The Gnash
The Gnash is a particularly dangerous geological formation found within the Eiquereus Craglands of Eastern C. The lure of rich iron and gold deposits proves too great for some explorers, whose subsequent blunders into The Gnash prove fatal in a myriad of painful ways.
Geography
The Eiquereus Craglands are a cube-spanning network of massive pyrite crystals. Even in this heavily acidic, reducing environment, some pockets of softer minerals or less noble metal ores remain intact deep beneath the surface. Geological activity can then cause these pockets to become exposed to the acidic rains of the surface or redirect corrosive spring water from sources beneath them causing the minerals to be eroded away and leaving a metastable skeleton of pyrite columns and arches behind.
In The Gnash, dangerous conditions have been created where earthquakes, conducted through the cube surface from the Ventral-adjacent cube on the other sides, have caused these massive columns of jagged pyrite to become unmoored from their original bases and to jumble atop one another in unstable configurations. What looks like traversable patch of terrain from above is actually a rubble pile of smaller crystals concealing a series of deep, sharp-edged, inaccessible hollows that gnash together like giant teeth when the ground shifts - often chewing up unwary explorers and their equipment in the process before conducting them to the unreachable places below. The appearance of openings on the surface provide a false sense of security in their immediate environs, where loose crystals pile in to conceal more pits and places where misplaced limbs and vehicle wheels can become trapped. Worse, The Gnash 'baits' mineral explorers in because its surface, comparatively free of inclusions by softer minerals, appears to be richer and purer in terms of ore composition than the surrounding terrain.
Ecosystem
The constant shifting and rearranging of The Gnash's subsurface structure makes the region extra hostile against incursions by plant life that might stabilize it. In a cycle that reinforces the region's barrenness, the lack of surface cover ensures that life that would otherwise take root on the surface is unable to due to the arid, acidic climate overhead. A few colonies of Distal polyps reside in pockets deep beneath the surface, scavenging the remains of any who stumble into The Gnash unawares, but these populations are sparse and, realistically, represent less of a danger than the geography itself.
Comments