There is an old saying that without a map, a compass, and a firm grasp of one’s destination, an adventurer is merely a lost person with expensive luggage.
For the CCF, even possessing all three is no guarantee of improvement.
Fortunately, modern civilisation has provided a fourth essential survival tool: Google.
Without it, the great explorers of history might never have discovered entire continents. With it, four middle-aged gamers can occasionally discover which door they’re supposed to open.
And sometimes even that requires a second search.
As the old engineering proverb goes, the first tower burned down, the second fell over, and the third burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp.
Which is entirely irrelevant to tonight’s adventure.
Except that there was a swamp.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
The Fellowship of the Absent
Tonight’s expedition began with a dramatic reduction in personnel.
Zaph had abandoned his comrades to attend PAX, apparently preferring a convention full of people talking about games to actually playing one. An unusual philosophical position, but one he was entitled to hold.
Craig was attending to a family emergency, which was considerably more understandable and, for once, provided a perfectly legitimate reason for not being available to fall off something.
This left Myles and Dave alone in Welkin’s Reach.
Two seasoned adventurers. Nearly three decades of accumulated gaming experience. One main quest standing between them and the next realm.
Naturally, the question arose: shouldn’t they wait for the others?
Under ordinary circumstances, yes.
But ordinary circumstances rarely survive contact with Dave.
Dave possesses the attention span of a gnat that has recently discovered caffeine. Asking him to leave an unfinished quest alone is rather like asking a golden retriever to ignore a sausage balanced on its nose.
Myles, meanwhile, has a particular weakness for maps and puzzles. If someone suggests there’s an unexplored location, an incomplete map, or a mysterious mechanism requiring careful investigation, his sense of adult responsibility tends to quietly leave the room.
Thus, with the collective judgement of two men who should really know better, they decided to finish the main quest.
What could possibly go wrong?
The Site of Power That Wasn’t on the Map
The objective sounded straightforward enough:
Cleanse the Site of Power in Welkin’s Reach.
Last week, the group had thoroughly explored the realm, uncovered the entire map, and diligently filled in every available detail.
This was precisely the sort of preparation that ought to make completing a main quest a simple administrative exercise.
Grab the cleansing potions. Open the map. Find the Site of Power. Proceed directly to heroic victory.
Except there was no Site of Power.
Myles inspected every icon.
Dave inspected every icon.
They inspected the icons again, presumably in case one had become embarrassed and decided to reveal itself.
Nothing.
Zilch. Nada. Not a sausage.
The map was as forthcoming as a government department asked to explain its expense claims.
Eventually, they invoked the ancient and powerful oracle known as Google.
Google explained that the Site of Power was actually the Well of Power, conveniently located near the Zeppelin and surrounded by an enormous red laser death dome.
The same enormous red laser death dome they’d already seen.
Of course.
Why would the game label the location with the same name used in the quest? That would remove an important element of the experience: bewilderment.
The Mine of Unnecessary Scorpions
Having identified their destination, the pair now needed to work out how to enter it.
The enormous red laser dome was proving somewhat discouraging, so they performed an aerial reconnaissance.
Across from the Well stood a large doorway leading into the cliff face.
“That must be it,” declared Dave.
This was compelling evidence by CCF standards. There was a door, and Dave wanted to go through it.
They descended into the opening, following the passage deep into what appeared to be an abandoned mine.
“Almost there,” said Dave.
“Just a little…”
“A giant scorpion!” yelled Myles.
The scorpion, presumably delighted that two idiots had wandered into its basement, wasted no time introducing itself.
There was frantic combat, considerable poison, and several regrettable encounters with the floor.
Fortunately, their followers were on hand to pick them up whenever the heroes succumbed to the traditional CCF combat manoeuvre known as falling over.
The followers had become remarkably proficient at this.
Their job description presumably read:
Carry supplies, assist with combat, and periodically resurrect the management.
After a thoroughly unpleasant encounter, the pair discovered that the mine wasn’t the way into the Well after all.
Another consultation with Google revealed the actual solution.
They needed to travel to the top of the observatory, activate the strange rune they’d unlocked during the previous session, and receive ten minutes of protection allowing them to pass safely through the red laser dome.
“It’s obvious, really, when you think about it …”
“Not!!” yelled Dave.
Myles, ever the systems analyst, was less concerned about the mystical significance of the rune than the complete absence of a visible countdown timer.
