Gifts for the Adventurers in your life - Secret Santicorn 2024

Do your recently rescued villagers need ideas for what to do for the wanderers that just saved their lives? Is there a holiday coming up, and a patron is looking to be kind to their pet fighters? One, for shame, Two here is a rollable table. Depending on how magical your setting is these are more or less impressive, but none should be too overpowered or useful/

(Merry Santicorn, Anne of DIY&Dragons !)

The gifts below are all worth 50sp, assuming a silver is enough for a bed and meal for one night. There is also enough for every adventurer in the party, obviously!

1d12	Gifts for Adventurers
1.	Cosmetics Kit, steel cases enameled in bright colors. The pigments are varied and strong enough to conceal or invent wounds, function as decent disguises and of course beautify excellently. Can be used in adventuring 6 times, but could be used just for cosmetics indefinitely.
2.	Wok of Seasoning, glittering cast iron. Enchanted to season anything cooked inside to the chef’s desire. This makes  bags of salt for preservation obsolete, practically, but will be a major comfort on the road.
3.	Costume Jewelry. Beautiful, but obviously glass and pewter if examined closely. Given to “help class up their wardrobe without the temptation of selling!” Looks worth 100gp.
4.	Sword oils, whetstones, etc. When do you ever stop to clean and care for a thing?
5.	Matching sets of fine clothes, suits or gowns or what have you. A party logo has been inscribed on the lapels, wrists, or boldly emblazoned across the back. How.. nice?
6.	A lump of porous white.. soap? When added to a bath of any size, it is filled with frothing scented bubbles and its temperature is changed to a gentle boil. Extremely comfy, counts as a rest.
7.	Liar’s Lip Dye, rich purple. When a kiss mark is applied with this, the color will change depending on what the person marked just said. If it turns green, they are lying. If it stays purple, it was true to their knowledge.
8.	A carnivorous potted plant, highly trained. Eats vermin exclusively, good for camping.
9.	A homemade pie. What’s the party’s favorite flavor?
10.	Disgustingly brick-like fruit cake. Useful as an infinite bludgeon, will never crack or bend safe for unnatural or magical pressure.
11.	A nice portrait of the party, slightly misremembered to be more attractive and noble.
12.	Bottomless wallet, can contain any amount of coinage & summon them at a thought.

Secret Santicorn 2019: An Adventuring Economy

"It's time for the best part of Santicorn - making things!
Diaghilev requests the following gift:
Adventuring/tomb-robbing is a cash-rich, high-turnover profession. Those tend to spawn secondary industries. What are some interesting secondary industries that might spring up around a known hub for rich tomb-robbers? Aside from the obvious sorts of armorers and provisioners."

(Happy Santicorn! Be sure to check out who did my request, at Numbers Aren't Real!)

Ah, after eating an entire loaf of garlic bread and stewing in indie folk-pop, I have finally been struck by inspiration, Master Diaghilev. After doing some research into real life Secondary Industries, I find the through-line to be using the Primary Industry's produce as the base of the Secondary Industry. So, what is the main production of tomb robbing? Money is the obvious one, but it also doesn't push me in any particular creative direction, so fuck it. There is also a wealth of historical and academic material being exhumed (assumedly), so something Big Brain and smort could be an option. There's your average adventuring party needs, which would become more common as adventurers became a fixture of the economy. Hirelings, specialty tools, maybe a very specific form of healthcare?

I think that gives us the spark we need! And so, we begin.

The Adventuring Game

Thanks Pinterest

When a grave-robber who is dirt-caked and bleeding from the flank decides to settle with their loot in town, that town will one day become a city. Collecting adventurers like snow in a ball, as the wealth accumulates and builds this community, lots of people come to take some sliver of the pie. Here are just a few.

