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.