If a magical protection spell expires after ten minutes, surely displaying those ten minutes somewhere on the HUD would be a reasonable user-interface decision?
Apparently not.
In Nightingale, one is expected to maintain an intuitive understanding of the remaining duration of invisible magical protection.
Presumably by consulting one’s pocket watch while plummeting towards certain death.
Pinball Wizard: The Well of Power Edition
Armed with their newfound knowledge, they began the logistical operation required to enter the Well.
Fast travel to Zeppelin camp.
Glide to the observatory.
Climb to the top.
Activate the rune.
Fast travel back to Zeppelin camp.
Glide down into the Well.
A simple six-step process to accomplish what, in a less whimsical universe, might have required walking through a door.
Dave had apparently devised a careful descent plan.
This plan survived until he spotted a chest.
For Dave, treasure chests exert a gravitational attraction considerably stronger than anything described by Newton. The moment one appears, every other objective becomes secondary.
He diverted towards a chest perched atop a floating rock.
Then he spotted another opportunity lower down.
A little glide, a little essence collection, another rock, another chest.
And then a slight navigational miscalculation.
Dave missed his intended landing and descended approximately four levels in one glorious, uncontrolled demonstration of gravitational enthusiasm.
Imagine a pinball machine in which the ball is a heavily armed Victorian adventurer and the bumpers are floating chunks of rock.
Dave was the ball.
The Well was the machine.
Gravity was having the evening of its life.
Myles, meanwhile, was attempting to locate the musical puzzle.
“There is one of those musical puzzles,” said Myles. “Do you see any of the pieces?”
“Nothing to see here,” declared Dave, metaphorically dusting himself off and attempting to restore whatever dignity remained after his impromptu pinball tournament.
Three Notes, Two Idiots, and Another Google Search
Myles located the first musical puzzle piece one level below his position.
The second was considerably more troublesome.
Eventually, he spotted it inside a cage off to one side of the Well.
Naturally, the obvious route was blocked, so the pair went through another door to investigate.
Inside were the Bound, who seemed to have taken up employment as security guards for every inconvenient location in the realm.
A fight followed.
The Bound attacked.
Dave and Myles retaliated.
Their followers once again demonstrated the increasingly indispensable skill of picking their employers off the floor.
With the guards dispatched, the cage remained firmly closed.
There was no obvious switch, lever, or conveniently labelled button.
Back to Google.
The solution was to stand in a glowing blue square, which would lower the cage.
“Why didn’t we think of that?” pondered Dave.
Possibly because every previous encounter with glowing blue electrical squares had suggested they were designed to electrocute adventurers or launch them into the stratosphere.
It was an understandable misunderstanding.
The puzzle now had two pieces.
Unfortunately, musical puzzles generally expect all their notes, and the third remained stubbornly absent.
Another search revealed a door they’d missed.
Of course there was another door.
At least this time they understood how to lower the cage.
Progress, of a sort.
The Lodestar and the Case of the Missing Components
With the Well proving to be a substantial vertical obstacle course, Myles decided that building a lodestar inside it would make subsequent travel considerably easier.
A sensible decision.
He opened his follower’s inventory to retrieve the required construction components.
The follower had none.
The components had been helpfully unloaded into the storage chests back at Zeppelin camp.
This was apparently the follower’s understanding of logistics: ensuring that all essential equipment was safely stored somewhere other than where it might be needed.
Myles expressed his appreciation using several words unsuitable for a family-friendly publication.
Then he began the journey.
Fast travel back to Zeppelin camp.
Retrieve the components.
Return to the observatory.
Climb to the rune.
Activate the protection.
Return to Zeppelin camp.
Glide into the Well.
Build the lodestar.
By the time he finished, the whole operation had acquired the complexity of an international supply chain, albeit one operated by people who kept forgetting where they’d left the forklift.
Dave watched his eventual return.
“What took so long?”
Myles replied with another carefully selected collection of words that cannot be reproduced in this blog.
It is fortunate that Nightingale does not feature a profanity-based magical system.
Myles would have become a god.
Behind Door Number Three
With the lodestar operational and the musical puzzle finally solved, another door opened.
Dave raised a philosophical concern.
If one door opens, shouldn’t another door close somewhere?
This was the kind of question that suggested the puzzle had gone on quite long enough.
