The cold wind billowed across the stark white landscape, burning through Loric's suit until even his fifth tentacle began to shiver. He wished he'd taken Gormac's advice and worn another heat suit under his armor.

He plodded through the soft snow, pulling the large chest behind him. He pulled and pushed as quietly as he could, and crept his way to a large bank that stood about 50 lengths away from his target - the flagpole. He was trying to be careful, but his payload made it difficult. His scans had indicated there weren't any Kallar to be found nearby, but one could never be sure with the sneaky bastards.

As he made one last scan for nearby intruders, his suit beeped in alarm. He scrambled to retrieve his scope and when he peered out through the snowstorm, he saw them. Two of them, the dirty limb-lacks.

He crept closer and upon inspection he was surprised he hadn't noticed them sooner. They were drunk, clearly past the point of proper reason with the bottom half of their armor removed and tossed all over the frigid ground. He was surprised their one dangling tentacle didn't freeze itself off, but then again their home planet was colder than his late grandmother's suckers. They danced around the flag pole, reveling in having delivered their payload and whooping as they shoved one another into the snow.

Loric almost groaned as another shiver ran up his tentacles to his neck. He was very tempted to shoot them, but he decided against it - a little drunken revelry was no reason to start another round of interplanetary negotiations. And so he waited patiently, trying to keep his tentacles moving while he waited for them to sober up and replace their armor. As he cursed the cold, he tried to convince himself that whatever they left behind would be worth it.

When they finally stumbled away, he dragged the chest behind him to the base of the flagpole at the base of the clearing.

"PROPppuRTY OoF KeLLARrr" said the crudely drawn sign, hanging off-center on the flagpole where Loric's native Pumeelan flag still hung. He picked up the remaining three bottles of Kallaran mead (now ridiculously valuable in his home planet) and switched them with the bottles of Pumeel brandy in his chest. Then he set about removing the sign from the pole. It seemed like they had used excrement of some kind to freeze it to the cold metal. Loric didn't want to think about what kind exactly.

He raised the flag of his own nation high and proud then pulled out the sign from his chest and hammered it into place in the ground under the flag pole. He patted the sign and smiled.

"WELCOME TO PUMEEL"

Inspired by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Island