General disclaimer: The lack of real information in this week's blog says nothing about how the night went, or that we stumbled from one mishap to the next like a group of inept wannabe realm-walkers.
Which, for the avoidance of doubt, we did.
Disclaimer – Although the blog would beg to differ, Dave is not trying a new literary style to see if the blog can be written as a series of disclaimers; it's purely a strange coincidence, like given infinite time and a typewriter, Craig could eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare.
There is, however, some concern that Dave has discovered the legal principle that if every paragraph begins with Disclaimer, nothing that follows can subsequently be used against him.
This is not how disclaimers work.
Disclaimer – Dave denying Myles editorial rights has nothing to do with last night's events, which may, or may not, but probably do, make Myles look bad; it is purely a kind gesture to save Myles from writer’s cramp.
Editor’s note — Myles retains editorial rights. This is particularly important when the principal witness is also the accused.
Hewards Reach Royal Commission – Why Did It Take So Long to Progress the Main Quest?
Disclaimer – Despite the whole spider, pig, horse measuring debacle thing from last week, at no point did Dave say “Goddamn it, I have just been jumped by a wild pig the size of a spider”
This statement has been entered into evidence exactly as supplied by Dave.
Its suspicious specificity has also been entered into evidence.
Disclaimer – Any unfortunate side effects Craig suffered from following Dave’s instructions are purely coincidental and can in no way be considered punishment for missing the previous week's adventures. Side effects such as death, quest progression failure are just things that happen …. To Craig, randomly, and Dave telling Myles to SHUT UP as he tried to warn Craig was purely due to the stress off the situation, but at least it confirmed the death lasers are still working.
Editor’s note — Correction, Dave.
For the benefit of the Royal Commission, a somewhat less defence-counsel-shaped description of events is available.
Craig had missed the previous week.
Craig therefore did not know about the Death Dome.
Dave did.
Dave gave Craig the instructions.
Craig, displaying the touching faith of a man who has somehow learned nothing during nearly three decades of gaming with us, followed them.
Myles realised what was happening and attempted to warn Craig.
Dave told Myles to SHUT UP.
Craig flew in.
The Death Dome did what Death Domes have traditionally done since the earliest days of Death Dome engineering.
Craig died.
Dave would now like the court to accept that these events were unrelated.
The court may take as much time as it requires.
On the positive side, the experiment conclusively proved that the death lasers are still operational, Craig remains willing to follow instructions without asking why, and Dave should never be permitted to use the phrase trust me while standing near a portal.
Disclaimer – Craig’s failure to get through a gear level locked doorway should in no way be taken as an indication that we spend a lot of time making nice things for Craig, and he just ignores them and runs around in a roughly woven sack. Although the evidence suggests otherwise, no-one could be that naïve.
Craig has apparently approached the Victorian gaslamp survival genre with the firm conviction that armour is a bourgeois affectation.
We craft.
We enchant.
We improve.
Craig wears sackcloth.
Somewhere, an entire Nightingale crafting system quietly wonders why it bothered.
Disclaimer – Making Zaph and Craig jump into the boss fight with the giant stink beetle was truly a sign of how much we trust in their ability to overcome adversity, and in no way an attempt to make Dave and Myles feel better about how badly they sucked in the same encounter a few weeks ago.
Editor’s note — No objection. This explanation is sufficiently implausible that further editorial intervention would only weaken it.
The Magwyth Marsh Royal Commission – Did Someone Turn Up the Difficulty?
Disclaimer – at no point did Nightingale decide the bound just weren’t kicking our arses, so perhaps a few mortar bound, and boss bound would be just the thing for newly arrived realm walkers, who haven’t even had time to get their bearings. Oh snap – that totally happened.
We arrived in the marsh.
The marsh examined us.
The marsh apparently found us insufficiently miserable.
Mortar Bound appeared.
Boss Bound appeared.
The Realm Walkers briefly became Realm Casualties.
Welcome to Magwyth.
Disclaimer – The opening marsh quests did not suggest we over-levelled our gear before heading to the marsh, because the facts (our dying) strongly suggest otherwise, even though the quests hint we should craft gear (guns) that we already have.
This presented the group with a difficult philosophical question.
If the game tells you to make better guns, and you already have better guns, but everything is still killing you, are the guns actually better?
