Castle Claus: The Keep on the North Pole
CASTLE CLAUS
Also known as the Keep on the North Pole
Adjacent Hexes
North: TBD
Northeast: TBD
Southeast: Transient Snowfields
South: Three Calves
Southwest: TBD
Northwest: TBD
Follow your compass to the northernmost pole
And you’ll find a stone castle with walls black as coal.
If atop its high spires you spy a parked sled
Then there in the keep dwells the jolly King-in-Red
His cheeks are so rosy; his nose is a cherry.
But to any stray elves, his visage is scary.
All know he is a great wizard by the hue of his beard.
And his carnivorous reindeer are rightfully feared.
But if you should seek great treasures hand-fashioned
Then seek the workshop staffed by elves under-rationed
Neither halflings nor gnomes yet they be of that size
These Christmastime elves need but a mutinous spark to uprise
Castle Claus perches on the spindliest spire in the cold mountains of the North Pole. If you are not assisted by the flying reindeer native to the region or some other means of flight, climbing the icicle-strewn cliffs are treacherous and require climbing equipment and either great skill or adequate training. The length of the climb is 2d6 hours, but reroll the higher die if you have both skill and training in climbing sheer rockfaces.
Random Encounters
(Roll 2d6 [certain levels of the castle may specify otherwise], check higher result for possible variation):
2. Winter Warlock: Friends just call this magical hermit “Winter”, but you aren’t his friend. He is actually quite warm-hearted once you get to know him, but if you don’t know him, he is likely to use his sorcerous control over snow and ice to freeze you to death. It’s nothing personal; he honestly just needs therapy. [Stats as archwizard with access to all spells involving cold, ice, or snow. Penguins obey his orders without question]
3. Yukon Cornelius: Whether or not “gold-for-XP” is a metaphysical reality, this outdoorsman acts as if it is. His nose for adventure led him to this castle, which he initially believed to be a polar bear’s den but now believes a cache of gold may be in the upper levels. [Stats as vampire-hunter. Can ascertain the direction of a source of precious metals by tasting any such minerals]
4. Elf: Santa’s elves are not born in the North Pole, they are made. Unsuspecting, naughty adults are kidnapped, their minds are erased, and their bodies are forced to atrophy to the size of a very large garden-variety gnome. (1-2) Hermey used to be a dentist and dreams of being one again, (3-6) Germey also used to be a dentist but is quite content as an elf and thinks perhaps you would make a good elf too. [Stats as gnome]
5. Elf: Santa’s elves can make any ordinary toy or treat, but some elves specialize in what they produce. (1-3) Bingle bangs out bongo drums like no one’s business, (4-6) Bangle bakes cookies and, if you don’t seem like you’ll nark to his overseer, “special” brownies. [Stats as gnome]
6. Elf Overseer: The role of overseer is not taken lightly. It is more than a full-time job; so much so that when the prior overseer died of karoshi, three elves were appointed to share the job, working in shifts. (1-3) Jingle is Mrs. Mary Claus’ right-hand elf and her eyes and ears in the castle. He reports directly to her and willingly lies to Santa, (4) Jangle is one of the least competent elves you’ve ever met and two and a quarter feet taller than any of his peers. Rumors abound that he is not a “true” elf at all but is instead Santa’s illegitimate child who never went through the Elfing process, (5-6) Jungle was mistakenly kidnapped. The elves meant to kidnap an ordinary human (who just so happened to be a dentist) on their visit to the zoo but accidentally grabbed a gorilla due to it and the target sharing the same posture and arm hair thickness. Jungle cannot talk but wears typical Christmas elf garb and can hum all the typical Christmas songs. [Stats as gnome, except Jungle who has the stats of a gorilla]
