Freezing Fire Pass
Usmor.
The southern fields.
Nestled deep amongst the frozen glaciers and towering stacks of unbreakable ice and obsidian fragments brought up from the depths, there rests the access to one of the most deadly locations on the continent, and one of the most infamous locales on the planet for it's temperatures and for the death toll that took place there. A miles-long stretch of canyon that wraps from the southeast of the continent and around to the southwest, providing limited access to both sides of the frozen wasteland.
Those who hear of this place cross through at their own peril, and will knowingly pay with their lives should they fail to make it through the pass on time. Improper preparations will result in death, and those who prove lucky enough to make it through to the end on both journeys swear to their comrades that they will never again return to this frozen hell.
This place is called Freezing Fire Pass.
It is recorded as the most deadly location on the planet, and it is also known to be the coldest of them all, even during the slightly warmer summer months of the year. The entire continent is wrapped in perpetual snowstorms and seemingly endless night or even dusk or twilight. The sun only rises for a month at this altitude and longitude, and this absence explains the never-ending cold that swarms the continent year-round.
But even during the summer, those who seek their route through Freezing Fire Pass are at no less risk of death and permanent hypothermic sickness and the need to amputate frozen, dead limbs from their damaged bodies.
Freezing Fire Pass is known to descend into temperatures as low as possibly thirty degrees without wind chill, and it's lowest temperature was recorded on the coldest day of the calendar year by a robotic probe that was driven into the entrance of the canyon at around eleven am in the morning. To the amazement of the team, the probe recorded an internal temperature of as low as fifteen degrees Fahrenheit before sending an emergency message to the team that it's systems were failing.
When they finally lost contact with the probe only two minutes later, an effort was made to recover it, which ended in failure and the discovery that an ice cap had completely enveloped the probe, making it's last known point almost unrecognizable to the scientists who had tried to recover it before the scientist sent to do so was forced to retreat from the canyon's entrance in fear that the wind chill would catch up and freeze him to death before they could successfully rescue the destroyed probe. The scientist lost all the toes on their left foot and swore never to return to the canyon.
But one incident within the Freezing Fire Pass proved to be the day that would stretch fear into the hearts and minds of those who would come after them, and their desperate attempt to reach the southwestern end of the deep canyon would prove to be their last trek upon the mortal plane. Their deaths would implement regulations on preparation and would also call for a system to be devised for monitoring and calculating the times at which the canyon were safest or at their most dangerous, either permitting or denying those groups the chance to brave the canyon in the attempt to reach the other side.
On the seventeenth of February, nineteen-oh-five, during an expedition to attempt to reach the then-unnamed and uncharted region of The Highlands - the highest elevation in Usmor above sea-level - a group of scientists, explorers, biologists of both aquatic, marine and plant-based studies as well as cartographers and other well-natured scientists camped near the entrance into the canyon before making their plans to invade and make a crossing that they hoped would only take a few hours time. In an attempt to beat an oncoming snowstorm that would strike their location - and where they had moored their ship on the coast at the time - in only a few similar hours, they had decided to set out just around five pm, to beat the sunset and make it out of the canyon before nightfall.
The planning phase went perfectly, and their leader, the human Alistair Miles Breckenridge prepared them to set out to the mouth of the canyon at four-fifteen pm. They made the trek to the canyon mouth effortlessly, and watched as the sky began to lighten with the colors of evening. It was not a minute sooner past four-fifty pm that the band set out into the canyon's wide mouth and began the first minutes of what would soon turn out to be the final hours of their lives. Some seventy-four men and women set out into the canyon that evening, but by morning of the eighteenth, every last member of the group would be dead, including their leader, Breckenridge.
As they made their way through the canyon, conditions only worsened and after only a few minutes of movement, a few of the team members began to complain of extreme cold and stiffness, as well as trouble making full bodily movements due to the stress of the wind and the force of pressure on their bodies from the environment. These warning signs went unheeded however, and despite being allowed to slow their pace in hopes that rest would revive them, this pause would prove to be the first mistake that many of the team members would make. It would also be the last mistake they would ever make. Although they continued on through the worsening environment and soon left the comfort of the upper slopes behind until it was no longer visible, they only encountered more problems. Ice was beginning to creep up and around them at a fearfully alarming rate and, as a result, some began to panic and started dumping rations to give them a better chance of surviving. Others began to attempt to melt the ice with their water or other provisions, but this seemed to only lessen their chance of survival which had dropped by twenty percent throughout the first leg of their trek. More and more team members began to be caught up in the frey, and as time wore on, groups were left behind to fend for themselves in order to have a better chance at resting while the remaining teams could reach the canyon's end sooner.