The answer, according to the corpses scattered around Magwyth Marsh, was apparently no.
Disclaimer – The completely random direction Myles chose for us to travel had nothing to do with the Factory of industrial sewing machines that needed saving. Pure coincidence, and if you believe that we found a nice, only slightly ruined weapon factory in the swamp that you can purchase.
Myles would like it noted that navigational instinct is a recognised professional skill.
Dave would presumably like it noted that blindly wandering through a swamp until something useful appears is also a recognised professional skill.
History will judge.
Disclaimer: Dave wandering off in a random direction was purely because he was waiting for Craig’s PC to restart and had nothing to do with the previously unseen swamp lilies he was collecting.
Editor’s note — Dave is the Gatherer.
The prosecution rests.
Disclaimer – When Zaph says “my backpack's full, and so is my followers, and I don’t know what to keep”, this is not a deliberate attempt to trigger Dave’s OCD for comedic value, even though you knew that was going to happen, because this is NOT the first time we have had the TALK!!!
There are certain phrases that should never be spoken around Dave.
I threw the resources away.
I don’t know where I put the ore.
Do we really need all these storage boxes?
And, apparently:
“my backpack's full, and so is my followers, and I don’t know what to keep”
Somewhere deep inside Dave, an inventory spreadsheet opened itself.
Again.
Disclaimer – Climbing picks – don’t leave home without them, or if you do Zaph, stop asking how we climbed the tall tower. It’s not like Myles can build a waystar on the fly so you can join us in the main quest, he is always missing a component, springs, lumber, or that one time his follower put everything in a box and we had to go back to get it.
The official expedition checklist now reads:
Gun.
Ammunition.
Food.
Climbing picks.
Emergency Waystation components.
Emergency components for the emergency Waystation components.
Check that Myles’s follower has not helpfully placed the emergency components in a box forty minutes away.
Proceed.
Disclaimer – No Harpies were hurt in the making of this blog, as when they are dead the hurting stops, and we killed those poisonous horrors, to the immortal words uttered by Myles – Now I understand why you hate them.
And Craig we totes didn’t complete another step in the main quest without you 😊
Editor’s note — We absolutely completed another step in the main quest without Craig.
In fairness, Craig was probably safer wherever he was.
Particularly while Dave knew where the Death Dome was.
Disclaimer – In no way were the shiny rare clothes handed out as quest rewards better than the crap Myles has been making for us. The fact that we're all wearing the new clothes is purely coincidental, and a sign of the high esteem we hold for Myles’s tailoring ability, and our not wanting to damage the amazing stuff he provided. Dave totes didn’t equip his follower with the Myles gear, because that would be a cruel and totally unjustified punishment for a hard-working follower who carries all the rocks Dave picks up.
Myles’s tailoring operation had, until this moment, been considered the height of Realm fashion.
Then the game handed everyone shiny rare clothing.
There was a brief pause.
Everyone changed clothes.
Dave’s follower inherited the old collection.
Nothing says we value your contribution quite like making the employee carrying six hundredweight of rocks wear the boss’s discarded trousers.
Disclaimer – the fact that Myles proceeded to make a single set of tier 3 clothes, is in no way related to the previous disclaimer. We love your tailoring Myles, it’s the best, no really, the only thing that would make it better is if you used better components than the tier 1 cloth and fibre. Does that come in red?
Myles accepted this constructive feedback in the mature and professional manner for which he is known.
And immediately started making better clothes.
One set.
For reasons entirely unrelated to spite.
The Homebase Royal Commission: Is Myles Inept, or Is He Just Punishing Dave for Years of Manufacturing by Remote Control?
This inquiry has been independently commissioned by Dave, chaired by Dave and supplied with evidence prepared by Dave.
Its findings are expected to be impartial.
Disclaimer – Charms, invocations, enchantments are to be used, not stored in the magic box, they boost your gear level so you can get through those annoying doorways. Not that anyone in our group would ever have a problem with that.
Craig.
The Royal Commission would like to remind the witness that sarcasm is still sarcasm when preceded by the word Disclaimer.
Disclaimer – Stopping at 10 pm in no way means we are getting old. Also, when Zaph says I built a shiny new stove, but we are out of spices and logs for the night, it was not a trick to force Myles and Dave to play until midnight to stock the cupboards with spices.
At 10 pm, sensible adults stop playing computer games.
