Icarus: The Great Hunt, the Great XP Scam, and the Great Lake Platform Unbuilding

 

There are weeks in Icarus where the group strides boldly across the alien wilderness, armed with purpose, discipline, and a clear operational plan.

This was not one of those weeks.

This was one of those weeks where the phrase “housework” somehow escalated into wildlife intrusion, industrial fish rot, XP class warfare, elephant-based radar testing, a failed desert hunting expedition, and Craig threatening retribution because Dave discovered that gravity still works.

It began, ominously enough, with Myles and Dave logging on an hour early to get the housework done. Not “housework” in the domestic sense, although given the state of Winchester that distinction is becoming harder to maintain. This was the frontier version: finishing the exotic mining, refuelling every automated mining project, collecting the resources, and generally keeping the increasingly absurd Winchester industrial complex from collapsing into its own spreadsheet.

For a brief and dangerous moment, things looked productive.

Naturally, that could not be allowed to continue.

The Bridge Folly

Unbeknownst to the group, Craig had been busy extending the jetty across the lake and connecting it to Dave’s building project.

This was discovered in the traditional Craig manner: not through planning approval, structural inspection, or any verbal announcement, but through the consequences of it having already gone horribly wrong.

The group had also not noticed that the local wildlife had begun using Craig’s magnificent aquatic infrastructure as a shortcut across the lake. Animals, being smarter than the average building inspector and considerably more direct than Craig, had worked out that the jetty led straight to the back door of Winchester.

The back door had, of course, been left open by Craig.

Myles went AFK, leaving his toon standing safely on the second floor. This seemed reasonable. Winchester had walls. Winchester had doors. Winchester had, in theory, a defensible structure.

Five minutes later, Myles returned to find himself dead.

Wild horses were busy destroying Winchester.

This raised several important questions. How had the horses got in? Why were they so angry? At what point had the house become a wildlife corridor? And, most importantly, why is it always Craig?

The answers, in order, were: the jetty, unknown, Craig’s bridge, and because the universe has a sense of humour but poor risk controls.

The Fish Extermination Project

Meanwhile, Dave had turned his attention to the fish problem.

Specifically, the lake piranha problem.

The piranha had long existed as one of those environmental features designed by developers to remind players that even shallow water can contain poor life choices. Dave, however, had developed a plan. Not a plan of revenge in the simple sense. Dave does not merely kill something when he can fold it into a multi-stage production chain and call it operational efficiency.

Dave converted platinum ingots into platinum sheaths, and those into platinum weave. This produced enough material to make eight advanced fish traps.

These were installed in the lake to catch fish, which were then left in the sun to rot, so the rotten fish could be fed into the biofuel composter.

At long last, the piranha were useful.

Not dignified, perhaps. But useful.

Four more cans were made to fill with biofuel. Unfortunately, the fish alone were not enough to keep up with demand. The group’s automated mining empire had grown hungry. It needed fuel. It needed constant fuel. It needed the sort of fuel demand usually associated with minor nations and doomed space programs.

So one wheat field, half a forest, and all vegetation within a mile radius were fed into the biofuel composter.

Still, the fuel supply could not keep up.

And what about the other half of the forest?

An excellent question.

That was fed into the mortar and pestle to be turned into tree sap, which was then used to fuel the biofuel composter.

It was at this point that Winchester began to feel less like a homestead and more like a biomass crimes tribunal.

Why Is Dave 15 Levels Ahead of Everyone Else?

Zaph logged on and immediately demanded an explanation for why Dave was fifteen levels higher than everyone else.

Normally, this sort of thing can be explained by Dave playing on the server during the off days. Dave is, after all, a man who treats “weekly gaming session” as a loose social construct and “resource gathering” as something that can happen at any hour short of an intervention.

But not this time.

Myles was hosting the server. Dave had no secret midnight access. No unsupervised agricultural sabbaticals. No illicit Wednesday mining retreat.

Dave’s explanation was simple.

“it's not my fault that you guys suck at maximising XP opportunities.”

Myles, representing the committee for the prevention of Dave getting away with that sort of statement unchallenged, demanded an explanation.

“Please explain.”

Dave thought about it.

This was already suspicious. Dave thinking about how to explain something usually means he has either already done the thing, is currently doing the thing, or has prepared a moral defence for doing the thing.

“Here is a great example – Myles takes the full biofuel cans, runs around collecting the mined resources, refuels the drills, comes back and stocks the furnaces to make ingots. All very important – net XP gain 0, nada, zip.”

A silence followed. Not because anyone disagreed, but because the horrible shape of the truth had begun to emerge.

Dave continued.

“While he does that, I water the crops – net XP 10,000, then I harvest the crops, net XP 10,000, then I take raw materials and set the alchemy machines producing resin, organic resin, gunpowder, steel bloom – net XP heaps. I also get the fabricator making gold and copper wire, electronics, mining drills, beacons, and net XP heaps. Then I go back and harvest the crops again – net XP 10,000.”

This was not a confession. This was a TED Talk for agricultural villainy.

Dave was not merely farming crops. Dave was farming the XP system.

Myles took the coffee crop to the trader to sell. This was important. Dave, after all, had made it very clear that he did not work for free.

But the XP result?

Nada.

In conclusion, automation was great. It improved efficiency. It produced far more resources than could be obtained by mining with a pick. It allowed the group to build a sprawling, semi-functional, extremely needy mining empire.

But there was no XP in it.

Then came the dagger.

“Oh, Myles, could you go unjam the water wheel? Our platinum drill has stopped.”

There it was. The entire economy of Winchester in one sentence.

Myles mused that Dave had delegated all the important tasks that provided no XP to him, while reserving all the high XP tasks for himself.

Dave nodded.

“when you put it like that, it sounds kind of planned, but it's not my fault you put me in charge of manufacturing and farming. I just optimised the opportunity. Whereas you optimised not doing grunt work, which is clearly not valued by the developers.”

It was, in its own horrible way, elegant.

Myles nodded.

“so it's like the over-encumbered bag exploit and the greenhouse 4-pieces-of-glass exploit. You are just making the best use of the system provided by the developers.”

“Exactly,” Dave replied. “You burn wood to make charcoal – XP 0, I take charcoal and sulphur to make gunpowder, or charcoal and Iron ore to make steel bloom – XP heaps. But hey, don’t feel bad, I couldn’t be where I am today without the valuable work you do.”

This was the sort of thing said by a man standing on a pyramid built from unpaid labour and plausible deniability.

Craig, having absorbed the full economic horror of the moment, offered his own analysis.

“This game sucks.”

And so, in the spirit of justice, accountability, and redistributed suffering, Craig was placed in charge of watering the plants and harvesting the crops until further notice.

This may not have solved the XP imbalance.

But it did feel morally correct.

The Titanium Mine

With Craig reassigned to agricultural labour, Myles and Zaph set off to do the important task of setting up an automated electric drill on a titanium site.

Net XP: 0.

They also used the radar to triangulate the next exotic deposit.

Net XP: 0.

This was valuable work. Essential work. Infrastructure work. The sort of work upon which empires are built and spreadsheets are later blamed.

Meanwhile, Dave built another exotic extractor.

Ding.

Dave levelled.

Craig was very quiet.

This could mean several things. He might have been reflecting on the unjust structure of labour in a survival crafting economy. He might have been planning revenge. He might have been watering crops and reconsidering his life choices.

Most likely, he was building something somewhere that would later be described as “technically connected to the house.”

The Exotic Adventure

No, not exotic dancers.

No, not secret spy missions in a tropical country involving cocktails, espionage, and someone wearing linen irresponsibly.

This was the other kind of exotic: meteor showers, mining drills, bad weather, and the constant sense that the planet would prefer everyone to leave.

The triangulation had worked. The group found another exotic deposit close by. Dave set up the two drills, connected biofuel generators for power, and wired everything together.

When Myles and Zaph returned, the system was turned on, and another 220 exotics were mined.

This went astonishingly well.

There was only one small timeout required to hide in a cave while the weather attempted to murder everyone. By Icarus standards, this counts as smooth execution. A professional operation. Practically NASA.

Flush with success, and therefore vulnerable to overconfidence, the group decided to do more scanning.

Myles and Zaph headed off to a nearby possible site while Dave packed up all the equipment.

The location Dave provided was a bust.

This surprised no one and yet was still disappointing.

So Myles and Zaph headed into the desert to do another triangulation. They set up the radar beside a lake, placed some railing, and turned on the scan.

Seconds later, Myles asked whether elephants were hostile.

“Nope,” declared Dave. “not a problem.”

Dave, as usual, was wrong.

The elephant charged.

Myles swore as the elephant thundered toward the radar. Zaph opened fire, landing multiple shots into the elephant while it attacked the equipment with the professional outrage of a building inspector discovering Craig’s lake bridge.

Then a cougar, seeing Zaph distracted, did what cougars do best.

It pounced.

Zaph went down.

The cougar then attacked his horse, Mr Speedy.

Myles jumped on Patch and fled.

Patch, who has endured repeated indignities and constant references to being a stripey horse, finally lodged a formal objection by bucking Myles off.

Myles picked up Zaph. Zaph dusted himself off, grabbed his gear, and killed both the elephant and the cougar.

