The Icariad

[Remi]

So the plot, the premise, the central conceit:
A giant moon is terraformed. Something goes wrong, the terraform doesn't hold...or maybe it went awry.  Wrathful storms, hurricane gales, acid rains, arctic winds and blistering heat waves.  Probably the only vacation spot worse than Detroit.  As this world devolves into a hellworld, something is found.  Exotic materials, unfound elsewhere and unreplicable, having strange properties.   A new rush - not to enjoy the new world, but to exploit it.  Prospectors drop in, with nothing but the refurbished environmental suit they have on; seeking to get in, get out, and get rich in a few days before the planet overwhelms them.

Except me.  I think I kinda like it here.  The storms are predictable.  The scenery enthralling.  Plenty of game to hunt. Resources are rich if you know where, and how, to look.  Sure the air is toxic and the water infested, but that is a solved problem.   I think I'll make a home here.
... maybe punch out another bear.

First thing first, picking where to make the initial drop.  Olympus region, that sounds good.  Can be put down roughly in .. a glacial waste, some burning sands, a grassland or a forest.  Well, forest sounds nice, let's go with that.  What do you mean that's the worst spot?  Highly populated with hyperactive carnivores?  All the starter missions are the other end of the region?  Whatever, just means I've a local base by the time reach 'endgame'.

Okay.. pick up sticks. Pick up rocks.  Rip out some plants for fiber.  Make an axe, cut some trees.   After a few minutes of playing lumberjack, we have a little cabin.  Won't survive a storm, unless we stay and repair it, but at least our stuff won't get wet.



..maybe on fire.  Fun fact.  Lightening can set trees afire.  Flash Lightening Storms can set forests on fire. Idiot prospectors investigating too close can also be set on fire.  Do not recommend.  Free charcoal was nice though.

You know what doesn't burn? Stone.  Not easily.  So solution: build a house of stone.  Of course we picked a great spot, so building a new house means putting it somewhere else.  If we rip down the wood house first, we'll be homeless until we finish.  Not of the good with the weather looking 'deadly, with a chance of lethal'.  So.. solution!



Build a house for your house!
We need more than just local stone though...picki ng up rocks would be forever.  Luckily we have the power of oil.. okay, biofuel, natures oil! Ignoring that oil oil is also nature's oil.  Either way, drills.  Of course a lone drill in the middle of nowhere is just asking a passing bear to smash it to stop the noise.  And what if you go to get the ore but you're hungry, or a sudden storm appears?  Or what if you aren't hungry but there is a storm, and while you wait for it to pass you get hungry? Houses for drills!  Also makes it easier to spot since for SOME REASON you can only mark one thing on your map until you unlock beacons and build a few (or steal them from missions).



Trouble with ranging out is you build a house for your drill. Then you build a house for you while you wait for your drill.  Then a bear knocks it down and eats your lunch...and your horse.  Now you're walking back for your stuff, to fix your walls, and turn your horse into biodesil.  Horse-power, heh.  Time to make this a Military House.



Palisades and spikes and hedgehogs oh my!. ..and then we unlock electricity and animal repellants so no predators within a few hundred meters anymore. boo.
Oh, rate my cable management skills!




So I'm needing more and more materials to keep up with this crap.  Scouting shows in the 'farther north', i-dot-e-dot 'where hardest bears and critters is', is a cave with all the rock we need, with coal in the mine, and iron just up the cliff - it's steel time. And with a limestone deposit?  Time to remake in concrete ... with electricity and pluming as a prethought, not afterthought.  Well, not FIRST first... first is setting up here since the dozen mile commute through bear country isn't advised.

Step one: open up the mouth of the cave.
..
Step one: run back to the cave and kill those spiders
Step two: kill the cave worms in the cave
...
Step one: run back, kill spiders, kill cave worms, don't die to poison or parasites.
Step two: setup a camp in the cave so if die, don't have far to go.
Step three: wakeup in camp because of bear.
...
BASE!

Okay, this became it's own project.  Wall off the gaps so spiders don't get in. Realise they glitch anyways, or whine on the roof, turn spiders off.  Riddance to eightlegged horrrors.  I'll miss your cheap resin though.  Build the house, setup the drills. 



Realise running around the mountain means running into bears.   Also: tiring.  Solution?  Setup a ramp to run up the mountain on horseback.  Cover the ramp so  don't have weather issues.  Put walls on the ramp so wildlife stops jumping in it, getting trapped, and wrecking it.  Realise too cramped for a horse now. Oh well.  Might as well setup a camp at the top.  Of course at this point I'm using concrete so is a sudden material shift when you crest the cliff.  Whatever, Just here for the limestone.



Thing is, no water nearby.  Making concrete needs water.  The horses need the water.  And importantly I need the water.   Storms are common though, so....  a dozen metal rainwater collecting tanks is the answer.



