It’s the holiday season and it’s time to punish the naughty characters and reward the good. While the Krampus has become a known mid-winter figure in pop culture, many have forgotten The Belly-slitter: Frau Perchta. Also included: three adventure seeds.
Frau Perchta
High Concept: Enforcer of the Holiday Spirit
Trouble: Capricious and Short-Tempered (Goddess one moment and angry crone the next)
Other Aspects: Despises Dishonesty, Rewards the Hard-Working, Army of Ghosts
Like the origins of the Krampus, Frau Perchta’s backstory has been lost to time and translation. She is primarily a figure of southern Germanic and Austrian folklore and it’s likely that she once was a pagan goddess twisted and reinvented as a hag as Christianity enveloped pagan cultures.
Frau Perchta makes herself known during the twelve days before Christmas and Epiphany. She travels the land with her company of pertchten: ghosts of un-baptized souls. These souls protect her and help her punish those she deems deserving of punishment. Often she appears as a shining, moonlit beauty (her name means “the bright one”), but when angered or “disciplining” the lazy or her transgressors her form changes into that of an ugly, but powerful, crone.
Unlike Krampus or Santa Claus, Perchta is not solely focused on children. Her punishments and rewards also apply to servants of any age. Her lists of sins punished included laziness, lying, and greed. Her lightest punishment was having her pertchten beat the transgressors, but she would often punish liars by scraping their tongues with glass.
She is most focused and powerful, however, on the Twelfth Night, aka the Epiphany. She demanded that people did not work on this day, but instead feasted with friends and family. Those who did not would be held down, and she would cut open their stomachs, removing their guts and replacing them with straw and debris. In early days the feast had to specifically be the traditional meal of fish and gruel, but due to the changing of times she has made allowances for any types of feasting.
For those that are good and hard-working she will leave behind a silver coin. Typically the coin is left by the bedside or in a bucket. In the Early Middle Ages, this was equivalent to a half-day to a day’s wages, depending on the servant. As the coins she leaves behind are still from the same time period, their value is typically around $100 to $200 USD on the market today.
Powerful and immortal, Frau Perchta cannot be killed. She can, however, be harmed by weapons made from evergreen wood. If pierced or wounded she will vanish and not return to that area for twelve years. Her ghost entourage will protect her and anyone attempting to vanquish the goddess will need to deal with them, first. The ghosts, individually, are weak and can be exorcised or dispatched by cold iron.
Skills
Superb: Presence
Great: Rapport, Will
Good: Notice, Provoke, Resources
Powers & Stunts
Shapeshifting: From impossibly beautiful goddess, to fear-inducing crone
Supernatural Speed: Effortless movement and can be faster than the eye
Soulgaze: Can look at a person and know if they could be considered lazy, a liar, or greedy
Physical Immunity: Impervious to harm
Physical Immunity Catch: Except by weapons made of evergreen wood
Stress Tracks
Physical 0000
Mental 00000
Frau Perchta Adventure Seeds
The Belly-slitter
It’s Christmas Day and sixteen people have appeared in the morgue all with the same cause of death. Their bodies beaten, their stomachs split and filled with trash. All sixteen people appear to be unrelated and from different walks of life. Each night, the death toll continues. The player characters must discover the lore of Perchta and identify her weakness before January 5th or she will vanish until the next year—where she will resume her bloody wandering.
Twelve Years Ago
Normally Perchta does not seek any sort of revenge if harmed or vanquished; it’s not her way. The goddess will make an exception, however, for hunter Charles “Chuck” Weston. Twelve years ago the supernatural hunter dispatched Perchta in Minnetonka Beach, Minnesota. He’s lived there since, and has become a lazy drunk who hasn’t hunted or helped the community for the past six years. As the holidays approach, the hunter is in a scramble. He’s lost track of time and knows he could not put up a fight against the hag. And that’s where the player characters come in. He’ll supply the lore and some cash if they can help him survive an onslaught of ghosts and Frau Perchta herself for twelve nights.
Double Trouble
What happens when a punishing goddess of the Twelve Nights meets a punishing god-being of Christmas? True love and a powerful alliance. Though the shared time between The Krampus‘s activities and Frau Perchta’s lasts only a night, that Christmas Eve can be mayhem for a town whose children don’t follow the desired societal norms of these ancient beings. And now, the player characters must protect the children from two powerful threats.
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