Myles healed Mr Speedy.

It was, all things considered, a remarkably compressed demonstration of the food chain, poor advice, equine resentment, and why “piddly little railing fences” are not an elephant policy.

Take two did not go much better than take one.

Dave rode across the desert to assist. Naturally, by the time Dave arrived, everything was already under control. This is one of the great laws of group survival games: help arrives precisely when it is no longer useful, but still in time to offer commentary.

Myles packed up his toys and went home to Winchester.

Craig asked if anyone needed help.

This was received with the cautious silence normally reserved for unexploded ordnance.

The group regrouped at Winchester so Myles could select a real job.

Desert Mission — Part 1

Some haughty executives wanted a nice camp built in the desert.

The group has learned something about these missions: they do not tell you the specifics until you are on site. This is apparently because the station prefers to operate like a corporate escape room designed by people who hate clarity.

Zaph rode out so the group could find the details.

Dave started up the fabricator to make the required equipment: a skinning bench, a trophy bench, and a decoration bench.

This was not camping.

This was a hunting expedition wearing a camping hat.

The equipment was installed. The group cashed in. Myles dialled up the next mission.

It is important, at moments like this, to remember that progress in Icarus often resembles victory right up until the next task explains what it actually wants.

Desert Mission — Part 2

With all the hunting happening, the station sent down an order for meat.

Not some meat.

Not useful meat.

Not the perfectly good cooked and salted meat already sitting around like the group had prepared for exactly this sort of nonsense.

No.

The order required dried meat, dried white meat, dried gamey meat, and dried giant meat.

Dave rode out to the drop pod to get the details.

Craig, speaking for common sense and pantry management, demanded an explanation.

“What is with all this dried meat – demanded Craig. We have cooked and salted meat, I can bring that?”

Zaph replied with the bleak calm of a man who has already accepted the shape of the misery.

“Nope Zaph replied, hunt some animals and bring the raw meat here, we will have to dry it on racks to match the orders.”

The customer had at least provided details of which animals needed to be hunted for each type of meat.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that every animal on the planet had apparently heard a great hunt was in progress and vanished.

Normally, the group cannot move ten feet without cougars, jackals, antelope, zebra, bears, elephants, or something with teeth deciding that humans are an invasive species. But now that specific animals were required for a mission, the entire ecosystem had developed witness protection.

The cougars disappeared.

The jackals disappeared.

The antelope disappeared.

The zebra disappeared.

Dave and Zaph both made trips through the snow and out to the river looking for bears, polar or brown, and found none.

No bears.

No useful meat.

No dignity.

If only the group had the animal-attracting radar.

Myles had left that at home.

As for giant meat, the group killed three elephants and got nothing but tusks. This was less “great hunt” and more “ivory-themed disappointment.”

After a couple of frustrating hours, the group had filled half the order and called it a night.

Still, it was not a total loss.

While hiding from a storm, the group found another cave of wonders.

So that will be plundered later, obviously. It would be irresponsible not to strip mine the place in the name of morale.

Jenga

Before logging off, Craig continued work on his lake platform project.

This should have been a peaceful moment. A gentle return to Craig’s personal architecture movement: Vertical Nonsense With Aquatic Access.

But Dave had other ideas.

Dave pulled the pin on the project.

Literally.

He removed the lowest ladder section.

The developers, in a rare moment of firm but fair judgement, had accounted for gravity.

Craig’s entire project collapsed into the lake.

It was less a demolition and more a physics-based editorial comment.

Craig was not impressed.

He vowed retribution on Dave.

And so ends another chapter in the long-running civil engineering cold war between “Craig builds something alarming” and “someone else eventually discovers the load-bearing mistake.”

Tonight’s Campfire Song — by Craig

Craig, still processing the emotional wreckage of Dave’s act of ladder-based sabotage, produced the evening’s campfire song.

In the interests of not summoning copyright lawyers from orbit, the original spirit has been preserved while the words have been dragged through the biofuel composter and reassembled into something legally less flammable.

Can’t believe it, Dave, you clearly framed it
Built my masterpiece, then you unmade it
Lakefront vision, flawless elevation
Then you yanked the base from my creation

Don’t you smirk there holding that candle
I’m a walking hazard when I lose the handle
One small ladder, one loud collapse
Now my whole grand plan is fish food scraps

You pulled the pin on my project — that’s sabotage
Dave, that’s sabotage
Winchester saw it
The lake remembers
Craig does not forgive
Craig does not forget

There are times when a song becomes more than a song.

This was not one of those times.

But it did rhyme with blame, which is the important part.

Did We Learn or Achieve Anything This Week?

Yes.

Unfortunately.

The group learned that when animals are not required, they are everywhere. When animals are required, they vanish into the trees like unionised actors during an unpaid callback.

The group also learned that piddly little railing fences do not stop elephants.

This feels like something that should have been obvious. But in fairness, most health and safety policies are written in hindsight, and occasionally that hindsight is shaped like a furious elephant attacking a radar.

Last week, the group said to tune in this week to see if:

• We can finish mining the exotics without mishap.
  Done.

• We can convince Myles to harvest exotics from a geyser.
  Nope.

• Dave takes revenge on the lake piranha by installing fish traps.
  Done.

• Dave converts the entire planet into an enormous coffee-growing conglomerate.
  Replaced soy bean plots with coffee.

• Dave can produce biofuel fast enough to keep up with the automated mining.
  Not a chance.

• Craig can connect his ladders into a death-defying puzzle designed to kill Dave.
  It was going well until Dave intervened.

Achievements

Dave achieved Jenga: remove the key piece to make Craig’s construction collapse.

Dave also achieved Aladdin: discover another cave of wonders.

Myles achieved WQE: pick the worst quest ever.

Craig achieved Limited: blocked during construction by game limits, and Dave.

Zaph achieved Cougar Bait: get slaughtered by a cougar whilst fighting an elephant.

Sturnim achieved Pr0n: unable to join due to watching dubious content with family.

A lesser group might view these as failures.

The Crypt Creeps understand them as progress markers.

Tune In Next Week

Tune in next week to see if:

• The group can find the animals required to finish the meat mission.

• Cave of Wonders 2.0 is stripped of every useful resource and several decorative ones.

• Dave apologises to Craig for the epic Jenga disaster.

• Sturnim joins before the group finishes.

Given the evidence, the animals will remain hidden, the cave will be emptied with industrial precision, Dave will not apologise in any meaningful legal sense, and Sturnim will arrive just in time to ask what everyone is doing.

Meanwhile, Craig will be somewhere near the lake, rebuilding.

Possibly higher.

Possibly wider.

Definitely without a permit.

Icarus: Request Denied, Zebra Rescue, and the Tragic Ballad of Patch

 

Last night’s expedition began, as so many great endeavours do, with paperwork, delusion, and Craig attempting to smuggle a future catastrophe through the approvals process.

“What’s this then?” asked Dave, examining the request form Craig had submitted with the weary suspicion of a man who had seen forests, houses, and probably basic social contracts go up in flames.

“It’s for the new Timber Extraction unit,” Craig replied, already vibrating at the frequency of preventable disaster. “The schematics have just been released, it’s legendary — think of what I could do with a legendary timber extraction unit.”

Dave did think about it.

He looked out the window at the smoking, charred ruin that had once been a thriving forest, before Craig had apparently decided that photosynthesis was a personal insult.

“Request Denied!!!”

Craig, realising his chances were somewhere between Buckleys and None, hurriedly scratched out “extraction unit,” wrote “chainsaw,” and resubmitted the form with the innocent expression of a man who had merely renamed the war crime.

Dave looked at the form again.

“Let me see if I understand your request: you want us to build a petroleum extraction and refining industry so you can have a chainsaw?”

Craig nodded enthusiastically, sensing victory, because Dave did love new technology. Dave loved new technology almost as much as Craig loved misunderstanding why he should never be allowed near it.

“Request Denied!!!”

Dave scratched out “chainsaw,” wrote “platinum axe” on the form, and stamped it approved.

“Here, you can have a shiny axe made possible through Myles’s platinum mining expedition.”

Craig snatched the form from Dave and headed to the forge to get his new axe before Dave could remember that Craig with any axe, even a manual one, was still Craig with an axe.

Dave then turned to the latest requisition list from Myles for the evening’s desert Zebra rescue mission.

“You want what now? Airconditioning? Request Denied!!”

He scratched out “air conditioner,” wrote “insulated water bottle” on the form, and stamped it approved.

Next form.

“Concrete fortifications — Request Denied!!!”

He scratched out “Concrete fortifications,” wrote “Hedgehogs & fencing,” and stamped that approved too.

Thus did Dave establish himself not merely as House Builder and Farmer, but as Quartermaster-General of the Petty Tyranny Division. The man had discovered bureaucracy and immediately weaponised it.

Then, with the administrative business concluded and several people now significantly less prepared than they had hoped, Dave pulled out a blank requisition form, wrote “Greenhouse” on it, and stamped it approved.

Apparently when Dave wants something, democracy blooms.