Okay, setup some solar power, a room for battery storage, a fire pit/trench thing for cooking lots of meat.  Set-up another predator-deterrent now there is power, and... let's never visit this base again unless we need limestone or coal =P

Now, armed with a lot of concrete, steel and glass (haha no, this is a weeklong bit of running back and forth 'cuz the Machine of Progress is hungry).. I've got the main base...improve d. Concrete walls, multifloor, bedrooms, kitchen, and even a greenhouse.. with nothing really in it.  Growing my own coconut trees (don't ask how a full tree grows in a day, that's just the exotics talking) means I can stop clearcutting the entire wilderness... I'll just let the constant storms do that.  After the corn finishes that is.  Oh a stable to the side, for whenever get around to breeding.  Horse has to last more than a few days for that to matter though.




And yes, the original wooden flooring of the initial base has been preserved.  Matryoshka engineering at its finest.



Time to catch a breath before seeing what those smugglers are wanting for unofficial 'missions'.  Been doing some of the smaller ones (poach this, gather that, make a few tools for fellow prospectors), but is some bigger jobs waiting... once I setup some encryption on the orbital uplink.  Maybe I'll even string for them smuggling down a cryofrozen lamb to raise - plant fibre makes for a lousy pillow, and this bone armour could use some padding.

[Remi]

Well turns out first mission.. is in the grasslands. You know, OTHER END OF THE WORLD! Okay, other end of the region, so not the world. Just trek a few miles of hilly first, then mountain ravines, a short jaunt through a glacial field of arctic temperature, then another canyon into a burning desert.  What to even wear? 

Well, after looking through the catalogue of Primitive Chique, decided on Composite Armour... let's half-ass it everywhere, as opposed to 'warm in ice, melt in desert' or the reverse.  Hold a torch in the cold and take a thermos of coffee to be a bit warmer,  then extinguish it and use thermos of cold water in desert. Let's go!

So after making it to the grasslands, after being chased by arctic wolves, polar bear, scorpions, hyenas, cougar, and the love child of an armadillo and a rhinoceros, mission time!
So she wants to setup a grow-op or something, but needs materials to make it. That's fine.  She also needs local produce for initial inventory? That's also fin...wait.  I can't pick local fruit and veggies, they don't count.  You want me to pick them, extract seeds, grow the seeds, harvest them, and give you THAT?  What is even the point?  Whatever, I'm NOT heading back to my greenhouse, then hauling the perishable harvest BACK through the hell-gauntlet for you.  I'll just setup here - except  wood doesn't last, stone is still damaged by storms, and my concrete setup is all the way back.. and hauling building material that far.. not, happening.  I'd need a caravan of oxen, and over that distance and weather?

Now on the other hand, limestone is as good, if not better, and can get that stuff from that desert.  Pretty sure I spotted some right by a convenient oasis.
Step 1:  in a cave near the wanna-be Cultivator, setup a small crafting area - workbench, meat drying, water purifying
Step 2: make an electric drill and wind-powered generator. 
Step 3: travel to the oasis and place the drill, and gather a few other easy resources from local caves while it mines out limestone
Step 4: build a 'house' to make this sustainable

Okay...but a certain idiot who shall remain nameless, forgot critters also need water, and congregate at waterholes.  Like the one I'm living inside a flimsy tent in.  Scorpions not so much.. but packs of hyenas and cougars?  Herds of those blind-violent 'mostly peaceful' herbivore rhinos?   On the plus side, plenty of meat and bone material.    On the other? Who needs stairs when you can just climb the pile of corpses to get to the second floor.  Either way, eventually established.  Weee~




All nice and... covered in sand from sandstorms. Why even try?  On the other hand, even before starting the house, tapped into the 'power grid'  for an AC unit in the tent. Was not prepared.
Also had to setup campfires and torches because desert nights?  Rather frigid.  Was not prepared =D

So when the house was finished, just ported the AC over.  Comfort~




Time to make a minifarm.



Turns out this area is a natural 'dead end'.  Just overran with deer and deer-adjacents: chemois, pronghorns, bambi.  And bunnies. kitten bunnies.



See we used the limestone for building material, and crushed some to bake for glass, but for aesthetics, we just built the greenhouse as walls/roof over worked earth.  Neodruid or something.
But crops were disappearing.  Usually near the walls.  Sometimes one, sometimes four.  I checked the doors were closed, the roof was working.  Made sure the water was setup. Everything was fine.
Then one trip back from hunting bambi, there it was. Sitting cheekily atop my coffee plants, it ate them in front of me.

So one stuffing-and-mounting later, we've replaced the dirt with limestone,  setup some aeroponics and bee hives, and Ms Cultivator is of the happy.   And buying my overpriced Icarian Coffee Beans.
Life is of the good.