Santa stole into the room, she tapped the temple of her glass, which then showed the status of the occupant, "Jimmy, 8, Nice." Jimmy didn't stir in his slumbers, she reached into her sack, pulled out the appropriate present, placed it in the stocking, and left as silently as she'd arrived.

The scene was replicated in countless home simultaneously, in another, "Timmy, 9, Nice," lay silently, but Santa felt herself changing. Her curves became more generous, more motherly. Timmy was awake, but pretending to be asleep. All he'd see was his mother, disguised as Santa, leaving his present. Santa sighed, another kid's illusions shattered, he'd no longer believe in her, so she'd no longer visit him. Always a sad moment to her, which happened far too frequently.

Later, "Brett, 8, Nice," stirred, again she felt herself changing. But this wasn't right. Her hips narrowed, her waist contracted as well, her chest expanded to 32 wow! Blond ringlets fell down about her shoulders; she swore she could feel her eyes turn green. Always disturbing when her eyes changed color like that. If this was his image of his mother, something was wrong.

Brett's eyes flew open as a shaft of moonlight from a skylight struck her. "Santa?"

That didn't sound like an 8 year old's voice. She looked across at Brett, the reflected moonlight was enough for her eyes, especially green eyes. He didn't look 8 either. In fact, he looked distinctly tasty. She licked her lips; his lust filled gaze was getting to her. "You don't look 8 years old."

"I'm not. I haven't believed in you since I was 8 years old, ten years ago, when I saw it was just Mom with the presents."

"You're not Brett either, are you?"

"No I'm Theo."

Something was wonky here, something was wrong in the database, she was in the wrong house, with the wrong boy. She should have been worried, she should have checked in with mission control to fix the problems, but she was being drawn towards the horny 18 year old instead. The neckline on her red bodice was plunging, the white fur trim receding to reveal more of her bosom. The hem of her red skirt was rising, the fur trim was already above her knees.

Still in the moonlight, she wiggled her newly enlarged bosom at him. His eyes widened. She could see the tent he was making under the covers, she stepped forward and flung those covers off him and his bed. Yes, he was very tasty. She knelt at his bedside and took him into her mouth. He tasted sweet, virginal. She'd bet he was a virgin. The urgency with which his hips were twitching also reinforced that feeling. As did his coming in his mouth the next second, she swallowed all that he had to give him, and then some.

She let him lie there to recover. She turned on the bedside light and waited for his eyes to focus. Theo was having difficulty with that part, he felt like nothing more than going back to sleep and continuing this great dream. He really wasn't sure what was dream, and what was reality.

However, that weird naked chick/Santa started peeling off her red, fur trimmed, mini-dress. Even though she was the image of his ideal girl, he was still convinced she was Santa, even as she stood before him naked and juggling her boobs. He felt himself getting hard again, so soon.

Santa stood before Theo, and admired his growing hard on. She just loved 18 year olds, she could come have seconds so soon. Now which way would he like this best, she had so many possibilities, but he'd never imagined most of them. Maybe doggy style, but no he was a simple missionary type boy.

She straddled him and knelt over him, feeding him her boobs. He hungrily sucked them in, and she felt the energy flow through her nipple. She reached down, hugged him, then expertly flipped both of them over so she was on her back and he was on top of her. She even managed to get his hard on correctly positioned so he found himself buried in her pussy. Even the inexperienced Theo knew what to do now, he started thrusting his hips. This is what he'd imagined for so long; this was the best Christmas ever.

Santa lay back and felt the sexual energy flow through his hard on, and into her. So sweet, she loved it. She could feel his energy waning; he was desperately seeking his climax. He strained as hard as he could to get there, and he did. She felt the last of his energy flow into her, along with his come. Then, he collapsed on top of her, and snore escaped his lips. She smiled, extricated herself from underneath of him, pulled the covers back over him and went on her way.

—

Across the timezone, Santa started discovering more errors in the database, in a hundred homes she grew concerned, in 99 of them she got distracted by the gaze of the errant boy. In that one hundredth home, "Santa?"

She was startled as "Lucas, 7, Nice," asked the question. She was startled as she hadn't felt anyone looking at her, she was still just her regular self. Again, he didn't look 7, most definitely not. He might have been tasty if he'd shown any lust, but he just stared at her, as surprised as she was.

Again, "You don't look 7."

"Nope, I'm 26."

"And you're not Lucas?"

"No, I'm Alfie."

