Bone Dune Station was basically the Area 51 of this world – a black site that caravans and nomads knew to avoid.

In the game, the station wasn't automapped even when you visited it.

From far away, it looked like a picturesque high island in the middle of desert; a great isolated monadnock surrounded by sand dunes and large rocks.

When you got closer, you saw that the station was actually a craggy multi-platform fortress made of white stone built on the side of the monadnock, and surrounding the station, rows of dew domes collected moisture from the air and channeled the water into vast underground system of cistern catacombs built inside a small, empty labyrinth dungeon.

Because of all the water, the station was a green oasis of trees, bushes and flower fields – like Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

The main research station, however, was deeper under the fortress and the moisture catacombs. It consisted of eight dungeon floors restructured into a military research facility. Levels one to four were reserved for Unit 731 type secret human experiments. Levels five and six were for ultra-highly classified top secret Strangers artifact experiments. Level seven was for deviant individuals, so that's where we would find Rainwoman and Sorry Man. And level eight was for insane dark rituals and outside-the-box occult weirdness – like experiments where mad mystics tried to summon half-demons with half-pentagrams – so we didn't need to go that deep down.

Eight Floor was in the same category with Deep Basement and Winter Forest as a honorary sixth member of my Silly Places Not To Visit List.

I had sketched out the floor plan of the station during our journey, marked the choke points and worst RNG locations, so everyone in the party already knew where to go in case we got accidentally separated from each other.

Small drops of water started falling from the sky when we approached the area. We were already close enough that Rainwoman's grand scale area-of-effect curse started manifesting itself.

“Dark clouds in the sky and water drops falling in the middle of the desert... Rainwoman's power is quite something.” (Dancer)

“Yep. Caliph Tze's long-term plan is to use Rainwoman like a mobile watering system and parade her through dry territories like a holy shrine maiden or goddess of harvest. Obviously having a rain goddess working for you, on top of becoming immortal, would further solidify Tze's position as a god-emperor of the world.”

“Tell me about the other research being done here.” (Crys)

“Well, they just dig and collect Strangers artifacts all over the world, send them here, test them on slaves and prisoners, and so on. That's the routine. They basically treat Rainwoman and Sorry Man as artifacts as well, exploring their uses and limits. Caliph Tze was the Strangermaster of this place for a while and gave it a big funding boost after becoming Caliph instead of the Caliph. The search for artifacts is what ultimately leads Caliph to find out about the psikir dhyankhoi explosion ability, which then leads to arkont Tikano finding the Psikir Island.”

Dancer, who kept his eyes at the peak of monadnock, turned momentarily to look at me when I mentioned psikirs. I waved my hand and continued.

“Test Subject wanted to become a voluntary test subject for them, but he is not here in this timeline, so they might not find the Psikir Island at all because those trippy space-time breaking experiments won't happen. Test Subject doesn't turn into a vegetable and Dancer can return to visit his home island. Happy ending... well, Test Subject really wants to become a deviant and we cruelly stop him for achieving his dream, so maybe it's not a happy ending for him.”

When we continued to move closer, we avoided several lazily riding guard patrols on the outskirts of the sub-area and sidestepped some defensive traps like wolf holes.

I confirmed that the guards moved on same paths they used in the game.

They hadn't changed their routes over the years at all. I guess they didn't see any need to change them since no one would dare to attack this place even if they knew about it. The things inside the station were more of a threat than the things outside the station.

That made things easier for us.

“Alright, let me detail the basic setup for a Bone Dune Station run: first, we set up a rally point at the Petrified Forest on the east side of the station–”

“Rally point?” (Dancer)

“A meeting point, regrouping point. A point where we meet after we have temporarily separated during the mission. Leave the stuff we don't need on this mission at the camp site.”

“Oh, understood.” (Dancer)

In the game, you normally met the NPCs at the Petrified Forest after an action-packed escape sequence, or you had to wait for the NPCs yourself if you zipped through walls and got out faster than the NPCs.

“Me, Crys and Kimono will run in from the east side, and we will also come out from the east side. Dancer, you will stay outside to set up two sets of escape dynamite after we run out: one set to blow up the underground cisterns, which will create a large sand bowl behind us, and another set to blow up roadside rock formations in the Petrified Forest, which will create a roadblock behind us. One stack of 11 sticks and another stack of 11 sticks. Can I leave it to you, Dancer?”

“Two sets, two explosions. I will do it.” (Dancer)

“Good, I know you can do it. Remember that the point is that if we are pursued, you blow up the ground under their feet so that they have to climb up from a sand bowl, and block the road so that they have dig through a pile of petrified tree trunks... By the way, the dynamite shouldn't go off from short spins, but be careful not to spin too hard... Now, any questions? Everything clear? Everything crystal clear?”

Dancer didn't get my lame joke, but the basic setup seemed clear.

“Alright, let's keep moving on the outskirts instead of going any closer than this. We should circumnavigate to the east side of the station before sun goes down.”