The Greenhouse Project

Dave happily got to work. A greenhouse would mean faster crop growth. Faster crop growth would mean more trips to the trader. More trips to the trader would mean sweet, sweet Ren, which Dave now regarded less as currency and more as a moral philosophy.

He laid the foundation: four stone walls at one corner of the plantation. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been enough steel to make all the reinforced glass required for a proper greenhouse wall and roof.

Instead, he had four sections of reinforced glass.

A lesser man might have called this “not enough greenhouse.” Dave called it “strategy.”

By placing the four sections of reinforced glass with the confidence of a man bluffing both botany and physics, Dave managed to trick the plants into growing faster.

“How the mighty have fallen,” he thought, surveying his work. “Dave: Tricker of plants.”

Finally, he checked the crops.

Yep. Plants are dumb.

They were now growing 40% faster.

Then a horse ran through the plantation, trampling the seedlings.

“Craig!!!!”

It is important to note that Craig may not have been directly responsible for this particular incident. It is equally important to note that this has never stopped the established legal framework from assigning blame correctly in spirit.

The Zebra Rescue Mission

“So what are we doing tonight?” Myles asked.

Stripes’ ears perked up.

This was the first warning sign.

The zebra trotted over to Myles and nudged him towards the contact device. Myles switched it on. Stripes daintily lifted a hoof and tapped the buttons with the precise menace of a union delegate lodging a formal grievance.

Myles peered at the operation.

Zebra rescue mission.

Stripes nodded.

Myles looked at the target location on the map.

“I have never been there before. It could be dangerous.”

Stripes thumped his hoof on the ground emphatically, then glared at Myles.

“Right — locking that in,” said Myles, backing away from Stripes.

And so the mission was chosen by a zebra, approved by fear, and prepared for with the kind of calm professionalism usually seen immediately before a workplace safety documentary.

It was almost as if the group had foreknowledge of the challenges ahead. We brought prebuilt ramps, beds, hedgehogs, rails, house parts, and, critically, switched off Craig’s flamethrower.

This last step may have saved a biome.

As usual, we spent an hour prepping, making gear, packing for the mission, and generally doing the sort of careful preparation that suggests lessons had been learned.

By the time Myles declared everyone ready to leave, Zaph was already in the desert.

Because Zaph does not wait for the group. Zaph materialises ahead of the group, like a tactical rumour.

The journey through the forest and riverlands was uneventful, although at one point we had to sit out a storm in a mine.

Naturally, we stripped it bare.

On the way, we passed the broken-down wooden remains of former buildings used during the great bear hunt of ’26. We even fixed one of them up to its former glory, then immediately pilfered the fire pit.

We did not burn any of them down, due entirely to the fortuitous disabling of Craig’s flamethrower.

This counts as progress.

We reached the desert without incidence. As Zaph scouted ahead, Dave marked the potential location of a world boss to be avoided on the map.

Zaph avoided the boss.

He then rode straight across a giant sand worm lair and complained to Dave for not marking it on the map.

This was unfair, but efficient, and therefore very on-brand.

Eventually we arrived in the general area to check on the previous rescue squad. Their house, DustWater, was located at the end of a large lake.

The house appeared to be full of cougars.

Not metaphorical cougars. Actual cougars. Angry, toothy, home-invading cougars. The sort of real estate issue not usually covered in the inspection report.

Not to worry. We built a small pillbox and installed a single bed for respawning purposes. Then we built a ramp up an outcrop and moved our mounts out of harm’s way, because even by our standards we were not letting the animals watch us die from ground level.

We found a place to set up, installing prefabricated fencing and hedgehogs to slow and kill the cougars.

Now we just needed to let the cougars out of the house.

We needed someone brave. Heroic. Not afraid to die.

Instead, we got Dave.

Dave opened the door.

The cougars roared.

Dave fled, leaving puddles behind.

Zaph shot the cougars as they approached. Craig snuck out and skinned them.

It was all going to plan, which immediately made everyone suspicious.

Then the cougars got stuck and started destroying the house to get out.

Dave, who had already completed the “open door and flee screaming” portion of the operation, ran back and shot a cougar to get their attention.

This worked.

A bunch of cougars ran out.

Unfortunately, cougars run faster than Dave.

It was brutal.

They caught him just as he was trying to reach safety beyond the hedgehogs, and Myles had to sneak out to rescue him.

Which, to be clear, was not in the original plan. Myles’s plan was mostly “map, supervise, and remain unchewed.”

Finally, the cougar crisis was resolved. The group had a beautiful new home made from sandstone, with a lovely raised animal shelter, some beds, a fireplace, and a solar-powered chemistry bench.

Nothing says “rescue operation” like moving into the disaster zone and installing mod-cons.

While the rest of the guys explored the house and installed the essentials — mortar and pestle, bedrolls, crafting bench, and the usual collection of items that suggest we might accidentally colonise the place — Zaph got on with the actual mission.

Zebra rescue.

Zaph rescued two zebras. He walked out to one, saddled it up, and rode back.

No fuss. No muss.

This was the dangerous moment, because success made Zaph cocky.

He decided to collect two zebras at once.

One zebra: no problem.

Two zebras: the local wildlife objected to mass migration.

The cougars swarmed. Zaph fought bravely, but the fight was going badly. He jumped on a zebra and rode back towards the group.

The other zebra, Patch, followed behind, distracting the cougars.

Dave jumped on Stripes and rode out to the rescue.

Halfway to Zaph, the news came in.

Patch didn’t make it.

RIP Patch.

There are moments in history when everything changes. The fall of empires. The signing of treaties. The invention of plumbing.

And then there was Stripes learning what happened to Patch.

Stripes, infuriated, stomped five cougars into the desert sand, pounding their corpses until only bloody stains and visages remained.

This was less “mount behaviour” and more “biblical judgement with hooves.”

Zaph got back to the house, dejected.

There was still one zebra left to collect.

This one was trickier. It had somehow got itself stuck on a Mesa, because apparently even the zebras had started taking inspiration from Craig’s architectural philosophy.

Not to worry. We came prepared.

Zaph grabbed the prebuilt ramps and headed off. As he worked his way up the side of the Mesa, he stopped to admire his progress, stepped back to get a better view, and fell to his death.

There is a lesson here, and it is not a subtle one.

Myles rode out to rescue him.

Zaph finished the ramp and rescued the last zebra.

The Iron Mining Project

Given our desperate shortage of iron — the cupboard was bare — we decided to find some nearby mines and gather ore.

This was successful. So successful, in fact, that the cupboard is now almost full again, which means Dave will soon be able to deny higher-quality requests with even greater confidence.

Myles tried to get Dave to exclude the deplorable wrong-cave bee incident from this report.

Request Denied!!

The wrong cave was entered. The bees were real. The shame was documented.

The Triangulation Project

On the way to the Zebra rescue, we stopped halfway, set up the radar, and did another scan.

More time was spent fortifying the location than it took to run the scan.

Dave had clearly overhyped the expected animal response. Somewhere in his mind, he had prepared for a full-scale planetary uprising. What we got was closer to mild ecological disapproval.

After the Zebra rescue was completed, we ran another scan from the desert house. We set up atop a rock outcrop, with hedgehogs protecting the path up.

Again, we overprepared. Only four hyenas objected to the scan, and Myles and Dave quickly dispatched them.

Using the three scans, we determined three possible locations and finally found an exotic deposit.

We set up rails, built a stone house to protect the mounts, installed the extractor, and powered it.

It hummed merrily, pulling valuable exotic material from the ground.

For a brief, shining moment, the operation looked competent.

The only mishaps were Stripes setting himself on fire on the indoor campfire, then running through the forest and setting the undergrowth alight.

Also, lightning storms set the forest on fire while we hid in the house.

“Craig!!!”

Again, was Craig responsible for lightning? Technically no.

But he has created a climate of expectation.

It was going so well that Myles and Craig headed back to Winchester to unload their stuff. After an hour, with half the exotics extracted and shipped, we called it a night.

Nobody died in the extraction phase.

This should be recorded somewhere in case it never happens again.

Tonight’s Campfire Song — Started by Zaph

Zaph began the evening’s musical offering with a jaunty frontier-style number about home, wildlife, and the persistent hope that Craig might go one full day without converting woodland into decorative ash.

There were verses about buffalo, deer, cougars, and the rare dream of a land where discouraging words were few and Craig was not setting forests on fire all day.

Craig then contributed a verse, because of course he did.

His was about standing proudly on top of a mountain, the wind at your back, ember and ash in the air, and Myles’s house burning to the ground.

It was less a song and more a signed confession with a melody.

Stripes added a verse too, which raised several questions about desert canyons, floods, planning decisions, and the alarming number of zebras involved in what had originally sounded like a simple rescue operation.

Myles then looked at Dave and burst into song, demanding to know whether any of this had been thought out at all, whether the whole base design was just paint thrown at a wall, whether there were blueprints, whether there were plans, and whether anyone might be permitted to speak to the architect.

Dave, unable to help himself, sang lovingly of wildflowers, coffee crops, dear lands, and the stars glittering at night.

Zaph brought it home with a final verse about the lake house, the bears, the wolves, the absence of discouraging words, and the desperate hope that Craig was not building ladders all day.

It was, in its own way, beautiful.

