Last year, I had an idea for a holiday-themed one-shot that I would run in late December. I didn't wind up getting it off the ground before getting hit by a car on Christmas. But then I still had the idea from last year this year; it had not gone away! So I set up a one-shot.
The Night Before Driftmas
It’s the night before Driftmas and in the Great Hall
All the students are dancing at the Driftmas Eve Ball.
The hall is decorated with garlands and trees,
Through all the dancers blows a pepperminty breeze.
Though it’s winter, for one day goldfinches wear yellows,
While students waltz and twirl with merry schoolfellows.
The pine trees are festooned with platinum and gold orbs,
Dancing through them: the sons and daughters of lords.
Peacocks show off tails and Numiel-given eyes,
And someone’s rustled up a flock of gold butterflies.
A rich human guy drunkly ‘splains, “Actually,”
To some girls who don’t much like his loquacity,
“Morozz’s cultists had Driftmas as their holy day
Before Numiel took it over as the world’s birthday.”
Everyone shows off their gymnastics and dance moves,
For the coronation in five days calls for the youths
To wage ritual dance-off in hope to bless Unity
For the world to be brought into one great community.
But tonight, the Academy celebrates winter,
And the band plays carols with a most festive timbre.
But this is a story of adventure and strife,
And dangerous potential of loss of life,
There will be dragons and villains and some excitement,
A festive and joyful and maybe violent event.
Some 550-600 years ago, the world was completely flooded, and all land-dwelling nations survived in various ways, or perished. From 50 years ago til now, the flood was reversed -- scholars reckon this as the first year the world has seen a complete return to its pre-Inundation ocean levels. A member of the adventuring party that completed the end of the Inundation, Aeyssa the Nymph, parlayed her prestige and diplomatic skill into more or less uniting all nations into a metanation called Unity. The Academy in the Capital draws students from worldwide, the nation's various lords and luminaries sending their children to be educated at this boarding school.
It is the 24th of Ices of the 50th year of the Subsidence, Inter Desidentem -- tomorrow is the holiday of Driftmas. The students are dancing at the Driftmas Eve Ball in the Academy's Great Hall. Fir trees decorated with platinum and gold orbs, a pepperminty smell, peacocks wandering around, goldfinches perch in unseasonable summer yellow, the Trans-Kryian Orchestra (named after the southern continent of Kryia) plays festive-rock music from the stage.
Our (level 4) PCs: Federiga Moonblight, tiefling wizard; Throm, half-orc barbarian; Welby Dovesky, halfling rogue/artificer; his twin sister Velma Dovesky, halfling bard/rogue. Velma gets a conga line going.
Ebby Navsau, the son of a rich Shell merchant family, tries to fish girls out of the conga line to splain to them that Driftmas was originally a celebration holy to the ice god Morozz, before Usla, Archbishop of Banor, claimed it for Numiel as the birthday of the world ("now most of the Archbishops of Banor were human, because it was a human nation, but several of them were actually celestials, so it's not that weird that Usla was an elf"). Welby slips a periodically quacking stone in his pocket, and its quacks eventually driving Ebby from the hall.
Everyone is showing off their acrobatic dance moves, because in one week there is to be a coronation on the inaugural Day of Unity as Aeyssa takes her crown as Unity of the new metanation of Unity and usher in the Epocha Unitatis, and as part of the coronation there is to be a ritual ceremonial dance-off.
Gradually, the party becomes aware that something is off about the Trans-Kryian Orchestra. Something is unplaceably weird about their playing; they're playing, and have been for several minutes, something unrecognizable, not like any modern Driftmas music you're familiar with; they seem like they're playing in a trance; one of them is not in a trance, and is legit playing an old-fashioned Ilyan 7-string guitar; literally everyone in the hall who isn't playing an instrument is dancing (many of them in the conga line), or at least tapping their feet and swaying. Federiga deduces that three spells are going on: the lead performer has the rest of the Trans-Kyrian Orchestra entranced; the band has everybody in the hall ensorcelled with some sort of irresistible dance; the lead performer is doing something probably nefarious to everyone dancing.
Welby and Velma try to distract from the band with a fiddle-off, but the ritual completes with a flash of bluish-white! Everyone starts stumbling over their own feet and no longer dancing successfully -- the band leader's ritual stole everybody's dance mojo! The band leader throws off her white cloak, holds up her guitar, and cackles maniacally!
Velma uses vicious mockery on the band leader, who transforms into a Huge white dragon! Battle ensues, during which the dragon ice-bricks everybody's feet to the floor but is careful not to hurt anybody, and a handful of waiters dispensing hors d'ouvres reveal themselves to be cultists working for her. The party (mostly Throm) does great harm to her, but eventually she makes a hole in the roof and escapes, flying south.
The cultists have holy symbols of Morozz, and tattoos indicating grayseal or blackpenguin moiety. They do not speak Common, but local NPC half-dragon Aurum helpfully translates because two of them speak Draconic (Aurum is a bard who specializes in dance, and is heartbroken to have lost their mojo).
It is very important to the students for everybody's dance mojo to be returned, because of the ritual dance-off in a week. The dragon (Xarzith of the Aussir'orn bloodline, white Dragon who inherited the ability to Change Shape from one silver dragon grandparent) and her allies were careful not to kill anybody, because any mojo in the instrument belonging to a dead person loses its power. The cultists were members of old Ilya, the Morozz-worshipping civilization that dwelt on Kryia before the Inundation. Ilya survived the Inundation by freezing the whole civilization beneath miles of ice. Xarzith had unfrozen these cultists to help her with her plot to unfreeze the whole civilization, which depended on the stolen dance mojo. There is a ritual which must be completed before the end of Driftmas day which will consume the mojo and unfreeze Ilya.
How The Academy Got Its Mojo Back
An elven woman dressed in red and furs, driving a sleigh pulled by 8 perytons, locates the party on the roof. It transpires that she is Saint Usla, possessed of tremendous power for one night a year, luckily this night. With her blessing, the hors d'ouvres at the ball count retroactively as a heroes' feast, and she has gifts for the party from her sack: Boots of the Winterlands for everyone, a Staff of Fire for Federiga, a Flametongue Greatsword for Throm, a Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments for Welby, and a Necklace of Fireballs and a Claw of the Wyrm Rune for Velma. (If there had been an archer, 9 Arrows of Chromatic Dragon Slaying would have been given; if there had been a fighter or paladin, a White Dragon Scale Mail.) Then she conveys the party in her sleigh, with unnerving alacrity, to the south pole!
(If time had been generous, we may have seen a young remorhaz want to eat the party but be very willing to run away if it met resistance or pain, and/or a winter wolf and several worgs want to eat the party but the worgs flee if the winter wolf dies or flees.)
The ritual is taking place in an ancient crystal ice palace at the magnetic south pole. Xarzith is busy casting a 24-hour ritual at a massive ice altar with the 7-string guitar on it. To keep the ritual going, the altar and guitar must be cold breath'd every time her cold breath recharges. Three undead ice priest mummies are there.
Xarzith has access to white dragon lair actions here, but the party is now immune to her fear effect, and to that of the mummies, because of the heroes' feast. Because of reasons, she, like the mummies, is vulnerable to fire. So the party, using Usla's gifts, makes quick work of the dragon and the mummies, despite a massive CR imbalance. They smash the guitar, free the mojo, and are conveyed back to the Academy by Usla and her sleigh.
(This was the standard D&D way of solving the problem. The standard holiday movie way would have been to warm the heart of the dragon with kindness and holiday spirit, which would have allowed her to melt Ilya's entombment without using up the stolen mojo (and thereby being free to release it).)
