Merry hexmas! Here's a weird hex I made for Prismatic Wasteland's end-of-year blogwagon. 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!
Summary
A highland region of magically-animated snow. It is home to a village of 'roblings', creatures cursed to compulsively steal. A dysfunctional team of researchers has travelled here in a gingerbread mecha, now broken down.
Hex terrain description
This hilly region rises out of the rich pastures to the south and grassy steppe to the southeast. Here little grows beyond a dark moss, with snow always blanketing the ground.
The snowscape is dotted with missing patches, each one beginning a trail of footprints, as if areas of snow were getting up and walking away.
The region otherwise appears devoid of villages, hamlets, or other habitation. It rises higher into tall mountains at the northwest edge.
Connecting hexes
- Northeast: Three Calves (see https://elsewhere-elsewhere.neocities.org/posts/2025-12-07-23.-hexmas)
- Northwest: The Valley of Eternal Cheer
- Southwest: The town of Borsk (see https://coppershaman.com/merry-hexmas-babbling-baboon/)
- Southeast: The Silver Steppe (see https://www.fluoriteguillotine.com/blog/2025/11/08/blogwagon-broken-bronco-on-the-silver-steppe/)
Description
The landscape is not-quite-beautiful. The sparkling white snow is thoroughly dotted with missing patches and criss-crossed with tracks. The wind gently sighs, except for when it's howling.
Transient snow can be found covering the hex. The large hilly snowfields look quite mundane, but are home to intelligent creatures who fall as snow during the night and collapse into quickly-dissolving piles of slush by the following afternoon.
The transient snow creatures all have names, personal stories lining up with hazy false memories of the world, and often relationships with each other. They have a dull understanding of the broader world, but only come to comprehend their own immediate mortality through the course of the day. Each has a unique appearance, as if bespokely made by a snow artist. They have equipment, clothing, and skills, all of which dissolves as the sun descends.
Locale: The village of the roblings
Roblings are part mischievous goblin, part red-breasted robin, although they joke that there's more magpie than robin. Something in the genetic mix gives them tails and claws, too, and makes them taller than most humans. They're muscular and very quick, and with the aforementioned claws, each one is about as dangerous as a bear if it comes to a fight.
These folk are all covered in long fur. Apart from a touch of red at the chest, they are dark green shading to black, the same colour as the moss and lichen under the snow. The roblings harvest those tiny plants, and hunt the reindeer that compete for it. They supplement their diets with small river fish and with sugared oranges of unclear origin.
Their village is two hundred roblings, of all ages. They hatch from knobbly hairy eggs, and their yurt homes have a nest-like look to them, low communal structures made from reindeer hides stitched with sinew, huge mammoth tusk struts, dried moss, and goose down.
The roblings are hospitable, but seem a little concerned that they are receiving visitors. A village elder will explain their circumstances:
- Background: The roblings as a species are cursed with kleptomaniac episodes. They are individually compelled at random intervals to go to the nearest place where they think some valuable objects might be, taking a big sack, and loot it all in a mischievous frenzy. They then return to wherever they live and find they don't care about the things they've taken, feeling fairly embarrassed about it (but not inclined to give anything back).
- Community: Because they are otherwise normal, the roblings don't like the outcomes from this behaviour. Their attempts to sublimate the urges failed, so a couple of generations ago they formed this community, leagues away from anywhere. A big part of their local culture consists of stealing from each other and the attendant little customs of going around to find their stuff again. Relatively few robling robberies now take place outside the village, but they have a big collection of things they stole in the past.
- Transient snow: Because the ancestral curse is about stealing valuable things, the roblings can safely live here amongst the transient snow creatures. The creatures' snow equipment (which evaporates daily) is largely worthless, so the robling instinct never targets them.
- History: The roblings were created in vats as an arcane experiment. Oral history says their creator was a genius archwizard whose hobby was thievery. She was betrayed by her apprentice who killed her, stole her powers, and abandoned the roblings for a new project, making some kind of huge mechanical baboon (see https://coppershaman.com/merry-hexmas-babbling-baboon/)
The roblings are smiling. Self-actualised. Happy with the niche they've carved out for themselves. They only admit to two worries:
- In the distant future, population growth could have them brushing up against regions with other kinds of people, with friction as a result. They'd like to find a way to lift their curse if they could.