Not musically.

But sociologically.

Did We Learn or Achieve Anything This Week?

We learnt that Dave is a petty tyrant and should have had a career as an army supply sergeant.

We learnt that you can make a plan Dave will follow. All you have to do is let Dave make the plan.

We learnt that two zebras are one too many to rescue at the same time.

We learnt not to step backwards when admiring the ramp you are standing on.

We learnt that it’s not always Craig’s fault, although 99.99% of the time it is.

We learnt that it’s not always Craig who isn’t listening to instructions. Sometimes it’s Myles.

We learnt that Stripes is awesome, but not fireproof.

Last week, we said to tune in this week to see if Dave could speed up crop production.

Done.

If Myles could triangulate the exotic deposits.

Done.

If Stripes could talk us into the Zebra rescue mission.

Done.

If Craig could connect all the ladders.

Request Denied.

And if Zaph could put up with the shenanigans.

Nope.

We also mined enough iron to refill the cupboard, which means Dave can now return to denying requests from a position of industrial strength.

Achievements Unlocked

Dave achieved: I Forgot — “Who packed this mining equipment on my Zebra?”

Myles achieved: Did the Bees Respawn? — Go to the wrong mine.

Myles also achieved: I Am Craig — Ignore Dave’s explanations, then ask questions that have already been answered.

Craig achieved: Scapegoat — Be blamed incorrectly for everything that goes wrong.

This remains one of Craig’s most reliable contributions to group cohesion.

Zaph achieved: Patchwork — Get Patch eaten by cougars.

Zaph also achieved: Seeking Support — Need a friend’s help to avoid dying, and to recover from dying.

Stripes achieved: Rescuer — Save your zebra buddies from the cougars.

Stripes also achieved: It Burns — Set yourself on fire.

Tune In Next Week

Tune in next week to see if we can finish mining the exotics without mishap.

If we can convince Myles to harvest exotics from a geyser.

If Dave takes revenge on the lake piranha by installing fish traps.

If Dave converts the entire planet into an enormous coffee-growing conglomerate.

If Dave can produce biofuel fast enough to keep up with the automated mining.

And if Craig can connect his ladders into a death-defying puzzle designed to kill Dave.

Request pending.

25 Years of Denial

25 Years of Denial: The Gold Dragon Incident Gets the Anniversary Treatment

There are gaming groups, and then there are archaeological sites with snacks.

The Crypt Creeps have now been playing together for over twenty-five years, depending on how generously one treats time, memory, and Craig’s relationship with the truth. This is not merely a milestone. It is a containment breach with candles. A quarter-century of weekly games, LAN nights, campaigns, respawns, tactical disasters, loot disputes, suspiciously confident decision-making, and the slow accumulation of in-jokes dense enough to generate their own gravity.

Some groups celebrate anniversaries with a nice dinner.

Some groups commission art.

Some groups write heartfelt retrospectives about friendship, loyalty, and the shared joy of imaginary worlds.

We have chosen to commemorate our long-running association with fake magazine covers, black-and-white dungeon comics, and sticker designs about Craig being a menace to civilised society.

This feels correct.

The Crypt Creeps were never really built on dignity. They were built on showing up, rolling dice, ignoring plans, blaming pathfinding, and gradually transforming every preventable disaster into folklore. And no piece of folklore has endured with the radioactive half-life of The Gold Dragon Incident.

For those unfamiliar with the sacred text, the Gold Dragon Incident allegedly took place around 2003, during one of our Neverwinter Nights adventures on the NODNOL server. We say “allegedly” because dates blur, hard drives die, memories improve themselves in the retelling, and Craig has spent more than two decades maintaining a level of plausible deniability usually reserved for parliamentary inquiries.

The broad strokes, however, remain clear.

There was a town.

There was a gold dragon.

The gold dragon was about two storeys tall.

The party had entered the town to perform normal adventurer business: trade, gather information, sell rabbit pelts, avoid starving, and generally behave like people who had not been raised by wolves in a cursed inventory screen.

Craig, meanwhile, looked at the two-storey lawful-good dragon — a creature that was less “random monster” and more “municipal authority with wings” — and apparently identified it as a viable pickpocketing opportunity.

This was not a shadowy wyrm sleeping on stolen treasure in some forgotten cavern. This was not a morally ambiguous beast guarding a hoard of cursed coins. This was effectively the town sheriff, except the sheriff was covered in gold scales, the size of a terrace house, and presumably capable of resolving petty crime with a single raised eyebrow.

Craig saw this and thought, in essence, “Yes. That.”

And thus began one of the great load-bearing jokes of the group.

The exact tactical theory remains unclear. Craig’s implied version of events has always suggested some daring rogue manoeuvre. A bold gambit. A misunderstood act of genius. Perhaps even a high-risk, high-reward operation that lesser minds simply failed to appreciate.

Everyone else’s version involves a failed roll, immediate consequences, civic exile, and the party being forced to experience the educational side of medieval justice.

There is also the small matter of the server log, which, inconveniently for Craig, appears to have preserved the essence of the affair with the grim efficiency of a court stenographer.

You attempt to pickpocket the dragon.

You fail.

There are some sentences that need no embellishment. This is one of them.

The first comic in this anniversary collection asks a question that probably should have been raised before the dice came out: where exactly does one expect a two-storey dragon to keep loose change?

Horns: no pockets.

Wings: no pockets.

Scales: no pockets.

Tail: no pockets.

Conclusion: no pockets.

This is the sort of preliminary investigation most thieves might conduct before attempting a theft. A brief anatomical survey. A moment of professional caution. Perhaps even a whispered team discussion beginning with, “Hang on, does the dragon have trousers?”

Craig, of course, has always preferred a more direct research methodology. Some people learn by study. Some by observation. Craig learns by pushing the red button, pulling the cursed lever, opening the suspicious chest, digging the hole, climbing the impossible wall, or in this case, attempting targeted wealth redistribution from a civic dragon.

The comic captures this perfectly. Craig, studying the problem with the bright-eyed optimism of a man who has not yet met the consequences department, simply improvises. The dragon, being ancient, wealthy, intelligent, and now personally involved, offers the necessary clarification.

That is not a skill check.

It was, regrettably, a crime check.

This is the kind of rules interpretation that arrives too late to be useful but early enough to be funny forever.

The second comic, Passive Perception, moves from legal theory into stealth mechanics.

Craig approaches the sleeping dragon with the confidence of a shadow. Unfortunately, the environment appears to have been designed by someone who hates rogues. Coins, bones, armour, helmets, a lute, assorted debris, and at least one squeaky object all conspire to produce the traditional soundtrack of bad stealth.

Clank.

Rattle.

Twang.

Squeak.

There is a moment in every tabletop session where the player believes they are being subtle, and the rest of the table can already hear the town guard putting on boots. This was one of those moments, except scaled up to include a dragon large enough to have its own weather system.

The dragon opens one eye.

“I am awake, wealthy, ancient, and taking this personally.”

There are few things in fantasy more dangerous than an ancient dragon. One of them is an ancient dragon with a valid complaint. Another is Craig asking, “So I roll with disadvantage?”

The answer, in hindsight, was probably no.

Not because disadvantage was too harsh.

Because by then the roll had become more of an administrative formality. The universe had already reviewed the application and rejected it on moral, practical, and architectural grounds.

The third comic, Kobayashi Maru, gives the incident the post-disaster philosophical treatment it deserves.

In Craig’s defence — and let us be clear, this is a phrase that should always make nearby adults nervous — he has occasionally suggested that the whole affair was essentially unwinnable. A no-win scenario. A trap. A Kobayashi Maru. The sort of impossible test designed to reveal character, expose the illusion of control, and perhaps explain why everyone was suddenly banned from town.

Myles, naturally, objects to this framing.

“You created the scenario.”

Zaph, with the cold precision of a man who alphabetises ammunition and considers group discussion a failure state, adds the necessary second clause.

“Then failed the scenario.”

Dave, holding the rabbit pelts and possibly still trying to work out whether they can be sold somewhere else, completes the prosecution.

“Then made us live in the scenario.”

Craig’s response, of course, is not shame. It is not apology. It is not even recognition. It is the serene expression of a man who has detected narrative value in his own indictment.

“So you admit it had narrative weight.”

And this is why the joke has lasted twenty-five years.

The Gold Dragon Incident is not merely funny because Craig tried to pickpocket a dragon. That would be enough, obviously. But it endures because it contains the full Craig cycle in miniature.

First, a bold idea.

Second, no meaningful consultation.

Third, immediate consequences.

Fourth, group suffering.

Fifth, long-term denial.

Sixth, eventual conversion into commemorative merchandise.

It is less an incident than a template.

Which brings us neatly to the stickers.

Because after twenty-five years, the Crypt Creeps do not merely have jokes. We have iconography. Dave is no longer just Dave; he is a wandering reagent magnet, a lore-hungry side-plot archaeologist, a man who can turn “we are going directly there” into “I found something interesting over here and may now require rescue.” Zaph is not merely Zaph; he is tactical removal in human form, a precision instrument who has already solved the encounter while the rest of us are still discussing whether the door looks suspicious. Myles is not merely Myles; he is the reluctant adult with the map, the medic bag, and the expression of someone mentally calculating the paperwork.