She was distinctly unnerved by the totally non sexual way he was looking at her. That had never happened before, not with a grown up boy. She was lost, she didn't know what to do. He asked, "Could I interview you?"

"What?"

"Could I get an interview with you, I'm a journalist, imagine what a scoop interviewing Santa would be."

"Urr, OK," she said uncertainly. It wasn't lust, but it was interest; it drew her to him. She sat at his bedside, and fiddled nervously with her glass as he looked at his phone.

He set the phone down on his bedside, it was still glowing, providing a ghostly glowing light. That further added to his feeling of being in a dream, but he focussed on his job. "I'm recording, the conversation, is that OK?" He knew he needed consent to record a conversation, it was safest to get that on the recording itself.

"Yeah, sure." She still didn't know what to make of the situation, but she was her usual agreeable self when there was a man around.

Alfie's mind was racing, what do you ask Santa? He tried to keep his cool professional facade covering his inner turmoil. He decided to start with the obvious question. "You don't seem like the Santa I grew up with." His mental image of Santa was of a jolly middle aged fat man, not a svelte young woman. Her lack of a bushy white beard was also disconcerting, but suited her being a svelte young woman. Really given she was nothing like his Santa archetype, he wondered why he was so convinced she was Santa, he saved that last question, it might put her on the defensive, start with an open question, get them talking.

Her response was illuminating, and confusing all at once. "I'm not, I've only been doing this job for ten years."

She didn't expand on that so he sought clarification and asked, "I never thought being Santa was a job to do."

"OK, not a typical job, more of a role." She paused, considered his confusion, then asked, "You do know that Santa is one of the incarnations of immortality, don't you?"

"The what?"

He had no reference to understand that statement, clearly he didn't, so she explained, "The 'incarnations of immortality.' They fill important archetypes in the world, like 'Good,' 'Evil,' 'Death,' 'Nature,' and 'Fate.' I thought everyone knew about them, especially since what's his name wrote his exposé on them."

"Urm, just a second." Alfie picked up his phone and searched for 'incarnations of immortality:'


Incarnations of Immortality
Book series

Incarnations of Immortality is the name of an eight-book fantasy series by Piers Anthony. The first seven books each focus on one of seven supernatural "offices" in a fictional reality and history …


He showed her the phone, then switched back to the voice recorder.

"Oh," was all she said, but tapped the temple of her glass, and read the status. "I don't seem to be in the universe I expected to be in. Something's been wonky in the database all evening … Yeah, in this universe it's all considered folklore and fiction." She paused and again tapped her temple, quickly read the article about the books. "Yeah, in this universe he wrote it as fiction, and the idiot managed to leave Santa out as one of the incarnations. Now, he needs more money and has the cheek to make 'Night' an incarnation, and still no Santa."

She looked at Alfie, saw he was lost by her rant, so she asked, "You've never read the books have you?"

"No."

"Well, in simple terms the archetypes, including Santa, are 'offices' as that article puts it, people manage to end up filling the role and doing the job. Usually there's a qualification for assuming the role, like you have to kill death, who's invulnerable, to become death."

"With Santa, you have to out-jolly him, him who's the archetype of jolly. I accidentally managed to fuck him to death, he wasn't jolly anymore after that, and I became Santa."

Alfie didn't know what to make of that, he was trying to come up with a question, but couldn't even manage a "How?" or a "Why?" He just stared blankly at Santa.

Taking his incomprehension for accusation, she was defensive, "Yeah, it was an accident; I don't fuck people to death, not anymore. These days, we succubi have an environmental conscience, killing our prey would be wasteful. If we only fuck them to insensibility, so we can feed off them again later. And it avoids awkward questions from nosy cops."

Alfie was still lost, he understood almost all of the words she used, but what she said made no sense. There was the one word he didn't understand, so he questioned that, "Succubi?"

"You don't know what a succubus is?" He shook his head. 'Figures,' she thought, everything else is mythology here, so why not succubi. "We're demons who feed off sexual energy. We change to be most attractive to our, err, client, then seduce them, and feed off the sexual energy generated." She was pretty sure Alfie wouldn't like being referred to as 'prey,' so used 'client' instead. "In the old days, it was traditional to feed until the client was dead, but since the third conclave of the arcanorum, we don't do that anymore. Well, not deliberately, but accidents still do happen."

"But anyway, I accidentally became Santa. The old Santa had been doing it since 1843, so he had some old fashioned notions. Would you believe he based himself out of the North Pole? That's a nightmare for logistics, UPS won't even deliver to the North Pole. You know, there's not even land at the North Pole, just drifting sea ice, it's a stupid place to setup an operation like this, so I relocated to Silicon Valley."