7. The King-in-Red: He appears in a flash! He has been watching your progress through his Keep and has determined that you are: (1-4) Naughty! There will be no presents for you this year or any year hence for Old Saint Nick has determined this Christmas will be your last. Prepare to die, (5) Nice! He pats you on the head with a great jolly chuckle. If you present him with milk and/or cookies, he offers to enchant one of your otherwise mundane items (but no weapons, that would be naughty), (6) Neutral! Santa Claus offers to join for a time but does not tell you it is because you are being observed closely. You are on the knife’s edge of his list this year and the next action you take that is naughty or nice will definitely send you careening into that alignment. [Stats as archwizard with the following spells: Clairvoyance, Cone of Cold, Conjure Snow Elemental, Detect Naughty and Nice, Dimension Door, Dispel Naughty and Nice, Knock, Passwall, Protection from Naughty and Nice, Sleep, Teleport, Wall of Ice, Wizard Eye, Wizard Lock. Always carries with him a Bag of Holding]
8. The Queen-in-Green: The King-in-Red is not monogamous, but it’s purely a practical matter. Each of his wives has the ability to polymorph into the form Santa Claus, which makes the job of visiting every child in the world much more feasible. However, to reduce mischief, Santa’s spellcraft permits this transformation only on Christmas and Christmas Eve. (1-4) Jessica knew the King-in-Red when he was merely an orphan named Kris, raised by the Kringle elves (these elves were born as elves and not merely transformed dentists). They married for love, (5) Mary met the King-in-Red when he was already Saint Nicholas and revered him at the time they were wed. They married for power. Mary is now with child (immaculate) and seeks escort to a manger, where she can give birth and increase the number of days her transformation is possible from a mere two to an entire four, (6) Holly only met the man she calls Father Christmas last year at a shopping mall. She assumed he was just a geezer and that she could stand to inherit his estate until he flew her straight from the Las Vegas chapel to the North Pole. They married for money. [Stats as wizard’s apprentice]
9. Reindeer: Each of Santa’s reindeer can fly, of course, but some have special powers. It is these reindeer that are given the honor of riding on his sleigh team on the night of Christmas Eve. (1-5) Dunder can shoot lightning from his eyes, (6) Blixem can regenerate any wounds. [Stats as pegasus, except Dunder can cast Lightning Bolt every 1d6 rounds and Blixem has the regeneration ability of a troll]
10. Reindeer: Santa’s flying reindeer also are not capable of speech other than the language of “Reindeer” (which the King-in-Red speaks fluently) and eat human, but not elf, flesh. Good luck negotiating. (1-5) Flossie can turn invisible at will, but this ends when she bites, (6) Glossie can create visual illusions at will. [Stats as pegasus]
11. Rudolph: Due to Santa’s foul magical experimentations on his reindeer, Rudolph is the only flying reindeer with sapience akin to a typical human child and the ability to speak in both Reindeer and Elvish (nota bene: Elvish is, for all practical purposes, the common tongue in the North Pole). A much less interesting magical aspect of this uplifted beast is his glowing red nose, the brightness of which Rudolph can control at his whim. Rudolph seeks liberation of his kind from the King-in-Red’s yoke but acts as Santa’s most obedient servant until the time is right. [Stats as pegasus]
12. Abominable Snowmonster of the North: There are actually several of these in the North Pole. Yukon Cornelius swears to Father Time that he tamed the last of the abominable snowmonsters, but he is also full of shit and if you believe that, you are probably gullible enough to believe Santa isn’t real too. Snowmonsters will rip you limb from limb just to decorate their cave with a festive red hue. [Stats as yeti]
Ground Floor
Roll 2d6 for Random Encounters.
1. Foyer
The 20-foot tall pinewood doors open to a vast chamber shimmering with all manner of tinsel, tastefully reflecting the light emitted from a sequoia-sized fir tree that is more decorated than a five-star general in a totalitarian regime.
Tinsel would take some time to gather up, but it is genuine silver and a whole spool of it is worth at least 300 gold pieces. You’d need to load it up on a mule or dogsled to transport it all back to civilization.
The Christmas tree is loaded with ornaments that, although shiny, aren’t worth a hill of beans. The gold star atop, however, is worth 500 gold easily and much more easy to gather and transport than spools of tinsel. The main difficulty is simply getting to the top without an Abominable Snowmonster giving you a piggyback ride. Not to mention the fact that a Giant Northern Squirrel named “King Richard” lives in the tree and jealously guards the ornaments. He is willing to trade the star for a sufficient amount of nuts.