But it was these groups, left behind by the others, who would succumb to the horror of the cold first.
The ice and chill of the air, combined with the wind itself blowing through the canyon became the march of death towards the scientists, and they began to panic further as their friends and colleagues were frozen to death in mere moments in front of them. Their faces bent in pain and fear, and their arms and hands reaching out for help, they died where they stood and were frozen solid forever. Those who weren't immediately caught only survived for a few minutes before meeting the same fate. The expedition is believed to have lasted only three to four hours before every member of the gang had been frozen by the cold. The last of them to perish was Breckenridge, and his standing figure with his hands upon a ski pole and his head held high would be found some ten years later by another team of explorers who had mastered the elements more readily and would be the first to find the southwestern side of Freezing Fire Pass. This explorer was in fact Breckenridge's own nephew, Benjamin Hunton-Blather, a Kitsune - as his brother had married a Kitsune female and given birth to a son and had given him a traditional human name to honor his uncle's race and heritage. Blather had come with a team of twenty to make the same journey as his uncle, and it was Blather who recorded the loss of his uncle to his mother, Breckenridge's sister. Blather left a monument marker with the names of the scientists lost in the canyon on both the southeastern end and the southwestern end to honor them.
He and the twenty scientists survived their journey through the canyon, but failed to make a return journey as their ship had sailed to the rendezvous point on the western shores to meet them and bring them home. All members survived. Ever since, a number of travels through the canyon have been made throughout the decades, but have taken their share of lives along the way. To date, there are rumored to be over one-thousand bodies lost on the continent in various locations; But the largest number of the lost has been located in the Pass, totaling some three-hundred-fifty bodies scattered throughout it's treacherous length.
The southern fields.
Nestled deep amongst the frozen glaciers and towering stacks of unbreakable ice and obsidian fragments brought up from the depths, there rests the access to one of the most deadly locations on the continent, and one of the most infamous locales on the planet for it's temperatures and for the death toll that took place there. A miles-long stretch of canyon that wraps from the southeast of the continent and around to the southwest, providing limited access to both sides of the frozen wasteland.
Those who hear of this place cross through at their own peril, and will knowingly pay with their lives should they fail to make it through the pass on time. Improper preparations will result in death, and those who prove lucky enough to make it through to the end on both journeys swear to their comrades that they will never again return to this frozen hell.
This place is called Freezing Fire Pass.
It is recorded as the most deadly location on the planet, and it is also known to be the coldest of them all, even during the slightly warmer summer months of the year. The entire continent is wrapped in perpetual snowstorms and seemingly endless night or even dusk or twilight. The sun only rises for a month at this altitude and longitude, and this absence explains the never-ending cold that swarms the continent year-round.
But even during the summer, those who seek their route through Freezing Fire Pass are at no less risk of death and permanent hypothermic sickness and the need to amputate frozen, dead limbs from their damaged bodies.
Freezing Fire Pass is known to descend into temperatures as low as possibly thirty degrees without wind chill, and it's lowest temperature was recorded on the coldest day of the calendar year by a robotic probe that was driven into the entrance of the canyon at around eleven am in the morning. To the amazement of the team, the probe recorded an internal temperature of as low as fifteen degrees Fahrenheit before sending an emergency message to the team that it's systems were failing.
When they finally lost contact with the probe only two minutes later, an effort was made to recover it, which ended in failure and the discovery that an ice cap had completely enveloped the probe, making it's last known point almost unrecognizable to the scientists who had tried to recover it before the scientist sent to do so was forced to retreat from the canyon's entrance in fear that the wind chill would catch up and freeze him to death before they could successfully rescue the destroyed probe. The scientist lost all the toes on their left foot and swore never to return to the canyon.
