What are some things to do on a glacier

[The Cats]

Next sessions my players will be returning to the material plane and I'm infatuated with the idea of plopping them into the lair of an ancient white dragon so i can watch them poop their pants before they realize it's out hunting and the challenge is to get the heck out of there before it comes back. I've already put together (IMO) a really cool inside-the-glacier lair of the dragon for them to work through but I'm stalling out trying to come up with interesting things for them to encounter once they're outside on the glacier proper.

The issues:
-It's a glacier. The heck is there to do on a glacier?
-The dragon has been here for awhile so there's no big game nearby, so no remorhaz encounters.
-This group (including me) isn't big on finicky stuff like tracking supplies etc. so focusing on the survival aspect probably won't go over too well.

One idea I had was them running in to a group of locals (hidden inside an illusion or something) sneaking up on the lair to slay the dragon that's been terrorizing them. So... "We're going to kill that dragon!" "Cool!" "... yup." "... yup." "Mhmm..."

I mean i could just have them emerge somewhere else but... I already made this cool lair map and junk :s

(Side note: I found a "Crown of The World" (Pathfinder Campaign Setting) supplement in the back of a Jade Regent adventure path book and holy cow it is the worst fantasy gazetteer I've seen. A third of a page is taken up with describing the course of a river. Dude, there's a map. I can see where the river goes.)

[Darth Ultron]

Lots of things like:

1.The dragon cult. They live around the lair and 'worship' the dragon (that keeps them like 'pets'). This can be humans or any race.

2.Any Elemental Ice monster encounter. The idea is they just 'popped' on to the glacier for some unknown reason(but you can make a reason, of course). There are plenty of 'Ice' monsters, made of ice. Though you can also use any 'Earth' type monster and just say it's made of Ice.

3.A dragon is smart enough not to eat everything around it's lair. Again, they are far more likely to keep some as 'pets' or even 'save them to eat later'. So you can have big monsters around the lair.

4.Crashed sky ship. It can be from anywhere, really. Even from ''off the planet''. They can have just about any story going on, and often need help.

5.A group of local dragonslayers....but are they friend or foe?

[Elvensilver]

Glaciers are fun!
- They move, so maybe the party also has to run away from masses of ice, instead of just a dragon, and of course it is really difficult terrain.
- they are cold, so corpses are well preserved - could result in some undead that still look mostly alive(trap) or in a few clues about the behaviour of the dragon.
- under most glaciers there is running water, because the pressuren of the ice atop melts the ice near the ground, this could be an escape route.
- since glaciers are impressive natural features, maybe throw some druids in who maybe work with the dragon,but maybe are more concerned with the local game disappearing?

[weckar]

If you have never been on a glacier, it is hard to explain just how cold they are. You need to get this across. It is more than discomfort. It is snot freezing to shards in your nose. It is not being able to eat or drink. It is scary and terrible, especially if not prepared.

[gkathellar]

If you have never been on a glacier, it is hard to explain just how cold they are. You need to get this across. It is more than discomfort. It is snot freezing to shards in your nose. It is not being able to eat or drink. It is scary and terrible, especially if not prepared.

That depends a fair bit on location and time of year. Most glaciers are in polar regions or at very high elevations, so you're generally correct, of course. But during the summer, in direct sunlight, someone could probably get around on an alpine glacier in shorts and a t-shirt and not immediately die (they'd still qualify as an idiot, mind).

[The Cats]

[Thanks everyone, I'll use a lot of these.

We live in northern Canada, about as far north as you can get without being in the arctic circle, so I don't think conveying the cold will be an issue. We all know what -50C with heavy wind chill feels like.

[J-H]

A wendigo
Frozen zombies (I think there's a template in Frostburn?)
Ice elementals
A small uldra colony
A plane-hopping merchant mining ice to take to Sigil/City of Brass/etc. to sell. He uses magic and elementals to dig and carries it in a portable hole. Two thousand gold a day is pretty worthwhile over time.
A small team of elite scouts sent by a rival dragon to scout the white dragon's lair.
Polar bears and/or were-polar bears.
At the edge of the glacier, an ancient, ancient tomb or ruin that's just been uncovered...or some Bone creatures (template, better skeletons) that were buried or frozen in it.

[OldTrees1]

A desperate fire elemental in distress.

[paddyfool]

Depending a little on level, there's always straight up environmental hazards as well - crevasses opening up beneath their feet, blizzards, crumbling seracs, or the bit of glacier that some or all of the party are on breaking off and floating away / falling into the sea as an iceberg...

[Tvtyrant]

Things you could find on a glacier:

~A demon named Sinter C Laus who is trapped in the ice, he and his chariot pulled by 9 nightmares are slowly melting free of the ice. A group of elves that dwell deep in tunnels in the ice will escort the party to safety if they will perform the ritual song to keep him from another year.

~A colony of ice elementals are vacationing on the glacier, but their bags got stolen. Find their vacation top hats and they will plane shift you to the Elemental Plane of Water safely. L

~A Yuan-ti named Fros-Ti wants milk from the great cow named Queen. Her dairy is known to be the best in the world, enough to draw him onto the glacier in a blizzard.

Less silly:

~The big monsters are gone but their tunnels aren't. The party has a choice between facing the ghostly undead of those who died on the glacier down in the lightless tunnels or risk the dragon eating them on the surface.

~An ice quake splits the party, some under the ice and others above it.