2. Dining Room
The long wooden table is draped with a red satin tablecloth, and a buffet of fresh food is stocked atop it all times day and night on Mrs. Jessica Claus’ orders (“Who ever heard of a skinny Santa?!”). There are also a few of those Christmas crackers decorating the table.
The food consists of carved roast beast, figgy pudding, latkes, and of course milk and cookies (shortbread and gingerbread).
The Christmas crackers, when opened, bestow paper hats and toy jewelry, although roll a d20 and, on a 1, it is empty and on a 20, it is a sword whose blade is striped silver and ruby and is +1 against wizards and +3 against the King-in-Red. This is the family blade of House Meisterburger, which is obvious to anyone familiar with heraldry as the crest on the pommel is the Meisterburger sigil: a yellow and blue yo-yo.
3. Kitchen
1d20 Christmas elves are here at any given time, slapstickishly preparing food. There is almost always an elf grievously wounding themselves in their culinary pursuits.
If you roll a 20, ten of the elves are actively baking a 2d6 layer German chocolate cake and the other ten are putting out a fire that threatens to subsume the entire room.
If you roll a 1, then there is only a single elf in the kitchen, Alfonso (formerly a dentist), who wears a chef hat and is very focused on whatever they are cooking. Only by removing their hat is it revealed that a Christmas mouse is inside and is teaching Alfonso to cook by an elaborate series of hair pulling.
4. Icebox
Accessed by a small metal door in the Kitchen, this is where the elves store raw meat, raw milk and other refrigerated ingredients for future preparation. It is also where hundreds of bottles of Coca-Cola (not yet invented in your world but with a possible market capitalization of over $300 billion if you play your cards right) are stored. The chamber stretches on for hundreds of yards, and the further you go, the fewer food you find and the more likely (roll 1d6 each turn exploring this room, non-random encounter on a 3-6) you are to come across a polar bear. These bears are incredibly dangerous but will refrain from attacking for as long as they are drinking a Coca-Cola. They cannot uncork any of the bottles so do not yet know how much they love them. After 200 yards, the chamber opens out into a regular cave entrance.
5. Music Room
A grand piano is covered in dust. A small, sad child and his equally depressed donkey sit in a corner and don’t initially make eye contact or small talk.
The sad child is the “tiny troubadour”, a traveling musician who once met baby Jesus and was gifted or perhaps cursed with immortality so that he could walk the earth and proclaim the good news. When he entered the castle, Mrs. Holly Claus told him about the Music Room, and he was overjoyed. Upon seeing that the only instrument was a piano, the joy soured because the tiny troubadour only plays percussion instruments (and not stringed instruments that are “technically” percussion). He will trade his donkey for a drum.
The depressed donkey is unremarkable. All donkeys are either manic or depressed. This much is known of them. The donkey has no loyalty for its ostensible master, the tiny troubadour. It prefers its former master, the owner of a world famous circus, who taught the donkey to “count” by stomping its hoof and also to play the “chopsticks” waltz on a piano. The tiny troubadour never even thought to ask his donkey if it knew piano.
6. Throne Room
Red carpet, gold tassels, flags hung representing every nation known to earth regardless of whether or not the U.N. recognizes it. And on the dais at the far end are two chairs of red, gold and green, one for the King-in-Red and the other for his Queen-in-Green.
Roll 2d6: (1-4) the thrones are empty, (5) Jessica Claus sits atop the queen’s throne, (6) Mary Claus sits atop the queen’s throne, (7) Holly Claus sits atop the queen’s throne, (8) Santa and Jessica sit on their respective thrones, (9) Santa and Mary sit on their respective thrones, (10) Santa and Holly sit on their respective thrones, (11) Santa and Jessica sit on their respective thrones, (12) Santa sits alone.
If Santa sits atop his throne, he beckons you to him and bids you to sit on his lap. If you refuse he demands it. If you absolutely will not, he calls for his guards (1d6 elves and 1d6 reindeer). Those sitting on his lap may tell him one thing they desire. There is no guarantee they shall receive it, but the King-in-Red notes it in his unfailing memory just the same.
Second Floor
Roll 2d4 for Random Encounters.
