Scenario: RED SLED DOWN

Briefing

Emergency briefing delivered to the assembled command staff at Sinterklaas Base, North Pole.

Gentlemen,

At 0800 NPT (North Pole Time) today, SF1 (Santa Force 1) was shot out of the sky during codename RUBY WHITE’s routine pre-Christmas test flight over the Icelandic island of Danskfjord. At this time, RUBY WHITE is believed to be alive but in critical condition. The OPFOR are suspected to be members of GRINCH Squad, acting under orders from the island’s owner, reclusive industrialist Darrow Vanderhoof IV.

To put it plainly: we don’t have much time. Christmas is tomorrow, and without RUBY WHITE’s recovery, we may be looking at a cataclysmic loss of holiday spirit across all channels. We’re down to the wire, and I’m afraid there’s only one choice: re-activate the Merrymaking Activity Squad. Yes, I know the team was mothballed for good reasons, but in this case, we need the best.

Once the team is reassembled, we will depart for Danskfjord aboard SF2 immediately. There is no time for our usual mission prep: this will be a blitz to the heart of the island to rescue RUBY WHITE.

If we fail, Christmas may never be the same again. Consider this my official command to reactivate the X-M.A.S. May God have mercy on our souls.

Command Notes

• The specifics of how Santa and Christmas magic works are left vague. Assume that the player characters lack the purity of heart to access the North Pole workshops where they’d learn these sorts of details.
• In playtesting, the scenario took about 3 hours to run, not including group character creation. Plan for about 4 hours all-in.

Getting the Band Back Together

• In this opening montage, Commander Noel gathers up the M.A.S. members from across the world. Give each player a brief scene to introduce their character, based on their “What You’re Up To” choice from character creation. Background music recommendation: Thunderstruck (AC/DC) or Seven Nation Army (White Stripes)
• Commander Noel: A gruff and tough SOB, currently using a wheelchair after the events of the last M.A.S. mission two years ago.
• At each location, describe a colossal red-and-white cargo helicopter setting down nearby - once the operator gets on board, they realize that the helicopter is a magical illusion (or high-tech baffle camo from the CHRISTMAS-FUTURE working group) and they’re actually boarding a huge cargo sled with a team of reindeer at the front.
• Tacticelf Holly: Imagine Jason Statham as a two-foot elf in head-to-toe snow camo gear (including a camo Santa hat). He’s along for the ride with Noel and hands each operator their chosen gear as they board. There’s also Pilotelf Anya, holding the reigns up at the front of the sleigh.
• Once everyone’s had their brief intro, the sled heads for Danskfjord, a small island in the Arctic Ocean (see the timeline for more details) and Noel introduces the mission:
  • Santa’s sled has been shot down by GRINCH Squad and it’s down to the wire to rescue him.
  • To avoid the island’s ground defences, the team will be inserted via low-orbit HALO drop, aiming for the lightly-guarded chemical disposal plant at the island’s north peak.
  • Santa’s injuries have resulted in Christmas magic going haywire, including the creation of living snowmen and colossal snowflakes over the island
• After the squad asks any questions they have, cut to the next scene.

What Do Angels Have? HALOs.

• The approach to the island is a rough one. Anya has to pilot through an arctic storm while avoiding megasized snowflakes and dodging SAM strikes (Scrooge Antisanta Missiles) from the island’s air defences.
• Holly hastily gets everyone but Noel and Anya set up with a parachute and rebreather and orders the squad to the back of the sled. He’s ready to jump first when the sled takes a massive hit, catching fire and threatening to crash out.
• Holly falls, pinwheeling through the sky before vanishing from sight. The rest of the squad should jump now, or die in an aerial fireball!
• Use a 6-segment clock to track the squad’s descent towards the chemical plant’s roof, ticking it up as pacing demands
• Obstacles and threats while falling:
  • The room-sized snowflakes are thin but very wide, basically a massive ice sculpture that hurts like hell if crashed through
  • GRINCH Squad “Tree-Chopper” buzzsaw drones pursue the squad through the sky
  • Sickly-green explosions fill the air as the SAM sites fire relentlessly
  • One squaddie’s parachute won’t open!

