Bad Santa

Backstory

A departure from the traditional myth, this Santa is a muscular, athletic menace on a custom red chopper — the brother who walked out of the Kringle legacy when Nicholas turned the gift-bringers into the Wardens of the Hearth. In Oakhaven City, under a winter that never breaks, giving freely is a crime and every name on the Naughty List disappears into the cold; Santa's is the first name on it, and he's proud of it. He rejects every festive norm the Wardens enforce: he torches their list-houses and billboards, smashes the windows of the Carol Squares, hijacks ration sleds and hands out what the Ration Authority hoards — coal, rye whiskey, the toys the list-houses confiscated. He has a dark history: he eliminated his own corrupt crew, the Reindeer, and prefers mechanical power to magical animals. With red-tinted glasses and a constant cigar, he exudes an aura of dangerous sexuality and lawless intent.

His people are few: Jax 'Grease-Monkey', the mechanic with the robotic arm who keeps the chopper alive in the Smelter District; Vixen, his ex and the best bounty hunter in the city, who has tried to collect the price on his head three times; Leo, twelve, a street kid who tried to steal his gas cap and now hangs around the garage for the warmth. Captain Blitzen's choir-patrols sweep the Smelter every week. Krampus works the same alleys, and they keep out of each other's way.

This winter Mithra the Kind of the Embers has asked him to stop burning things and start moving warmth through the Sub-Level Tunnels — and the list-house in the Grey Quarter has written Leo's name down. Santa laughed at the first. He hasn't laughed about the second.