~The glacier is sentient and hungry. It begins to hunt the party by opening cracks under them, iceslides and well timed blizzards. They must placate the glacier to escape.

[Mike Miller]

Read HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. Plenty to die - I mean do, at a glacier...

[paddyfool]

Also consider hungry polar bears, angry whales, a rogue alchemist fleeing to the cold north to escape his undead creation, stampeding herds of mammoths, ice giants, a lost city semi-thawed out of the ice that may contain whatever unseen treasures and hazards you wish to conceive of, and of course a bodysnatching alien thing ...

EDIT: Sabre-toothed tigers, sealfolk, walrus-men, viking expies, inuit expies,

[King of Nowhere]

That depends a fair bit on location and time of year. Most glaciers are in polar regions or at very high elevations, so you're generally correct, of course. But during the summer, in direct sunlight, someone could probably get around on an alpine glacier in shorts and a t-shirt and not immediately die (they'd still qualify as an idiot, mind).

in the alps, in summer, it's well above zero on glaciers. you'll still be uncomfortable in shorts and shirt, but you go trekking on them in jeans and sweater. they melt during that time, to be replenished by winter snow. so they are quite different from polar glaciers; those never melt, but they get little snow.

[Erloas]

Not really sure what you're looking for if you've mostly ruled out any large creatures and you're not big on the survival aspect.

Depending on how far you want to take survival, there aren't going to be paths and it is very likely to be large areas that are going to be very difficult to navigate, assuming at least that your party can't just fly over everything. Blizzards, limited resources, and extreme colds pretty much all come back to survival too.

Although I would say to talk to the players about possibly focusing a bit more on the survival aspects of things. I completely understand that no one really wants to fuss too much about trail rations, camp fires, storms, hunting, and that sort of thing when you're running around between small towns or in areas with plenty of things to hunt and things to make shelter. But this is a different thing, it isn't going to be some simple DC10 survival check to feed the party, there might not be anything to burn anywhere around, etc. It might make for an interesting change of pace to make those things important for a while. After all, if all your doing is killing creatures and essentially ignoring the "environmental" part of your environment then a forest, a city, plains, deserts, and glacier are essentially exactly the same and the only difference is a bit of XP fodder description.

Although a lot of magic can essentially null a lot of that. If I were to run a survival heavy game I would probably change something like Endure Elements to be less "environment means nothing" and more "it helps endure, not eliminate" by saying something like "treat the temperature 15C closer to ideal" which would make incredible colds not lethal in minutes but still bad. Of course having the magic users have to take up quite a few slots feeding and protecting the party 24/7 does make combats have a different feel to them too.

[Stadge]

I'm not sure if you'd get an encounter out of it (maybe have the players learn the truth and then have to stop someone accidentally unearthing it?) but is it too silly to have a glacier, rather than being a normal slowly moving river of ice, actually be ice that's encasing a frozen, and so slowly moving, huge Purple Worm, that's encased beneath layers of ice?

Other than that, I echo what others have said. Are there crystalline creatures? Could they be hidden in the glacier somewhere?

[PastorofMuppets]

Ok so here’s my 2cp M. Knight Shamwow idea: There is no glacier.

The PCs are where they are because that group of locals previously alluded to had their shamans/druids ask their god(s) for help in calming the lands. The PCs are the answer to their prayers and are meant to drive off if not slay the white dragon and a few other large burrowing creatures that are making or expanding nests. Ever since they started arriving there have been ice quakes and stronger storms driving away wildlife making the village life harder than ever.

The reason for all this is that the “glacier” is actually an Ice Elemental on the scale of primordial Tolkien dragons. It is happy enough to host Arctic biome type civilizations and wilderness but a recent influx of large burrowing creatures are digging deep enough to hurt it and it’s getting angry and defensive. The villagers and nomads of the region will surely all die before conditions are harsh enough to drive out a dragon.

Can the PCs figure out what’s going on and save the village before the Great Cold One is hurt enough to take actions severe aenough to wipe all life from the area so it can finally start to heal?

[Mordar]

If you have never been on a glacier, it is hard to explain just how cold they are. You need to get this across. It is more than discomfort. It is snot freezing to shards in your nose. It is not being able to eat or drink. It is scary and terrible, especially if not prepared.

That depends a fair bit on location and time of year. Most glaciers are in polar regions or at very high elevations, so you're generally correct, of course. But during the summer, in direct sunlight, someone could probably get around on an alpine glacier in shorts and a t-shirt and not immediately die (they'd still qualify as an idiot, mind).

While King already hit on this, glaciers can be found in temperate zones that aren't even terribly elevated. See, for instance, Glacier National Park in Montana. Plenty cold in the winter, but shorts are totally in play in the summer (if you're from a cold area, anyway...).

So that means there can be lots of interesting things nearby...and taking into account glacial movement, I recommend considering the following: The glacier is in retreat...and it has exposed something long covered. A temple/settlement/waypost/laboratory from ages past, remarkably well preserved thanks to the glacier. Once upon a time this was an idyllic setting, perfect for XXXXX to build their TSWL. Now, it is being exposed to the open air for the first time in ages. The magic/constructs/not alive things all still fine and functional, and aside from the local critters that have just moved into the entry areas, the site is pristine.

Lots of options there, I think!

- M

[Slipperychicken]

-It's a glacier. The heck is there to do on a glacier?

Just chill out, take it slow, get a cold drink, cool your heels a bit.