The Ice

A cryogenic preservation vault tied to the under-prison beneath the Grey Vale Cave — described, never yet visited. According to the janitor Gerald (Session 30), the facility's doctrine is that those judged worthy drink Ambrosia, the agelessness elixir, and are then placed "in the ice": frozen to outlast a prophesied extinction-level meteor, and thawed only "when everything is safe." It is, in effect, an ark for the deserving few against the end of the world.

Gerald's wife, Alice, is among the sleepers — "in the ice, hopefully," if she earned her ticket (he believes she did: "a hard worker, and very important"). By coincidence, Thalia has been carrying undelivered mail addressed to Alice, and her map and triangles are what helped Gerald place where the vault lies. Gerald himself does not remember its location.

Gerald pleads that the frozen be left alone: "They are already saved — that is the point of the ice. If you try and save them, you will only make things worse." Whether that warning is true, or the protective instinct of a man who can't reach his own wife, is unknown.

The vault is unlocated as of Session 30; the only lead is Thalia's map. The thread gains urgency from the incoming meteor flagged at the close of the Queen Grabbler arc — the very catastrophe the ice was built to survive.

(Heard only as "the ice" in play; whether it is a single chamber, a network, or something stranger is unknown. See Canon Questions.)