Dune: The Discovery Phase, or Don’t Forget to Fuel the Generators

 

We rejoin our brave adventurers at their newly rebuilt base, a sprawling edifice that, depending on who you ask, is either a shining beacon of survival ingenuity or an architectural monstrosity with too many staircases.

Dave stands proudly, scanning the horizon for applause. None arrives.

“Where do I put this stuff?” asks Craig, dumping a suspiciously large pile of random loot into the middle of the floor.

“Why is it so big?” muses Myles, gazing at the looming walls.

“Is this our base? I don’t remember it looking like this,” says Zaph.

Dave exhales dramatically, the sigh of a man who knows he is surrounded by philistines. “Right. Focus up!”

“Listen carefully,” he commands. “Check your gear. Level 2 cutterays, medium blood bags, litterjons of water, Mk2 battery packs, Khirijon stillsuits or armour. And we’re not coming back until your backpacks are full.”

“Can we take our bikes?” Craig asks hopefully.

“No bikes,” Dave snaps. “This trip is on foot. Life in the desert is not a cakewalk.”

“There’s cake?” Craig perks up.

“No cake. No bikes. No slacking,” Dave growls.

And so, properly scolded, we set out. Up the stairs, out the back door, climbing the switchback path. We’re almost at the top when Myles pipes up: “Are we there yet?”

Dave sighs again. It is going to be one of those nights.

---

Lessons in Swordplay (and Patience)

“Draw swords!” Dave orders.

There’s a scavenger camp ahead, perfect for live combat drills.

Craig is crouched on the path, suspiciously still.

“What are you doing?” asks Dave.

“Drawing a sword,” Craig replies, pointing proudly at the doodle he’s etched into the dirt with his dagger.

“Two targets,” Dave continues. “On three, we attack.”

“Wait,” says Myles. “Is it on three, or do we attack after three?”

“We attack on three.”

“ONE!” yells Craig, immediately charging forward like a berserker.

Everyone else follows in varying degrees of confusion and enthusiasm.

“Stop hitting me!” shouts Dave as he fends off both scavengers and friendly fire.

“Swords suck!” complains Myles. “Why can’t I use my rifle?”

“Everyone needs to learn all weapons!” Dave declares. “It’s about skill versatility and team composition!”

“Swords suck!” Zaph echoes. “When do I get a sniper rifle?”

“When I say you can!” Dave roars. “And NOT A MOMENT SOONER.”

---

Blood Bags and Broken Seals

Fight over, we drain the bodies of blood (as you do), loot everything not nailed down, and press on.

In one cave we find corpses behind a broken moisture seal. Everyone turns slowly to look at Craig.

“It wasn’t me,” he says unconvincingly.

---

Dave’s Masterclass in Quicksand Navigation

At The Anvil trading post, we take a detour into a cliffside cave.

“Follow me,” says Dave. “Watch out for quicksand, heavy gunners, and—”

KER-THUNK.

Zaph leaps off a ledge, directly into a firefight. Dave rushes to assist and gets immediately bogged down in quicksand.

Luckily, everyone else is too busy swinging swords to notice his heroic flailing.

---

Bikes, Boosters, and Bad Ideas

Having survived our foot march, we zip across the dunes on our bikes.

At the top of a rise, we spot a Harkonnen base. Wisely, we avoid it and focus on gathering carbon crystals.

Back to base, unload, smelt steel.

Next up: “Evict squatters from an Imperial testing station. Dead or alive.”

“That’s our kind of gig,” Dave says cheerfully.

Myles tries out his bike booster and rockets ahead like a sandworm on espresso, waking every worm in a three-mile radius. The rest of us dive for the nearest rock.

---

Heavy Gunners: Craig’s Nemesis

Inside the Imperial station, we find a hologram delivering a welcome speech it’s been practicing for 10,000 years. We ignore it, drink all the water, loot every chest, and drain every corpse.

Combat is intense:

• Dave and Zaph clean house on the left flank.

• Myles and Craig… less so.