7. Portrait Hall
In this long hallway stands framed paintings of world wonders, with each painting being roughly ten feet wide and eight feet tall. The paintings are of (1) the Great Wall of China, (2) Petra, (3) the Christ of Rio de Janeiro, (4) Machu Picchu, (5) Chichen Itza, (6) the Colosseum of Rome, (7) the Taj Mahal, (8) the Pyramids of Giza.
Jumping or flying through a painting will instantly transport you to its subject (high above it, in the air). The King-in-Red uses these portraits to quickly navigate the globe on those fateful nights when duty demands it.
8. Weather Center
The King-in-Red boasts the most advanced meteorological observation facility on earth, capable of accurately predicting the weather down to the exact count of snow flakes up to a year in advance but only for the current or upcoming Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Any attempt to determine the weather for any other time period, even attempting to ascertain whether it is raining directly outside Castle Claus at that very moment, is impossible.
The Weather Center is managed by Santa’s oldest elf, Roker. Roker is a bald, bespeckled elf who knows all the drama and goingson at the castle but doesn’t speak a word of it. It’s none of his business. He can make small talk (unsurprisingly, mostly about the weather) for up to 2d6 hours without the need for food, water or sleep.
9. Toy Workshop
Yeah yeah, this is what you expected. You think “Santa’s Castle” and your greedy little mind goes straight to elves working night and day to make you presents. That has to be the main thing, right? Well guess what, there is actually a whole lot of logistics that go into delivering presents to every well-behaved boy and girl (and coal to every naughty one, which is its own logistics nightmare). This is a very small part of the actual operation and frankly Santa is thinking about outsourcing it. He used to run all this out of the Nordics but moved to the North Pole only because of its frighteningly lax labor regulations. That’s the only way something of this scale can work; you just wouldn’t get it. Anyway, I guess you don’t really care about the amount of carrots the elves have to grow in the frozen tundra of the North Pole to feed all those reindeer, do you? No, you just want to hear about toys, toys, toys. Okay, well here you go.
10d6 elves work in this long, unadorned chamber in the day and a skeleton crew of 4d6 work the nightshift. They make every toy you can imagine: six-person unicycles and one-person hexacycles, hoola-hoops and hoopa-hools, jingtinglers, floofloovers, tartookas, whohoopers, gardookas, trumtookas, slooslunkas, blumboopas, whowonkas, galooks, and electro whocarnio flooks. All the stuff you enjoyed as a kid and you probably collect vintage versions of now.
If you visit at night and you see the weariest elf, Samuelf, and ask him why he looks so weary, he won’t hesitate to tell you. Every child who tells Santa himself what they want, either via letter or shopping mall visit or telegram, gets assigned one elf who must produce the object of their desire. Samuelf was assigned a child named Gayla who asked for a hippopotamus, but that is not a species native to the North Pole. If you can bring Samuelf a hippopotamus in time for Christmas, he vows to make a present of your choosing. His speciality is toy guns.
10. Excess Toy Storage
This is where all the toys are taken immediately after production. After a previous incident, the room is outfitted with the latest in anti-Grinch technology, and only the most trained and mostly hairless burglars are able to break into this vault. Of course, the King-in-Red and the elf overseers can all bypass these protections via a biometric keypoint by the door that scans their thumbprint, eyeprint, and plucks a single whisker from their chin to verify their identity.
These are all mundane toys and mostly wrapped. It would take a Bag of Holding or similar contraption to take them all. However, if you do accomplish such a heist, the market value of all the toys in the vault amounts to 100,000 gold pieces, but only 100 gold pieces of toys can be sold to any settlement (1,000 gold for a town, 10,000 gold for a city) without absolutely collapsing the local toy-economy and perhaps also spoiling the children. If the kids are too busy playing with their dolls and yo-yos, they won’t find time to go into the mines, and that’s just bad for business.