"I've modernized the operations, you wouldn't believe how easy it is to find tech workers in Silicon Valley, a lot of them are still virgins, and believe in Santa, even after you fuck them. So I've got this nice little front company going, 'Santa Incorporated,' on the North Bayshore, and life is good. That's Santa as in 'Systems Anywhere, Network Traffic Analysis.' We do network security as the front."

The interview seemed to be back on track now, he thought it was making some sense. If he thought about it too long, he wasn't sure about the sense part though, so he pushed on with the interview. "How do you deliver to all the children in the world in one night?"

"Well, it's not all the world's children, only those that believe. There are large swaths of the world without Christmas, how sad is that? Then, children stop believing after a while, it doesn't help if Mom and Dad don't believe, and refuse to keep up the fiction. So generally, somewhere around seven or nine, they stop believing and disappear from the database."

"That old guy used to have a long paper scroll with his database, and he'd have to check it twice manually. I've got two independent transaction processing systems, that were designed by engineers who used to work on Amazon's systems. I tell you, if Bezos ever finds me, it won't be pretty after I keep poaching his best TPS engineers. Anyway, those two independent systems constantly crosscheck each other. It automatically sorts into naughty and nice, and trims those who stop believing."

"I've got a nifty parallel route management system, so I can get to all the houses in the time allotted. That old guy was so haphazard about it, even NORAD could track him. I put up a dummy delivery system to keep NORAD happy now, and I go on my way. Santa's reality is polyphasic, so he can be just about everywhere at once. I'm really not sure how many of there are of me currently delivering presents. I follow Christmas Eve, or the small hours of the morning around the world, depending on local traditions, so the West Coast here is my last big push. After that, there's not a lot in the Pacific, except Christmas island, and Hawaii and Alaska."

"I hope I'm slated for Hawaii, not Alaska this year, I froze my tuckus off last year in Nome. Though, once it's all over all those polyphase me's all get together and be singular again. It gives me such a headache, suddenly having all those memories in one place. I make sure to have the prettiest of my staff on hand, there's nothing like an orgy to clear up a polyphasic headache."

She paused, she thought she'd covered most of the salient points of being Santa. Alfie was staring at her, trying to process the information. A nagging question came to her, "Say, why are you not attracted to me?" That was novel, she'd never met a man who wasn't attracted to her, even the gay ones, she'd turn into a man for them (she hated that).

"I'm asexual," was Alfie's simple reply. With that Santa disappeared. Nonplussed by her arrival and her disappearance, he looked at his phone, and checked the recording was useful.

Back on her "sleigh," Santa breathed a sigh of relief. Asexuals were a particular hazard to succubi, they didn't fall under their spell and were dangerous. She'd had friends who'd came off badly, or even dead with an encounter with an asexual. She offered a prayer to her patron for delivering her from that danger. The "sleigh" was not really a sleigh, it just looked like that. The appearance was caused by a chameleon glamor, and various other magics enabled the sleigh to function (such as carrying an infeasible number of presents, and moving at impossible speeds).

She checked in with mission control, to advise them of the glitch, then carried on on her route, while she mused on that encounter with the old Santa which had elevated her to be Santa.

—

Ten years ago, on Christmas eve. She was looking forward to her Christmas meal, in her happy hunting ground of Silicon Valley. She'd found Ken, a 26 year old Software Engineer. He was still a virgin, her favorite prey, they tasted so sweet to her. Ken obviously still believed in Santa, and probably thought that she was his Christmas present. It was just past midnight, in his bed, he was fucked into insensibility, drained of most of his energy. She was just climbing off him and thinking of her post-prandial activities, when Santa walked in.

"Santa!" She exclaimed surprised.

"Err, … Ken?" He'd glanced at a long scroll he held to find his name.

She felt herself changing, becoming more matronly. Santa peered over the top of his glasses, "Mrs Claus?" Obviously, Santa's ideal woman was Mrs Claus, but who the hell calls their wife "Mrs whatever."

She felt a wave of lust wash over her, as Santa examined the scene. Seeing his wife climbing off the 26 year old stud, obviously well fucked. 'Santa! No!' She thought to herself, Santa did not have cuckold fantasies, that wasn't right. But he did, his lustful stare, the swelling in his pants confirmed that.

