Merry hexmas! Here's another weird adventure location I made for the community holiday blogwagon courtesy of Prismatic Wasteland. Use it however you like! Creative commons license at the end. If you link one of your hex edges to mine, drop a comment or message me on Bluesky and I'll update the post!
Download link
If you'd like a copy of these Christmas hexes in PDF form, get it for free here: https://periapt-games.itch.io/hexmas-locations
Summary
A sect of treetop angels makes this isolated mountain valley their home. Dwelling in the porous rock caverns, the object of their worship: the Blissful Homogenate. It is an immense festive slush composed of thousands of former intelligent entities, now an immense mushy rainbow sea, a hivemind experiencing True Holiday Joy. It dissolves anyone who touches it.
Hex terrain description
This is an area of lofty wind-wracked mountains, most of them bare other than the omnipresent snow. In the more protected valleys, pine trees huddle together for warmth.
One particularly deep valley, more of a huge crevasse than anything, is curiously warm. Wisps of steam drift about, and a rivulet of snowmelt runs its length. Bubbling up from clefts in the rock, a lumpy rainbow mishmash that looks like a tendrilly mess of soft modelling clay.
Above, there's a stand of huge trees, where glittering candlelight suggests the presence of people.
Connecting hexes
Locale: The citadel of the treetop angels
A huge ice-encrusted treehouse with numerous parapets, slit windows, and clear sightlines. It is supported on the trunks of six massive pine trees. The only way up, if you can't fly, is a winding path that flips back and forth between ladder, tunnel, and staircase. Concentric walls of stakes at the base help keep out interlopers, but the gate – and the charitable donation box next to it – are both kept unlocked.
Inside, the citadel is freezing cold, lit only by candles. What care angels for warmth?
Principles of hospitality are a little fraught at the moment: the order is nearly torn apart by religious quarrel.
The treetop angels consider the whole valley a holy site. The caves and tunnels honeycombing it are filled with a miraculous vast-lake-sized gelatinous entity of perpetual cheer and enormous power, the Blissful Homogenate. The treetop angels revere this entity as their guardian, guide, and future, but they are at odds over the nature of their worship.
The order of angels is split into several factions, or 'choirs'.
- The loudest voice is that of the status quo, who sing: those who should be drawn into the Blissful Homogenate are already fated to do so. No intervention is needed.
- Another choir believes the angels should be united with their deity at once. These angels are only holding back long enough to convince their sistren to take the plunge together.
- A more radical faction sings carols of escalation: the heathen must be converted, whether by the sword, by persuasion and pilgrimage, or by cracking the stone of the valley asunder and letting the Blissful Homogenate descend like a multicoloured avalanche into the plains below.
- A small number of voices call for study and for optimisation. The rate of dissolution should be maximised. The Blissful Homogenate should be increased in volume if possible. The order should investigate methods for budding off new homogenates to carry elsewhere in the world.
The rift between angels is unlikely to be repaired, but canny adventurers could align themselves with a choir for personal gain, and possibly even egg on the factions to the point of violence. The treetop angels don't have much gold, but their stockpiles of frankincense and myrrh run deep.
Locale: The overlooking cliff
A precipice directly above the deepest part of the valley. Ancient, crumbling steps descend in fits and starts into the crevasse. It's screamingly windy here, shredding the wisps of steam that rise up.
When the sun is high, you can see through eddies in the mist below: parts of the Blissful Homogenate extend from the valley's caverns. It looks like a colourful smear across the rocks, as if vomited by some vast sherry-soused god on its way home to a mountaintop paradise to sleep it off.
There is a little shanty town here, made from rough-hewn pine wood, stacked boulders, and reindeer hides. A motley bunch of people have come here, mostly on bad information, and are unsure of what to do next. There's a continual argument simmering like an eternal stew.
Currently about twenty people live in the shacks (detailed in the encounter table below). Many others before them have returned to the lowlands, or descended into the valley to become one with the Blissful Homogenate.
There are also four treetop angels hanging around here:
- Numerica Of The Last Apex Unclimbed. Studying the Blissful Homogenate by observing those who may or may not eventually enter it. She's conducting an ongoing census and interviews. Currently taking measurements.
- Radiala Of The Final Pinnacle Unmatched. Feels a desperately personal relationship with the Blissful Homogenate. Paranoid. Fanatical. Has given up everything. Will keep herself out of the homogenate for all eternity to fulfil her self-appointed role of keeping it safe. Currently making patrols.
- Levitica Of The Ultimate Peak Unsurmounted. She's trying to enforce a taboo against hanging around the valley through persuasive sermons. Mostly she has succeeded in making everyone annoyed with her. Currently standing on a boulder and lecturing to the wind.
