Further Adventures In No Man's Sky

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN NO MAN'S SKY

My spacecraft was in orbit above the deep red orb of an alien planet, and with great care I navigated my way past the twisted ruins of rocks left over from some ancient cataclysm.

Bringing my spacecraft down toward the surface of the planet I beheld a dry, arid landscape. Everything blazed red and orange as the sun rose over the horizon, casting gigantic columns of stone into shadow so that, as silhouettes, they stood as silent sentinels while my landing thrusters kicked up clouds of dust before I settled on this virgin territory.

The sun had risen higher in the sky by the time I had settled and disembarked from the comfort of my cockpit. Already the heat of the day was decidedly hot and I was glad to be protected by the cool air circulating my environmental suit. There was not a cloud in sight amidst the brilliant blue sky in which the sun shone a dazzling white. A large jagged rock rose out of the ground close to where I stood, shaped by the sculpting effects of corrosive sand blown by high winds. But it was not all sand and rocks and sun; there was life here also, in the form of hardy, tough plants that waved in the hot breeze.

I set off on my journey across this desert landscape. After having walked for a while I encountered my first animal lifeform. It was a smallish creature, its size somewhere between that of a cat and a sheep, its leathery skin giving it a reptilian appearance but with a mammalian flavour to the way it walked, crawling on all fours rather than that fish-like waving motion typical of snakes and lizards. Upon its head there was a bony crest, and it walked along with its head always bent down, ceaselessly sniffing at the ground flicking out a sticky tongue to catch morsels and eat them.

I left the little fellow alone and continued on my trek. This landscape was dominated by those gigantic pillars of rock that rose up all across the desert, their walls pockmarked from where the ravages of the sand-blown winds had eaten away at them. I wondered how much time would need to pass before these natural monoliths had been eroded to nothing.

While I was contemplating such things beheld a large creature heading in my direction. Just as before, this animal had a reptilian quality to it, but instead of that being mixed with the attributes of a mammal, this beast's chimeric qualities mixed the reptilian with that of an insect. I watched, nervously, as a vision out of some mad scientist's experiment that crossed a tortoise with a grasshopper approached me on four long greenish-yellow limbs. Two antenna-like appendages atop its head twitched and it opened its mouth to emit a piercing sound I can only compare to a hundred rattlesnakes shaking their tales. Such was the nightmarish vision of this thing that I ran away.

Fortunately, the beast made no attempt to pursue me and I admonished myself for having taken its scary appearance to mean a scary demeanour. My rather panicked flight had happened to take me to a beautiful crystalline structure, weathered into an arch. It blazed with an intense blue as the sun's rays refracted off its surface.

While I was gazing at this beautiful Jewel, squinting my eyes to protect them from the glare of the sun as its light bounced off the reflective surface, I heard a sound unlike any animal cry I have heard before. I turned to seek out the source of this alien noise and this thing I saw! There, bouncing along on thick, tentacle-like appendages was the last thing I expected to see in such a place. It was some creature that resembled a giant jellyfish, only with a bell that looked more like pumice stone than anything soft. From this bell there protruded two tusks. I watched as this strange being bounded around on its tentacles. What a truly bizarre form of life it was!

I walked on, trudging across the land, negotiating the crevasses that were carving their way across this landscape.

Eventually my exploration led me to discover something undoubtedly artificial in nature. It was a large building, not angular like ours tend to be but dominated by graceful curves. Its lozenge-shaped towers rose up toward a neighbouring planet that hung suspended in the sky. I wondered: what kind of beings built this structure here.

While I was thinking that, a couple of alien creatures came running along. Just as before, these animals appeared to be some combination of animals familiar to me. This time, they mixed the unmistakable features of the pig with...well...they looked almost human. They were running around on two legs, chattering excitedly to themselves in squeals and grunts that sounded too complex to be mere vocalisations. A huge horn sprouted from atop their snouts, but the most remarkable thing was their eyes. They had large eyes that twinkled with the unmistakable light of an intelligent mind. Could these be the architects of the building?

Sadly, I had no way of communicating with these pig-people, separated as we were by the language barrier. So I left what might have been their habitat and walked further across this landscape of rocks, sand, and chimeric animals. After a while, the sun sank below the horizon, casting everything in the deep red glow of a brilliant sunset. As the sky turned from red to the blackest of nights sprinkled with the diamond dust of a million stars, I called for my spacecraft and departed.

Thanks to Hello Games for the images.