Sleet Mountain

The following article is about a fictional company in The Gerosha Chronicles'' and related media. For the real-life Sleet Mountain Service Center near Stephenville, Newfoundland, see RV and Travelers.com.''

Sleet Mountain is a fictional water bottling company in the Gerosha multiverse. It serves as a stand-in for BlueTriton Brands, whose Ice Mountain plant is in Stanwood in real life.

Early history
Sleet Mountain was founded in 1976 by Richard Lusital, whose son Bob Lusital would take control of it in 1987. The company managed to get by and do fairly well for its region for 22 years under Bob's leadership. However, the Obama administration's new policies and regulations led to the company having some issues with how its warehouses and bottling plants were operating. In 2009, the company started seeing its profit margins shrink for the first time. The Great Lakes Water Debate further damaged the company's reputation, regarding where it harvests water from. Bob, who was getting old, decided the time was right to retire from the company. A man named Clyde Spendelworth, whose past was not well known outside of a sketchy resume, quickly befriended Bob in 2006, assuming a high rank at the Stanwood plant.

Earth-G5
Shortly after throwing a going-away party, Bob left Sleet Mountain's building, never to be seen or heard from again. Clyde set to work as the new boss at the company, and staged an elaborate scheme to use a nearby building-polluted pond and some fraudulent documents to defraud the EPA. Cleanup fraud, by his reasoning, would save the company millions of dollars. Those who helped him cover up the scam would profiteer especially, and could skim a few million off the top for themselves.

However, one very reluctant Mark Stefflin at the company refused to keep quiet. When plant coworker Kyle Tugrass tried to bribe Mark into keeping his mouths shut and accepting hush money, he once again refused. Intimidation by coworkers George Lawence and Vance Lingolin was also not enough to sway Mark - who all the same was hesitant to immediately inform his twin brother Aaron what was happening. Mark offered to take Aaron on a "fishing trip," in order to divulge the information. Mark manages to steal an envelope with incriminating evidence on the company, with Vance unsuccessfully trying to talk Mark out of betraying the company. George calls in a lower-level plant worker, Mark's best friend Chris Kennal, to assist them with addressing the "problem" that Mark has begun to pose.

Greedy and under pressure, Chris agrees to meet with George and Kyle to mastermind a plan. Chris knows a girl that would gladly assist him with his evil plan: Ashley Phillips. Chris and Ashley assassinate Mark; and then take pains to dispose of his body. George and Kyle are called in to find the missing folder. However, Mark dying means he failed to call Aaron early in the morning. A curious Aaron wakes up to his alarm, curious as to how he was awake before Mark. Aaron investigates the apartment, and finds the missing envelope.

George and Kyle give pursuit of Aaron, but to no avail. They are fruitless in their quest to recover the evidence. Aaron does his best to decipher what he has; and stumbles upon George's phone number. This leads to Aaron being abducted, and to a confrontation. However, Aaron escapes while Kyle and George get into a heated argument about who should kill Aaron. Kyle and Chris later find Aaron and recapture him, along with a classmate of his named Monica Shelly. Still unable to recover the folder, Chris decides that it won't matter if the folder is never recovered; provided that the key witnesses to Sleet Mountain's criminality are wiped out.

However, Aaron's begging and pleading finally convinces Chris to switch sides. Chris knocks Aaron and Monica out, using the cover of darkness to feign killing them. He then takes the gun on an unsuspecting George and Kyle, killing them for real. He leaves an apology note to Aaron, then flees. Chris later goes to a drop point to collect his cut of the take. When Clyde tries to pressure Chris into continuing to work for him, however; Chris refuses. He quits his job at Sleet Mountain, and makes for life as a fugitive. Chris insists that he's fed up with being Clyde's patsy, and that three homicides is enough for him.

Amidst Chris' departure, Aaron and Monica successfully get the authorities to inquire more into Clyde's activities. Clyde vanishes, and the company is thrown into disarray without him. Worse: those left at the company who know about the scandal, but said nothing, are left the target of heavy lawsuits. The company is threatened with chapter 7 bankruptcy, and is on the verge of being permanently shut down.

Earth-G7
The Cataclysmic Gerosha timeline's version of Blood Over Water elaborates much more on the full extent of what drives Sleet Mountain to cleanup fraud, kidnapping, and murder. Clyde this time around is now a very twisted man, who spent his youth in shady business, while seeking out spiritual empowerment through dabbling in dark ways. He settled on a materialistic glorification of elitism and sexual enslavement of others, after dabbling in numerous satanic cults and forms of mysticism. Classic Soros-Bilderberger-Masonism didn't quite appeal to him either, as the Marlquaan intrigued him. Instead, when Rappaccini first proposed the Triumvirate, and six years before it was made official, Clyde decided that his Gleeful-N'-Young human trafficking cartel had its best possible future under the Hebbleskin Gang - selling it under the Hebbleskins' dummy corporation known as "Shiny Horizons."

