A Colorado Winter (Perkins,

by Doug Levandowski
CO)
The holiday season in Colorado is always magical. Being in the mountains, there’s always
snow, and the skiers passing through give the town a good financial bump right before
the holiday bills start coming in.

Even before the winter recess, students wake up each morning to a surprise: is it going
to snow enough that school will be closed? Usually, that means about half a foot or
more. Coloradans are tough. Even if school is open, Mr. Gretch, the gym teacher, usually
lets you have a snowball fight for gym class, much to the dismay of Principal Smith (no
relation to the John Smith the middle school was named after... probably). Yes, it’s the
most wonderful time of the year.

But it does get dark earlier, and it’s very cold out. The winds howl — and it seems like
maybe other things are howling in the wilderness, too — and this is the time of year
when all those kids went missing five years ago, vanishing from their homes mysterious-
ly in the middle of the night. But that won’t happen again, right?

Note: This module uses the Ashcan rules, available for free here:
http://huntersbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/Ashcan-1106.pdf

Because of this, all characters will be kids.

AT THE START OF THE GAME, ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS.

“Group” questions are answered as a group. “Individual, Shared” questions are
answered by each player, then shared with the group as public information. “Individual,
Private” questions are answered by each player but not necessarily shared.
• Group: What activities other than skiing ramp up at this time of year?
• Individual, Shared: What rumor have you heard about Perkins in December?
(Answer this instead of establishing a rumor as described in the Ashcan rules.)
• Individual, Shared: What holidays, if any, does your character celebrate?
• Individual, Private: What is your favorite part of the holiday season?
• Individual, Private: What part of the holiday season do you hate?

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INTEREST:

• THE MALL!! It opened last year, and they’re really going big for the holidays this year,
with decorations everywhere and Santa with a real beard!
• Old Man Yager’s Farm, where he’s very happy to let the kids have snowball fights in
his dormant corn fields, and he’s got a great hill for sledding. Sometimes, he even
brings out hot cocoa and talks with the parents.
• The Religious Organizations, always particularly active this time of year.
• Al-Sadiq Mosque, the local mosque
• Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, the local Catholic church
• Perkins Presbyterian Church, the local protestant church
• Temple Emanuel, the local synagogue
• Perkins Family Restaurant, a place where everyone passing through eats even be-
cause it’s so tongue in cheek. The locals avoid it.
• Faisal’s Diner, the greasy spoon where most of the locals dine. Faisal makes sure to
decorate for every holiday and always has rotating specials. As the sign out front
says, the desserts are simply scrumptious!
• Wigley’s Orchards, the one and only place to get trees this time of year.
• Climatology Research of Perkins (CROP), a secret government facility studying,
nominally, the effects of cold weather and altitude on crops. But there’s a lot of
security for just that, there are strange sounds at all hours, and there don’t seem to
be any fields...
POSSIBLE NPCs:
• Faisal Baqri, owner and operator of Faisal’s Diner. Perhaps the happiest guy in
town — and someone who really knows how happy this time of year can make
everyone.
• Jack Gretch, the middle school gym teacher. A nasty, brutish man all year, he’s no
different now that there’s snow. He actually seems to enjoy seeing kids get hit in
the face, whether with a dodgeball or a snowball.
• Abe Helman, a stranger who came to town in September, rented a room, and has
been asking a lot of questions about the children who vanished five years ago.
He’s telling anyone who’ll listen that they’re in danger. He’s obviously nuts.
• Patricia Miller, the owner of the local coffee shop. A jovial woman, Patricia moved
to town from Denver to take life slower and to make coffee. Some say she fled a
dark past, but she seems so happy all of the time!
• Claire Nurtz, the town sheriff and general curmudgeon. She’s on record as saying
that all holidays should just be outlawed, especially this time of year.
• Rebecca Smith, principal of John Smith Middle School. She’s a cold, serious
woman who seems to have forgotten the meaning of fun, especially around this
time of year.
• Reed Wigley, local farmer and purveyor of the only Christmas tree stand in town.
They still keep their prices fair, and if money is tight for families, they’ll cut a deal.
• Peter “Old Man” Yager, former mayor of Perkins and probably the nicest man in
town. Owns a farm on the edge of town. Pillar of the community.

POSSIBLE ADVENTURE HOOKS:

• During a snowball fight or while sledding, the kids find a wounded creature near the
treeline, and it needs their help.
• After five quiet years, a kid from town goes missing on December 5th, Krampus-
nacht. Perhaps that kid is a friend or sibling of some of the characters. Perhaps they
aren’t the first kid to disappear this year.
• The kids see the Mall Santa doing some actual magic, and now that they know his
secret, he needs their help.
• A small but vocal group of citizens have decided that only one holiday should be
celebrated and that their religious freedoms are being abridged by others
celebrating theirs. Last year, they were just loud and obnoxious about the non-
denominational red cups in Miller’s Beans. This year, they’ve become violent.
• A particularly severe winter storm has gripped the town for a few days now, burying
Perkins under snow, baffling meteorologists. Could CROP have caused this? Could
it be to hide something more sinister?
• Santa’s sleigh crash lands near Perkins and Santa needs the kids’ help to get the
sleigh up and running again.

POSSIBLE THREATS:
• A group of hunters looking to bag a mythical creature spotted in the area.
• Government forces descending on the town looking for those creatures.
• A group of religious fanatics who want to ban every holiday but theirs.
• A scheming, miserly business owner who just wants to commercialize the holidays.

POSSIBLE POWERED CHARACTERS:

• The Mall Santa, whose beard is real and who seems to be actually magical.
• A sentient reindeer that showed up one day and seems bonded to one of the
kids in the party.
• A friendly Yeti who just wants to come in from the cold for a little bit.
POSSIBLE MONSTERS:
• Krampus, an evil monster bent on kidnapping children. It came through town five
years ago — and now it’s back.
• A pack of wolves terrorizing the town and picking of livestock. But as the blizzards
get thicker, the wolves get bolder — and they seem to communicate with each other
without a sound.
• A slow, creeping darkness that feeds by pulling the joy from people’s hearts and
pushing them away from the ones they love.

ADJUSTMENTS TO RULES:

Rule Addition: COLD EXPOSURE

In Colorado, people are pretty used to the cold, especially this time of year. During
the course of their adventure, though, they might find themselves exposed to the
elements for long enough that they begin to suffer ill effects. Because the effects
of exposure to cold weather depend greatly on what the characters are wearing
and just how cold the weather actually is, it’s difficult to create a formula for ef-
fects of exposure.

In general, the longer characters stay out in the cold, the worse the effects
will be. At first, they should suffer some slight penalty on Stat checks. As
hypothermia sets in, the penalties should become more extreme, especially for
Brains and Charm checks due to the confusion associated with hypothermia.
When hypothermia gets worse, shivering becomes uncontrollable, and any Stat
checks involving physical action should be assumed to immediately fail. Severe
hypothermia causes death, often after “paradoxical undressing” — hypothermia
victims start to feel overheated because of the body’s response to changes in
blood flow, and remove their clothes. For more information, Wikipedia has an
informative entry on hypothermia.