Then the waves of lust she felt coming off him drove her hunger. Such a deep lust drove her into a frenzy. She stood up and grabbed the back of Santa's head, just as he was dropping to his knees. She pulled his head into her sloppy, and by now, very hairy, honeypot, where he greedily lapped up the evidence of Ken's coupling.

A bolt of sexual energy, such as she'd never felt before or since shot up through her crotch. She felt alive like she never had. Her arms spasmodically drew his head harder into her. Santa redoubled his efforts to please her. Now, it should be noted that Succubi feed on sexual energy from men, for them this is not a sexual encounter, but a meal. At that very second, she was not too clear about that distinction. The bolts of sexual energy coming off Santa were so strong, she felt they were almost sexual to her.

She was losing her balance, her knees were giving way. She moved forward, and sank to her knees, forcing Santa onto his back. Her legs crossed behind his head, further trapping his head. She could feel the energy coming from Santa reaching a climax, and his hips spasmodically thrust as he did reach a messy climax in his pants. Then there was nothing. There was no more energy coming from Santa. She wasn't sure if she killed him by taking all his energy, or all his air. Whatever, he was now dead.

She looked down at the lifeless body of Santa below her, no longer the jolly guy. She felt like she never had before, she was starting to realize an incarnation had much more life energy than a regular mortal, and now she had all that energy. She'd never felt more alive. Then, she realized she was becoming Santa, and she had work to do. She only had the West Coast and the Pacific to finish off as the new Santa, that was bad enough. She had 12 days to work out his system before the Orthodox Christmas, then she spent the next year revamping the system to her satisfaction.

—

Four hours later, Christmas started fading from the globe, and she was done with her deliveries. There were just a few ships in that last time zone. She headed back to Silicon Valley to reintegrate her multifarious bodies into a singular whole. She reserved one of herself, that one who'd encountered Alfie, to stay unintegrated and investigate the glitches in the database. That one of her was both relieved, she wouldn't suffer the polyphasic headache, but also she would miss the orgy. That really was the best meal of the year.

She, as in that one of herself, called a conclave with her security experts, some of them even didn't seem put out to be missing the orgy. Those ones were genuinely excited by the night's developments. They reported that there had been an intrusion from the internet. She saw why they were excited, that should not be possible. Not only was the facility guarded by the best firewall in existence, it was also magically warded which sent malicious traffic straight to the bit bucket. To any malicious actor in the world, they would appear to be off the net. The only echo of their existence a destination unreachable packet.

The intruder had changed 100 records in the database. They had changed exactly 100 records, which seemed very suspicious, and the security team was currently looking for any less obvious intrusion as the 100 records seemed like a smokescreen to cover other tracks. Not only had the intruder managed to crack the system with being noticed. They'd resurrected records from the backup from ten years previously, and they'd inserted those records into the database overwriting actual records. They'd also managed to corrupt both independent copies of the database at once, so the change had not been flagged. They were obviously dealing with a very skilled cracker.

That was confirmed when he proved almost impossible to trace. They'd only managed to crack the cracker's trail by bringing out the big guns. They had to use their custom version of NMAP, they had to invoke it with the true seeing option, a difficult, dangerous, and expensive procedure, they're prefer to not have to use. The smell of saffron was still hanging in the air. That revealed the intrusion originated from Russia, an interesting development as it wasn't Christmas in Russia until January 7th.

She needed to get to Russia, but first she was starving. She'd been working for 30 hours straight, and she was missing out on the Christmas meal/orgy. She had a quick snack before she left, quickies with two of the network engineers who were feeling most left out of the orgy. Feeling renewed and energized, she took to the sleigh and soon she was on the outskirts of Moscow.

She landed on the roof of the house where the intrusions were originating from. First problem, the house was sealed; it was Santa-proof. Santa needed an opening, like a chimney, or a keyhole to enter a building in his normal manner, the house had none such. Fortunately, that wasn't a problem for her, as a demon she could gate into anywhere she wanted, and with that she was inside the house.

She was in an office, and in front of her was guy working away on his computer. She tapped her glass, there was no response, 'offline.' Looking around she saw copper mesh stapled to the walls. The guy was obviously totally paranoid, and built himself a Faraday cage to isolate himself from the outside world. That was also no problem for her, she opened a gate back to mission control, just big enough for a WiFi signal to get through to her.

Back online, she streamed video from her glass back to mission control, and looked over the guy's shoulder. While what was on screen was being analyzed, she felt herself changing. She was growing taller, and slightly chubby, her hair grew thick, dark, and exquisitely coiffured, while her skin grew pale. Her shoes grew into thigh-length boots, with heels, and her skirt shrank to reveal the tops of the boots.

