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 creationDon’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 scrapsYou 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.