And Craig is Craig.

The sticker designs lean into these roles because, after this long, they are not character traits so much as emergency labels. They belong on laptops, notebooks, campaign folders, storage crates, hazardous equipment, and anything with moving parts. Especially ladders. Especially ladders that appear to serve no purpose. Especially ladders near Craig.

There is also a Sturnim sticker, naturally, because no retrospective of group chaos would be complete without acknowledging the patron saint of rash entry. Sturnim the Brave: the man, the myth, the warning label. The man who has looked at armour, gravity, and basic caution and declared them optional. His inclusion feels necessary, if only for balance. Craig cannot be expected to carry the full burden of historic irresponsibility alone, though he has made a heroic attempt.

The broader sticker set pulls from our usual rotation of fictional disasters: Icarus, Rogue Trader, Enshrouded, and the general Crypt Creeps Cinematic Universe of Poorly Supervised Decisions. Different worlds, different mechanics, different monsters; same people, same flaws, same strange comfort in logging on again next week to see what new form of avoidable complication we can manufacture.

That, really, is the thing worth celebrating.

Not the gold dragon itself, although it remains a magnificent civic victim.

Not the failed roll, although it has earned its place in the archive.

Not even Craig’s denial, although at this point it should probably be heritage listed.

What we are celebrating is the fact that these stories still exist because the group still exists. Twenty-five years of turning up. Twenty-five years of laughing at each other. Twenty-five years of jokes that have become shorthand, shorthand that has become mythology, and mythology that has now apparently become a fake magazine publishing line.

There is something quietly absurd and genuinely wonderful about that.

Most friendships do not come with server logs.

Most anniversaries do not involve commemorative forensic dragon journalism.

Most gaming groups do not preserve a single failed pickpocket attempt for a quarter-century and then turn it into a magazine cover, multiple comics, and stickers.

But then, most gaming groups are not the Crypt Creeps.

We have survived edition changes, platform changes, game changes, house moves, work schedules, family obligations, technical failures, character deaths, save wipes, patch notes, early access bugs, late-night fatigue, and Craig discovering vertical surfaces.

We have travelled through dungeons, deserts, starships, cursed forests, hostile alien planets, shrouded valleys, grimdark voidships, spider houses, polar wastes, and at least one town that probably still has our faces on a warning poster.

We have developed tactics.

We have ignored tactics.

We have blamed pathfinding.

We have blamed lag.

We have blamed interface design.

We have blamed Craig.

And, to be fair, sometimes the blame has been well-supported by documentary evidence.

The Gold Dragon Incident endures because it represents the perfect Crypt Creeps story. It is stupid, specific, mechanically grounded, morally indefensible, and somehow still arguable over drinks two decades later. It has a protagonist, a victim, a failed roll, a legal framework, secondary consequences, and a villain who continues to insist the situation was more nuanced than everyone else remembers.

It is our Bayeux Tapestry, if the Bayeux Tapestry involved a man in a beanie trying to rob local government.

So here we are. Twenty-five years of the Crypt Creeps. Twenty-five years of denial. Twenty-five years of turning bad decisions into good stories.

And somewhere, in a friendly town that wants absolutely nothing to do with us, a two-storey gold dragon still checks its pockets out of habit.

Not because it has any.

Because Craig once made that everyone’s problem.

Icarus: Winchester Gets Wired

Icarus: The Night Winchester Discovered Electricity, Plumbing, and Craig’s Ongoing War Against Vertical Restraint

With Zaph away for the evening, the group entered that rare and dangerous phase of civilisation known as Dave Being Allowed to Set Priorities.

This is usually when sensible people log off, mute Discord, or fake a medical emergency. Sadly, Myles was already online.

Dave, freed from Zaph’s tactical efficiency and Craig’s usual ability to convert any plan into a public safety investigation, decided that the evening would be devoted to house improvements. And by “everyone,” Dave meant Myles. Craig, naturally, refused to have his artistic nature restrained by anything as dreary as chores, indoor plumbing lines, basic load-bearing principles, or gravity.

So Myles and Dave logged on early to get some work done around Winchester without distractions. This was optimistic, because “without distractions” in this group means “Craig has not yet found the button that makes the world worse.”

The evening began respectably enough. New technology was researched. There were plans. There were pipes. There was the faint, heady smell of a settlement about to crawl one rung higher on the ladder of civilisation, unaware that Craig was already building several literal ladders elsewhere for no helpful reason.

An electric water pump was installed. An electric water purifier followed. The base now possessed clean water, which meant dysentery had been formally asked to leave the premises. Dave finished laying the floor on the lake construction, adding dignity and probable future trip hazards in equal measure, while Myles ran water pipes to the water troughs.

Then came the plumbing spree.

Myles hooked up the optional water connection to the cement mixer, the concrete furnace, the biofuel composter, the fabricator, the electric furnace, the glassblowing table, and the advanced masonry bench. It was the sort of job no one appreciates until it stops working, at which point everyone immediately asks Myles why the cement mixer is thirsty.

And then came the miracle.

Lighting.

Actual lighting.

Not torches. Not “stand near the fire and hope.” Not navigating the crafting room by the red glow of Craig’s latest forest incident. Proper electrical lighting.

The group faced one of the great aesthetic decisions of the modern age: smoked glass lights or clear glass lights. Dave, applying the sort of practical wisdom usually reserved for grizzled lighthouse keepers and insurance assessors, pointed out that clear glass was pointless because it would simply get covered in smoke from the strangely recurring forest fires.

No one looked at Craig.

Everyone looked at Craig.

Craig was unavailable for comment, possibly because he was up a ladder.

Myles ran wiring around the house and connected the lights. Winchester entered the electrical age. The base could now operate twenty-four hours a day, which was especially useful at night, when previously the crafting area had the atmosphere of a medieval tax office being haunted by wolves.

It was progress. It was beautiful. It was almost suspiciously competent.

Which brings us to the question every responsible adult was asking.

What was Craig doing while all the house improvements were happening?

Craig had, in theory, been given simple and helpful tasks.

Water the crops, Craig.

Weed the crops, Craig.

More wood and stone, Craig.

These were not complex requests. They were not metaphysical koans. They did not require a philosophy degree or a hydraulic engineering certificate. They were the sort of tasks one might give to a reasonably bright goat.

But Craig muttered to himself as the chores piled up, and when Myles became distracted by asking Dave a question about plumbing aesthetics, Craig saw his moment. Like a raccoon slipping out of a kitchen window with a stolen sandwich, he escaped.

Craig’s contribution to the evening can be summed up as follows: he spent the entire session making six-storey ladders that went nowhere.

Not somewhere unusual.

Not somewhere dangerous but potentially rewarding.

Nowhere.

These were not ladders in the practical sense. These were monuments. Vertical mood boards. Wooden expressions of Craig’s inner landscape, which apparently resembles a workplace accident report with delusions of grandeur.

Dave, in what historians will surely describe as “a mistake,” had taught Craig how to build stone foundations. Armed with this terrible knowledge, Craig built a walkway across the lake. Then, drunk on structural possibility, Craig used the wondrous new foundations to build a ramp up a mountain in an attempt to reach the top.

There were also a few forest fire outbreaks.

Craig claimed these were due to the frequent lightning storms in the area.

This was accepted in the same spirit one accepts a toddler’s explanation that the jam simply climbed onto the ceiling by itself.

Meanwhile, back in the house of actual work, Myles and Dave had used an alarming amount of resources to bring the wonder of electricity to Winchester. Everything required copper wiring. Iron was converted into steel. Gold and copper vanished into electronics because apparently the future runs on precious metals and quiet despair.

Soon the copper and iron cupboards were empty. Titanium was gone. Only a few bars of platinum remained. This was the sort of inventory screen that makes Dave start saying things like, “We should just do one quick mining run,” which is how groups vanish into the wilderness for four hours and return with nine berries, frostbite, and a story about a bear.

On the plus side, Winchester had a cupboard and a half of aluminium ingots, lots of charcoal, and coal.

The group was, in short, rich in the wrong things.

It was time to go exploring and scavenging.

Myles headed out, following rumours from Dave about possible mining locations. Dave stayed at the house fabricating excavators, beacons, and fuel cans, which sounds like preparation until one remembers that Dave’s rumours about possible mining locations are usually delivered with the confidence of a man pointing vaguely at the horizon and saying, “Probably over there.”

Still, the expedition paid off.

Myles found six mining sites: several platinum sites, oxite, gold, iron, and copper. Extractors were installed and powered by biofuel. Beacons were added so the sites could be found again, because “we’ll remember where it is” is one of the foundational lies of survival games.

One site was close to a stream, so the group installed an electric extractor powered by a water wheel. This was pleasingly renewable and made everyone feel like responsible planetary settlers, right up until the water wheel began collecting every stray plant in the biome like a compost-themed fishing net.

With ten extractors working day and night, powered by biofuel, Winchester entered a new economic era: the Biofuel Panic.

Everything became fuel.

Furs. Fibre. Rotten plants. Vegetable oil. Wheat.

If it could be stuffed into a composter and converted into combustible optimism, it was sacrificed to the machine.

