WoWP One-Shot: Klaus the Imposter Report

General Summary

On the eve of Anamas, a group of cutthroat mercenaries gathered together for their own mutual profit. They included the warlocks Aiden and Sahl Uzan (a variant of T-R01D, The Death-Bound Revenant) and the elf hunter known as Killjoy. They approach a snow bound village looking for jobs when they see a sleigh overhead, pulled by reindeer. Orcs mounted on giant owls hit it with javelins and knock it from the sky.

The False Gift Giver

As they approach the wreckage, a large man dressed in red emerges along with his two elven servants. They see that the orcs have dismounted and are coming towards the wreckage from the other side. Sensing profit, the mercenaries hold off and let the conflict play out. They suspect that something is amiss when the elves pull out lightning guns instead of the expected bows.

The mercs get into position climbing a tree and onto a roof to get into sniping position. The orcs close on the elves, spearing one through the heart and revealing that it's actually a changeling, not really an elf. The orcs yell out, "How dare you put coal in our stockings! We have been good orcs all year long!"

They enter a berserker rage and end the fight pretty quickly, revealing that "Klaus the Gift Giver" is actually a doppelganger pretending to be the mighty artificer. They see that the reindeer are actually automatons, but the gifts in the bag were real.

Having seen how deadly efficient the orcs were, the mercs decide to parley with the owl riders. The orcs tell the mercs that they will find greater treasures on the False Gift Givers flying headquarters. They offer to give each merc a gift and two of the zap guns, but they will take the rest for themselves. Sahl greedily attempts to get more gifts and instead gets none.

The Moonlight Express

They each mount a reindeer automaton and press the "return home" buttons on them. The reindeer take them back to a skyship covered in goblins with a captive owl-folk, Bingo Ashdown, piloting it. As they approach, Aiden summons a flock of gazer familiars to converge on the ship. Sahl calls out to them that Klaus has asked them to go back to the ship for him. The goblins call out to them to stop 50' from the ship.

Aiden's familiars get into position and Sahl drops a darkness spell on the goblins. Bingo is overjoyed that heroes have come to save him. Killjoy picks off the visible goblins while Aiden's gazers push goblins off the side of the ship or freeze them with their rays. Sahl turns off the darkness and lands among them with a thunderwave that kills most of them.

Bingo is overjoyed to greet his saviors, but his joy turns to horror as Sahl begins roughing him up. "Tell me what's going on here! Should we wreck the ship?"

Bingo tells them that the real Klaus is imprisoned in the hold under the power of a witch. The witch is using the false Gift Giver to give cursed items to children all over the Zone! She has kookie constructs guarding the top floor and ghoul servants guarding Klaus and herself.

The party makes short work of the kookies, eating their remains and discovering that they get a health boost from the sugar!

The Witch, the Ghouls, and the Gift Giver

The mercs make a plan to descend into the bottom hold to confront the witch. But when they open the door, the ghouls pounce ready to attack. Sahl is in front, but manages to escape paralysis. Aiden flies alongside the outside of the ship and one of his familiars breaks the glass into the hold. He shoots an eldritch blast into the ship, hurting the witch.

As Killjoy and Sahl fight the ghouls, Aiden engages the witch. She attempts to cast a spell to help her minions, but Sahl's arcane countermeasures cause her to waste her magic. Sahl jumps down into the hold and blast the ghouls apart with a thunderwave. The witch leans out of the porthole to see Aiden and blasts him with magic missiles.

As Killjoy mops up the ghouls, Sahl runs up to the witch, who is halfway out of the porthole. He pokes her in the butt with a cantrip that sends her flying out of the hole and to the ground 1,000 feet below. As she falls, she disappears into the Ethereal Pland and vows revenge on the mercs.

The mercs open the door to the hold and see Klaus the Gift-Giver chained to the ground with magical bonds. He immediately identifies that all three of them are on his naughty list! He says that even though he suspects that they will be naughty again, he'll put them on the nice list if they let him go.

The mercs think it over, take Klaus' Bag of Gifts, and close the door on him. They go back up to the wheel deck, mount up on their reindeer, take Bingo captive, and destroy the controls. The ship crashes to the ground a thousand feet below and explodes.

When they go down to the snow to retrieve Klaus' body, they instead find an upraised middle finger drawn in the snow and the message, "You're on the Naughty List forever!"