- Honoria Of The True Zenith Unparalleled. She's dipped a toe in the Blissful Homogenate and will soon be part of it. She's flown back up the cliff to spread the good word. Currently ecstatically dissolving.
Random cliff encounters (1d10):
- Inkoo and Shmo. Pair of gigantic lumbering penguins. Mountain natives who make a simple living guiding curious people out here, then usually earning even more to guide them back again. Very disliked by the treetop angels.
- Jenk Holdfraught. Withered old man. A would-be lich who hasn't managed to walk any of the normal dark paths. He's decided that eternity will still be worth it even if filled with tinsel, whistling, and the cross-talk of a happy hivemind, but it's not his first choice, and he's waiting until the last moment possible. If he waits much longer he won't be able to get down the steps under his own power. Has a small amount of treasure, mostly in the form of magical scrolls and cursed ritual equipment.
- Five tuskers (huge tusked trolls) all wearing enormous boots and ceremonial bells. Not very smart. A small religious pilgrimage from the Grove Where The Snow Is Like Icing, over Rime Ridge. They were trying to find the Big Rock Candy Mountain and are unsure of what they've stumbled upon. That thing down there... is it pudding?
- Prudence Dearborn. Half-angel. Skilled chef. Her current ambition is to make the ultimate festive spice mix, and she's travelled here for inspiration.
- Old Father Chrysalis. A white-bearded wizard who touched the Blissful Homogenate and is becoming one with it, but much more slowly than usual. Meanwhile, he's wandering the valley and the cliff. Nobody knows his real name. Doesn't converse. Mumbles a slurpy bubbly mixture of arcane half-secrets and mystic half-truths. (Probably warded himself against the homogenate's effects and only partly succeeded.)
- Snarlface, Dayglo, and Toad. Three escaped orcs of the Red Lord (see magnoliakeep.blogspot.com/2025/11/blog-bandwagon-orcish-toy-factory.html). One of several secret orc cells combing the world for potential superweapons to wield against their despicable master. Cautiously excited by the potential of the Blissful Homogenate, but underequipped to do anything with it.
- Plush Carl. Three-eyed misfit toy. Trying to track down his happy-go-lucky great aunt, missing for months. She's one with the homogenate already.
- Terrrence Norrbrright. Gangly hollow-eyed elf. Legate of a deposed tyrant. Truly hates good cheer, but is pretending otherwise. Smile like a death rictus. Hums off-key. Secretly wants to destroy the Blissful Homogenate and has brought a sorcerous weapon looted from his old boss's treasury to accomplish this. With the right invocation, the Cauldron Of Inversion should turn the homogenate's boiling, joyous form into something cold and hard and miserable. It won't, though. It'll just splatter dangerous chunks of it all over the landscape.
- Jephrow Bosk. A skeleton percussionist. Inexpertly plays his
ribcage like a xylophone. Thinking of branching out into skull bongos.
Extremely cheerful; was drawn to this place by a mysterious inner
pressure he can't explain. Jephrow wears the bejewelled Tiara Of Undead Control, giving him enormous amounts of self-actualisation. If it is removed he will become a mindless bloodthirsty monster.
- Zephany. A westerly wind, separated from her easterly sister Gale (see thegloaminglog.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-quiet-season.html?m=1). Gale was last seen above these mountains, having talked to a treetop angel on the way past. She has left already, but Zephany doesn't know that, and deeply dreads descending into the valley. She hopes her brother Eddy will catch up to her here to lend some support.
Locale: The cheer-clogged depths
The rocky valley floor is in shadow for much of the day (the parts near the walls, perpetually so). A small stream of snowmelt pours the length of the middle and ends up in a sinkhole, feeding who knows what underground river further on.
Steam shrouds much of the valley depths, stirred by the omnipresent mountain wind, and occasionally scattered in wisps to the top of the overlooking cliff. It's slightly warm down here, and feels shockingly hot compared to the rest of the freezing mountains.
There's a pleasant humming sound.
Entity: The Blissful Homogenate
Larger than most lakes, and composed of colourful whorls of half-liquid, half-solid organic strands. These flow and wobble and slowly move about by themselves, occasionally splitting off and wandering semi-independently, never far from the main mass. Looks like the aftermath of an inconceivably huge and ultimately failed modeling clay project.
Vestiges of faces smile back at you.
It smells of cinnamon and hot plastic.
