This all started with just throwing some terrains together in Bryce. I tried Bryce's "iceberg" material on one of 'em, and that looked promising enough that I then spent time adjusting the textures on the other terrains and getting the sky, atmosphere, and lighting together. After that, the stuff on the surface started appearing, first the cones and then the glassy bits. Then I put it up for a critque and people didn't like the glacial ice colors or texture. SkyDancer suggested black and blue stripes on the mountains, so, partly for a lark, I tried that. I ended up liking it. Then I changed the surface elements to the current smoky orange, and added the cat in response to BoulYaBase's imagining a figure hunched over this outcrop in the foreground. I don't think a cat is what he had in mind, though.