Behind door number three stood a woman.
She appeared perfectly comfortable and, rather disappointingly, did not require rescuing.
The pair convinced her they weren’t there to steal her belongings.
Then, in a remarkable departure from established CCF procedure, they actually refrained from stealing her belongings.
A historic moment.
She explained what they were supposed to be doing.
There was something about helping someone, accomplishing an objective, and presumably saving the world from an unpleasant fate.
The details were absorbed with the usual degree of concentration.
Which is to say, approximately none.
Should the information become important later, Google would undoubtedly know.
The Gear Score of Doom
The next doorway contained one of those magical barriers that refuses entry to adventurers whose equipment fails to meet a minimum gear score.
Fortunately, both Dave and Myles passed through without difficulty.
This was particularly welcome because the Bound on the other side had apparently discovered that the barrier only applied to people entering the room, not to projectiles travelling in the opposite direction.
They were quite happily shooting through it.
A triumph of magical security design.
The followers, meanwhile, passed through without any apparent inspection of their equipment.
This was just as well.
Neither had received a meaningful equipment upgrade since joining the expedition.
Their outfits were now so outdated that archaeologists might reasonably have classified them as historical artefacts.
Without Zaph’s famous underwear guy present to demonstrate the absolute minimum acceptable standard of battlefield attire, the followers slipped through security and resumed their usual duties.
Which included picking up Dave and Myles after another disagreement with the Bound.
At this point, the followers were less like companions and more like a mobile emergency medical service.
The Boss Fight That Shall Remain Mostly Unspoken
Finally, the pair descended to the lowest level.
Here, the main quest reached its dramatic conclusion.
For the benefit of Zaph and Craig, who would eventually have the pleasure of experiencing the encounter themselves, certain details shall remain undisclosed.
Suffice it to say that there was a boss arena.
There was a boss.
There was considerable running.
There was screaming.
There were words which, once again, cannot be reproduced in a G-rated blog.
And then there was a total party wipe.
Not merely Dave and Myles.
The followers went down too.
The entire expedition had achieved the sort of comprehensive failure normally reserved for government IT projects.
Once everyone had finished being dead, the surviving human operators consulted Google.
Google politely explained several important aspects of the encounter that would have been obvious had the participants not been so occupied with running around and screaming.
Armed with this information, they returned to the arena.
This time they followed the recommended strategy.
And it worked.
The boss fell.
Victory was theirs.
Dave offered several words of commentary that cannot appear in the blog, presumably expressing deep appreciation for the quality of the encounter.
They looted the boss, collected their essence and rewards, and emerged with twenty-five units of precious Tier 3 essence.
The good stuff.
And, as a bonus, a realm card leading to a swamp.
Because after everything they’d endured, what the expedition really needed was more dampness.
The Quest for Self-Cleaning Trousers
Returning to Zeppelin camp, the victorious pair invested their hard-earned essence in Tier 3 crafting benches.
For Myles, this presented a golden opportunity.
At last, superior equipment.
More advanced technology.
Access to the finest materials available.
He built a Tier 3 sewing bench.
And made pants.
Not a legendary weapon.
Not an enchanted shield.
Pants.
There are those who would argue that in a dangerous fantasy realm, defensive equipment is every bit as important as offensive weaponry.
Myles would agree.
Particularly when the equipment in question is trousers.
Unfortunately, the new Tier 3 pants suffered from a serious design flaw.
They were not self-cleaning.
This was unacceptable.
Myles demanded magical pants.
Dave, displaying the sort of practical support normally reserved for major engineering initiatives, learned how to construct a Tier 3 enchanting station and built one.
At last, the technology existed.
The infrastructure was complete.
The magical trouser revolution was imminent.
Then Myles discovered he didn’t have enough Tier 3 essence to enchant anything.
The dream collapsed.
A few more unprintable words were added to the evening’s rapidly expanding vocabulary.
Somewhere in the Nightingale universe, an enchantment station stood ready to perform miracles, while its owner continued wearing ordinary trousers.
Civilisation had advanced, but not nearly far enough.
The Great Anti-Clockwise Expedition
With the main quest completed, Dave and Myles decided to finish exploring the map.
They set off anti-clockwise around Welkin’s Reach, clearing hostile camps, solving Bastilles, and generally making themselves unpopular with the local inhabitants.