Chemical Plant Zone

• The squad lands on the snow-covered roof of the Pine Breeze Christmas Tree Farm & Chemical Waste Disposal Facility. A rusty hatch opens to reveal a ladder down into the hangar-sized building.
• The facility is built at the island’s highest peak. You can a barely walk 5 paces from the north entrance before reaching the mile-high cliffs that loom over the threshing Arctic sea far below.
• To the south, a maze of overgrown pine trees crowds the rest of the summit, concealing the steep mountainside that leads down to the rest of the island.
• Inside the facility, the ladder leads down to a catwalk that rings the upper level of the plant. Rows of massive aluminum vats and tangled knots of pipes fill the massive room. Two stairwells (at the north and south sides) lead to the ground floor.
  • The South exit (leading down to the island) is locked, requiring either demolitions or the GRINCH captain’s key card to open.
• Threats and obstacles:
  • Two cannon fodder GRINCH squaddies share a cig while leaning over the catwalk, facing away from the squad
    • GRINCH mercs all wear distinctive green body armor, tactical balaclavas, and carry mean-looking German assault rifles. Some have a crude Christmas tree with a slash through it spray-painted on their armor. All carry walky-talkies and will raise the alarm if not taken out quickly.
  • Several two-person squads of grunts patrol the shadowed plant floor
  • A GRINCH squad captain, Aloysius “Coalman” Smow, plays cards with two grunts at an improvised command post set up in the middle of the plant, pushed up against a chemical vat stamped “GLITTER/ASBESTOS DISPOSAL.” He carries the keycard needed to unlock the exit.
  • A vat gets winged by a bullet - start a 4-segment clock to track the room filling with poisonous gas. Once saturated, breathing becomes painful and the room will explode at the next spark.

Downhill Jam

• Outside the facility is an overgrown Christmas tree farm. Assuming the squad aren’t still in a gunfight, give them a chance to catch their breath, interrogate any prisoners, and then ready up to descend the mountain.
• As they prepare to leave, Darrow J. Vanderhoof IV turns on the island-wide system of tannoy speakers and addresses the players (use your best phlegmy old man voice):
  • This is Darrow J. Vanderhoof the Fourth, and I am addressing the… unwelcome guests at my island’s North peak. Surrender now. My men outnumber you. Your precious “Mister Claus” is well in hand and will not be rescued by such a miserable group of rejects. You have no hope. Your bones will moulder in the permafrost for a thousand years. That is all.
• The soldiers in the plant drove lime-green GRINCH snowmobiles to reach the peak - snowmobiles that are now temptingly parked before the steep descent begins.
  • Each operator can commandeer their own snowmobile, or ride shotgun with another. Operators riding shotgun/in the snowmobile sidecar have full use of their weapons, while those driving can only use secondaries without releasing control.
• Give them a few moments of enjoying the wind in their hair and the thrill of speed before the next event triggers: a GRINCH squad cargo helicopter wheels overhead and opens its ramp, letting a squad of GRINCH snowmobile troopers slam down behind the squad.
  • Don’t worry about stats for most of the troopers, assume that one good hit will kill them or explode their snowmobile
  • The troopers are led by AGENT GOLD, one of the elite Three Wise Men assassins. Gold wears a Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned to the waist and carries a colossal gold-plated grenade launcher. Snow collects in his mop of curly black hair as he flashes a gold-plated smile that matches his weapon. (AGENT GOLD: 5 PT, 1 armor, 1d6 Blast grenade launcher, unhinged demeanour)
    • The first time Gold would be killed, he instead leaps off of his exploding snowmobile and lands on an operator’s vehicle (or commandeers one from a grunt, if no operators are nearby) - refill his PT to 5 as he becomes much more violent and unpredictable
• The players can defeat the pursuers with direct combat or trickery (steering them off a cliff, weaving through a narrow canyon, setting up tripwires between snowmobiles, etc.)
• Once Gold and most of the grunts are taken out, any remaining enemies skid to a halt as they break off the pursuit.

Pine Breeze, A Merry Place to Live!