This also placed Myles on the hamster wheel of resource collection and extractor refuelling, with occasional diversions to remove all the plants clogging the water wheel. It was less “base support and medic” and more “municipal utilities department during a fungal apocalypse.”

The renewable energy supply was amazing. There was even a battery for night use. Winchester was becoming a beacon of progress, industry, and questionable zoning.

Unfortunately, with all the lights and devices consuming power, the battery could not supply the required output. Frequent blackouts followed.

There is a special kind of comedy in installing lighting so the base can work twenty-four hours a day, only to discover that the base can now work for several dramatic minutes before everything shuts off like a haunted motel.

More research was required. More resources were required. Eventually, the group built and installed an advanced battery rack.

There may or may not have been some wiring problems during installation, leading to half the facility shutting down.

Myles refuses to speculate on the cause.

This is not an admission of guilt. It is simply a legal position.

At this point, the evening had already contained plumbing, lighting, water purification, lake construction, biofuel logistics, resource extraction, Craig’s alpine ladder theatre, and enough electrical problems to make the house smell faintly of burnt ambition.

But Zaph was away.

And because Zaph was away, Zaph was also spiritually present as a future complaint.

The group knew he would return and ask, with quiet sniper judgment, why there were no riches. He would look at the electric lights, the plumbing, the extractors, the advanced battery rack, the new crop infrastructure, and the general miracle of industrial progress, and somehow communicate that none of this counted because it was not shiny enough.

So the decision was made.

They would find and mine exotics.

This meant inventing radar.

Radar, of course, was powered by biofuel, because by this point biofuel had become less a resource and more a religion. The base no longer ran on technology. It ran on whatever Myles could shovel into the hungry green maw of the composter monster.

Having heard Dave’s tales about wild animals attacking new technology, Myles ordered the construction of a narrow walkway out into the lake. This was intended as a defensive measure. Sensible. Controlled. Minimal.

Craig mysteriously appeared and took charge of construction.

This is never a sentence that leads to a safe outcome.

Still, the walkway was built. Myles installed hedgehogs and the radar, then switched it on.

The local wildlife immediately objected to science.

Wolves and wild horses attacked the house, perhaps offended by the electromagnetic implications. Fortunately, Sir Stripes defended the yard and soundly defeated them. A few creatures attacked the radar installation and were defeated by the hedgehogs. Hedgehogs may not be as glamorous as Sir Stripes, but they got the job done with the blunt professionalism of a spike-covered accountant.

The radar provided a general direction to search. Dave and Myles set out on a scouting expedition.

Craig said not to wait for him; he would catch up.

He did not catch up.

They stopped frequently.

He still did not catch up.

This is because “I’ll catch up” in Craigish roughly translates to “I have found a new angle from which to endanger myself.”

Dave and Myles continued checking nearby locations. Dave kept insisting on “just one more spot.” This is one of Dave’s most dangerous spells, ranking somewhere between Summon Side Quest and Detect Reagent. It always begins innocently. One more hill. One more cave. One more glacier. One more reason Myles starts calculating sunset and body temperature.

The scouting expedition became a long, arduous journey through snow-covered passes to the sound of “it’s just over the next glacier,” while Myles demanded they return home before dark.

This continued with the grim rhythm of an Antarctic buddy comedy.

They checked six possible locations.

They found nothing.

So the radar would need to be moved to different locations to triangulate a fix, because even the future apparently requires cartography, patience, and Myles sighing heavily into a headset.

There was, however, one upside to the trip.

Dave picked every berry and soybean in sight to turn into rotten plants to feed the biofuel composter monster the group had created.

This is Dave in his purest form: heroic, distracted, and somehow turning a failed expedition into agricultural hoarding.

Along the way, they hid in a few caves, mined some exotics, and Myles took the crops to the trader for cash. So there was profit for the evening, even if the expedition’s main result was frostbite, plant theft, and a renewed understanding that Dave’s “nearby” is a flexible term.

Then the coffee economy made itself known.

Looking at the coffee returns, Dave installed thirteen more plots and planted coffee.

This is how Winchester works now. Discover indoor plumbing? Fine. Install electricity? Good. Invent radar? Useful. Learn that coffee makes money? Immediately restructure agriculture around caffeine.

Future technology would require new materials, so the group researched composites. These were, naturally, complex formulations requiring gold ore, iron ore, silicate, and organic resins. Because nothing says “the future” like spending all evening emptying the copper cupboard only to discover the next phase of progress wants the gold cupboard too.

The newly discovered composites, plus a ton of concrete — and by “a ton,” the recap means one hundred concrete — were used to build an electric composter to produce biofuel faster.

This was less a quality-of-life upgrade and more an arms race against the group’s own energy addiction.

Winchester had become a machine designed to consume the planet in order to power the devices needed to better consume the planet.

A perfect little civilisation, then.

This Week’s Campfire Song

Sung by Dave and Myles over a campfire, with Craig nowhere to be seen.

There’s a Craig who believes every glittering thing
Means a secret the devs must be hiding.
So he stacks up a staircase with no earthly use,
And calls it “experimental climbing.”

If he reaches the top and there’s nothing up there,
No treasure, no loot, no achievement,
Dave will stare at the missing resources below
And begin his long speech on bereavement.

There’s a sign near the wall, but Craig squints at it twice,
Because words can be tricksy and loaded.
By the brook stood a tree, before someone lit flames,
And the local birdlife exploded.

There’s a feeling one gets when looking west,
Past smoke, ramps, and timber disorders.
Myles sees ladders rise up where no ladders should be,
And updates the risk register borders.

And it’s whispered that soon, if we all survive night,
The composter will hum like a furnace.
But the tune that we hear through the crackle and sparks
Is Craig, building more things without purpose.

What Did We Learn?

The evening produced several important lessons, all of which will be forgotten at the exact moment they become relevant.

Electricity makes everything better, right up until it makes everything turn off at once.

Purified water stops dysentery, which is a considerable improvement over the previous settlement health plan of “try not to think about it.”

Let Myles do all the cabling. It is neater that way, and also gives everyone someone obvious to blame when half the facility shuts down.

Never teach Craig how to do something. It will be misused. This is not pessimism. This is longitudinal research.

Never leave Craig unsupervised.

If Craig is quiet, it is not peace. It is the calm before the storm, or the sound of him calculating how many foundations it takes to offend a mountain.

Achievements Unlocked

Dave achieved: Housework
Convince at least one other person to spend the entire session doing chores, then somehow make it feel like destiny.

Myles achieved: Indoor Plumbing
Hook all crafting stations up with water and become the unwilling patron saint of pipes, cables, refuelling schedules, and suspiciously avoidable outages.

Craig achieved: Led Zeppelin
Build a stairway to heaven, or at least to a point several metres above practical usefulness.

Zaph achieved: Coffee Break
Take the night off and still somehow exert enough pressure on the group that they invented radar to avoid future disappointment.

Stripes achieved: Protector of Animals
Defend the yard from a wildlife incursion, proving once again that Sir Stripes is one of the few members of the team whose combat priorities are both clear and helpful.

Tune In Next Week

Tune in next week to see if Dave can speed up crop production.

If Myles can triangulate the exotic deposits.

If Sir Stripes can talk the group into the Zebra rescue mission.

If Craig can connect all the ladders without deforesting the planet.

And if Zaph can put up with the shenanigans.

On current evidence, the answer to that last one is “technically yes, but not quietly.”

Electricity Makes Everything Better

 

There are many sensible reasons to build a house on a lake. Scenic views, convenient fishing, a pleasant breeze, the opportunity to say things like “lake house” in a tone normally reserved for real estate brochures and people who own boat shoes.

We, naturally, had built ours on a lake because it contained hidden treasure.

Or at least that was the rumour, and in our group a rumour only needs to survive three seconds of Dave saying it over breakfast before becoming an expedition, a construction project, and eventually a workplace safety incident. As rumour had it, somewhere beneath the placid waters of our charming little lake was the entrance to a cave of mystery. This cave, being a proper cave of mystery, had not bothered with signposting, safety railings, or a tourist kiosk. It was, however, guarded by piranhas, because Icarus is the sort of game where even the decorative puddles have opinions about your mortality.

All it took was a few hints dropped by Dave over breakfast and the gang were all set to go.

Apart from Zaph, who was sleeping in.

This was fine. Zaph approaches wilderness adventure with the efficiency of a professional assassin and the social engagement of a cat deciding whether the room deserves his presence. If there was shooting to be done later, he would appear, possibly already aiming.

Myles, as base support, medic, quartermaster, mapmaker, and reluctant adult in the room, made sure everyone had rope, biofuel lamps that stay on underwater, and at least the faintest theoretical chance of not drowning in a lake full of bitey fish. With the expedition thus equipped to a standard that could generously be described as “better than Craig’s usual,” off we went for a swim in the lake.

For the next 20 minutes we perused the lake looking for a cave opening. “Perused” here means flailing around underwater with lamps, ropes, and diminishing patience while the local piranhas treated us like a buffet that had foolishly delivered itself.

The water turned red with our blood.

Myles turned red with frustration.