11. Beancounter’s Room
Craig the elf used to be a dentist when he was a human but now he is quite happy as an elf accountant. The King-in-Red operates as an anti-business where profits are bad and losses are good, so Craig dutifully calculates just how much money they are losing each week in their toy construction, sleigh R&D, reindeer selective breeding programs, and other money-wasting endeavors. He is delighted by just how much money they are losing this year and thinks Santa should perhaps consider paying the elves, not for self-serving reasons but just to blow the budget even further. He doesn’t have the guts to share this observation with Kris Kringle but is more than willing to convince others to suggest it. He knows that if there is one thing Santa confusingly hates more than greed, it's paying his employees.
12. Overseer’s Room
A triple bunkbed: the bottom bed is freshly made, the middle bed has an anime body pillow, and the top bed is absolutely littered in banana peels. In the small closet are extra elf-overseer suits, badges, and pointed shoes with bells at the tip. There is a 3-in-6 chance that an overseer is already here when you enter ([1] Jingle, [2] Jangle, [3] Jungle).
13. Elfing Room
A peppermint-colored hypno-wheel is set up in the center of the room in front of a row of chairs fitted with straps and eye-stirrups and ear-stretchers. A row of cabinets are in the back.
The hypno-wheel and associated equipment is for the Elfing process. There is a 3-in-12 chance that the room is in use by a recent captive, in which case one of the overseers ([1] Jingle, [2] Jangle, [3] Jungle) are here applying the Ludovico Technique on a frightened dentist.
The cabinets are locked, but any of the elf overseers have a key on their person. Inside is a set of records (including before and after photos and dental records) of all the elves in Castle Claus. There is also a paper trail of pay stubs and other paraphernalia that points to an illicit scheme between the King-in-Red and the tooth fairy involving the kidnapping of dentists for Santa’s workforce in exchange for Santa delivering increased quantities of cavity-causing sweets to the under-dentisted youth.
Third Floor
Roll 2d4 for Random Encounters.
14. Elf Hostel
The cots are uncomfortably small even for Christmas elves. The sheets are so threadbare that you can see right through them. The pillows are goose feather, and I mean feather (singular). There is no natural light source but fluorescent lightbulbs automatically flicker on at the start of every shift, which is to say every 2 hours.
At any given time, 2d6 elves are asleep here. If the result is a 2, the elves are sleeping together, and they are quite annoyed that you’ve interrupted them.
15. Elf Infirmary
This tiny room is fit to store cloaks and spare lightbulbs but instead houses a half-picked over first aid kit and Wrangle, the elf-doctor. He is not a licensed doctor (well, he used to be a licensed DDS actually) but is chomping at the bit to do some surgery. An elf comes in with a scraped knee? Let’s remove the leg. An elf comes in with a stomach ache? We need an organ donor, stat! An elf comes in with a throbbing head from a late night of hitting the eggnog a bit too hard? Off with his head.
If any of your party enters with ailments or even not at your full capacity of hit points, Wrangle offers to fix you right up free of charge. First, he applies some anesthesia, then gets to work.
16. Elf Cafeteria
Unlike the King-in-Red, elves don’t eat much. Of course, this is by design; if you let them eat like adult human beings, humans they will become. Instead, each elf is given a single sweet (typically a gum drop or jelly bean) three times per day. This rationing system is overseen by a snow elemental summoned by Santa himself after learning the hard way that elves cannot be trusted to feed elves. Each day’s sweets are delivered to the snow elemental by elves working in the Kitchen. Yes, there is an obvious means by which the elves could subvert the flow of candy and take it over. No, they haven’t figured it out.
Observation Tower
Roll 2d4 for Random Encounters.
17. Observation Room
A circular room with stacks of crystal balls lining the walls. Each crystal ball is tuned to a single child and is used to surveil and track the degrees to which their behavior falls into the naughty or nice categories. Roll 1d6: (1) When not performing other important work, the King-in-Red sits in a rotating chair in the center of the room and monitors all activity on earth himself. (2-4) When he can’t make it, he will ask one of his wives to do so ([2] Jessica, [3] Mary, [4] Holly). (5-6) When all else fails, an elf named Randal is assigned the task. Randal is the harshest judge of character in the entire North Pole and has never met a single child that ever lived up to his exacting standards for moral rectitude.