But one incident within the Freezing Fire Pass proved to be the day that would stretch fear into the hearts and minds of those who would come after them, and their desperate attempt to reach the southwestern end of the deep canyon would prove to be their last trek upon the mortal plane. Their deaths would implement regulations on preparation and would also call for a system to be devised for monitoring and calculating the times at which the canyon were safest or at their most dangerous, either permitting or denying those groups the chance to brave the canyon in the attempt to reach the other side.
On the seventeenth of February, nineteen-oh-five, during an expedition to attempt to reach the then-unnamed and uncharted region of The Highlands - the highest elevation in Usmor above sea-level - a group of scientists, explorers, biologists of both aquatic, marine and plant-based studies as well as cartographers and other well-natured scientists camped near the entrance into the canyon before making their plans to invade and make a crossing that they hoped would only take a few hours time. In an attempt to beat an oncoming snowstorm that would strike their location - and where they had moored their ship on the coast at the time - in only a few similar hours, they had decided to set out just around five pm, to beat the sunset and make it out of the canyon before nightfall.
The planning phase went perfectly, and their leader, the human Alistair Miles Breckenridge prepared them to set out to the mouth of the canyon at four-fifteen pm. They made the trek to the canyon mouth effortlessly, and watched as the sky began to lighten with the colors of evening. It was not a minute sooner past four-fifty pm that the band set out into the canyon's wide mouth and began the first minutes of what would soon turn out to be the final hours of their lives. Some seventy-four men and women set out into the canyon that evening, but by morning of the eighteenth, every last member of the group would be dead, including their leader, Breckenridge.
As they made their way through the canyon, conditions only worsened and after only a few minutes of movement, a few of the team members began to complain of extreme cold and stiffness, as well as trouble making full bodily movements due to the stress of the wind and the force of pressure on their bodies from the environment. These warning signs went unheeded however, and despite being allowed to slow their pace in hopes that rest would revive them, this pause would prove to be the first mistake that many of the team members would make. It would also be the last mistake they would ever make. Although they continued on through the worsening environment and soon left the comfort of the upper slopes behind until it was no longer visible, they only encountered more problems. Ice was beginning to creep up and around them at a fearfully alarming rate and, as a result, some began to panic and started dumping rations to give them a better chance of surviving. Others began to attempt to melt the ice with their water or other provisions, but this seemed to only lessen their chance of survival which had dropped by twenty percent throughout the first leg of their trek. More and more team members began to be caught up in the frey, and as time wore on, groups were left behind to fend for themselves in order to have a better chance at resting while the remaining teams could reach the canyon's end sooner.
But it was these groups, left behind by the others, who would succumb to the horror of the cold first.
The ice and chill of the air, combined with the wind itself blowing through the canyon became the march of death towards the scientists, and they began to panic further as their friends and colleagues were frozen to death in mere moments in front of them. Their faces bent in pain and fear, and their arms and hands reaching out for help, they died where they stood and were frozen solid forever. Those who weren't immediately caught only survived for a few minutes before meeting the same fate. The expedition is believed to have lasted only three to four hours before every member of the gang had been frozen by the cold. The last of them to perish was Breckenridge, and his standing figure with his hands upon a ski pole and his head held high would be found some ten years later by another team of explorers who had mastered the elements more readily and would be the first to find the southwestern side of Freezing Fire Pass. This explorer was in fact Breckenridge's own nephew, Benjamin Hunton-Blather, a Kitsune - as his brother had married a Kitsune female and given birth to a son and had given him a traditional human name to honor his uncle's race and heritage. Blather had come with a team of twenty to make the same journey as his uncle, and it was Blather who recorded the loss of his uncle to his mother, Breckenridge's sister. Blather left a monument marker with the names of the scientists lost in the canyon on both the southeastern end and the southwestern end to honor them.
He and the twenty scientists survived their journey through the canyon, but failed to make a return journey as their ship had sailed to the rendezvous point on the western shores to meet them and bring them home. All members survived. Ever since, a number of travels through the canyon have been made throughout the decades, but have taken their share of lives along the way. To date, there are rumored to be over one-thousand bodies lost on the continent in various locations; But the largest number of the lost has been located in the Pass, totaling some three-hundred-fifty bodies scattered throughout it's treacherous length.
Type
Canyon
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