- More immediately, some big, pricy, well-defended target could come along, prove irresistible, and the village would suffer some violent retaliation after robbing it. (They don't know about the W.A.I. gingerbread mech yet – see below)
If you could somehow alleviate either fear, you'd have the gratitude of a lot of interesting people.
Notable items stolen from the outside world by roblings (1d10):
- Mrs Clause's rocking chair. She probably wants it back, but it's pretty heavy and unwieldy.
- Treacle hourglass. Ornate ceremonial timepiece. The dark liquid very slowly flowing through it has almost finished counting down a decade.
- Sack of large rubies and sapphires. Used as 'practise gems' by an apprentice gnome lapidary, they are all quite misshapen or in some cases have been split in half. Still valuable.
- A set of telescope lenses once belonging to the Snow Miser (see https://tbr.bearblog.dev/merry-hexmas-blog-bandwagon-snow-misers-houseboat/)
- Two large golden rings, from a set of five. A recent political intrigue is said to have revolved around them. Sounds like a tall tale to you.
- A taxidermied chimerical denizen of some nightmarish realm. This particular chimera has the glassy-eyed head of a reindeer, body of a giant penguin, and feathers of a turkey, duck, and chicken combined. It also has human arms, holding a knife and fork.
- Trunk-sized golden key to the city of Sniffleheim, fortified ancestral home of the frost giants. Etched on one side with the Sniffleheim coat of arms (a stylised scowl) and on the other with "Property of Jarl Keith".
- Tongs of the Heat Miser. Magically room-temperature kitchen tongs. Once used by this mysterious figure to manipulate objects without melting them into white-hot blobs, before he learned a measure of control over his eldritch power.
- Bottomless Pouch of Sugared Oranges. Vital to the roblings, who use it to supplement their moss-based diet with extra calories and vitamins.
- Single-use doomsday device stolen from the Red Lord (see https://magnoliakeep.blogspot.com/2025/11/blog-bandwagon-orcish-toy-factory.html). Ugly pear-shaped mess of steel pipes, loose wires, and warning symbols. If activated, it instantly tinselifies all organic life in a six-league radius, leaving nothing but glittering strands and a mass of fused slag at the epicentre.
Locale: A curious expedition
A campsite huddles around the legs of a massive gingerbread mecha. The five-storey-tall delicious biscuit robot is currently immobile.
Houses a research party from the Weather Advancements Institute (W.A.I.), here to study the magical properties of the snow. They are competing with the North Pole Ironworks and the Hannukademy for funding, and would offer trade tips and small favours for news about either group or for leads on new sources of private equity.
The gingerbread mecha is a quadrupedic walking vehicle constructed from pastry, icing, spun sugar, high-tensile marzipan, and rolled steel. The inside smells like a holiday drink made from hot machine oil. The mecha broke down slightly short of its destination two leagues further into the snowfield, so the expedition has set up camp here while mechanic Grace tinkers with it.
The mecha is armed with a devastating heat ray and six pop-out autocannon turrets which lob chocolate shells at an unbelievable rate of fire. Part of an experimental fleet belonging to the Heat Miser, who contracted the design out to the W.A.I., funded the construction, and leased it back in a sweetheart deal.
Weather Advancements Institute team members (1d8):
- Dr Margrit Blithely. Principal investigator. Stressed out. Really needs this expedition to work. Has only just found out about the roblings and is worried there could be a violent clash. The mecha has autonomous defences which can't be deactivated.
- Thab Xnox. Research assistant. Hammock enthusiast. Has raised laziness to an artform. Motivated by nothing but new excuses not to do his job.
- Magus Kaleb Baiseen. Academic wizard. Fascinated with the elements. His life's work is the construction of a periodic table partitioned along the lines of which elements can or cannot be animated or summoned.
- Jennet Jensdottir. Meteorologist. Seven feet tall, platinum blonde, glittering celebrity smile, mind like a steel trap. Sociopath. Prolific writer. Managing editor for a journal of sorcerous metereology.
