NUELOW at Christmas: Day Eighteen

Dozens of centuries ago, a red dragon who is known as Brigid fell in love with the human winter festivals that eventually became Christmas. She continues her love affair with Christmas, and she has taken to spending some of her time creating magic candles that she secretly places in places where people of good cheer and kindness gather. Humans, when they notice them, have taken to referring to these mysterious magic items as candles of peace.

 

Brigid also uses the candles herself, placing them all over the part of her lair that is visible to humans. She sometimes invites heroes (such as the player characters) and disadvantaged children to spend all of Christmas Eve waiting up for Santa with her... and there's a 1d6 chance that he shows up slightly before dawn to visit with his biggest and oldest fan and those she think are worthy of getting gifts from him.

The rest of this post is presented under the Open Game License, and it presents rules for candles of peace for use in the d20 System and D&D compatible games.

Candle of Peace
Candles of Peace are found in churches and shrines to good-aligned deities. No one knows how they are created or by whom. They just seem to appear in dark corners  bundles of 2d4+4, on random festival days for the deity a given shrine, church, or temple is devoted to. If subjected to detect magic, candles of peace radiate faint auras of divine magic, but nothing more specific can be determined. Roll 1d6 to determine what color the candles are: 1-2 red; 3-4 white; 5-6 green.
   When lit, a candle of peace provides a +2 bonus to Will saves to resist fear effects, and a +2 bonus to Fortitude saves to resist disease, venoms, and poisons (magical and non-magical) within a 10-foot radius and sight of the candle's flame. Each candle can burn a total of 48 hours before completely expended. It can be lit and extinguished any number of times during that period. (Each time it is lit, the GM can assume that a minimum of 1/4 of an hour  of burn time is spent.)
   A candle of peace cannot be wet or submerged in water to work. It can be used to ignite flammable materials and substances. It can be extinguished by any means that would extinguish a normal candle.
   Up to four candles of peace can be lit at the same time and their benefits will stack, for a maximum bonus of +8. They cannot be more than 4 inches apart for the bonuses to stack. The radius of the effect never expands beyond the 10-foot radius.



Best Holiday wishes from your friends at NUELOW Games! Here's Mike Oldfield's fabulous version of "Silent Night" to help set the mood!

NUELOW at Christmas: Day Seventeen

THE DRAGON WHO LOVES CHRISTMAS

When she walks among humans, she calls herself "Brigid" in honor of a goddess she once knew. Her real name is too long and complicated for lesser beings to pronounce, so she doesn't even bother to tell them.

Brigid is one of the oldest living beings on Earth. Brigid is an ancient dragon.... an ancient red dragon. Unlike most of her kind, she not retreated to the elemental planes with the Titans and other ancient races who were driven from Earth by the Atlanteans. Instead, she has spent tens of thousands of years observing humanity as it developed from cave-dwelling scavengers to masters of the Earth and becoming capable of destruction on a level that not even red dragons can conceive of in their darkest imaginings.

Brigid first became interested in humanity when she noticed they had "tamed" fire and made it just another one of their tools. Over the millennia, she traveled among them in human form--dragons are all capable of taking whatever shape they like, but few bother to perfect the skill to the degree that Brigid has--and she has been worshipped as a goddess of fire and light (and sometimes destruction) by many cultures that have emerged and faded.

 

  

 
 

But out all the inventions and achievements she has witnessed grown out of human imagination and community were the celebrations of Saturnalia and Yule; she loved the chaotic way humans in that part of the world celebrated life and brought light to the darkest of seasons. She also enjoyed getting gifts and getting roaringly drunk and treating lucky crowds to amazing displays of fire magic.

As Christianity gained dominance and the ancient festivals merged into a celebration of the faith's central figure, Brigid's love of the festivities surrounded it only grew greater. The songs, the decorations, the setting aside of differences and coming together in peace--if only for brief moments. And by the time what we consider "modern day" had arrived, Brigid loved that Christmas was EVERYWHERE thanks to all the various human inventions' who needs magic when you have broadcast networks and Muzak in malls?!

Every Christmas, Brigid assumes the human form she considers her most perfect and dresses it in quirky Christmas outfits. She visits churches and community centers around the world; she crashes corporate and political Christmas parties; she approaches both the financial and cultural elite, as well as the poorest and most rejected members of societies, asking to help them celebrate Christmas.
If treated with a minimum of hospitality and good cheer, she is a good guest that brings much entertainment to the party. If she is treated warmly and generously, the generosity is returned. The party's hosts receive a charm that will bring good luck to them and their direct descendants for 100 years so long as they are kind and generous while guests who are nice to her receive charms that grant them good luck for the next year.

 

 

If those who are impoverished or on the fringes of human societies accept her offer to spend Christmas with them, they find themselves whisked away to a wondrous palace that reflects Yule and Christmas in all its forms. They are guests at a spectacular feast and leave with gifts both useful and desired, as well as money to get back on their feet and magically cured of whatever addictions of ailments they may have been suffering from.

On the other hand, if Brigid is rebuffed or treated rudely, she makes sure those who lack proper Christmas spirit have their Holiday Seasons ruined by unexplained fires. How severe those fires are depends on how badly Brigid is treated. If she is physically attacked, she will reveal her true from and lay waste to a swath of the land, killing dozens if not hundreds of people... but leaving those who violated the Spirit of Christmas alive and fully aware of what they unleashed.