Clyde sets up the entire Sleet Mountain water cleanup fraud operation as a smokescreen, to keep Sleet Mountain low-level workers in the dark about his greater purpose for the building. Behind everyone's back, Gleeful-N'-Young was to be using back storage rooms to hide illegal woman-and-child murder porn tapes for later distribution via dark web distributors. To keep Bob Lusital from growing wise to what was really going on, Clyde encourages Bob to retire by August of 2009, and hand over to Clyde the full reins of the Sleet Mountain operation. George in this version is an escaped mental patient, and survivor of the Icy Finger's failed Project: Ijiraq experiments - which produced Jerry the Psycho Reindeer. Jerry defected to serving Krampus, abandoning the Icy Finger's initial plans for him. George, however, was lost in the world until Clyde found him. He made George into his servant, primarily as his gun-for-hire.

In this version, it's made explicit that Bob doesn't return...after being stalked through traffic by George. Vance in this version refuses to play along with any of Clyde's games, and becomes the catalyst for Mark's betrayal of Clyde. In this version, Chris and Ashley were well-established parts of the company from the get-go, rather than being recent hires. Chris, Ashley, and Mark are embroiled in a love triangle, while Ashley hides a dark past involving a corrupt minister - and dozens of previous boyfriends. At varying points, she sleeps with both Mark and Chris behind each other's backs. Mark and Chris are both revealed to be very promiscuous themselves, having been with plenty of other women besides Ashley. Chris does his best to distance himself from one Kylie Drimmon, after she claims to be pregnant with his child.

Mark escapes in a less-dramatic fashion with his envelope, after leaving behind photocopies for Clyde in an effort to fool him (that doesn't work.) He hides the envelope under a patch of torn carpet in his apartment, under the bed, after leaving Aaron a clue to look under there if anything too strange should happen to him. Kyle and George attempt in vain to sway Mark to stay loyal to the cause; but fail after Mark has learned of the illegal porn operation.

Instead of sending George and Kyle right away, Clyde decides to twist the knife by turning Chris against Mark. He has George break into Ashley's home, and steal information on her past with Rev. Campelli. He uses that as blackmail to send her to try to talk Mark out of exposing the company. Instead, she defects to Mark's side. Clyde uses this situation to trick Chris into going to Mark's apartment to kill him. Ashley unwittingly becomes a diversion, keeping Mark busy by having sex with him while Chris sneaks into the apartment. With a silenced pistol, Chris shoots Mark dead. A terrified and confused Ashley confronts Chris with what Clyde told her, and the two realize that Clyde has been manipulating both of them from the beginning. They agree to dispose of Mark's body together, and then hatch a plan to collect their share of the money and then go on the run. However, Clyde tricks them once again, and has Ashley abducted and sent to a brothel in Kentucky. Chris, angered by this, plans his own scheme to betray the company - in order to rescue and avenge Ashley, and get back at Clyde for manipulating him into killing his own best friend. However, his plan is made complicated by Aaron's interference - made worse by Monica's persistent quest to solve Vance's murder.

George goes to greater lengths to stalk Aaron this time, still under the impression that Aaron is somehow Mark. Yet, his plans to kill Aaron fail all the same - for a more-understandable reason. Finally, Monica collects enough compelling evidence to mail it to a trusted associate via dark web connections. However, Clyde has Gleeful-N'-Young stage an elaborate purge on Big Rapids and several nearby towns, making off with women and small children while disabling the dispatch centers to ensure that no one can call 911.

Instead, Monica's home is raided - on the chance that her niece Annabelle might be there. Monica herself evades the raiders, but her backup romantic interest Hank Froli is killed. Monica is arrested when police arrive in her neighborhood, and she is held while her home is investigated. She is eventually released without charges, but warned that she may be under surveillance. She discovers, to her horror, that Annabelle was rescued from Gleeful-N'-Young - by the Straggele! The odds of seeing her ever again were slim.

Not long after that, Chris and Kyle discover Aaron and Monica on campus one evening. The pair are recaptured, and led to Lot 47 for execution. However, Monica doesn't beg for her life this time. Instead, she taunts her captors about how they're already too late - that killing her would accomplish nothing! Chris has already decided to save Aaron and Monica, and to betray the company; but he allows Aaron to believe that he's still part of Clyde's gang. The scene plays out similarly as in Earth-G5; except Chris leaves Aaron with damning evidence of Clyde's porn operation in addition to an apology letter. He includes evidence that the Purge was also Clyde's idea.

