Corporeal Forces: 1
Strength: 2
Agility: 2
Ethereal Forces: 4
Intelligence: 8
Precision: 8
Celestial Forces: 3
Will: 6
Perception: 6
Vessel: sweet, plump old lady/3
Skills: Dodge/3, Enchantment/6, Fighting/3, Knowledge
(The Marches/3, Tsayadim/3), Move Silently/2, Small
Weapon/6 (Knife), Tactics/3
Songs: Artifacts (Celestial/1), Draining
(Celestial/1), Dreams (All/3), Entropy (Ethereal/6),
Forbidding (Celestial/1), Light (Celestial/2), Might
(Ethereal/2, Celestial/2), Shadows (Corporeal/1,
Ethereal/1), Seals (Ethereal/1, Celestial/3),
Shattering (Celestial/1), Shields (All/2)
Servants: elves/4 (Class/4)
They never pay attention to her, you understand. The
Tsayadim, that is.
At first Mrs. Claus simply tried to discover why the
Tsayadim hated HIM so greatly. HE isn't a bad person,
despite all the nasty things that Hell's done to HIS
legend: HE just likes to make toys and give them to
good children. HE brings them toys, and they believe
in HIM. When you consider all the sorts of things
that kids could believe in - all sorts of nasty,
horrible things - believing in HIM isn't a bad thing
at all. Right?
Apparently not, from point of view of the Tsayadim.
It never fails: every year, when belief in HIM is at
its height, HE would go out with HIS sleigh and HIS
sack of toys - knowing what would happen - and every
year, HE wouldn't come back. A day or week later,
though, there'd be a crash at the door ... and Mrs.
Claus would silently come out to find HIS broken,
mutilated body. That wasn't the worst part, though:
the worst part would be nurturing the new HIM that
would almost immediately pop into existence ... all
the while knowing that HIS fate would invariably be
the whip and the torch. HE would always rise to the
challenge, always promising her that this year would
be the year HE came back to her. HE never does.
Mrs. Claus is tired of burying her husband. So very,
very tired.
The mistake that those sadistic murdering fanatics
keep making is, of course, that they never think to
attack her: after all, what's the fun in slaughtering
HIM if there isn't someone to weep and wail at the
sight of HIS corpse? She makes sure to give them a
nice, histrionic show every year; she almost never
sees them, but she knows that they're there. Every so
often, she gets a glimpse of one as she goes back into
her newly-lonely cottage.
And, every so often, a Tsayadim on solo patrol in the
Marches or on Earth disappears, never to be seen
again. This happens all the time, of course, and
always in areas of high risk: his, her or its fellows
will conduct a search, but it's a dangerous universe
out there. These things happen, after all. There's
never any evidence that would suggest a search of Mrs.
Claus' cottage - the Tsayadim don't even realize that
it has a basement. Basements, really - after all, the
toys have to be made somewhere. They most assuredly
are not aware that the lowest basement of all is her
workshop, not HIS. Or that she has some truly special
tools down there.
What happens to those lost Tsayadim?
Well, have you ever really looked at those angels that
you find on top of Christmas trees? Probably not:
after all, they're just ... well, dolls. Toys.
But, sometimes, if you find the right one, you just
might notice that the expression on one seems just
slightly off. That there may just be a hint, a
suggestion, a whisper of pain carved onto its immobile
face. That there's just the flicker of awareness in
those painted eyes... But that's impossible, of
course, so pour yourself another egg nog and forget
about it. It's just holiday stress. It was merely
your imagination running away from you. Perfectly
understandable.
After all, 'tis the season.
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