At approximately 10:01 pm, Zaph mentioned that the shiny new stove had no spices and no logs.
At this point Dave and Myles apparently discovered that sensible adulthood was more of an aspirational framework than a binding agreement.
Production resumed.
Disclaimer – When Dave says I am just going to make some spices, offering to improve efficiency is an unnecessary distraction.
This sentence should be engraved above the entrance to every engineering department on Earth.
Dave wanted spices.
Myles saw a process.
This was the first mistake.
Disclaimer – Failure to read the manual Myles, is not a valid excuse for introducing a so-called process improvement that requires a complex, multi-step process using multiple new crafting benches, consumes vital resources, and takes 2 hours to produce paper foil, just so you can finish building an Augment that doesn’t actually improve spice production
The proposed efficiency improvement involved new machinery.
The new machinery required additional machinery.
That machinery required processed materials.
The processed materials required paper foil.
Paper foil required two hours.
At the end of this elegant industrial revolution, spice production remained exactly where it had started.
Dave still needed spices.
Myles had, however, successfully invented middle management.
Disclaimer – Myles could not have avoided the industrial debacle by simply reading the manual, as Craig had obviously used it as fuel for the stove.
Editor’s note — This allegation against Craig has not been substantiated.
It is, however, extremely believable.
Disclaimer – Building a unicycle, and moving it to different locations every time Dave leaves the building, just to distract him from the industrial improvement prank you are putting over him, will earn you the 1000-watt death stare.
This was less a manufacturing process and more a behavioural experiment.
Every time Dave left, the unicycle moved.
Dave returned.
Dave noticed.
The unicycle moved again.
Dave returned.
Dave noticed again.
By this point the unicycle had become less a vehicle and more a psychological weapon.
The 1000-watt death stare confirmed the experiment had achieved full production capacity.
Tonight's Campfire Song – Sung by Dave
We were going to have a song about lawyers, and disclaimers but the lawyers threatened to sue, so Dave did it anyway.
The Royal Commission Campfire Song
Truth we seek,
The oppressed we defend,
Rights we protect,
Justice we serve.
That lasted thirty seconds,
Which is longer than expected,
So now we need a Royal Commission,
And several facts corrected.
Every tale needs a disclaimer,
Every disclaimer needs a song,
No lawyers were inconvenienced,
And somehow Craig came along.
For the record, Your Honour,
The gold dragon’s merely lore,
No resources were squandered
Near a badly labelled door.
Nobody skipped the manual,
Nobody built pointless gear,
And the bicycle’s an antique
That appreciates each year.
Its value may keep rising
Long after Myles is dead,
Assuming Craig has not dismantled it
To build a ramp instead.
We’ll use everything Dave collected,
Every flower, stone and pear,
And Zaph certainly shot neither pig
Nor any passing bear.
The evidence is flawless.
The witnesses concur.
We rest our case.
Editor’s note — The defence should absolutely not rest its case.
Did We Learn or Achieve Anything This Week?
We learnt
The laser grid is still working.
Myles never reads the manual; that’s what Dave is for.
No one reads the blog when they miss a week.
The first of these findings was established through rigorous empirical testing involving Craig.
Craig was not informed that he was participating in the test.
Dave was.
Editor’s note — This distinction remains important.
We achieved
Dave made spicy potatoes to boost Myles’s stamina by 50 for 30 minutes, which he now regrets after the industrial augmentation prank.
A fair response.
Never improve the stamina of the person currently converting your straightforward spice-making operation into the Industrial Revolution.
Dave achieved – Sucker
Spend 2 hours building stuff that does nothing.
This achievement was technically earned by Myles, but the suffering belonged to Dave, so the committee has allowed the wording to stand.
Myles achieved – Build a bike
It is bound to be useful.
There is currently no evidence supporting this claim.
There is, however, a unicycle.
Sometimes that is enough.
Zaph achieved – Spice up your life
Hint that we are missing desperately needed ingredients, triggering a manufacturing emergency before logging for the night.
And thus another entirely normal Friday evening concluded with death lasers, poisonous Harpies, inventory interventions, industrial over-engineering, a mobile unicycle, several Royal Commissions and Craig discovering that when Dave gives navigational advice near an unexplained glowing structure, the correct response is no longer Where do I go?
It is:
“You first, Dave.”
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