Chris collects his money, then flees, similarly to in the Earth-G5 miniseries. However, he doesn't simply tell Clyde that he "wants out." He insults and threatens Clyde over the phone. Chris then steals some supplies and a van, and goes to war. He locates the brothel with Ashley inside, and he rescues her - after killing every single other living soul inside the building! Chris only briefly returns to Big Rapids to collect a few items, dump what he doesn't need anymore, and end his apartment lease. He leaves a note for Kylie, explaining that he's been recruited into a very dangerous secret war. That it would not be in her best interests to look for him. He then leaves Big Rapids, never to return.

With testimony in court happening later on by Ashley, Aaron, and Monica regarding what happened, it doesn't take long before an FBI raid occurs on the Sleet Mountain building. By then, Clyde has fled the premises - with a majority of the illegal porn. The business suffers similar losses due to EPA and other lawsuits, along with any remaining workers who knew of the porn operation or the Purge facing very lengthy prison sentences. The company is implied to limp along after that scandal, only to be completely obliterated in 2018, after Halal Affadidah takes control and destroys the US.

In Earth-G5

 * Clyde Spendelworth: The mysterious CEO
 * Vance Lingolin: Corrupt security officer
 * George Lawence: Low-level worker and gun-for-hire.
 * Kyle Tugrass: Low-level worker a rank or two above George, desperate to protect the company's secrets.
 * Mark Stefflin: Incorruptible higher-level worker at the Stanwood plant, who pays the ultimate price.
 * Chris Kennal: Recent hire, and highly treacherous.
 * Ashley Phillips: Outside help, hired by Chris to be a cleaner, assisting with the disposal of Mark's body after Chris kills him.

In Earth-G7

 * Bob Lusital: Former head of the company
 * Clyde Spendelworth: Head of Sleet Mountain after Bob's passing
 * Vance Lingolin: Accounts receivable department head
 * Chris Kennal: Area account representative
 * Ashley Phillips: Secondary Marketing Assistant. She is a fairly new recruit, but quickly falls for Mark. Clyde is quick to take notice, and exploits the situation to blackmail her.
 * Kyle Tugrass: Warehouse supervisor and eventual hired hitman
 * Mark Stefflin: Office manager
 * George Lawence: Assistant to the manager / gofer / hitman. Undercover security, but all-around insane thug.
 * Brent Yorming: Clyde's plant within the local area police, to throw local authorities off of Clyde's trail.

Development
The existence of Sleet Mountain in the Blood Over Water franchise was a convention born initially out of necessity, before more was done with it creatively. In late September of 2009, the Wednesday evening TVPR 318 class at Ferris State was in need of a villain corporation. Instructor Nathan Meadows insisted that "an environmental theme" should be worked into the plot somehow. Assigned director Chris Wilson immediately suggested that events could take place centered around the Ice Mountain bottling plant located in Stanwood, MI. Stanwood was only a few short miles away from Big Rapids, and had a pond located conveniently nearby. In the 1990s, there was a lot of activism and scandal surrounding the Stanwood plant, culminating later in the Great Lakes Water Debate. It was believed that a hit-and-run had also occurred in the area.

These themes of pollution scandal and an alleged murder were first incorporated into the Mountain of Cabal episode "Late Matters Not," in which Alvin Monaco was the first to discover some paperwork in Mike's house. Blood Over Water was able to get by in its production up until Part 2 before Ice Mountain was mentioned by name.

The Dozerfleet founder suggested changing Ice Mountain to some other name, so that a real company wouldn't be defamed. After all: the high point of the class was supposed to be that the end result was broadcast for cable. Chris and other classmate Kyle Mayer opted to ignore the legal risks, and went ahead with making Ice Mountain the villain explicitly in their cut of the miniseries. In initial takes of scenes for part 2, a Starbucks logo was also plainly visible. This was one of many issues that needed correction.

In 2010, the Dozerfleet founder took it on himself to make a version that was cable-ready. It was determined that "Sleet" made a good censor for "Ice." However, limited ability at the time for making good dubs meant that the actual dub was only used once. A quick-rendered "Sleet Mountain" wallpaper was added to Chris Kennal's laptop screen in Part 3 of the miniseries, as a way to cover up the Ice Mountain screen that featured originally. Several other scenes were pop-edited or else were re-cut to remove any actual references to Ice Mountain. Likewise, one of the functions of re-shooting the coffee shop scene in Part 2 was also to obscure any Starbucks logos that would have been very difficult to deal with in the original.

The introduction of Clyde Spendelworth at the tail end of Blood Over Water begged for "Sleet" Mountain's history to be explored in more detail. In April of 2013, that new mythology surrounding Sleet Mountain began to be explored in detail, as Dozerfleet Comics welcomed a remake of Blood Over Water to its ranks. Its logo is based on the quick wallpaper designed as a censor screen in 2010. The miniseries' version of events was canonized to Classic Gerosha retroactively, though it was initially set in its own separate universe.