Fogbound

[virodhi]

Until yesterday, I didn't know fog was a weather type that could happen spontaneously. Blizzards, sure, I've had those appear out of nowhere often enough, but fog had always been a thing that crept up on you while you were inside. Enter a house from okay weather, and exit it ten minutes later into zero visibility. Perhaps it still does, and my graphics glitched, I dunno.

Anyway, it was day nine, and I'd set up in the Camp Office and felt comfortable enough that I thought I'd start looking for the bunkers. It was a nice enough morning for it - all bright sunshine and almost civilised temperatures - so I set out to check for the two bunkers on the other side of the lake. No joy, alas, and as I'm heading down the hillside, I sprain my ankle. Because I am a complete muppet, I'd got complacent and packed light in anticipation of a bunker haul; tools, food and water, but no painkillers. So there I am, limping back across the lake, grumbling about being an idiot and occasionally poking into the fishing huts to see if I'd missed anything, when... fog.

The fun thing about zero visibility in a relatively featureless area is that you lose your bearings completely. Grumbling even more, I put my back to the fishing hut and headed off in the general direction of the Camp Office. I reasoned that I knew the shoreline well enough that I'd recognise the "beach," even if I couldn't actually see the house from the waterfront. After a while of shuffling along and hoping I wasn't going in circles (which has killed me in the past,) I start hearing a wolf growl in the way they do when you're getting too close and they're deciding whether or not to attack. Since I couldn't tell where the sound was coming from, I took a wild stab in the dark and hoped I was limping away from the wolf in a non-threatening manner. I chose poorly. Wolf attack! After fighting him off bare handed, I was in bad shape (because muppets don't pack bandages either) and now completely lost, since getting tackled by furry death does nothing for your internal compass.

And that's the story of how I bled out in a fog bank somewhere on the ice of Mystery Lake. God, I love this game.