Monday, December 16, 2024

NUELOW at Christmas: Day Sixteen
Bessie Love and the Magical Mistletoe

It's the time of year when the Spirits of Christmas move across the land, randomly bestowing icons of the holidays with supernatural blessings. Among the things they empower is the mistletoe that hangs in the doorways of frisky young people.

Bessie Love via OpenArt.ai

 
During the Christmas Season of 1925, Bessie Love (silent movie star who secretly fought against supernatural evil as a costumed mystery woman), noticed that enchanted mistletoe was showing up at the parties she was attending. Even in her own house, the mistletoe that hung over the doorway to her sitting room suddenly became enchanted on Christmas Eve. 

The magic seemed to vary in strength and appeared harmless--perhaps even helpful in some cases--so it was a fairly low priority for her to track its origins. Instead, she collected the enchanted sprigs when possible and preserved them in her collection of magical artifacts. She noted they tended to regain their enchantment every Christmas Eve, even after they'd long since dried out.

Eventually, when she joined forces with Santa's Helpers to save Kris Kringle himself from certain doom in 1933, she discovered the true origin and nature of the enchanted mistletoe, even if she never did find out exactly what their full range of effects could be.

MAGICAL MISTLETOE
The Spirits of Christmas enchant random mistletoe sprigs in doorways to bestow various blessings from December 21 through January 5.

IS THE MISTLETOE MAGICAL?
Roll 1d6 to determine the nature of the mistletoe hung in the doorway.

1. Not magical, but still pretty (and a pretty good excuse for smooching).
2. Vampires may not cross through the doorway in which the mistletoe hangs, they cannot touch it, and anyone on the other side is immune to their mind-effecting powers.
3. Everyone who passes through the doorway in which the mistletoe hangs are instantly filled with a sense of comfort and joy. They receive a +4 bonus to all Charisma checks and Charisma-based skill checks that are done in acts of love and friendship or to defuse tense situations.
4. Unfaithful lovers feel compelled to confess their betrayal while under the mistletoe (Will save DC24 to resist).
5. Faithful lovers who kiss under the mistletoe gain the spell-like abilities of comprehend languages, discern lie and detect illusion as if they were 20th-level spellcasters.
6. Faithful lovers gain a +4 bonus to all saving skill checks, saving throws, and attack rolls made when fighting together or defending each other for 24 hours after kissing beneath the mistletoe.


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The text in this post is presented under the Open Game License and may be reproduced in accordance with its terms. Copyright Steve 2017. (If you found this material useful and/or entertaining, please support our efforts by buying one of our products at DriveThruRPG.)

Also, for the record, both images of Bessie Love in this post are as fictitious as her career as a superhero. They were made using a specifically "trained" model at OpenArt.ai.


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