Leaning over his shoulder, she asked, "So what are you doing?" In Russian, in a sexy low voice with that slight American accent that always drove Russian men wild. (Something like, "так чем ты занимаешься.")

He looked up startled, but smiled as she took to sitting on his lap and held him around the neck. "Snegurochka?" he asked.

One of the (many) confusing things about being Santa she found was how she was identified differently, in different parts around the world. The Santa archetype she was normally, was the typical American Santa, the most dominant in the world's psyche. However, Russians had both St Nicholas, and Grandfather Frost. And Grandfather Frost was accompanied by his granddaughter the snow maiden, "Snegurochka." In her present form, she did indeed look much more like the snow maiden than either of Grandfather Frost or St Nicholas, so she went with that, even if it were a Soviet secular construct she wasn't too fond of.

She nodded her head, then got to the heart of the matter (still in Russian of course). "You got my attention, why did you break into my systems?"

"I'm sorry Snegurochka, I thought you were the Yankee 'Santa,' a mockery of the glorious St Nicholas, the patron of our county. I was laying a trap for you. If I were to become Santa, I could remake Christmas in it's true image."

'Oh, great!' She though, a religious fanatic, but that explained some things about the situation.

She continued the questions, "However did you find me, and how did you break into the system?" That was something they really needed to know, what vulnerabilities he'd exploited, the security team currently had no idea how he got past the firewall and the wards.

He explained, "I was routinely scanning your address space, when I got strange responses from your firewall. The returned packets had the evil bit set in my headers. I never set that bit. I later found your 3514 filter would set that bit, so your firewall could reject them."

She'd drained the life energy from enough network engineers that she knew what he was talking about. You always learned something from your prey when you drained them. The magical ward worked on the principle of detecting the intent of the sender, if the sender was malicious, it would set the "evil" bit as specified by the RFC-3514 standard. The firewall knew to reject any packet with that bit set. When sending the destination unreachable message, as it should, the firewall included a copy of the header as it had seen it, including the evil bit, which was different from how it had been sent. It was a subtle flaw in the design, something they'd have to work on there.

He continued, "I investigated the strange echoes, and found I could get into your system. If I was merely curious, your 3414 filter did not flag my traffic." Again, he'd found a vulnerability in the system, if the attacker was not malicious, but just acting out of curiosity, the traffic did not get flagged. That was going to be a more difficult vulnerability to patch.

And then, the final part of the puzzle fell into place as he said, "When I discovered you were 'Santa,' I was determined to bring you down, and your 3514 filter became capricious. Sometimes it would let me in, sometimes it would block me. The more righteous was my cause, the easier it was to get in." And an even more difficult to patch vulnerability, it depended on the mindset of the attacker, if they were convinced of the righteousness of their cause, they might not get flagged. She was going to have to consult meta-physicians, theologians, and philosophers about that one, as well as software engineers.

He was obviously a very dangerous enemy, she could continue her seduction now, that would be easy. He would no longer be a problem if she did not stop before his death, or she could use his talents. It would be a great shame to waste his talents, and they needed to know what prosaic vulnerabilities he used to get past the less meta-physical parts of the firewall.

She snuggled up to him, and asked, "How would you like to come work for me? I have use of your talents." She kissed him tenderly on the forehead.

He was deep under her spell, his answer was just what she wanted, "For you, Snegurochka, anything."

The crisis seemed to be averted, so she led him back through the gate, which she expanded, back to Santa Incorporated. There he could be thoroughly debriefed, but not before she had her fill of him. After missing out on Christmas dinner, she was not so gentle with him.

 

VERY INTERESTING!

 

Well that was a twist I didn't expect! A Succubus in Santa's clothing along with a whole host of cyber espionage! You clearly did a lot of well thought out thinking to generate this highly sexual piece. Thanks for your excellent contribution to the competition!

Hush....an alias

 

Thanks @pars001 and @Hush

@pars001 I hope that's a good "interesting".

@Hush more loquacious than some of your reviews of my work.

 

Bumping the entries to make them more visible to the casual browser. Come on, people! Read!

 

The take of a female Santa peaked my interest in this story. Good job Thanks for your submission.

 

Hmm.

I knew someone would go WAY outside tradition with this thing, and you certainly did. Interesting premise and sex romp. This was an odd story, not in a bad way at all, but I couldn't quite get into the main character. Maybe it's just my pre-conceived notions of a Christmas tale getting in the way.

