There's been a bunch of midnight robberies in the PC's home turf lately. The targets have been large department and toy stores: the thieves have been ignoring jewelry and furs and gone right for the children's section. Any guards around have been found unconscious, but without a mark on them: that, coupled with the increased disturbance lately, should be enough to make people suspicious of celestial interference. However, a quick check shows that the stolen goods haven't been appearing locally, so it's a bit of a mystery about what precisely is happening to the stuff.

Examination of the crime scene (or interviewing the affected guards) suggests that, whoever's behind this, they're pretty careful to leave behind few clues: about the only thing that can be gleaned is that there seems to be no more than two robbers. Two very good robbers, who can apparently waltz through security systems as if they weren't there: the conclusion is obvious, but just what would Servitors of Theft (or the Wind) want with toys?

It's a long story. You see, once there was a major Faerie noble called Gwydion, who got stuck serving Hell for a while as part of the deal that keeps his pantheon from being eliminated. While on earth, he did what every Faerie noble tourist does: he looked through modern artistic conceptions of his kind, and vomited. Nybbas likes to let his guest workers see what the alternatives are; it keeps them motivated. However, Gwydion came away with a slightly different notion. He was an elf: this Santa fellow had plenty of elves running around; kids believed in those elves almost as much as they did in Santa. There's some Essence there, surely.

Unfortunately, kids are pragmatic little buggers: if you want to manifest as one of Santa's busy workers, eventually you had better have a toy or two to give away. Sure, Gwydion could make illusions, but that's only good in the short term. He needs the real thing if he wants to keep the tykes' attention. Needless to say, making toys was right out; why, that would be work. No Faerie noble worth his or her salt would ever dream of working.

However, they can dream of stealing quite handily. Enter Jasmine, Servitor of Theft: her Band will depend on the Brightness of the campaign. Bright campaigns will have her a Balseraph who's convinced herself that she's trying to encourage kids to obsess over things, when what she's really doing is getting up the nerve to go for Redemption. In neutral campaigns, she's an Impudite getting a bit of Essence here, a bit there, usually through belief via Gwydion (but filling up her tanks whenever she can). In darker campaigns, she's a Lilim racking up the Geas with an eye to the future. All three versions are excellent thieves.

The unlikely pair have worked out a pretty straightforward methodology: once or twice a week they take a van to an appropriate store, load up, drive the van to a completely different location, then find the poorest kids they can find and give them stuff. Gwydion uses his alternate vessel to pretend to be Santa's special helper (using the occasional Song use to emphasize that he isn't just a midget, or something) who just couldn't help giving Bobby or Sue or the orphanage their toys early, just because they've been extra good this year. Jasmine acts as backup (though why varies from incarnation to incarnation) while also using her own Songs to make sure that no adults catch on. They've been raking in the belief hand over fist with this one.

It shouldn't take too long for the PCs to work this one out (if nothing else, Nicolas, Malakite Friend of Infants and buddy to ethereal Santae everywhere, will hear about this and give a good lead or two), but the problem lies in what to do next. After all, nobody's gotten hurt, right? Except for the department stores, but they're insured: besides, the markup on toys really is obscene these days. Mixed parties will undoubtedly have Superiors who will want them to collect all the stolen goods and return them … and Superiors who will want to know why the PCs didn't come up with this idea first. The arguments over situational ethics should be quite amusing.

Even if all of your PCs happen to work for humorless toads, that won't help matters. You may be the biggest, toughest Malakim in creation, but that won't do you a bit of good when you have to take away the only doll that some little girl is ever going to have in her life. Go ahead. The girl can't hope to match your strength. She'll just watch you with quivering lips and big eyes as you jam her special toy from Santa into that garbage bag… filled with all the other special toys you've collected. That's all she can do. Except cry, of course.

Yeah, Merry Christmas to you too, pal.