The Temple of Protein

Ice cavern (cold, snow drifts). Automatic meat factory ( scuttling servant golems). Gatehouse (insulated containers, offices). Ice maze (blue glow).

• Search gatehouse: Empty offices, missing files, multi-coloured food wrappers, locked door to central autofactory control.
• Central control: Devastation, ripped up panels and circuitry, ancient blood glyphs on the dead big screen (override, please, override!). Frozen corpse of the last Factory Director with slit wrists and a tatty plush rabbit in their breast pocket.
• Ice maze: Endless bored passages stacked with ‘protein.’ The older stacks are mostly fish fillets, but the recent stacks are much less carefully sorted, including an astonishing accidental overview of recent civilizations and visitors. Patrolling guardian (as cold-themed bronze golem, can be harmed by mundane attacks, but damage is halved) with a corpse flash-frozen to its head like a strange hat. It is hard-linked into the autofactory core—the more it is injured, the colder the region becomes.
• Flash-frozen corpse: Clutches amulet inscribed “VT.” The name Miki is embroidered on its spelunking jacket. They were Vic Torbin’s companion. Metal ladders, square shafts, golem corpses.

Initial Exploration

More passages and chambers and houses stacked with frozen protein.

Further Exploration

Meat Processor

Silent machines (mills, grinders, pasteurizers). Parking lot (empty, abruptly truncated by bedrock). Tin hill (buried cannery). Fish pond (ornamental, frozen).

• Inspect hill: Mound of gently vibrating canned omega-protocol oils. Digging for 1 watch reveals an engine room with 3 live golem hearts the size of small pigs.
• Frozen pond: Antediluvian fish, giant water reptiles, a kraken. 1d4 watches to gather 3 massive trophies (3,000gp each). VT Amulet of Luck Happy-looking stone. Allows bearer to reroll one save daily. Path to Silent conveyor belts, pipes, tracks, chains. Path to Waste shafts, chutes, rough-hewn stairs.

Regional Challenges

6. Protein hunters: 2d6 Needle Gnomes (page 11) with heavy packs and light sleds. 7. Avalanche: Rush of snow and tins. 50% chance it strikes party. Save vs breath or buried (1d6 turns to dig out). 1d6 turns to cross the avalanche terrain. 8. Crevasses: Quake opens up deep crevasses in the ice (5’ across). 2d4 turns to bypass or STR check to leap across. 9. Repair crew: 2d4 metallic repair machines (as AC 5 [14] wood golem, can be harmed by mundane attacks, but damage is halved), filling in ice crevasses.

Collapse

1. Ominous, terrible groaning and grinding. Stacks of protein collapse. Save vs paralysis or struck for 1d8 damage. +d6 to collapse checks. 2. Gurgling sounds, shifting ice, as though water is penetrating below. +d6 to collapse checks. 3. The whole region begins calving into the great lake in an avalanche of processed foods, ice, water, mud, and scattered buildings. PCs have 4 rounds to flee to the nearest exit, 80’ away.