They even ventured into a bunker, passed through its portal, and cleared a small area on the other side for some worthwhile rewards.
It was the kind of methodical exploration Myles enjoyed.
A clean map.
Completed objectives.
No unexplored icons lurking in corners.
The satisfaction of imposing order on a world that had apparently been designed by a committee of mischievous cartographers.
Unfortunately, Myles’s equipment was beginning to show the strain.
His gear had become rather shabby, and repairs were increasingly urgent.
There was just one small problem.
He’d run out of Tier 1 essence.
Not Tier 3 essence, the precious resource required to create magical trousers.
Tier 1.
The cheap stuff.
Dave suggested a solution: return to camp and convert a thousand wood into a thousand Tier 1 essence.
A thousand pieces of wood.
A thousand essence.
Simple arithmetic.
No Google required.
For once, the pair had solved a problem entirely through their own intellectual resources.
It was a proud moment.
The Return of the Umbrella Enthusiast
At this point, Craig joined the game.
The expedition immediately lost whatever modest degree of organisational stability it had achieved.
Craig needed to upgrade his umbrella.
Specifically, he wanted the prank-proof version.
Given Craig’s history with jumping puzzles, long flights, unexpected descents, and the occasional disagreement with gravity, this was probably a sound investment.
Unfortunately, the upgrade required an elaborate manufacturing process.
Myles flatly refused to return to Sylvan Cradle just to complete the job.
This meant constructing additional benches at Zeppelin camp, manufacturing various components, and spending what felt like half the night upgrading a piece of equipment whose primary purpose was to stop Craig from falling quite so enthusiastically.
There is a certain irony in spending hours manufacturing an advanced umbrella for a man who regards vertical distance as a personal challenge.
Eventually, the umbrella was upgraded.
The group was ready to resume exploration.
Well, most of the group.
Dave had discovered a new project.
Six Shots of Lightning and One Important Warning
Dave had become increasingly concerned about his lack of a proper ranged weapon.
This was a reasonable concern for someone whose usual approach to combat involved getting close enough to the enemy to examine the contents of its pockets.
He decided to build a revolver.
Naturally, Nightingale does not permit the simple manufacture of a firearm.
One must first manufacture the components required to manufacture the components, which must then be assembled into the components required to assemble the firearm.
There was furnace work.
There were multiple crafting stages.
There was considerable waiting.
Finally, the revolver itself came together.
Then came the ammunition.
The finished weapon was capable of firing six lightning bullets before requiring a reload.
A magnificent piece of Victorian engineering.
A handheld thunderstorm.
A device capable of delivering six consecutive arguments against continued existence.
It did, however, have one important operational characteristic.
The right mouse button was not a zoom function.
In fact, pressing it could empty all six lightning bullets into the air.
This would leave the user standing near an alerted enemy, holding an unloaded revolver and contemplating the substantial cost of the ammunition just wasted.
Naturally, Dave would never make such a mistake.
This information is provided purely as a public service announcement for Zaph.
Because lightning bullets are expensive.
And shooting all six into the atmosphere is not generally considered an effective sniping technique.
The School of Advanced Falling
While Dave completed his industrial revolution, Myles and Craig resumed clearing the map.
They travelled through ruins, investigated another bunker, and climbed to increasingly improbable heights.
There were more jumping puzzles.
This presented Craig with an opportunity to demonstrate his legendary parkour skills.
Unfortunately, those skills appeared to have undergone a recent downgrade.
Craig had once been regarded as something of a jumping puzzle expert.
Now he seemed more interested in testing the structural integrity of the ground beneath each puzzle.
Usually from a considerable height.
He fell.
He missed jumps.
He fell again.
He demonstrated an impressive talent for converting forward momentum into downward velocity.
The others mocked him mercilessly.
Craig also displayed a surprising reluctance to undertake long flights, despite having just spent half the evening acquiring a superior umbrella specifically designed to facilitate long flights.
One might reasonably ask why a man who enjoys leaping from high structures would be frightened of flying between them.
The answer, presumably, lies somewhere in the complex psychological distinction between deliberately jumping to one’s death and accidentally surviving a long glide.
Dave had apparently promised Craig that none of this would appear in the blog.
Unfortunately, Craig seems to have misunderstood the exact wording of that promise.
What Dave actually meant was:
This is absolutely going in the blog.
A distinction that should have been obvious after nearly thirty years of Friday-night gaming.