 

Thanks @Redbeard1031 and @wantsomefun

She's doing her best to conform to pre-conceived notions of what Santa is. That's what the incarnations do.

If this story is a notional problem for you, it's probably best I didn't use my other idea. That had not a lot to do with Christmas at all. The theme is Santa, not Christmas.

 

Review will be coming soon. Till then...

 

I was excited to read a story about a female Santa. It had good writing, but honestly, the story did nothing for me. Sorry.

 

12-hours left to vote countdown!

Hush....an alias

 

Sorry it didn't work for you @HisBabyGirl

 

It was a very good story not my favorite genre...but good all the same. Very descriptive I was able to paint a nice picture of what was happening in my minds eye. I loved the idea of the female Santa...and how she came about! Thank you for sharing your creativity!

 

Thank you @justanotherslut , I'm glad you liked it.

 

I got really nervous at the beginning when I did not know where you were going... I should have known you were not going to go crazy with the 7 and 8 year olds. Hahaha.

This could have used a final proof read. (I will include a couple of examples only for an example)

Great story that met the theme. There was a lot going on here, but you brought it all together.

It was a good read.

 

I loved this! Great work, imaginative and sexy.

Personally I didn't need quite so much geek-speak towards the end, all those hacking details were a tad unnecessary but that didn't spoil my enjoyment of a brilliantly thought out tale.

A few grammatical mistakes which could have been solved by better proof-reading perhaps but that is a minor niggle. Overall this was a fantastic story.

 

Thanks @UncleB71 and @JayneyRedd

Now the results are out, I can start with the excuses. Not that I want to excuse myself, just explain. As I mentioned I had problems getting to writing this one, real life intervened. I started it and got the first scene written, and the second scene in my head. It wasn't until the day before the writing period closed that I managed to get back to writing, and I wrote out the second scene. Then I had to come up with a final scene in a one day that I hadn't even planned out yet, and I wasn't happy with it, but I had to submit anyway.

It also didn't leave any time for proof reading, so that is lacking, not aided by my usual proofreader being at death's door in the hospital (seriously, but she's getting better). So definitely not my finest technical work.

As for the last scene, I entirely agree with @JayneyRedd to much technicalities, for this story anyway. I think the final scene is totally hilarious, but not right for this story. It could have been a great addition to a different story. If I'd had some time (and a proof reader) I could probably have fixed that, though at this moment I have no idea how. The story always had the intrusion from Russia, but I hadn't planned on how it would play out.

I should probably have played more with the St Nicholas/Grandfather Frost dichotomy, but I didn't know any of that until the last day and I was up against the deadline. I also needed a bit about Sinterklaus and how that tradition gives presents on St Nicholas day (December 6th) instead.

 

Now that I've said what the story wasn't, I usually post something to say what the story was.

7 or 8 is a bit young even for me, but the problem of staying within the rules shaped a large part of the story. I might have gone for the succubus rewarding "nice" horny teens, but that wouldn't fly within the rules. So I had to steer her towards 18 year olds and older, which is where the hack/crack came in. That also gave me the opportunity to put in the middle interview scene, which told a lot of the story.

It was only later when writing that middle scene I thought about adults who still believed in Santa. So that's a bit of a disconnect I should have smoothed over.

My first though was to make Santa succubus, I haven't made much of the succubi stories recently, but they're at the back of my mind. I don't know why I thought that, but when the rules stated Santa could be any gender or species, it seemed obvious. The next question is why is Santa a succubus, not the most obvious thing. That's when the incarnations of immortality came in. I liked the Piers Anthony books, or at least I liked the concept, I'm not totally convinced of his execution. So I borrowed that background. I did have to put in some heavy exposition in the middle to incorporate that. Again, with more time I might have smoothed that out some.

The third scene (the Russian scene), had to be there to explain the hack. That was where I never planned very well. I had some vague ideas about St Nicholas, I was thinking he was Russian. I was mistaken, he was Greek, but is the patron saint of Russia. That did bring in some of how the incarnation has to conform to local customs around the world, so it wasn't Christmas there yet. That's when I came across Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden. She really needed to say more about them.

As I said, the technical details are totally hilarious, but probably not appropriate for this story. RFC-3514 is a real thing, but if you look at it, you should note the date it was published, and that it says "It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind." I really need to revisit the intersection of technology and magic like this, in a more appropriate setting.