Hireling Guilds

Originally the term was derogatory, but somewhere along the line people just adopted it. The line of adventuring demands many lives and well-beings be sacrificed in the name of deeper levels. The most common structure is a rank system, based on the missions returned from, your reviews from actual minted adventurers, and your general aptitude for tasks. Higher ranks receive higher portions of the profits after the Guild's cut. Its a supremely competitive field, and hirelings die just as often to each other as to dungeons. Eugenics are practiced, if the society knows what that is. Think the No More Heroes assassin ranking system mixed with intern/mentorship programs.

d12	Hireling Quirk	Gimmick	Demeanor	Rank
1.	Never makes eye contact.	Hide in shadows, literally.	Anxious.	I
2.	Constantly baring teeth.	Acts like an animal, buck naked.	Wild.	II
3.	Smug at all times.	Faux gold and gems, finery.	Bombastic.	III
4.	Disgustingly obese.	Operates via telekinesis.	Condescending.	IV
5.	Pulsating blood vessels.	Voice carries for a mile.	ANGRY.	V
6.	Too clingy.	Can become a thought-form.	Affectionate.	VI
7.	Doesn't speak the lingua franca.	Can appear as any human.	Confused.	VII
8.	Freezing cold.	Undead costume, carries rotting meat.	Morose.	VIII
9.	Does not emote.	Artificial, save for heart and brain.	Calculated.	IX
10.	Glittering smile.	Can avoid sure death, once.	Optimistic.	X
11.	Way younger than any other member.	Strength of a Greek hero, but no combat prowess.	Naive.	XI
12.	Sunglasses, whether era appropriate or not.	Best sword-fighter in the guild.	Overly Confident.	XII

Identify, Archaeology and You

As mystical artifacts and remnants of bygone civilizations piled up, somebody realized there was more money to be made here than just the material worth showed. Now there are stalls all over that are just as talented at Academic Research and Library Use as they are at Barter. It's kind of odd not to try and up-sell to the bigger brained customers, with just a little bit of a tale. Of course, after all this time, people are wary of false history. IDs, qualifications and true honest-to-gods knowledge are standard affair. Most vendors will be a fine source of very specialized research. Imagine the salesman at the beginning of Disney's Aladdin combined with your glasses-wearing anime stereotype.

d6	At this stall, you find...
1.	Endless Marvel - A lithe, quiet cat person. Specializes in interpersonal histories and genealogy, favors trinkets and baubles with dramatic stories. Comes alive when reciting an item's tale.
2.	Marosk - Wrinkly dwarf, like a Shar Pei. More of a physicist than a historian, has a mighty weapons collection. Currently working on the perfect siege engine.
3.	Phineas Addington - Collector of the Ancient Empire. Specializes in that culture, but has a soft spot for architectural features. Fountains especially.
4.	Florian - An artist, running a museum/auction house. Willing to put forth bizarre amounts of money up for authentic and undamaged pieces, but has equally bizarre standards.
5.	Zander - Warm and kindly. Researching ancient lifestyles to improve conditions back home. Will happily take any practical artifacts like cutlery or furniture.
6.	<3 - A masked figure completely concealed in cloth. Deals only in barter, and will not accept currency. Has a knack for magical objects.

Funerary Opulence

This maybe isn't so unusual, but when you have a wealth of people dying in their work, you gotta make good arrangements for their bodies. Depending on traditions, services cover many bases, and there is legal coverage for most obscure requests. Scattering ashes in otherwise private property, stringing the body up on a spire, hiding body parts in cabinets. Making light of death is one of many ways this society has coped with constant loss.

Extravagant Coffins are common, preservation of the corpse through magic slightly less so, and there are plenty of middlemen that scrape what cash they can get away with from the next-of-kin. Money is good.

With death so pervasive, you'll hear about some pretty bizarre cases. These are going on right now, if your players are interested in investigating.

Vandals, Necromancers, or Stranger?

Modest adventurer from a small housing district has recently passed away, and in their will requested their body be coated in iron and made into a gargoyle over the center of their home.

One week has passed, and the body is nowhere to be found. Due to the festival held in their honor, the locals have no idea whether the body was installed at all. The adventurer's survivors have placed a mighty bounty on the corpse-statue.

I Stab At Thee

A talented wizard was recently removed from their position at the university. This wizard put their life into one last working, and cursed the headmasters of their former work. Their days are numbered.

Wizard favors are supremely rare, and this may be the only opportunity you get to meet these headmasters without years of study. Alternatively, there will be quite a power vacuum to be filled...