• The heavy gunner turns Craig into salsa.

By the time Craig respawns, the team has moved on.

“Heavy Gunners: 3. Craig: 0.”

---

Of Fancy Pants and Moral Bankruptcy

We return to base laden with schematics for hats, gloves, and—most importantly—pants. Dave now answers only to “Mr Fancy Pants.”

Then comes Dave’s solo adventure.

While gathering iron ore, he finds an abandoned base, doors swinging open, storage unlocked. He politely robs them blind.

“350,000 credits,” he announces. “Left them 50,000. I’m only 80% a-hole.”

It takes three trips and four new storage chests to hold his loot.

Moral of the story: don’t forget to fuel your generators and lubricate your wind turbines.

Phobophobia: When You’re Afraid of Being Afraid of the Fear of Fear

 

Dune the Awakening: The Interlude

The endless dunes do strange things to your mind. Or, to be precise, they do strange things to Dave’s mind. The parched throat, the lack of water, the incessant slaughter of strangers to extract their precious bodily fluids—it was all too much for him. To make matters worse, the sight of their humble 4x4 rock hut sitting next to magnificent palaces triggered an advanced case of House Envy. Once House Envy sets in, it’s all downhill: Claustrophobia, Grammophobia (fear of grammar or sometimes writing in general), Thanatophobia (fear of death), Tropophobia (fear of moving or making changes) , Trypophobia (aversion to clusters of small holes), and even Basiphobia (fear of falling) took turns bouncing around in his brain like a deranged bingo machine. Since there is nothing to fear except fear itself, Dave naturally developed Phobophobia too (the fear of phobias).

Thus began Dave’s solo week of base redesign while the rest of us went AWOL, possibly to preserve what little sanity we had left.

Walls were raised to cathedral-like heights to eliminate those oppressive low ceilings. Stairs with safety rails appeared to keep us from our usual habit of gravity-testing. Straight walls were replaced with flowing, curving surfaces that would make Gaudí weep with envy. Holes in the floor were patched (boo) and several medium-sized cisterns were installed and miraculously filled with actual water instead of recycled human plasma.

A mezzanine now suspended the power generators off the floor, separating them from the water tanks and, more importantly, from Craig. Out back, Dave constructed a massive switchback staircase climbing the cliffs. It was so extensive that it could double as an Inca pilgrimage site.

Craig, naturally, contributed a sniper nest. This inspired Dave to demolish the third floor entirely, raise the roof on the second floor, move Craig’s bed as far away as physically possible, and install crinkled paper on the floor so you could hear Craig sneaking about at night like some sort of carnivorous marsupial.

For Myles’ latest hobby—grappling practice—Dave threw together a five-story bastion complete with a ladder and trapdoor. Craig’s multi-floor death trap was also retrofitted: slightly less deadly but far more challenging thanks to the addition of walls. And through it all, every attempt was made to preserve Zaph’s beloved CCF lighting strips on the garage floor because priorities.

At long last, Dave could return to his new hobby: wandering the desert at night, waving a sickle over flowers to harvest water like some demented Grim Reaper of botany. All in all, it was slightly less murdery than harvesting blood.

Myles surveyed the sprawling complex, nodded in admiration, and finally voiced the question on everyone’s mind:

“So then you pack this up and bring it with you on your bike when we move to a new spot next week?”

Dave froze mid-sickle swing as Metathesiophobia (fear of change) dug its claws into his soul.

Dune the Awakening: The Graduation (or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Sandworms)

 We decided to compare graphics cards.

RTX 2070

RTX 4080 Super

Let's Ride

After several sweaty weeks of assembling sandbikes, consulting with planetologists, and murdering every trooper trainer’s drinking buddy in a 5-kilometre radius, the big moment had finally arrived: we were graduating from the tutorial zone. No more handholding. No more convenient safehouses. Just us, our questionable decision-making skills, and an endless sea of sand.

We were now… couriers. Yes. Fear us, desert. For we deliver. Well, except for Myles, who refuses to use his bike’s storage compartment on principle.

