Once upon a time, there was a young knight named Ajericho, newly awakened from the Mother Ship and introduced to Haven. That young knight had a couple friends, one of whom was fond of the Cutter sword and had been searching high and low for a Striker Recipe. This was before the days of Basil Ports.

Ajericho did find the Cutter recipe during solo trips to the Clockworks, but still couldn’t find a Striker.

One day, Ajericho ran across someone creating Strikers for free, given an unbound Cutter. Ajericho was often a kind soul and didn’t know any better to know that such a good deal was actually too good a deal.

On the spot, Ajericho made a Cutter and was lucky enough to get a Unique Variant (UV) on the Cutter: “Attack Speed Increase: Medium”. This was especially welcome, as now Ajericho’s friend would have a good UV Striker as well!

So off Ajericho went to the knight offering Striker crafting for free, and gave to the knight the UV Cutter.

The knight went to the Alchemy Machine, and created a Striker from the Cutter—and to that knight, it must have appeared that the upgrade created a Unique Variant. For that knight kept that Striker and gave to Ajericho a Striker with no UV at all.

Puzzled, but ever polite, Ajericho thanked the knight and even sent 500 crowns as a tip, never realizing that UVs could be preserved across crafting upgrades until one day sitting down to do research as preparation to writing a guide to crafting. But it was far too late to do anything about what was technically termed a “bad trade”.

Time passed.

One day, another knight was standing in the Bazaar next to Ajericho, asking for a Dusker Coat. That knight had the mats and crowns, but not the energy, but Ajericho chose to make the coat at a loss anyways. Ajericho’s kind soul still remained.

And so Ajericho went to the Alchemy Machine, and created a Wolver Coat, and from it created a Dusker Coat. And that Dusker Coat had a Unique Variant, a very rare one: Shadow Defense Maximum! (complete with the exclamation point at the end). And for a moment, Ajericho was tempted to keep the coat and make another one.

But Ajericho passed that test, and gave the rare UV coat to the asking knight. Because doing otherwise would be incredibly dishonest. And besides, having heard recently on the Spiral Knights forums of other knights doing even more dastardly scams than the one who took away the UV Striker, Ajericho didn’t want to be like them.

Ajericho does not remember the name of the knight who stole the Striker. But the deed is remembered.

And the Clockworks turn.