Background and expansion
The world's most optimistic and spirited are instinctually drawn to this place on their deathbeds, making it an elephant's graveyard of the merry. They make up the bulk of the homogenate. It has also amalgamated various stupid or unlucky animals (most avoid this place), unwanted experiments/victims who were disposed of here long ago, and a certain number of people who couldn't hack it as liches.
The rest of the homogenate is made up of molten treetop angels. They've been joining it pretty regularly over the years.
If you touch the Blissful Homogenate, you immediately start turning into it. You go runny bit by bit, the event horizon slowly travelling up your arm. You can be saved from the effect if you strike off the digit (or, for the incautious, the limb). Just make sure you cut far enough up.
It usually takes a few hours, after touching the Blissful Homogenate, to collapse into a pile of goo. Features slide off the face. The face drips off the body. Limbs elongate. Clothing melds with flesh. A distinct cheerfulness is felt all the while.
Once it's done, you're indistinguishable. Now if anybody touches you, they start turning, too.
Capabilities
The Blissful Homogenate is in a sense an intelligent hivemind, but undirected. It has never been known to take any real action; it is continually thrilled beyond mortal comprehension just to be experiencing the world around it.
The entity only cares for things that are lively and moving and glittery; it doesn't eat through rock and trees.
The Blissful Homogenate is extremely hot to the touch, like flowing candle wax. Hot enough to warm the rock of the valley and melt the snow above. Bits can be struck off its mass, and if this happens, they slowly cool, losing their animation. They will try to return to the main mass before this happens.
The entity doesn't retaliate if struck. There's an ocean of this stuff, much of it underground. What could possibly harm it?
Challenges and opportunities:
- The Blissful Homogenate is always happily humming. Its underground parts sometimes break out into full-on carols. The distant singing could draw characters into the dangerous cave systems around the valley walls where the goo level ebbs and flows.
- There's tall cliffs above and below the valley, and the rock is porous. A landslide, snowmelt-heavy river, earth tremor, or explosion could knock things into motion. An avalanche of hot homogenate would flow into the network of valleys below like a rainbow lahar, eventually reaching inhabited pastures. There'd be enough mass for it to last for weeks or months independently of the main blob, with all the trouble that would ensue.
- The trouble that's brewing with the treetop angels could easily reach a head. The outlook for their custodianship of the Blissful Homogenate is different depending on which faction wins.
- The shantytown inhabitants all want different things. Trouble is particularly likely from Terrrence Norrbrright, Jephrow Bosk, the orc trio, or the not-too-clever tuskers.
- If a small part of Blissful Homogenate is separated from the main mass, it will eventually cool down, deanimating. But it does not become completely inert. If a small part got into a town's water table before rotting away completely, it could cause strange hallucinations, and toys to be born as misfits.
- Buried in the caverns of the Blissful Homogenate are a few bits of magical treasure too dull and/or cold to be homogenised. The Sceptre Of The Snow Miser turns a foot-wide sphere of solid matter into snow with a touch (exactly as horrid as it sounds). The Woadstone is a simple stone amulet which dyes you blue as long as it is worn. The Snow Deanimation Orb projects a league-wide field which annihilates the consciousness of any snow-based lifeforms.
- The Blissful Homogenate has never been stirred to anger... to date. Characters who presented a genuine threat to it would find out how mobile it really is.
Rumours about this hex (1d6):
- The long-sought Fountain of Merriment really does exist, and it's closer than you'd think! A drop of its waters would leave you happy for the rest of your life.
- The Banshee Queen, whose voice was the demise of thousands, did not herself perish but is still alive somewhere in a hidden valley, kept alive by unnatural magics.
- There's a geothermal springs with miraculous healing properties deep in the mountains. Their waters can even heal a damaged spirit!
- Should a treetop angel be slain in anger by its brethren, the body's angelic halo can be snatched up by a mortal to grant an unearned textra life.
- Some deranged alchemist created a dangerous substance called Colourful Amalgamising Clay. If you survive a brush with it, your mind will be forever changed.
- A cabal of the world's most naturally cheerful people have a secret mountain retreat where they recharge their optimistic energy and make blood sacrifice to a great chthonic god.
Credits
The text of this post is released under a Creative Commons BY (4.0) license. Do what you like with it as long as you follow the terms: credit me, link here, and link to the license.
Illustrations licensed from Alderdoodle (alderdoodle.co.uk), Amanda Lee Franck, Jose Eduardo "Jegs" Gonzalez, and Art SilverGlass / Sophie Grunnet. Some illustrations by Fernando Salvaterra - used with permission.
%20BW%20line,%20scene%20%20'Arabian%20nights'.jpg "A monkey writes on a scroll. Image by John Batten.")