18. Claus’ Study
The only truly cozy area in all of Castle Claus is lined with bookcases that reach high enough above that the room’s sliding ladder is needed to reach the highest shelves. Two plush chairs lined with thick blankets face an unlit fireplace. On a table between them rest two big mugs of cocoa with lightly toasted marshmallows.
The bookcases hold not a single piece of fiction, not even a light beach read. Instead, each book is labeled for a single year and either says “Naughty” or “Nice” and lists every human being that behaved according to such categorization for that year. The tomes are fastidiously organized and finding a particular year is effortless.
The fireplace is never lit because it is the King-in-Red’s preferred means of ingress and egress for the castle. He is the only one who ever enters through the chimney, so there are no precautions against intruders using this means. The coal in the fireplace is enchanted to be limitless, such that taking a piece never reduces the amount of coal in the fireplace one iota. Thus Santa is never discouraged when the naughty list seems to grow with each passing year.
The mugs of cocoa are everfilling mugs but only fill with cocoa and, if alcohol is added to the drink, the intoxicating effect is neutralized. The cocoa is always warm, but the marshmallows never melt.
19. Master Bedroom
This is where the magic happens. Specifically, it is where the King-in-Red and the Queens-in-Green perform their most powerful spells. The floor is covered with previous pentagrams and broken salt circles from prior incantations. If Santa or any of the Mrs. Clauses are encountered (via random encounter or, if it is night but not the week of or leading up to Christmas, on a 4-in-6 chance [(1) Santa, (2) Jessica, (3) Mary, (4) Holly]) in this room, they are asleep, except for Holly who suffers from terrible insomnia and is taking a bubble bath in the clawfoot tub in the attached master bath. The King-in-Red snores, but it sounds less like “honk shoo” and more like “ho ho honk shoo”.
Basement
Roll 1d6+6 for Random Encounters.
20. Reindeer Caves
A twisting warren of hoof-dug caves where reindeer nest away from the oppressive sunlight above. The dirt floor is littered with the bones of elves who were unfortunate enough to be sent on assignments in the caves. In each alcove, there is a family of 1d6 flying reindeer. Some reindeer have additional mutations and powers beyond flight, and these are the lucky few that are selected to accompany the King-in-Red on his annual mission.
If you travel many, many miles down the cave network, you will eventually see light coming from a hole above. Exiting up this shaft of light takes you back to the surface of the North Pole and out of the mouth of the Talking Wishing Well.
BONUS HEX: TALKING WISHING WELL
Adjacent Hexes
North: TBD
Northeast: TBD
Southeast: TBD
South: The Sleeping Slopes
Southwest: Sadtown
Northwest: TBD
In a wide open field of snow is an unassuming well. It speaks but only once spoken to. And once it starts, it can drone on and on, so desperate it is for company. It has aspirations of being a well in the center of town, where people will gather around it to gossip. But it has mostly given up on those dreams as it is impossible for it to move and unlikely for a town to suddenly spring up around it. Unless perhaps you’d be interested? You wouldn’t want to found your own town, would you? Oh geez, that does seem like an awful lot of work, doesn’t it. But it could be fun, right? Wow, that could be a lot of fun, now that I think about it. Wait, where are you going, please don’t leave!
If you toss a coin in the well, you do not hear a splash. The well might ask you to tell you what you wished for, but it has no ability to make your wish come true; it’s just nosy. Far down the well is a cave network full of carnivorous flying reindeer. If you follow this cave network as far as it will go (and avoid being eaten by reindeer), you will eventually come across a set of stone stairs going up to who-knows-where. Up above you hear the high-pitched voices of presumably elves, seemingly busy. Whatever is happening up there smells delicious too.
(Blogger’s Note: This bonus hex is inspired by the U.S. Supreme Court case Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984), where a “talking wishing well” is part of a Christmas display involving a Nativity scene and Santa's house, among other things. I was baffled by this as I had never heard of a talking wishing well being some iconic part of secular Christmas lore, and none of my limited research found the origin of this talking wishing well. Perhaps some future law student [unlikely, the current court is overturning too many cases to make reading this one worthwhile] will happen upon this blogpost in their effort to ascertain the mysteries of the talking wishing well. If that has indeed happened and you are reading this, I offer you my most heartfelt “beats me”.)
