DeVuego

In October 2016, Russian scientists discovered a secret Nazi base in Alexandra Land, an island belonging to the Franz Joseph Land archipelago, within the Arctic Circle.

The existence of this military base was known thanks to the documentation seized from the Nazi regime at the end of World War II, but its exact location was not. This base was called Schatzgräber, (in Spanish "Treasure Hunter") and, according to the official documents of the time, its main purpose was to serve as a meteorological station to obtain more precise parts of the time and thus provide a military advantage to the Nazi regime in the battles that took place during World War II.

When Russian scientists arrive at this base in 2016, they find a kind of time capsule. The official version of what happened on that base: A sudden and unfortunate infection from eating spoiled polar bear meat made all the members of the base sick with trichinosis. The seriousness of this illness forced them to desperately seek help from their superiors, who in just two days sent a submarine and evacuated all the residents of the base.

The situation was extreme when the rescue team arrived, so the evacuation was instantaneous. This is how time stood still at that base, until it was discovered in 2016. This finding had a notable impact, which is why most of the media echoed it:

La Vanguardia – Live Science – Very History

But behind this official version there is an exciting story that cries out to come to light, and that suggests that this base was built with a very different objective than to serve as a simple weather station.

The name of the base, Treasure Hunter, is linked to its primary objective: to search for relics that will allow them to gain a great advantage in World War II. It is well known that Hitler had a great obsession with this subject, and there are many documented campaigns by the German army in search of this type of relic. Indeed, we are facing one of these exciting stories…

The game

Today, Alexandra Land is a territory officially recognized as part of the Russian federation, but this was not always the case. In the mid-1970s, the Soviet Union occupied the archipelago of Franz Josef Land as a measure of pressure in the face of the international dispute over these territories and sent 2 important contingents to the most relevant islands: Land of George and Land of Alexandra.

We embody the protagonist of this story, Mihail Mashkov, a Russian army officer who is part of this mission.

During one of our regular patrols around Alexandra Land, the base reports some strange radio signals near our position, asking for visual confirmation that all is well there.

Arriving at our target, we discover that those mysterious radio signals are coming from an old abandoned Nazi base. An unexpected snowstorm complicates our return to base and makes all radio communication impossible, so we opt to take refuge in the mysterious building and wait for the storm to subside.

It didn't take long for us to realize that we are not alone...