I've dealt with lots of cold in my life. Heck I consider myself a fan of cold. The two hour trek to the Slush Flats broke my preferences. It was a cold that I'd describe as bone-chilling and hungry.
Even with our heat-belts, I felt my fingers and toes going numb. I even found myself traveling side by side with our Nasyk guide to brace myself from the heat-devouring wind.
When we finally crested the foothills, I saw a flat so large that I could not discern the end of it. It looked unnatural, a endless expanse of jagged ice pushing across the surface like massive turtles in the sea.
It was what they called the Slush Flats, and this was as close as we would be able to get, lest we meet our end as frozen worm food.
The Slush Flats of Jhoutai is a massive fresh-water lake that is near impossible to cross. The top layer of the lake consists of a deceiving slush that looks like a layer of fresh snow.
Slush flows generated by snow runoff and spores from fungal spores flow into the low basin, creating a quicksand-esque layer that appears like snow on the surface. While there are many other slush flows in Dar’ru this is the largest and most dangerous.
The Slush Flats also host the largest population of Zweeg Worms anywhere else, who use the massive lake as a hunting grounds for anything that disturbs the surface.
Beneath the Flats are a winding network of subnivean caves where the glaciers meet the Jhoutaioan Coral, these are the Zweeg Worms nesting grounds, and have rarely been explored. There is rumored to be a massive Old Home trapped by the ice, but no one has managed to get far enough below the lake to see.
Reading this article, I suddenly feel cold - very welcome in summer :D This place surely has a few Vertis sacrificed in it.
Plenty of Vertis needed to find out where the Zweegs are!