Further Adventures In No Man’s Sky

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN NO MAN’S SKY

My mission to find and recruit a Korvax scientist had brought me to a planet whose atmosphere shone with a white light. Far below I could make out rivers carving their way through a gray, rocky landscape.

Descending toward the surface, I saw a rocky terrain comprised of hills, sparsely populated by red vegetation. Off into the distance, the sun cast a golden haze on the horizon.

Settling the craft down, I stepped out of the cockpit and surveyed my surroundings. Hardy life clung to this gray-rock landscape. Tough grass, gray-coloured like the very land it sprouted from, grew in clumps here and there. Strange fungal growths, purple in colour, were fruiting, and tall plants with poppy-like heads reached up to a height that was taller than I. I began my trek to find the Korvax.

While on my journey, I encountered a pack of hog-like creatures. Their snouts were busily sniffing at the ground, probably to detect tasty morsels buried underground. Huge ears twitched and turned in the direction of any sound. I wondered what the growths on their back were. Bluish and lumpy, I surmised that they must have been some kind of parasitical growth. I left the creatures to their business and proceeded to hike up the hill.

This landscape struck me as being rather desolate. True, it was not the utterly lifeless rock that many planets were. There was vegetation here, and complex life forms. But something about the predominantly gray landscape and the rocks carved into tortured forms by the ceaseless wind made this place seem more barren than it actually was. I had a mission to accomplish, so I tried my best to ignore melancholy thoughts and concentrate on getting the job done. Onward I hiked.

A low growl captured my attention. Crouching down low to avoid detection, I observed an animal, obviously a predator, patrolling the land. It looked like a cross between a lion and a wolf. Paws with large and wicked claws trod softly as the animal moved, surveying its surroundings purposefully. I saw it tense its muscles, no doubt because it had sensed prey. Then, with a sudden explosion of movement it charged and there was a piglike sound of terrified squealing. It can only have meant that one of those hog-like animals had become this predator’s prey.

By the time I was nearing my destination the sun was starting to set. I was rather glad of this. The light changed as afternoon gave way to dusk, so that whereas before all around me was gray, now the land took on hues of pink, orange and red. And then, finally, there it was: An observatory whose markings provided all the evidence I needed that this was a Korvax construct.

I entered the building. Everywhere was clean and sterile, and the sound of ceaseless wind outside have way to the soft hum of air-conditioned computer hardware. I found the Korvax scientist, a humanoid robot, stood by a workbench. Working through translation software, I explained how our base required its services. “A fine base, Traveller!”, the intelligent machine replied, upon being shown an image of my base, “oh, Korvax shall be so happy here!’.

Recruitment would evidently be easy. This Korvax, Operator Entity Idzh, seemed to be brimming with enthusiasm. I asked it what the next course of action should be, and it wasted no time in responding. “Traveller, harvest cave marrow and Korvax will do more, will create plans for voltaic cells and weatherproof rubber”.

Voltaic cells and weatherproof rubber? I was not sure how such equipment would serve my quest, but then who knew what complex calculations OE Idzh had made to compute that such things were necessary? It seemed I had an errand to attend to, which was to harvest cave marrow…

The adventure continued.

Thanks to Hello Games for the images