After we reached the Petrified Forest zone and I checked that everything was as I remembered, it was time to hammer in the details of the main heist.

“There are three rings of guard patrols: outer ring, middle ring and inner ring. When we run inside the rings, we need to make sure that the patrols don't see us, but we also need to make sure the next patrol moving through doesn't see our tracks. We can't fool the guards completely, but if we run in an optimized zigzag pattern starting from the southeast edge, and use the dew domes as our cover, the guard patrols on the outer ring and middle ring won't find our tracks for several hours, not until it's too late and we're already in. And if the guards and servants move on their routine paths inside the station as well, our routing through the station should be quite smooth.”

“Why start at dawn instead of at night?” (Crys)

Crys was observing the station with a telescope while I made preparations with Dancer.

“Sorry, I forgot to tell you about that. Rainwoman's power is stronger at night, so they mostly do tests at night and let her rest during daytime. Also, the rainfall increases during the times Rainwoman is tortured, so we should go in during steady and calm rainfall because that's when she is kept chained in her cell. And if she's in her cell, they are not pumping drugs into her veins. The rainfall now has been quite steady and calm, so that's a good sign... By the way, if she's high on drugs when we find her, don't give her her guns immediately. I can probably convince her to follow us even then, but you should be ready to take her down with knockout gas just in case.”

“I see. How many guards in total?” (Crys)

“Um, there was more than fifty guards stationed here in the future. And there's around same number of researchers, scholars and support staff. Could be more at this time, or could be less.”

“Details. Numbers and weapons.” (Crys)

“We can ignore the lowest floor, so seven floors underground. Each floor has two wings, and each wing has a group of four to six regular guards.”

“Six shots per wing, twelve per floor.” (Crys)

“That should be a decent number for regular guards. They're mostly armed with blunderbuss-style rifles, revolvers, side swords and long bayonets. The researchers, the cooks, and the servants are unarmed, but it's better to drop them too, they aggro randomly and attack with ad hoc weapons. Kimono can deal with them.”

Kimono turned to look at me. Were you even listening?

“What?” (Kimono)

“Kill the researchers, cooks and servants.” (Crys)

“Yes, brother.” (Kimono)

“You don't have to kill all of them, just the ones that come too close... Uh, where was I? Security cameras don't exist, so– I mean, they don't have specialist watchdog guards on the long wall sections, and don't keep much light sources outside, so while we run above ground, we just have to worry about the night guards on corner towers and gatehouses. The traditional route is to crawl through ventilation ducts, break through the warehouse of the servant quarters, and then you're already on the first dungeon level. Can you see the Strangers-style metal towers that look like question marks? The air is channeled underground through those.”

“I see. We can use poison gas.” (Crys)

Crys had his own plans, but Bone Dune Station was a place where I wanted to do things my way.

“Crys, look. I know this map and the routes like my own pockets. They don't expect us, so getting inside and underground is the easy part. Finding Rainwoman might take some time because they moved her around to different cells and chambers, but I know the fastest routes to check the most probable locations and the room where the cell keys are kept. After that, Rainwoman can take over as the vanguard, assuming best case scenario.”

“And the Man?” (Crys)

“Sorry Man should be in the sevent floor cell next to the examination chambers. The examination chambers are in a separate wing, and there's no direct route between the wings, but we just have to get Rainwoman out of her cell first, and she knows where to go.”

“And then I blow up the dew domes when you come out?” (Dancer)

“Well, yes, but let's go through this in chronological order. I'll explain the end game scoring after the available actions and then we can go through the card icons.”

“Here we go again...” (Kimono)

Kimono rolled her eyes. Hey, it's a bad form to interrupt when one is teaching the rules!

“Back to the forced entry. The ventilation blades have a specific cycle we can exploit and slip through without breaking them. If we block the conduit for twelve seconds, the blades come to a halt for a moment before picking up more speed. After that, there's an elevator shaft going down, but that's a less reliable route, the staircase is safer.”

In the game, there was an invisible cutscene trigger in the stairs that made you temporarily invulnerable to fall damage. You could then use it to return back to the elevator and drop all the way down the shaft, but now we had to run down the staircase normally. I just have to think that the shaft exploit was patched and we must return to the earlier, slower route.

“Prisoners and slaves. We should release them and let them work as a distraction.” (Crys)

“We can do that on fifth and sixth floor, but releasing prisoners on floors above fourth is not a good idea. They're actually going to side with guards instead of fighting against them.”

“I see. Are they like Test Subject?” (Crys)

“Some of them are, or just insane or brainwashed. Anyway, when Rainwoman and Sorry Man are free, we can mostly leave the exit sequence to her. If she can't clear the rooms for some reason, I leave the rest to you. And when we are out, Dancer will hit the trigger on the dynamite and make sure that nobody follows us. That's my plan A in a nutshell. Comments, questions, concerns? Everything crystal clear?”

No comments about my lame joke again.