An Important Stop: Rocks and Wrecks

Our first stop was a pile of rocks (to hide from sandworms) and a wrecked buggy to salvage. Dave and Craig gleefully dismantled it like raccoons at a car crash buffet while Zaph got shot down by territorial scavengers—his blood darkening the sands in an aesthetically pleasing spiral pattern.

Myles was too busy polishing his sandbike to notice.

A little duct tape and some heroic first aid later, Zaph was back on his feet, and we taught the scavengers who the real kings of the desert were (hint: it’s not us, but don’t tell Craig).

The Anvil and the House Vote

We made it to The Anvil, the local trading hub, where we delivered our cargo, grabbed every job on the board like caffeine-deprived interns, and chose to side with House Atreides. This was a purely democratic decision because no one wanted to shave their head and smell like boiled onions to join the Harkonnen.

Craig voted Harkonnen, of course. He was outvoted.

The Great Sandstorm Incident

While circling a promising outcropping for a base location, the weather satellites issued a sandstorm alert. Time was of the essence. Zaph panicked and drove his bike directly into a ditch, trapping himself in the storm’s path.

Myles, Craig, and Dave zoomed off, engines roaring and laughter trailing behind them, and made it to The Anvil just as the massive stone doors slammed shut. Inside, the survivors toasted their “fallen” comrade with a few rounds.

Zaph? Zaph became one with the desert.

Building the Base (aka The Great Hoarding Begins)

Once the storm subsided, we found the perfect spot for our base: on the edge of an outcropping, conveniently near resources. Dave slapped down a sub-fief console and began construction while the rest of us scattered like those weird hoppy desert mice, gathering granite, iron ore, and copper.

Walls went up. A roof followed. Storage chests appeared, multiplied like rabbits, and filled instantly. Craig, naturally, dropped his inventory all over the floor like a toddler with a Lego set just to make work for Dave.

Myles and Dave took an Ornithopter back to the tutorial zone to pillage our first base before scrapping it.

Iron, Blood, and Tears

Back at home, our iron ran dry, so Dave built a refinery. “Crap,” he muttered, “it needs water.”

We built a blood refinery. Craig and Zaph went hunting scavengers to refill it. We installed water tanks, dew collectors, and anything short of hiring a team of desert hermits to spit in a bucket.

Trials and Tribulations

Feeling brave (or bored), we tackled the second trial of AQL. Let’s not talk about that.

On the bright side, we learned to make compactor rods for harvesting Flour Sand—the main ingredient for silicone and, more importantly, better guns. Because if there’s one thing this crew agrees on, it’s that there is no such thing as enough firepower.

We also embarked on a heroic quest to retrieve stolen goods. The goods weren’t there. We looted a cave and killed everyone inside—still no goods. We hit a scavenger outpost for intel—another bust. Clearly, detective work is not our calling.

The Base Evolves

Back home, we expanded. A second storey was added, then a third. Craig installed trapdoors in the floors because “ambience.” Dave added a sandworm statue, curved walls (for Feng Shui), and a five-storey buttress with a ladder.

Craig, in his eternal wisdom, built a sniper nest on the roof, which immediately became another floor. Later, he added “inconvenient ladders” in strategic places to keep Dave on his toes.

Diplomacy and Dew Harvesting

We tried to curry favor with House Atreides by finding their missing spy. We found him. He was dead. Strike two.

Water shortages persisted. Myles researched dew harvesting and discovered, to everyone’s surprise, that you can get water from flowers—at the right time of day. Unfortunately, you still can’t get blood from a stone, even after Zaph died on it.

Final Notes

The base now towers like a bizarre architectural experiment born of equal parts necessity and chaos. Dave is still fixing Craig’s ladders. Myles is still refusing to use his bike storage. Zaph is still finding new and creative ways to die.

And Craig? Craig is probably halfway up the sandworm statue, building a diving board “just in case.”

We may not have conquered the desert, but we’re definitely redecorating it.