The Portal of Poor Decisions
Eventually, the group noticed one final unexplored portal marked on the map.
It was an easy flight away.
The sort of minor detour that should have taken only a few minutes.
Dave examined the portal machine and offered his usual concise technical guidance.
“insert card, press button.”
These four words have caused an extraordinary amount of trouble over the years.
They are the CCF equivalent of a red warning light marked DO NOT TOUCH, except that Dave regards such warnings as instructions requiring immediate compliance.
Myles inserted the card.
Myles pressed the button.
A portal opened.
To a marsh.
There was, naturally, one small logistical issue.
Myles wanted to build a lodestar.
He checked his follower’s inventory.
The components were missing.
Again.
The follower had helpfully placed them in a storage box back at Zeppelin camp.
Again.
Myles muttered another selection of words unsuitable for publication and travelled back to retrieve the materials.
At this point, the follower’s habit of unloading essential construction supplies had become less an inconvenience and more a deliberate campaign of psychological warfare.
Meanwhile, Dave was cooking Grasshopper stakes.
This was apparently an important culinary undertaking that needed to be completed before the expedition departed.
Craig approached the portal.
“Whats this for?”
And wandered straight through.
The portal immediately pulled the others into the marsh.
Dave’s Grasshopper stakes were abandoned to whatever culinary fate awaits unfinished insect-based cuisine.
There are many ways to begin an expedition into an unfamiliar realm.
Being involuntarily dragged through a portal because Craig wanted to know what it did is perhaps the most authentically CCF.
Welcome to the Marsh
The new realm was certainly atmospheric.
Water stretched across the landscape.
Japanese maple trees provided striking colour.
Zeppelins drifted majestically through the sky, a welcome change from Welkin’s Reach, where they seemed to spend rather more time crashed into the ground.
There were ruined wooden towers, some rising three storeys high.
Naturally, these were occupied by the Bound.
And then there were the spiders.
Large spiders.
Poisonous spiders.
Spiders that appeared to have been designed by someone who believed the ordinary eight-legged variety was insufficiently upsetting.
The party explored the towers, with Dave and Craig pressing onwards.
Myles encountered a spider approximately the size of a pig.
Now, it must be stated for the historical record that Myles did not scream like a little boy.
Nor did he utter a stream of unprintable words.
Nor did he urgently demand that Dave and Craig return from the next tower to assist with an arachnid whose dimensions suggested it had been fed an alarming quantity of growth hormones.
Absolutely none of those things occurred.
Any suggestion otherwise is malicious gossip.
The fact that Myles’s follower once again had to pick him up is entirely unrelated.
Indeed, the follower’s ability to revive fallen adventurers remained exemplary.
His ability to remember to carry lodestar components, on the other hand, was still somewhere between hopeless and actively subversive.
One cannot have everything.
Although Myles would have settled for fewer spiders.
The Telescope Incident
Having survived their first visit to the marsh, the group finally returned to Sylvan Cradle to unload their accumulated possessions into the main storage chests.
It had been a long evening.
The main quest was complete.
The map was substantially cleared.
The group had acquired advanced crafting equipment, upgraded an umbrella, manufactured a lightning revolver, and discovered a new realm full of things that wanted to kill them.
A reasonable point to stop.
Craig had other ideas.
“When are we moving the base to the swamp?”
This was not a question Myles particularly wanted to hear.
The existing base had already required considerable construction effort, and the thought of dismantling the entire operation to rebuild it in a waterlogged realm full of poisonous spiders was not immediately appealing.
Dave, however, had a different solution to Craig’s enthusiasm.
He explained that his new revolver was actually a telescope.
A very special telescope.
One that Craig could examine by looking directly into the barrel.
Craig, who had previously demonstrated a willingness to investigate mysterious portals by walking through them, was precisely the sort of person for whom this explanation might prove persuasive.
Fortunately, Myles intervened before Dave could enable friendly fire.
Thus ended another evening in which the most dangerous creature in the realm was not necessarily a boss, a scorpion, or an enormous poisonous spider.
Sometimes it was simply Dave with a new toy.
And Craig asking what it did.
Tonight’s Campfire Song: A Chaunting Lay by Craig
As tradition demands, the evening concluded with a musical contribution.
