NUELOW at Christmas: Day Twenty-One

Here's a Christmas-flavored adventure idea for a modern setting that contains magic.

THE ELF ON THE SHELF MASSACRES
Someone is murdering the families of witnesses against Papa Jambo, the reputedly magic-using crimelord who is currently on trial for multiple murders. Despite heavy police protection, the assassins are still managing to infiltrate the homes and murder the families in their sleep; in one case, they even killed one of the officers on the protective detail.

After these shadowy assassins kill a pair of evidence technicians at a crime scene, the player characters are called in to help the investigation. Upon inspecting the crime scenes, they find one thing in common: Each home has an Elf on the Shelf doll in it... and at one point, one of the characters is attacked by one of the toys after it animates. (Use Kobold stats, 1d4 points of damage with a knife or some other sharp household object).



With some investigation, the characters discover that the Elf on the Shelf dolls were all sent to the family from the same downtown address, even if the packages all appeared to come from a variety of hard-to-contact relatives.

Upon visiting the warehouse, the party is attacked by 24 murderous Elf on the Shelf dolls. They attack in groups of 1d6+1 until all are destroyed. Further investigation of the warehouse reveals other addresses to which killer dolls were sent that morning, as well as the following (roll 1d4):

   1. That Papa Jambo's apprentice is animating the dolls and that he has moved to a different location with 48 more... which will be sent to judges and other law enforcement officials if he has the chance.
   2. That one of Papa Jambo's rivals are trying to frame him for the murders--and that rival is an even stronger and more evil sorcerer than Jambo.
   3. Family members or loved ones of the player characters have been targeted to recieve killer Elf on the Shelf dolls... and that they may already be in their homes!
   4. The Papa Jambo on trial is a look-a-like impostor and that the real crimelord is at a secret location, plotting a monstrous revenge that will turn Christmas Eve into a bloodbath!

NUELOW at Christmas: Day Twenty

THE SIX ARTIFACTS OF SANTA CLAUS

For a number of centuries, a set of related magical items believed to be the property of Santa Claus has been changing hands and drifting through the underground market for supernatural items. Only rarely have they been collected in one place, and it is the goal of many collectors to own all six items in the set. Some, like Brigid the Christmas Dragon, want to acquire them so they can return them to Santa as a present, but most want the bragging rights.

   Below, we present the Six Artifacts of Santa Claus as viewed through the lense of the d20 Game System. (The descriptions of the six items are released under the Open Game License and may be reproduced in accordance with its term.)

Giant Candy Cane of Peacemaking: This giant candy cane functions like a great hammer and deals 1d12 non-lethal bludgeoning damage. There are no bonuses to hit or damage rolls, but a target that is struck must make a successful Wisdom saving throw (DC22) or be frozen in place. The target is aware of everything happening around them, but unable to move in any way other than to breathe. The target is held in place until the wielder of the candy cane releases him or her from the enchantment (with a standard action), until dispel magic with a 20th level effectiveness is cast on the target, or until 12 hours have passed from the moment the target failed the Wisdom saving throw.

Santa’s Bag of Christmas Gifts: This is a bag of holding with 600 lbs. of weight available. Gifts can be taking out of the bag as a free action. The gift is always something the person it is intended for wants or needs.

Santa’s Boots: These heavy black boots paradoxically provide the wearer a +4 bonus to Stealth skill checks, at will the wearer can choose to leave no tracks in snow. The boots resize to fit whoever puts them on.

Santa's Hat: This red, fur-lined bobble hat appears like one of the most iconic symbols of Christmas. It grants the wearer the ability to unerringly identify the current location of a being whose true name is known to him or her, as well as the place that being considers its home.

Santa's Overcoat: This red long coat provides the wearer immunity to natural cold temperatures or from getting cold from being wet. When fully buttoned, Santa's Overcoat also grants a +2 bonus to AC/DR, +1 bonus to most saving throws, and a +4 bonus to saving throws made to resist air- water- and cold-based spell-effects and spell-like abilities.

   Santa's Overcoat is made for a tall, broad-shouldered, corpulent man, but it adjusted slightly if a smaller person wears it... but it still appears to be ill-fitting on anyone but Santa himself.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ITEMS

In reality, the six items described in this article were actually made by Brigid the Christmas Dragon because she wanted to fill in for Santa Claus if he ever needed help. The items were stolen from her original lair in France, on Christmas Eve of 1792 when it was penetrated by revolutionaries as the Reign of Terror was taking shape. She has been trying to recover them ever since, not because she necessarily wants to give them to Santa, but because she thinks he will laugh at them if her creations were ever put side by side with the spectacularly wondrous magical items he uses to deliver gifts and happiness all around the world.

NUELOW at Christmas: Day Nineteen

HE KNOWS WHO'S BAD OR GOOD... 

BECAUSE SOME OF THEM ARE TRYING TO KILL HIM! 

The world's leading assassin, Madam Satan, is hired to kill Santa Claus. Confronting St. Nick awakens memories of Christmases long gone, and, in turn, brings a long-dormant part of her soul back to life. She turns from predator to protector... but will she be able to save Santa and the very heart of Christmas itself from the 12 killers that were brought in by the client to replace her?

NOT SINCE DIE HARD HAVE YOU SEEN 

A MORE ACTION-PACKED CHRISTMAS MOVIE!

COMING ONLY TO THEATERS DECEMBER 25, 2024...

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.

NUELOW at Christmas: Day SixteenBessie 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.

 
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.

--

The text in this post is presented under the Open Game License and may be reproduced in accordance with its terms. Copyright Steve Miller 2017, 2024. (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.

NUELOW at Christmas: Day Fifteen

There exists among us people who are touched by the Spirits of Christmas at birth. As children, they seem extra kind and extra cheerful (especially around the Holidays). When they turn 16, the Spirits visit the individual and offer them a chance to become a Santa's Helper.

A pair of Santa's Helpers

 

SANTA'S HELPER 
(d20 System rules, presented under the Open Game License. Copyright 2024 by Steve Miller)
During character creation, the player declares that his character chose to become a Santa's Helper. (This can also be rolled randomly if the GM prefers; the character is a Santa's Helper on a roll of 001 on percentile dice.)
  In addition to all standard class abilities and bonus feats, a Santa's Helper gains the following abilities for two days out of the year, December 24 and 25.
  Joy of Fellowship: The character and his closest allies (other PCs for example) gain a +1 bonus to all saving throws, attack rolls, and skill checks.
  Spellcasting: The character may cast a number of spells from the following list a number of times per day equal to his Wisdom + Charisma bonus. He casts the spell by making a gesture (such as twitching his nose or winking, with no other components required): Animal Friendship, Detect Thoughts, Disguise Self, Fabricate, Knock, Nondetection, Passwall, Telekinesis.
   Bonus Feat: The character adds Naughty or Nice to the selection of available bonus feats. The ability gained from this feat is available all year long.

   Drawback: A Santa's Helper is expected to be kind and helpful to all but the most naughty and outright evil beings. If he or she is mean or violent toward an innocent, friendly, or harmless target, he or she instantly loses his mystical status and all benefits that come with it..

   Special: If Santa requires assistance in delivering gifts to good children, or if there's a particular threat that is stopping him from visiting an area that requires the sort of skills and attention that only a player character can bring to bear, he or she is asked to spring into action. (Hopefully, the other party members will go along to help the Helper!)