You head south through a nasty tundra. Trees are scattering the landscape covered in a thick blanket of snow. Many of them are bent halfway over while others have snapped in half due to the weight of the snow itself.
The snow on the ground has been heavily battered by the wind forming lines like dunes just a lot shorter and in higher rows. They expand out like veins running along an arm for as far as the eye can see as they disappear into the horizon.
There is quite a strange and tall mountain that looks like it is days off into the distance. As you slowly do a death march south you get oniums feeling that the mountain is your final destination. It almost looks like there is a tower of ice embedded into it.
Sometimes a powerful gust of wind comes whipping through the tundra pushing you around like a ragdoll. You are almost entirely exposed out in the open. While it is tempting to try and take some shelter in the random spattering of trees they pose a far worse danger of tree wells. As such you keep your distance.
In some parts of the tundra, the ice and snow are so mixed it sounds like someone is eating a very crunch snack with every footstep you take. While other spots have such powdered snow you fear sinking to your waistline.
By mid-afternoon, the sun was so glaring you decided to put on your space helmet just to see. This however reduced your side vision limiting what you could see as you were marching forward.
Before the sun started to set you were so exhausted you took one final rest for the evening. You then started the task of hallowing out a snowbank and turning it into a shelter for the evening. You were mostly looking for some protection from the wind blowing you around while you tried to get some sleep.
While you worked away you put some food cubes in your spacesuit to warm them. They were frozen solid and sent a chill down your back. You would later cook one on a fire you made.
You also went out and collect some spare branches and anything else you could find to start a fire. It has been a while since you have had such a warm sensation. This added a few extra hours you could have spent walking instead but you felt it was worth it.
You watched the fire burn and the smoke swirled off into the sky as the night fell. The temperature of the planet plummeted. After a while, you retreated into the shelter you had made for the evening. Although it was tempting to stare off into the heavens as tonight was one of the clearest nights you have seen since arriving on this planet.
The next day you rose with a bit of a stiff back. Despite your best efforts the snow melted and combated making a rather unconfinable sleeping spot. You a least got some decent sleep only waking up twice to the massive howling of winds.
The next day of marching towards the mountain was a bit more tricky. This area was a lot more covered in rocks. You would on quite a few occasions end up tripping over rocks as your foot sunk into the powdered snow. This sent you to face-first into the snow at least twice.
Your watch was starting to issue quite regular updates as the temperature was starting to plummet quite hard the further south you went. You pushed on as much as you could as you slowly got closer and closer to the mountain. How large it was starting to shape up to was truly mind-blowing.
You were too tired to make another fire so you just dug out another snowbank the best you could. This one however required you to remove some rocks as you attempted to dig using your spacesuit gloves as a makeshift shovel.
You don’t recall anything else. You woke up the next day ready for a few hours more march till you would be close enough to the mountain. Your nerves were starting to get the better of you slightly. You had no idea what you were about to encounter.
After a while, you noticed quite a large shiny looking rectangle at the base of the mountain. It was mostly covered up by snow drifts and avalanches. There was no mistake, however. It was a massive metal door.
You finally got close enough to walk up and touch the door. If you could just get inside you would not have to spend another day out in the high-freezing winds of the planet. It was however remarkably cold this close to the mountain that you were no longer taking off your space helmet.
After clearing out some of the snow you started to try and push on the door. It did not matter in which direction you tried it was not budging even the slightest.
You start to remove more of the snow and you notice there are not one but two ID card slots. They appear to be color coded. One of them is Black and the other one is Yellow.
(If you have both the black and yellow ID cards you can continue ahead into the mountain.)
If not you need to backtrack through the tundra and find both of them elsewhere on the planet. Perhaps they can be found in caves.
Content is written by @Enjar of @Enjargames. AI artwork was created using Playgroundai.