- Dward Blue. Former jolly postman. Current grouchy mech driver. Chain smoker. Mood made worse by the expedition's limited stock of booze and their current inability to get out of here on a moment's notice if things gone wrong.
- Grace Isthmus. Gingerbread mechanic. Green-skinned and covered in warts. Wears black overalls, bright red sequinned shoes, a permanent grin. Omnidirectionally overoptimistic. Very confident. Loves her job. Currently trying to work out why the gingerbread engine in Knee #3 won't start.
- Snid Kipper. Dogsbody. Young, anxious, splay-eared. Self-consciously amateur bagpiper and even more amateur poet. Very earnest.
- Chunk. Team mascot. Salamander. Little salamander collar with her name on it. Sleeps in the main boiler. Eats coal kibble. Very fat.
Random hex encounters (1d10):
- Jessica Bonechill. Transient snow creature in the form of an axe-wielding skeleton. Mercenary for hire, briefly. She wears a windbreaker and complains of the cold.
- Magus Glace von Zephyrous. Transient snow creature in the form of a pretentious floating wizard. Capable of casting up to fourth level spells, but will thoroughly indulge his fondness for riddles before being any help at all.
- Mister Hiphup. Transient snow creature in the form of a snowman. Hiking through the snow, eager to explore this new world he has found himself in, unaware he will live only a few more hours
- Megafrosty. Transient snow creature in the form of a gigantic three-headed snowman. Sings in a robotic voice. Has false memories of having lived thirty centuries. Dislikes solemnity and may attack the maudlin.
- Ia Snowhorn. Transient snow creature in the form of a fearsome ice centaur. He is struggling to traverse the snow on icicle legs which sink knee-deep with every stride.
- Kel Brittlegrasp. A young wandering robling, curious about foreigners.
- A small team of gnomes wearing piping hot steamsuits for warmth. They are crossing the snow on coal-burning sledges on a long journey to the big city. All of them are accomplished builders and interior designers, absolutely desperate for work (perhaps at a place like this).
- Three roblings (Bok, Twik, and Winston) armed with spears and big empty sacks, stalking a small herd of reindeer across the snow.
- A small herd of reindeer.
- Snid Kipper from the W.A.I., looking for a bit of solitude to practise the bagpipes. He keeps bumping into slightly simple-minded transient snow creatures and is finding it hard to shake them.
Rumours about this hex (1d8):
- There's a whole town of grinning demons out beyond the steppe, dark green like the algae-slick walls of an old well. They live to steal.
- A privately-funded research group has sent an expedition armed with gingerbread technology after something valuable out in the deep snowfields.
- There's a place where the snow gets up and walks around, asking confused questions.
- There was a string of odd thefts a couple of decades ago. Mrs Clause's rocking chair. The key to the city of Sniffleheim. The Tongs of the Heat Miser. Things that have never been fenced.
- Some strange naive chap walked down from the hills. He was white as snow and dressed in strange baubles. He got drunk enough at the public house to cause problems, and couldn't pay his tab. When they opened up the gaol cell the next day there was nothing left of him but a puddle.
- The Red Lord has been furious about a break-in which he was never able to avenge. He's put a big bounty on the head of something called a 'robling'.
- If you find a place where odd folk are birthed from the snow itself, the flowering lichen there should be cut under a full moon, dried, powdered, and burned as incense. You'll have oracular visions.
- Up beyond the snowline there's an orc spawning pit that went wrong and all the orcs there are obsessed with theft.
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.
The illustrations incorporated here are by Alderdoodle (alderdoodle.co.uk), Joe-Austin Flynn (www.patreon.com/c/u95234086/), Evlyn Moreau (www.patreon.com/c/evlynmoreau/), Steven Colling (https://stevencolling.itch.io/), and Jeffrey Koch (https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/26533/Jeff-Koch-Stock-Art). Used with permission.
%20BW%20line,%20scene%20%20'Arabian%20nights'.jpg "A monkey writes on a scroll. Image by John Batten.")
