Thrall, TX
Thrall is a small town just under 1,000 people off of US-79. Its major business is Thrall Cooperative Grain Co. supplying nearby ranches, but Tenderloin Time is a recent #2 employer.

Tenderloin Time
Created by Charles "Chuck" Mackenzie, "Tenderloin Time" is set up on ten acres of flat land. This includes the surrounding parking lot, truck depot, and the plant itself. This is a 24 hr operation, with a small paved road leading to the nearby city of Thrall to the Northeast of Austin, TX. The surrounding area is mostly scrub and farmland. The plant is surrounded by a tall security fence made of chain link, with an outward facing barbed wire section (1d4 dmg). A 60% ATHLETICS can get an agent over the fence without taking damage. There is a main entrance with a security guard booth and an automated crossing bar in the south of the facility. The guards are third party (Securitas contractors who commute from Austin) and are suspicious of the red glow and lack of cameras inside the plant. There is a smaller employee entrance to the west operated via an employees keycard with no security guard.

Background Info
- [Accounting or Bureaucracy at 20%, or roughly 6 hours of research:] No actual slaughtering of cows takes place on site. Carcasses are shipped in on refrigerated trucks. Select cuts are hand-carved, then plant workers process the rest of the carcass. "Every part of the carcass is used" is plugged as being environmentally-conscious on the website, but really these are standard practices in the meat processing industry to wrench every penny from a carcass.
- [Bureaucracy 20%:] They are hiring for night shift positions only. Several posted in recent weeks.
- [Law or Bureaucracy 60%:] Some of their workers are doubtlessly illegal. Even if not, an ICE raid would still be good cover for poking around.
- [Military Science, Accounting or Bureaucracy 30%]: Security and the people driving the trucks are contractor/third party. The majority of employees, of which the plant employs about 50, work the day shift. Less than a dozen person work on the night shift.
- [Any of the above:] Tenderloin Time has only recently become a 24 hour operation to accommodate new clients.
- [Bureaucracy or Accounting 80%, critical success in earlier investigation:] These new clients don't seem to exist. Deep digging reveals dummy payments made to a shell corporations also owned by Chuck Mackenzie. This accounts for almost all the night shift business. He's just shuffling money around.
- [Stealth or Crimonology 60% for a stakeout:] No trucks actually arrive during the night shift to pick up product. The first truck for pick-up doesn't arrive until 11 AM.
- Persuade 40% or online research targeting former employees specifically: Tenderloin Time is a fairly typical employer. The owner, Chuck, has a reputation as a douche-y self improvement obsessed alpha male type. Most former employees are too impoverished and too busy looking for other work to be called truly "disgruntled," but Jimmy Baumer is an exception. He has posted many raving reviews on Glassdoor and openly has a grudge against the company.

Infiltrating the Facility

Inside the fence, guests are greeted by a sign featuring a cartoon steer wearing a bib, tucking in to a perfectly cooked rib-eye steak, towering over the visitor parking lot to the south. There is a smaller employee parking lot is to the west. There is little cover in this area due to the flat terrain and relatively clear parking lots. [Art (Architecture), Military Science or Bureaucracy: Agents note a plethora of trees that seem to have been intentionally planted near windows as privacy hedges, almost as if to block light or to obscure the view to the inside. At night, these trees take on the appearance of flayed arteries when the Hungering Red Light turns on.]

The plant has its main entrance in the south, an employee door with keycard access in the west, and a door locked with a rusted chain in the north.

The south entrance leads to a VISITOR CENTER filled with pictures of various cuts of meat in rather vivid detail, none of them cooked. Visitors are offered samples - steak tartar, to tout how clean and sanitary their processing floor is. Beyond the customer service desk is a door that leads to the administration OFFICES. The hallway goes past various offices and ends at the large steel door that opens into the processing room. [ Search 50% or higher, or a successful roll otherwise: In one office, a 50% SEARCH finds a legal pad of paper that starts out with normal accounting info and looks more frenzied and insane as time goes on, ending with a page scribbled in red ink: "The thing below knows my name. It's in my thoughts and my sinuses fill up with the burn smell and i don't want to be hungry anymore i don't i don't i don't!! the flesh doesn't work anymore burn smell still comes into my head but we are all ONE flesh so put it on the belt and slide it down the drain and feed it feed us feed me feed us feed me. Need more night-shift, weekend shift. Mandatory overtime."]