Your Own Medicine

A nasty string of tomb-robberies went down in the Dead District, all valuables stripped. Obviously, no one with any sense would sell relics back to the people who made and owned them, so the culprits will likely be in hiding before fleeing for distant lands.

Will you bring them to justice for one of the highest crimes in this place, join with the robbers for a share of the profits, or simply watch as history changes hands?

Secret Santicorn 2018: The Lich Who Saved Christmas

Made by yours truly

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the land
Not a creature was stirring, and fate was at hand;
Trees of pine, bushes juniper, and tall pillars of oak
Occluded all vision as a near-dead-man awoke;

My children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of bereavement danced in my head;
And I in the snow-banks, their cold downy drifts,
In the forest hounded by bandits and robbed of my gifts,

When out on the horizon a motion was made,
I sprang from the dune, braced for a second raid.
Away from sight I dove in a flash,
huddled by a tree, face covered in sash.

The moon on the breast of the old-treaded snow
Gave a ghastly light to objects below,
When, what to my worrying eyes should appear,
But a gaunt figure astride and was quickly near,

His face was split by the gash of his teeth,
Nothing else was shown through his hair, nor beneath;
He had a sunken face, and withered black nails,
and he drug quite a path with his long coattails.

In the grip of his claws, he held fast a small toy,
the very same stuffed bear I'd picked out for my boy;
A widening of craw and a crane of his head,
Soon gave me to know I was as good as dead;

He spoke not a word, but gestured straight for my home,
And filled me with longing; A fool I was to roam,
now prone shivering at the feet of this beast,
this last gift I knew would survive me at least;

The creature's dread grin faded, slowly melting adieu,
And his crimson robe bled through the solid white view;
But I heard him cackle, ere he moved out of sight,
HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!

Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, Kris Kringle, Pelznickel. He is truly named Zinigol of Immortal Sorcery, The Two Right Handed. In times immemorial, Zinigol undertook the ancient rites and became a Lich; a being of eternal life and rotting form. Centuries past by from his Hyperborean birth, and Christmas arrived. It was beginning to peter out (relatively) soon after its creation when Zinigol took notice.
In the jolly, red-clad figurehead of the holiday, Zinigol found an opportunity for cover. If he were to relocate to the North Pole, spend a year or two delivering gifts, and turned away any investigators with illusory spells, he could pass as Santa Claus and have a base of operations that no wily adventurers would seek out. It was foolproof!

Sadly for Zinigol, he was too careful in his work. Time's passage is harder to perceive when one reaches as advanced an age as he, and immortality distorts the view even further. Years of gift-giving quickly became decades, and decades became centuries, and on and on. A millennia later and Zinigol's withering old mind was bent out of shape.
He is Santa Claus, now. Except more like the Futurama S.C, where he'll kill you dead if he ever lays eye on you. His standards were already made up, now they're completely distorted. Gifts and baubles are devilish. No treats, only tortures. Christmas was saved, and ruined, by the same man.


LotFP: Armor 18, Movement 200', 9th level Magic-User, 100 hp, gnarled claws 1d10+paralysis(as ghoul) or magic, Morale 16.
DCC RPG: Init +4; Atk claw +7 melee (1d12+3) or magic; AC 18; HD 12d12; MV walk 50'; Act 2d20; SP un-dead traits, paralysis(as ghoul), phylactery, spells as 9th level wizard; SV Fort +5, Ref +8, Will +2; AL C.

By this point in his un-life, Santa Claus' phylactery has become something new.. something different. Most are physical vessels for soulstuff that direct the reassembly of matter into a new form for the Lich. Santa's phylactery has shifted over his loooonnnggg life to be the very Spirit of Christmas itself. So long as children and childish persons believe in him, he will reform at his base of operation; a ruined Soviet drifting station in the Arctic Ocean. Its machinery has been refitted to churn out diabolic devices of torture and mayhem painted in a thin veneer of childish glee.

(Merry Crustmas, TLN! I hope this satisfies what you imagined when you thought of the Lich who Saved Christmas. Thanks so much for all the wonderful posts and inspiration since I found your blog! This monster man was a lot of fun to think around. I'd love to run a modern-day fantasy thing someday. This would certainly be that world's Santa Claus!)