When Steve heard that his friend Anton was being threatened by barbarian invaders, he traveled to Anton's home as fast as he could. When he arrived, he recited many ancient incantations and spells. Soon, the entire valley was filled with snow and ice. Steve then proceeded to build an enormous ice temple that was guarded by the spirit of the polar bear, Eisbär. When the barbarians arrived at the valley, they were stopped short by the bitter cold. Tormented by the plagues of Eisbär and nearly frozen to death, the barbarian horde fled the valley, never to return.

For this contest, I attempted to create a unique entry that was imaginative, well executed, and interesting. For the main temple structure, I used only a very simple color palette composed mainly of ice. The temple was built by myself (I don't have a massive build team, or any for that matter) in a period of around seven days, but most of the work was done in around three days. Building the temple was a real learning process for me; I tried things in this build that I had never done before. In my opinion, the roof of the dome is the crowing jewel of the temple. It has a unique above-view shape that is reminiscent of a snowflake. Throughout the entire valley and the temple structure, snowflake patterns are seen in many different forms. Since ice in Minecraft is melted by strong artificial light (I only realized this when I was almost done with the build), the interior of the temple is only lit by the relatively small amount of sunlight that shines through the ice. Please forgive me if it seems a bit dark inside the temple. Since ice is partially transparent, the interior of the temple seems to faintly glow. Regarding the terrain, I did not modify the bedrock and podzol area. However, some types of non-bedrock/podzol terrain that are surrounded by bedrock/podzol have been modifed. I attempted (but maybe not perfectly) to leave the original trees in the bedrock/podzol unaffected. I hope that my terrain modifications are acceptable and do not cause me to lose points.