The PROCESSING ROOM covers the area of half of a football field with no walls or partitions. However, it is a confusing tangle of head-tall machines, pipes, and three large conveyor belts that run the length of the floor. Everyone suffers a -20% to ALERTNESS checks due to the noise of chunking, crushing, and rending cow meat.

The three moving belts continually slice apart meat and produce copious amounts of blood. The agents can stop the machines by turning them off with a 40% HEAVY MACHINERY, destroy them with a 10% Lethality or better weapon (each machine has 25 HP and 10 Armor), or they can all be shut down at the control panel from the foreman's post with a 30% COMPUTER SCIENCE.

The room is filled with sawblades, meat hooks, and cutting implements. Any enemy or agent that is pushed, crosses, or impacts one of these takes 1d6+1 dmg. Plenty of knives and tools like chainmail gauntlets are scattered around the workstations, and anyone with 30% SEARCH or better can find a believable tool without needing to roll.

Many metal grates line the stone tiled floor where the blood and viscera is drained away. An agent can make an INT ×5 roll while checking the draining system to see that instead of having the waste pumped away to be disposed of properly, the gore is funneled into a hole 1' in diameter that goes right into the earth. [Alertness or Search: Beneath the caked-on gore, spiraling symbols are visible carved into the lip of the drain. They are quite similar to the Astevan and Chinese characters discovered in Merriweather's house.]

The large door to the west opens into the refrigerated MEAT CLOSET where split sides of beef are hanging in rows ready to be cut apart. From the refrigerated room, a door opens into the TRUCK DOCKS, which has a TRUCK BAY, LOCKER ROOMS, and BREAKROOM attached. A door from the break room also leads to the processing plant floor. The locker rooms also have direct accessing to the processing floor. The TRUCK BAY has drums of gasoline and diesel. The LOCKER ROOM contains two level C HAZMAT suits.

The North door of the PROCESSING ROOM leads to a SUPPLY CLOSET, which then leads outside to the north locked padlock entrance. The SUPPLY CLOSET has a trap door made of metal with a key needed to open it. The key is kept with the Shift Supervisor at the control panel. Opening the trapdoor reveals a ladder, leading down into the earth.

At the bottom of the ladder was once a drainage shaft for the plant, which has since had all flow cut off. In the darkness is a ring of symbols similar to the ones encountered in Merriweather's house. Touching foot to the ground at the bottom of the ladder (encompassed by the symbols) transports the agent to the extra-dimensional throne of the Larvae King.

The Hungering Red Light
Every 15 minutes after dusk, approximately 7 PM, a red glow suffuses the entire inside of the plant, originating from nowhere. If an agent attacks a plant worker or attempts to get in the SUPPLY CLOSET, the Red Light triggers immediately. Agents make an opposed POW test vs. the Larvae King, -20% if any meat from the plant has been consumed. Any agent that fails immediately is compelled to follow the Larvae King (SAN 1/1d4) for a single command.

The Larvae King typically orders people to, in order of priority:

- Consume the tainted meat, so they are vulnerable to futures bursts of the Red Light.
- Stop anyone interfering with the work of others, preferably by restraining them and force-feeding them meat.
- Assist with loading meat into the machines, repairing machines, or sweeping gore into the drain.
- Injure yourself with an edge, inflicting 1d4 damage on yourself. This inflicts 0/1d4 SAN loss on anyone who isn't affected by either. Let your blood from the injury into the drainage system.
 Any agent that fails the opposed POW contest three times defends the Larvae King and the plant for the rest of the night. The Larvae King orders its thralls to help feed it by either making sure blood and gore gets down into the grates in the Processing Room or they can cut themselves for 1d4 dmg (SAN 0/1d4 for violence) and let their blood drain into the floor.

The Larvae King
A truck-sized mass of flesh, all mouth and fat roll. A little tuft of brown hair at the top. The eyes didn't stretch with the rest of the face.

40 HP, Armor 2, STR 20, DEX 15, POW 10

Roll-Over 5% Lethality 90, Wriggling Mouths 50% 2d6

Feeding: For each working conveyor belt active (3 to start), it recovers 1 HP every round of combat from the blood and gore pouring down from the PROCESSING ROOM above. Killing an individual or "re-absorbing" a zombie or the beef carcass restores 2 HP.