Craig turned annoyingly on Dave, questioning his unnamed sources and declaring the cave to be another of Dave’s fairy tales, like the alleged Gold Dragon incident. The Gold Dragon incident, to this day, occupies a special place in group folklore: somewhere between “unverified sighting,” “deep lore,” and “Dave has been at the alchemical reagents again.”

Dave, having apparently decided that vindication could wait but construction could not, returned to the house to see how his secret stone foundation project was going. Craig, who had lost faith in aquatic archaeology and possibly the very concept of evidence, left the lake to burn down some trees.

Myles, on the verge of giving up, finally found the entrance.

Dave was vindicated.

This caused a disturbance in the natural order. Somewhere, a piranha paused mid-bite and reconsidered its worldview.

The spelunking expedition was on.

Sir Stripes stayed home. When asked if he wanted to go caving, he politely declined, indicating he would rather eat the slop in the food trough than die in a cave trapped underwater. This was, by some margin, the most intelligent tactical decision made all evening.

Myles installed solar panels on the roof of the house and ran heavy electrical cabling over the roof, down the wall, alongside the animal yard, across the ground, under the water, and into the cave. It was a marvel of neat, tidy, safe cabling designed to prevent accidents.

In the same way that a Victorian bridge made of fireworks is designed to prevent accidents.

Still, it was functional. It had purpose. It was power brought to the depths. Prometheus, had he been watching from orbit, would have nodded solemnly and asked whether the cable was properly waterproofed.

Craig made a light bulb and returned to the cave to install it. Like Thomas Edison, he would be the first to turn on a light. Also like Thomas Edison, his path to illumination involved failure. Unlike Thomas Edison, Craig’s response time between failure and blaming someone else was much quicker.

As with many Craig plans, things did not go as planned.

“The wiring is faulty,” declared Craig after several unsuccessful attempts to install a simple light.

Ignoring the fact that it took 10,000 failures before Edison successfully turned on a light bulb, Craig had given up after a mere dozen attempts and laid the blame elsewhere. The wiring, apparently, had betrayed him. The cable had lost faith. Electricity itself had become political.

“Impossible!” declared Myles. “I installed that wiring myself. Are you sure you know how to plug in a light bulb?”

The universe paused, awaiting Craig’s answer. Stars dimmed. The lake held its breath. Somewhere, Sir Stripes looked up from his trough, suddenly aware that history was being made.

“Yes, I know how to plug in a bloody light bulb, it’s not rocket science!” Craig responded.

This was technically correct. It was not rocket science. It was, however, light bulb science, and that would prove to be a different discipline entirely.

“There must be a break in the wire somewhere, we should test it,” suggested Dave.

Myles took the light bulb from Craig, attached it to the animal pen, ran a connection from the power cable to the light and switched it on.

It worked.

He removed the light and ventured further along the cable to the shoreline. Installed the light.

It worked.

He proceeded to the shoreline, installed the light, and it worked. He dived into the lake with the light, and we followed him into the cave. Myles installed the light, flicked the switch, and it worked.

Craig sheepishly declared, “How was I supposed to know you had to connect it to the cable?”

Myles held up a sparking cable and waved it at him.

“Oh, I don’t know, you could try reading the manual.”

The manual, of course, is Craig’s natural predator.

Dave unpacked the Humidifier, which worked, which is just as well because underwater caves are damp. This might seem obvious to the untrained observer, but in our group every technological milestone deserves a moment. We had brought electricity to a cave under a lake and then installed a device to make the wet cave less wet. Somewhere in the distance, engineering wept softly into a clipboard.

The cave was free from worms and bees, so Craig didn’t have to use the flamethrower. This was a relief to everyone except Craig, who believes most ecological problems can be solved by converting them to ash.

Craig returned to the house to make more lights.

Craig soon arrived back at the mine.

“Okay hand over the light bulbs and I will install them,” said Myles.

Craig looked everywhere except at Myles. He looked at the walls. He looked at the floor. He looked into the middle distance, where perhaps there was a parallel universe in which he had done the obvious thing.

“Craig where are the light bulbs?” asked Myles.

“I made them, no-one told me to bring them,” said Craig.

There followed a heated discussion on responsibility.

It was not the first heated discussion on responsibility. It would not be the last. Responsibility stalks Craig through our sessions like a bear in the snow biome: inevitable, angry, and surprisingly fast once noticed.

Dave left, returned to the house, retrieved the light bulbs, then returned to the cave where the discussion was continuing.

“Fine!!” declared Craig, “I will go back to the house and get the lights I suppose.”

He left the cave.

Dave waited till Craig left, then handed the lights to Myles.

Craig got to the house to retrieve the lights from the fabricator. They were not there.

“Dave!!!” he yelled.

Dave laughed.

Then we mined. We hauled the ore back to the house and refined it. This is the rhythm of Icarus: discover ancient underwater cave, argue about electrical competence, prank Craig, strip-mine the geological feature, drag everything home, and call it progress.

Eventually Zaph woke up, joined us, and was amazed at the empty cave.

We had already mined it out.

Zaph had missed the blood lake, the electrical audit, the Craig light bulb trial, the Dave vindication arc, and the cave’s entire mineral existence. He arrived at the precise moment when a normal person might say, “What did I miss?” but Zaph is not burdened by such things. He assessed the lack of remaining targets and moved on.

Onto housework.

Myles left to refuel the automated mining equipment and collect the ore. Craig was tasked with watering the crops. Dave added a secret stash label on the secret stash cupboard to confuse Myles. Zaph went hunting.

The division of labour was clear: Myles maintained the industrial backbone of civilisation, Zaph reduced the local wildlife population with clinical precision, Dave engaged in psychological cupboard warfare, and Craig watered plants, because this was considered the level at which society could safely entrust him.

Myles returned and asked Dave why half the mining drills didn’t even have fuel cans.

“Oh yeah, I went out yesterday and brought back the empty biofuel cans, then got distracted and never took the full ones back.”

Myles had a discussion with Dave on responsibility.

Responsibility, having failed to catch Craig earlier, had changed targets.

Dave got back to his secret project and laid some foundations partway across the lake. Zaph asked why he could see numbers floating above the lake. Dave, cursing, declared piranhas suck, and how was he supposed to lay proper underwater foundations whilst being eaten by fish?

This was an excellent question, although perhaps not one that would appear on a formal engineering exam.

Zaph solved the problem by shooting fish.

There is an elegance to Zaph’s approach. Where others see logistical difficulties, environmental hazards, or complex underwater construction constraints, Zaph sees target acquisition. Fish objected to the civil works program; fish were removed from the consultation process.

With 50 foundation pieces laid we now had a walkway, and a large area on the lake with no purpose.

Craig promptly installed a ladder that went nowhere.

It was perfect.

Not useful, obviously. Usefulness was not invited. But it was pure Craig: a vertical answer to a question nobody had asked, mounted proudly on an aquatic platform of dubious strategic value. If civilisation is measured by monuments, then ours had arrived. The Egyptians had pyramids. The Romans had aqueducts. Winchester-on-the-lake had Craig’s ladder to nowhere.

Zaph asked if we were doing any actual missions or if it was just going to be housework all night.

This was a fair question. We had, by this point, spent the evening installing underwater power, arguing with bulbs, mining a cave, labelling cupboards, fuelling drills, constructing a pointless lake platform, and enabling a ladder cult. To the untrained eye, this may not look like heroic frontier survival. To the trained eye, it also does not look like heroic frontier survival.

Myles dialled up a mission to open a new path to the riverland.

Zaph looked at the map.

“Haven’t we already been there?” he asked.

“Apparently, a storm caused a landslide and blocked the path,” replied Dave.

This was deeply Icarus. A planet where storms are not content with blowing down trees and mildly annoying the roof; they also rearrange the geography like a toddler with a sandpit and a grudge.

Zaph called a pod down from the station and presented Myles with his very own Zebra.

Now, everyone had a Zebra: Dave, Myles, Craig, except for Zaph, who used to have a Zebra, but it died.

This detail hung in the air with the mournful inevitability of a country song performed by a man standing beside an empty saddle. Zaph, efficient even in grief, did not dwell on it.

Myles and Dave discussed what equipment to bring. Zaph headed out early. Craig watered the plants.

Finally, we were ready and set out on the great wilderness exploration trip. We crossed the desert without incident, reached the Hunting Lodge, and stopped for the night. There was a storm, so we brought our Zebras into the house.

Things were going really well.

This is always the most dangerous sentence in any gaming session.

The one thing we hadn’t planned for was Craig.

Craig had installed a campfire in the wooden house without telling anyone, which meant Myles accidentally rode his Zebra through the fire, setting the house and Zebra on fire.

There are few moments in frontier life as clarifying as discovering that the cosy indoor warmth has been placed directly in the path of mounted traffic. The Zebra, who had expected lodging, shelter, and possibly some hay, instead received the full medieval siege experience. The house joined in out of solidarity.

We arrived at the site to find Zaph had already built a ramp up to the top.

“I need more wood,” he yelled to us far below.

Craig set to work. Dave moved all the mounts well away from the work area to keep them safe.

Craig still managed to drop a tree on them.