• At the base of the mountain, the operators pass a rotting 60s-style painted billboard reading “Pine Breeze… A Merry Place to Live!”
• The town itself is empty and quiet, a mixture of detached single-family homes with long-gone picket fences and Christmas-themed businesses (Mel’s Merry Diner, Sjokka’s House of Mistletoe, the Silent Night Laundromat, North Pole Bowling Lanes & Knife Museum, etc.)
• As the players pass the first house (peeling red paint, caved-in roof, flickering Christmas lights on the eaves), they hear a clatter from inside.
  • If they investigate, they eventually find a child hiding under a rotten bed (given away by her bright pink sneakers sticking out one side). Her name is Mina Vanderhoof, Darrow’s grand-daughter, and she’s distraught - first she gets brought to this stupid island to spend stupid Christmas with her stupid Grandpa in his creepy mansion, then she loses her new jacket when she runs away, then she sees… was that Santa getting dragged out of his sled by those weirdos with guns? Can Santa get… hurt? What about her presents? What about Christmas?!
  • Assuming they calm her down, she will give them one useful piece of information: there’s a secret entrance to “Grandpa’s stupid dig site” in the basement behind an oil painting of Darrow. Aside from that, she mostly just misses her parents (who leave her with Darrow each year in the hopes of getting her a piece of the inheritance) and hates this stupid island. Hiding out in the house is probably the safest spot for her, but how the players handle her is up to them.
• If your players are wanting more action, you can have a small-town gunfight in and around Main Street as GRINCH squaddies deploy in waves from each direction as the players try to keep Mina hidden and safe. If not, just move on to the next thing:
• At the end of Main Street (running North-South) lies a smouldering crater - the spot where Santa’s sled crashed. Inside the crater, the operators can find Santa’s smashed-and-burned sled, bloodstains (no one should, but if they do taste it, Santa’s blood tastes like gingerbread), and heavy drag marks in the snow leading further south - towards the Vanderhoof mansion.

The Vanderhoof Mansion

• The Vanderhoof Mansion is a walled compound containing a three-storey art deco mansion: Darrow’s residence for the last decade. Unlike the rest of the island, it’s in perfect condition.
• The front entrance is lightly guarded with only two grunts leaning next to the massive wrought-iron gate. Don’t make getting into the mansion too difficult, the grunts are easily-handled and the wall is low enough that climbing over doesn’t take much work
• The grounds surrounding the mansion are filled with too much garden, frozen topiaries and fountains and statues. Dead snowmen lie here and there (killed in an earlier gunfight), their antifreeze-coloured blood staining the snow.
• The squad can enter the mansion through the ornate brass front door or through a back entrance leading into a screened porch. Neither are well-guarded; all of the mansion guards have been pulled into a tight defensive perimeter deeper in
• Inside, the mansion looks like a modern art gallery with little furniture and few signs of life. Brushed aluminum fittings glow beneath tasteful sconce lighting. The only non-minimalist thing in here is the paintings: dozens of them in a range of styles, some so old that they’re just chunks of rock chiseled off of a cave wall, all depicting Santa or Christmas themes. A few depict Darrow (or maybe his father, or his grandfather — one ancient robber baron looks a lot like another), a sepulchral figure with a pale, hollow face, usually depicted wearing an 80s-style double-breasted suit.
• In the large living room at the centre of the first floor, the tasteful furniture has been shoved aside to clear space for two things: Tacticelf Holly, beaten, bloody, tied to a small chair, and the bomb he’s wired up to.
  • Holly survived the fall but was captured by GRINCH Squad almost immediately. Freeing him will set off the bomb, which even now is counting down — the readout says there’s only four minutes left on the timer.
  • Darrow intended Holly to be a distraction, slowing the squad down or (at best) killing them if their better natures lead them to rescue Holly
  • Holly will insist that the squad pursue Darrow who Holly knows (from overhearing a guard) is somewhere “downstairs.” If they don’t want to try their luck at the bomb, have him request someone’s secondary weapon to “hold the bastards off a little longer.”
  • If they try to help Holly, he will order them to leave him — but if they insist, it’s possible to defuse the bomb (start a 4-segment clock, tick it up on successful actions, detonate it after 2 failures in a row.)
  • Once rescued, he’s still not in fighting shape but will volunteer to guard the squad’s back as they head after Darrow.
  • If the bomb goes off, any squad members in the room barely survive: they immediately fill all Wound boxes and are On Lethal for the remainder of the mission.
• There are two paths to Darrow:
  • The freight-elevator-sized basement door is wide open, leading down onto a set of rough-hewn flagstones that descend into darkness
  • Grabbing the largest painting of Darrow (found in the Room of Darrows right next to the living room) reveals that it’s hinged, opening to a secret second access route to the basement. Behind the painting is a dark, narrow shaft with a rusted ladder that leads downward.

