Check out some stuff from my festive adventure sites (originally blogposts, now compiled as a free PDF on Itch)!
🎄 🎄 Fun xmas characters: 🎄🎄
⭐ Jephrow Bosk. Skeleton xylophonist. Thinking of branching out into skull bongos. Wears the Tiara Of Undead Control, giving him huge reserves of self-actualisation.
⭐ Inkoo and Shmo. Gigantic carnivorous penguins. Mountaineers and expert guides.
⭐ Mister Hiphup. Transient snowman. Eagerly hiking through this new world, unaware he will live only a few more hours.
⭐ Terrrence Norrbrright. Gangly hollow-eyed elf. Legate of a deposed tyrant. Pretending not to hate good cheer. Smile like a death rictus.
⭐ A small team of gnomes wearing steamsuits on their hike through the snow. Going to the big city to look for work as interior designers.
⭐ Honoria Of The True Zenith Unparalleled. Treetop angel. She's dipped a toe in her molten deity and is ecstatically dissolving. Until then, spreading the good word.
🎄🎄 Oddly festive locales: 🎄🎄
⭐ The valley of eternal cheer. A rocky crevasse; something's humming a carol far below. Its occupant: the Blissful Homogenate. A rainbow lake of hot plastic and molten flesh. The blended remnants of innumerable misfit toys and wayward wanderers, now a hivemind experiencing True Holiday Joy.
⭐ Campsite hastily erected around the broken-down "Snowtreader". Q-class heavy gingerbread mecha commissioned by the Heat Miser. Armed with a devastating heat ray and six pop-out turrets which lob chocolate shells at an unbelievable rate of fire.
⭐ Village of the roblings. Nest-like communal yurts made from reindeer hides, dried moss, and goose down. Roblings: half-goblin, half-robin, suffering powerful compulsions to rob.
⭐ Citadel of the angels. Pine treehouse fortress. Winding ladders. Concentric walls of stakes at the base help keep out interlopers. The gate and the charitable donation box are kept unlocked. Treasury stuffed with frankincense and myrrh.
🎄🎄 Oh-so-jolly treasures: 🎄🎄
⭐ Woadstone. A stone amulet which dyes you blue when worn.
⭐ Sceptre Of The Snow Miser. Turns a foot-wide sphere of solid matter into snow with a touch. Exactly as horrid as it sounds.
⭐ A sack of rubies and sapphires. Used as 'practise gems' by an apprentice gnome lapidary, they are all very badly carved.
⭐ Huge golden key to Sniffleheim, city of the frost giants. Etched on the obverse with the Sniffleheim coat of arms and on the reverse with "Property of Jarl Keith".
⭐ Single-use doomsday device. Capable of instantly tinselifying all organic life in a six-league radius, leaving nothing but glittering strands strewn across the landscape.
It's hexmas! Grab a couple of weird fantasy sites to adventure through.
Waldo wandered westward into the Whispering Woods. Under the shade of the susurrus trees he made his own path beneath the canopy: then the wind picked up, and blew away the leaves. Waldo wandered to and fro, unsure which way, which path, would guide him home. Around and round did Waldo go, never finding the way home. Lost inside the wood Waldo made his way as best he could. None can say when or were or which way Waldo wandered into wider woods. But it was in those wider woods where Waldo lost his name, lost in those wild woods a wild man he became. Where all that wild man wandered next not even he can say. The tale continues to an early grave.
When that wild man wandered from the Wight Wood he was now a stranger to the ways of men, and so he took shelter in the graves of men. So through a cemetery did he creep, past the caretaker did he did sneak, at last in a mausoleum did he sleep. Until one night he dreamed too deep. While his body slumber, his mind did wander deep. Wander deep in the lands of sleep to reach that Pale Keep where the dead sleep.
Among the dead he was well met – some spirits took pity it is said. For Once-was-Waldo had lost much of himself along the winding ways. Yet amongst the dead we are all reunited it is said – amongst the dead Waldo was made whole instead.
Only then did he learn what cruel fate at befell him while wandering in the woods. Waldo had wandered from one wood to another worlds apart. For you see Waldo had wandered between the woods. He had gotten lost in the timeless essence of a place, the essence that binds all places of like kind. One need only lose themselves to travel without end. For some the plains are endless, or oceans without end.
Notes
SunderedWorldDM gave me a real challenge when they requested "Many stories have a purpose. Write one such story from your world. Maybe it's a cautionary tale spread by a knightly order, maybe a spiritual parable, maybe a coded message from a thief's guild, what have you." as I tend to riff on existing settings and don’t really have a setting of my own.
So whats this all about? I find the concept of liminal spaces interesting and try to tie it into things like the Faerie and secret elven paths. When hexcrawling there is a chance that the player characters end up somewhere far from where they were but in the same kind of hex. Waldo’s Wanderings are intended to be both and explanation and warning. Waldo himself is a semi-mythical character that frequently blunders into and out of danger and across the world (and possibly beyond).
Sayings and Unfinished Tales Below the Cut
Aquatic
You may think me drunk and a teller of tall tales, but sure is me rudder and me sails, there are things more perilous than a gutter in a gale: rogue waves and whale and women with fishtails to name but a few.
If it ever seems hopeless throw your navigator overboard and get lost upon the brine. An almost certain death, but strange shores may yet welcome you. Three times I’ve been saved by the mercy of the waves.
I was once a merchantman being bared down upon by a fearsome privateer, A cloud bank rolled up the fool navigator fell overboard. When the fog had cleared neither the man nor our pursuer were left in sight. That night when the stars were alight We learned we were off the edge of the map and in fact I have never gone back.
Once I was shipwrecked and all seemed lost. I was stranded on a deserted island. For a year each day I paddled a raft out to open water and prayed that I find my way.
Arctic
In Arctic climates shifting snows are known to bring strange blessings. Blizzards give birth to foul beasts, but spring thaws reveal boons of unknown providence. Seemingly not a season goes by without someone stumbling upon some technological marvel or monstrosity.
Perhaps the greatest of these Is the Frost Beast Frank who disappeared while hunting and reappear 13 suns later with the body and stature of a bear who’s icy fur shone and shimmered In the light and no blade could pierce. It is said that they hunt both blizzard beasts and the blizzard born with equal fury making them a divisive figure in the lands they wander.
Desert
When you say you stumbled upon a nameless city I do not doubt you but your claims, but that you might lead me back to the treasure that remains. Sand spread slowly it is true, but in time it will consume the world. The desert has shown you relics of the old world hidden in the dunes.
Forest
There is a peculiar madness to druids. Absent minded and surefooted, like drunks they stumble along the elvan path. You cannot hunt a druid in its woods For they are not found to the land as men are but place like place
Graveyard
Have you ever wondered why we house the dead? Some say it is an act of remembrance, a simple honoring of those that came before. The truth is that, to those that know, they want to rest in comfort when they visit the halls below. Well... in some ways easier to visit one’s ancestors in a mausoleum or crypt, but any open grave can work in a pinch. Simply lay six feet beneath the earth, and await the rising of the moon. Be careful on your journey, their food and wine are not for the living. For those that do not abide, when they awake are consumed with ghoulish hunger.