This deserves acknowledgement. Dave had identified the danger zone, relocated the animals out of it, and attempted to build a safety margin between Craig and consequence. Craig, undeterred by geometry, probability, or compassion for livestock, found a way. There are guided missiles with less determination.

Night fell, and we didn’t have shelter, so we bravely climbed the ramps, up and over the mountain. “Bravely” here means sleep-deprived, underprepared, and propelled by the knowledge that staying put would involve weather, darkness, and whatever else Icarus keeps in its pockets.

Myles came last, without his Zebra, so he had to repeat the dangerous journey. In the morning, Zaph made an early start and headed off to our riverhouse, while the rest of us rode to the waterfall and installed the beacon.

Mission accomplished.

We caught up with Zaph at the house. Dave dialled up the operation to find the black market vendor, and Craig crafted the necessary flare gun and flares.

This was a sentence containing both “Craig” and “necessary,” so caution was warranted.

We set off to kill a world boss.

Myles brought hedgehogs. Lots of hedgehogs. He installed them along the riverbank, forming what in military terms would be called a defensive line and what in our group would be called “the thing the boss will probably walk around.”

Dave swam out into the river to attract its attention.

The ground shook. Water erupted from the river. The corrupted landshark burst forth.

“Oh my god, that thing is enormous,” declared Myles.

Everyone else stared at their screens, barely able to see the tiny creature.

Yet another bug brought to you by the Icarus devs.

On Myles’s screen, the corrupted landshark was a nightmare from the deep, a Lovecraftian disaster with fins and workplace aggression. On everyone else’s screen, it was apparently a slightly angry river garnish. This made tactical coordination difficult, since one person was fighting Moby-Dick and the others were squinting at something that looked like it might be cleared up with a broom.

We fought. It almost ate Dave, who ran screaming into the woods, yelling about poison and dying as he opened his first aid bag.

Dave downed an anti-poison pill, which staved off immediate death, then chugged a health potion.

It wasn’t healing him.

He took another, then another.

Nothing worked.

This was troubling, not least because Dave’s approach to medicine is usually to consume the contents of the bag until either the problem stops or the inventory does. The forest echoed with the sound of a man discovering that pharmacology had taken the night off.

Meanwhile, back at the river, the landshark avoided the hedgehogs, smacked Myles around, and things were looking grim as we used up our ammo.

Then Craig stepped up to fight, unlimbering his flamethrower and hosing the boss like it was a tree.

This was Craig’s moment. The man who had failed to connect a light bulb to a cable, forgotten to bring the light bulbs he made, installed a campfire in a wooden house, and dropped a tree on supposedly safe mounts now stood between us and aquatic doom. He did not read a manual. He did not ask for a plan. He simply applied fire to problem.

Red numbers fell from the creature. Craig hosed it again. And again.

It retreated to the river.

Myles and Zaph got in the final shots.

We were victorious.

Craig was declared the man of the match after we took away his matches.

This was only prudent. Celebrating Craig’s flamethrower triumph while leaving him with open access to ignition sources would be like giving a raccoon a credit card and the keys to a fireworks factory.

Myles looted the corpse, then proceeded to the objective location where he fired off a green flare to declare victory.

Luckily, he had packed the flares instead of relying on Craig.

A drop pod descended. An automated shop sprang forth along with the robot attendant who asked what we meatbags had to offer. Myles traded biomass for strange materials, and another operation was successful.

We returned to the riverside house to restock and called up a simple postal mission to deliver materials to three locations.

Simple, in this context, meant hauling 100 steel, 400 oxite, 200 copper, 200 ice, and 300 iron across a planet that regards travel as a form of slapstick.

We made the long trip back to Winchester-on-the-lake to gather the required materials. After a bit of gathering to find the required oxite, Zaph headed south to the ice lands to deliver the copper and snow.

Dave tidied around the house. Myles did another extraction refuelling ore collection trip. Craig watered the plants.

The plants, it must be said, were receiving a level of care that no mount, cave lighting system, or wooden hunting lodge could reasonably expect.

Zaph made the first delivery and rode back to the house. He had just reached the end of the snow, about to enter the forest, when a bear jumped out, took him by surprise, killed Zaph, and then ate his horse.

Thus continued Zaph’s complicated relationship with mounts.

Unable to sleep until morning, Myles and Dave went back to recover Zaph. It should have been an easy trip. Myles helped Zaph up, while Dave killed the bear, and a wolf, and a second bear.

Mr Stripes, not to be outdone, killed two innocent buffalo.

Stripes really has a grudge against buffalo. He had been killing them all night. Nobody knew what the buffalo had done. Perhaps they had insulted his trough. Perhaps they had looked at him funny. Perhaps in some forgotten zebra mythology, buffalo were the ancient enemy. Whatever the cause, Stripes prosecuted the matter with enthusiasm.

Back at the house, Craig watered the plants, and while no one was paying attention, he made himself a shotgun and used a lot of supplies to make 12-gauge ammo.

This is how escalation happens. One moment Craig is safely watering crops. The next, he has moved into firearms manufacturing with the quiet confidence of a man who has learned absolutely nothing from the light bulb incident.

Zaph headed north to the desert with the steel and oxite. Myles and Dave headed south through the forest with the iron.

Zaph arrived first, although he had further to go. This was not because his new horse was faster, but because Dave stopped to harvest every wheat field, declaring it made great biofuel.

Dave is many things: builder, farmer, lore enthusiast, secret project architect, occasional fish victim. But place him near a resource node and he becomes a man hearing angels sing through the medium of inventory slots.

Deliveries successfully made, another operation accomplished.

Zaph headed back to Windchester. Myles and Dave stopped at a few caves to mine exotic ore, and collected sulphur and oxite on the way home.

Because of course they did. A mission is not truly complete until Dave has diverted into a side cave and Myles has silently recalculated the return route, carrying capacity, and the emotional cost of friendship.

“Well that was an uneventful evening,” declared Craig.

Myles and Dave looked at him.

“Zaph died,” they pointed out. “His horse was killed by a bear – did you not see that?”

“Yup – another uneventful evening, saved by Craig,” responded Craig before breaking into song.

The original tune was legally recognisable enough to summon lawyers from the mist, so the official campfire-safe version went something like this:

There’s no restraining us now,
We’re on the trail, somehow,
There’s no explaining us now,
The plants are damp, take a bow.
We’ve had the bears and the burns,
The ladders nobody earns,
We’ve got a lake full of wire,
And Craig is holding the fire.

So keep the mounts from the trees,
Keep Dave away from the wheat,
Keep Zaph supplied with fresh horses,
And Myles with maps and receipts.
The night was calm, Craig insists,
Though death made several appointments,
But nothing slows this crew down,
Except unreadable instructions.

A few final house improvements and we called it a night.

Install a network monitoring system.

Install two wind turbines.

Craig watered the plants.

And so civilisation advanced, as it always does: through renewable energy, infrastructure, and the careful restriction of Craig to horticultural duties.

Did We Learn or Achieve Anything This Week?

We learnt that letting Myles do all the cabling is safer that way. Not safe, necessarily. Just safer. There is an important distinction between “up to code” and “less likely to become a cautionary documentary.”

We learnt that Craig can only be trusted with simple tasks like watering the plants, and even then only because the plants are rooted to the ground and cannot easily be set on fire by accident. Although, given enough time, one should never rule anything out.

We learnt that if Craig makes mission-critical equipment, it doesn’t mean he will bring it. Manufacture and transport are two separate branches of the Craig logistics tree, and one of them has been struck by lightning.

We learnt that sometimes Dave’s tales are true. Didn’t we learn this last week? Possibly. The difficulty with Dave’s tales is that some of them are valuable intelligence and some of them are Gold Dragon-adjacent, and sorting them requires either wisdom or piranha bites.

We learnt that Stripes really hates buffalo. This is now less a theory than a field of zoological study with a growing casualty list.

We learnt that Zaph goes through mounts the way Craig goes through flamethrower fuel. Efficiently, repeatedly, and with surprisingly little ceremony.

Dave achieved Peak Tech: unlock all tech in Tier 5. Naturally, this occurred in a week where technology was mostly represented by underwater cabling, secret foundations, a functioning humidifier, and Craig failing to connect a light bulb.

Myles achieved Let There Be Light: be the first to turn on a light. He also achieved Spelunker: find an underwater cave. Both achievements came with the usual hidden cost of troubleshooting, swimming in piranha soup, and waving a sparking cable at Craig.

Craig achieved RTFM: don’t read the manual, fail at a task, blame the wiring. He also achieved Boom Baby Boom: craft a shotgun. This second achievement has been noted by the base safety committee, which is Myles wearing a tired expression.

Zaph achieved Somewhere Over the Mountain: build a ramp over a mountain. He also reaffirmed his status as the group’s rapid-response answer to aquatic construction hazards, bears notwithstanding.

Stripes achieved Buffalo Bill: kill 4 buffalo in a hoof fight. The buffalo community declined to comment, mostly because Stripes had already found them.

Tune in next week to see if Dave’s tale of a mysterious waterfall cave in the desert is true, and if we made a mistake leaving Craig unsupervised in the house.

The answer to the second question is yes.

The only uncertainty is how flammable the evidence will be.