Tomb of the REDACTED, 10,000BCE

• The main basement entrance is fortified and well-guarded by multiple teams of GRINCH squaddies. Tripwire explosives are placed every few steps down, leading out to a hallway that’s guarded by mercs who are set up behind barricades every ten feet or so.
• The secondary entrance leads down to a brutally-narrow corridor that joins the main hall through a hidden door (behind another Darrow portrait, of course). This entrance lets out a little ways past the main guard posts, although the squad will still have to be careful to avoid detection
• Floodlights illuminate the black stone of the underground crypt. Strange hieroglyphs in a language unknown to the squad are etched onto every possible surface. Crude sculptures of screaming faces emerge from the wall at irregular intervals.
• At the end of the hall, the squad emerges into a large circular room, ringed by pillars and a low wall that forms a concentric inner circle. At the centre of the room:
  • A rough-hewn sarcophagus made of the same black stone as the surrounding crypt
  • Darrow holds a bleeding Santa Claus against the lid of the coffin, slamming his face against the stone as colourful energy blurs and bleeds from Santa’s tears
  • Santa begs Darrow to stop, warning him not to “awaken my brother” between fits of blood-coughing
• Several GRINCH Squad elites with grunt strike teams are patrolling the room’s perimeter. Even if the squad went in the front entrance and triggered a gunfight, these guards have been ordered to hold the tomb at any cost and will not leave (although they will set up defensively if they know the squad is coming).
• The coffin holds Krampus, Santa’s twisted brother — a dark entity who was sealed away by the first elf shamans more than 10 millennia ago
  • Darrow requires Santa’s Christmas magic to open the coffin, and he will succeed within minutes if the squad doesn’t intervene. If the coffin were to be opened, Christmas would certainly be ended forever (as would the world, probably).
• Play this last scene as an all-out gunfight (suggested music: the heaviest-metal version of Carol of the Bells you can find). Darrow keeps himself safe by holding Santa captive while his men engage the squad. Heavy gunfire or explosives will start the tomb collapsing: describe chunks of black rock showering down from the ceiling, the cavern trembling beneath their feet, all while eruptions of red-and-green energy boil from Santa’s wounds. Don’t hold back from killing player characters if you get them dead to rights — remind them of the Christmas Ghost rules to let them still participate in the climax.
• Assuming the players rescue Santa (probably after killing Darrow), play out their escape in sped-up montage as they flee the collapsing tomb.

Wrapping Up (Like A Present, Get It?)

• Santa is wounded but ever-jovial, although his customary jollity slips away entirely when asked about his “brother” in the tomb. He’ll reassure the squad that they’re definitely on the Nice List now.
• With Darrow dead, the island’s SAM sites shut down (he held the killswitch). Sleighs of all shapes and sizes touch down outside the mansion — with one even carrying the wounded Pilotelf Anya and Commander Noel, who managed to bring their exploding sled down onto one of the enormous midair snowflakes, where they were able to signal for rescue. Medelfs flock around Santa and any injured players, fussing over even the most minor scrapes.
• If the players rescued Mina, Santa and the squad can bring her back to her parents’ home, using a pinch of Christmas magic as Santa puts her back in her bed to make the family forget she’d ever left. If they didn’t, instead end as an exhausted Santa slumps down in the exfil sled. He looks the squad over one-by-one before winking and reaching under his bench, pulling out a magically-warmed bottle of top-top-shelf eggnog: “Milk and cookies are on me tonight, fellas!”