Meat-Puppets
The Red Light will animate the beef carcass once one of the plant workers are incapacitated. Dead plant workers will rise as zombies. The Larvae King can also exude a hideous clone of a plant worker or agent from the white slime coating its flesh once per night. Treat this as a zombie. Anyone who witnesses the spawning takes 0/1D6 SAN damage. Recognizing the clone as a clone inflicts 0/1 SAN damage.

Use statistics of 10 with 10 HP for all plant workers, regardless of individual. 30% of all actions due to their sluggish, hypnotized state due to the Red Light. If fully cognizant (and trying to resist arrest, for example) use 40% for all actions intead.

Zombies are as the sourcebook, with these statistics:

STR 15 CON 15 DEX 5 INT 5 POW 1 HP 15 WP 1, 30% to all actions or attacks

The beef carcass is a steer that has been bled, split, de-hoofed, beheaded, and skinned,
they flop around clumsily on their stumps, crawling forwards to attack. Treat as Liveliest Awfulness. Will be animated by the Red Light and attack if two or more plant workers are incapacitated or killed. The beef carcass has the following statistics:

STR 26  CON 20  DEX 10  INT 4  POW 6 HP 23  WP 6 Alertness 80%, 55% envelop. It will attempt to "envelop" agents in its "meat-cavity" and transport them down to the Larvae King for consumption. Has no meaningful attacks otherwise, but inflicts 0/1 SAN loss on sight.

Plant Workers
Everyone taken by the Red Light loses their memories, save those in a mentally compromised state. Failing the POW test three times means one is fully "taken" and will spend the night trying to feed the Larvae King.

Receptionist. Reagan Hart - Receptionist at the visitor center. Her shift ends at 6 but she sometimes stays until 7 or 7:30 doing paperwork or listening to voicemails. Gary sends her home - sternly - each night, trying to protect her. Nervous and uncertain about her job (mostly because it's her first job, but also because her job is WEIRD). 18, lives with her mom and intends to go to school out of state once she saves up enough.

Production Line Worker. Gary Janey - Night Shift Manager. White. Flabby. In over his head. Also the day shift manager and very overworked, with twelve hour days. Retains some memories from the Red Light and is falling apart at the seams. His office is a mess and contains several obvious clues, like a motivational poster for "Power - The Principle Act of Power is to Consume"

Production Line Worker. Philip West - Foreman. Black. Early 40s. Has a terrible crush on Ashley. Distrusts law enforcement of any kind and keeps a fire arm in his home.

Production Line Worker. Tommy Wilkes - Early 20s stoner. Buys weed from Fernando and smokes up with him in his car before most shifts. Every shift since the Red Light started.

Production Line Worker. Fernando Nunez. Late 20s. Has some tats, but not a gangster. Sells weed in Thrall. Saving up to buy property elsewhere, but is clueless as to how to spend his illegal cash. Slaughterhouse work is his cover/tax shelter.

Production Line Worker. Ashley Moss. Black. Late 30s. Trying to provide for her kids. Unassuming but works as a cam girl on the side.

Production Line Worker. Rosa Gonzalez-Thompson - Second generation immigrant from South America. Never moved away from town. Speaks excellent Spanish. Mid 40s. Knits and follows many Instagram influencers.

Production Line Worker. Zenaida Thompson - Third generation. Hispanic. Works with her mother. Poor Spanish, wants to go to community college to learn to be a graphic designer despite being a terrible artist.

Former Employee. Jimmy Baumer - A wreck of a meth addict and alcoholic, he is hanging around Thrall until he is forcibly evicted from his apartment. He has a shotgun with only two shells in it. He is tweaked out and jumpy, but willing to work with those who say they're trying to take down Chuck, Gary or Tenderloin Time.

Dealing with It
The challenge here is largely about killing the thing in the basement without killing all the innocent but mesmerized plant workers.  You will take 6 SAN damage, even on a success, if you just decide to slaughter them wholesale. On a failure it is 1d10+5.

Total SAN rewards from the mission:

1 for securing the Green Box
1 for sanitizing Merriweather's ranch house
1d6 for slaying the Larvae King
1d8 for saving plant workers, minus 1 for each killed
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:38, Sat 11 Apr 2020.