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.
