Galaxy 4: Frozen Veil

Kryo marks the border of the Frozen Veil, where starlight grows pale. Its atmosphere is so cold that your breath freezes before it leaves your lips. The first settlers built a fortified pass there, the only way between two ice ranges. The ice trolls, natives of Kryo, first watched, then attacked. Fast and tireless, they hunt in packs and never leave a trace. The pass fell in a single night, and its defenders vanished into the storm. Since then, the frost hunters ambush anything that moves. Kryo is the only gateway to the Veil: it must be retaken to go any further. Command is providing heated suits. They will last an hour.

The wind whistles through the pass. Blue eyes light up in the snow.

Lacus was an ocean world, a sphere of water without a single continent. Then its star went out, and the whole ocean froze in a single season. The surface is a perfect plain of ice, flat all the way to the horizon. Beneath the ice, the water still moves, and you can hear the depths cracking. The trolls have dug burrows there, from which they burst out without warning. The frost hunters shoot from kilometres away, with nothing to deflect their arrows. Nowhere to hide: every step on Lacus is a step in the open. The ice is solid, say the maps. The maps were drawn before the cracking began. On the other side of the plain lies the Yeti's cave, and the true beginning of the Veil.

A crack runs across the plain. Beneath your feet, the ice is splitting.

Yetia is a planet of caves, carved out by vanished rivers of ice. Its galleries echo so loudly that a whisper becomes a roar. The settlers avoided it because of a growl rising from the depths. Then the growl came out of the caves, in the shape of a Yeti. Twice as tall as a man, it carries an axe that three orcs couldn't lift. The trolls follow it as a pack follows its leader, and the hunters protect it. Yetia is its territory, and every cave is one of its rooms. The only way to Deserta runs through the central cave, the deepest one. It is also the one where the Yeti sleeps, when it isn't hunting.

A growl makes the stalactites vibrate. It is no longer asleep.

Deserta was the largest colony in the Frozen Veil, home to ten thousand people. Its heated domes shone in the night like lanterns set on the snow. One day, the domes stopped answering. All of them, at the same hour. Rescuers found the colony intact, meals still on the tables, and no one. On the walls, hastily scratched, were the words: "She sings, don't listen to her." A snow witch has made Deserta her domain, and its silence her music. Her spells freeze the blood, and her hunters finish what the frost began. The trolls patrol the empty streets as if waiting for the settlers to return. Command wants answers, and one witch fewer.

The domes are dark. Somewhere, a voice begins to sing.

Tempestas is a planet where the storm has never stopped. Winds of three hundred kilometres an hour carry snow and shards of ice. You can't see three steps ahead, and instruments lose their bearings. The Yetis thrive there, guided by a sense that humans lack. The witches find their power multiplied tenfold, fed by the storm itself. Two waves of enemies await you: the one you can see, and the one you never will. Ships cannot land; you will have to jump and hope for solid ground. Tempestas is the only way to the Glacier, and the Glacier leads to the heart of the Veil. Command lost two squadrons here. The third one is you.

The blizzard swallows you. A huge shadow moves in the snow.

Glacia is a planet covered by a single glacier, ten kilometres thick. The glacier moves, slowly, crushing everything in its path. The trolls have built ice fortresses on it, which move along with it. An entire army has gathered there, from every planet of the Veil. Yetis, trolls, hunters and witches march together towards Givrum. They answer a call that only beings of ice can hear. Something is waking at the heart of the Veil, and the army will serve it. Command wants to break the army before it reaches Givrum. You will face two waves, on ice that shifts beneath your feet.

The glacier rumbles. On the horizon, a white army begins to march.

Givrum is the heart of the Frozen Veil, the coldest planet in the known universe. Its core is not iron but ice, harder than any metal. The ancients of the Veil carved a guardian there, to protect the heart of the galaxy. The Ice Golem kept watch for ten thousand years, motionless, never sleeping. Then the settlers came, and dug, and the guardian understood it was under attack. It called the Yetis, the trolls, the witches, and they all answered. Its awakening has thrown the whole Veil into a war it does not understand. The Golem does not hate: it protects. But it won't stop as long as it stands. Defeating it means bringing peace back to the Frozen Veil, and silence to Givrum.

The icy ground trembles. Two white eyes light up in a mountain that is rising.