes in Realmwalker history.

The final verdict?

Dave won the argument. Myles won a sword. Zaph ran out of ammunition.

The spiders won everything else.

Next week: Perhaps the actual main quest. Assuming we can survive the introductory wildlife long enough to find it.