Craig, having spent a substantial portion of the night upgrading his umbrella and the remainder exploring innovative ways of falling, presented a reflective ballad on the difficulties of personal aviation.
To be sung with the solemn dignity of a Victorian explorer who has just discovered that gravity is not open to negotiation.
The Ballad of the Brolly and the Missing Delta V
I spent half the night fixing my brolly,
With brass and a buckle and glue,
They promised it wouldn’t be folly,
But nobody mentioned the view.
I am an umbrella glider,
A gentleman borne on the breeze,
A somewhat reluctant sky-rider,
With trembling Victorian knees.
Gliding with the wind,
With the ground a mile below,
My confidence is wearing thin,
And there’s nowhere else to go.
An umbrella rider,
Of dubious aeronautical skill,
The landing point to be determined,
Preferably not on a hill.
That’s a lot further than I thought,
That tower’s now terribly small,
The laws of physics can’t be bought,
And I’m beginning to fall.
What happened to my Delta V?
Where did my momentum go?
Why is that rock approaching me?
And why’s the ground not slow?
So raise a glass to the brolly,
To the brave and the airborne and daft,
For flight is a wonderful folly,
Until you run out of craft.
And should you hear a distant crash,
Followed by a rather loud yell,
You’ll find Craig among the rubble,
Declaring that it all went well.
Did We Learn Anything?
Against all expectations, yes.
Lesson One: Give Myles better crafting benches and he will make pants.
Not weapons. Not armour worthy of legend. Not a magnificent magical artefact.
Pants.
And if those pants cannot clean themselves, expect a formal complaint to the enchanting department.
Lesson Two: Craig is no longer the group’s jumping puzzle expert.
He has transitioned into the more specialised field of high-impact landing research.
His work continues to demonstrate that gravity remains remarkably consistent.
Lesson Three: Myles is afraid of spiders in games.
Particularly spiders the size of agricultural livestock.
This is not cowardice. It is a perfectly rational objection to oversized arachnids that have failed to respect the natural order.
Lesson Four: When Dave says something isn’t going in the blog, it is absolutely going in the blog.
Craig should understand this by now.
If he wishes to avoid appearing in the blog, the recommended approach is to stop doing stupid things.
Admittedly, this would require a fairly substantial change in personality.
This Week’s Achievements
Dave — Ad Astra
Completed the Welkin’s Reach main quest, mastered the art of falling through the Well of Power like a pinball, and constructed a lightning revolver with six very expensive opportunities for user error.
Myles — Ad Astra
Completed the Welkin’s Reach main quest, built a lodestar despite determined opposition from his follower’s inventory management, and advanced the frontiers of magical trouser research. Also demonstrated entirely appropriate caution around livestock-sized spiders.
Craig — What Goes Up
Successfully converted his jumping skill into a plummeting skill, acquired a superior umbrella, and demonstrated that curiosity remains a leading cause of involuntary portal travel.
Zaph — Got a Life
Attended a gaming convention instead of gaming. A curious achievement, but apparently one recognised by the wider gaming community.
Epilogue: In Google We Trust
And so another Friday evening drew to a close.
The Well of Power had been cleansed.
The boss had been defeated.
The map had been explored.
The crafting benches had been upgraded.
The trousers remained disappointingly ordinary.
And somewhere in a marsh, a poisonous spider the size of a pig was presumably waiting for Myles to return.
The evening had also demonstrated an important truth about modern adventuring.
Once upon a time, heroes relied upon ancient prophecies, cryptic scrolls, and wise old wizards to guide them through mysterious realms.
The CCF has Google.
Which is just as well, because without it, Dave and Myles would probably still be standing outside the red laser dome, wondering why the Site of Power wasn’t marked on the map.
Or wandering through an abandoned mine full of giant scorpions.
Or staring at a glowing blue square, wondering whether standing on it would open a cage or launch them into orbit.
After nearly thirty years of gaming together, the group has learned many things.
How to fight monsters.
How to build bases.
How to solve puzzles.
How to survive impossible odds.
And, most importantly, how to recognise when all those skills have failed and it’s time to open a browser.
Next week, perhaps the full fellowship will return to the marsh.
There will be towers.
There will be spiders.
There will almost certainly be Craig.
And if history is any guide, there will be another reason to consult Google.
Because in Nightingale, the greatest magical artefact isn’t a rune, a realm card, or an enchanted weapon.
It’s the search bar.
