November 9th, 1920
Geologists Lost
Kulik and His Men Presumed Dead in Siberia
[Picture of Kulik before disappearance]
After months of speculation, the Russian
government has finally called off its search for
Leonid Kulik and his team of explorers. The
expedition departed in mid-August to investigate
the Podkamennaya River region in the Tunguska
are, site of a mysterious explosion in 1908.
Communications between Kulik and his comrades
at the Academy of Sciences ceased a mere 20 days
later.
Rescue parties were then deployed and tasked
with the mission of retracing Kulik's path, but
returned empty-handed again and again. With the
harsh Siberian winter starting earlier every year, the
landscape has since become too unforgiving to
traverse. Officials declared that the chances of
survival in this region had withered away to none,
especially given the length of time that had passed
since the geologists first set out.
[Picture of devastated Siberian wilderness]
The final search party did manage to find
evidence of Kulik's presence near the village of
Vanavara, which included a camera and a page
from his journal which was rolled up neatly and
hidden in the splinter of a tree, its branches stripped
bare over a decade beforehand. The entry read as
follows:
"The local population here, the Evenki people,
has perpetuated a legend that their god, Agdy, came
down from the heavens in a flourish of anger,
causing the phenomena that was observable for
hundreds of miles around. I fear that they were
more accurate than I had initially believed. There
was a vengeful entity that forced its way into our
atmosphere all those years ago, but God has
nothing to do with it. We will embark on our return
trip to St. Petersburg at the first sign of sunlight
tomorrow morning."
