That Old Silk Hat

And now, a bit of Christmas magick: an artifact for Unknown Armies, third edition.  Enjoy!

That Old Silk Hat

Power: Significant

Description: That Old Silk Hat is usually treated as a joke or urban legend (it seems soundly ludicrous to think the holiday song "Frosty the Snowman" holds mystical significance), but some checkers in the occult underground claim it's an actual thing.
     That Old Silk Hat appears as an old, unassuming, and somewhat battered top hat, made of cheap felt.  Any story depicting it usually indicates it's found in the garbage or has been otherwise abandoned — it usually smells like refuse, and is occasionally described as being crusted with blood.  The stories claim That Old Silk Hat rarely stays in one place for long, as misfortune tends to befall those who use it.  It won't be long before it shows up in some dumpster, or abandoned basement, or forgotten corner of someone's garage...
     Chargers in the know claim there are many such hats, each with a limited number of uses.  In that case, the magick is not in the hat, but in the ritual that empowers them.  The chargers who tell such tales claim a ritual to empower That Old Silk Hat is a significant one, and requires the ritualist to murder someone and entomb them in a snow effigy.  The hat placed atop the snow effigy is then empowered as That Old Silk Hat.
     (Such a ritual would probably take 2 significant charges, and would empower the hat for a number of uses equal to the sum of the dice.)

Effect: When That Old Silk Hat is placed on a mound of snow that has been sculpted to resemble a human shape (typically at least given a face and rudimentary limbs, although most people who receive That Old Silk Hat are under explicit instructions to make the snowman "as lifelike as possible;" some of them are quite elaborate), the hat summons the nearest demon to animate the snowman.
     While demons are always hungry for experiences on this side of the Veil, That Old Silk Hat does nothing to make the snowman stronger, or grant it significant structural activity.  As such, snow golems animated by the hat are pretty fragile, and will still melt if the ambient temperature gets too far above freezing.
     As a result, demons are usually pretty annoyed with being trapped in a snow-body.
     Still, it beats being on the other side of the Veil.  Clever (and stupid) checkers can use this to communicate with demons, and particularly smart ones use this as a negotiation tactic; after all, a summoned demon probably needs the occultist to enact any particular schemes it has in mind, so it allows a would-be demonologist to negotiate from a position of strength.
     While in a snow body, a demon's wound threshold is only equal to 20% of its Urge (round down), and it only deals an amount of damage equal to the tens place of the roll when making hand-to-hand attacks.  When a snowbound demon makes a melee attack, it takes the same damage itself as it shakes its snow body apart.  A snow-body only takes hand-to-hand damage from guns, although any explosions or sufficiently large trauma will probably deal full damage.  (When in doubt, the snowman is fragile and probably just falls apart.)  If you're tracking movement, snow-bodies can typically only move at half-speed (check out "Running Around" on page 63 of Book One: Play), and take 1d10 wounds if they move at full speed.  Likewise, if it's too warm outside, the demon can take anywhere from 1d10 wounds per hour to 1d10 wounds per minute.  (Although the degradation of a snow-body in high temperatures is ultimately up to the discretion of the GM.)
     A would-be snow-sculptor can potentially heal a snow body by re-packing the snow, restoring a demon's full wound threshold with a few minutes' work.
     A demon is released when its snow-body is destroyed or when the hat is removed.  Sensation-junkies they are, however, no demon will willingly remove its own hat.  (If, as some stories say, That Old Silk Hat has limited uses, any given found hat probably has 1d10 uses.  A single "use" ends when the demon is banished; there is otherwise no time limit.)
     At the GM's discretion, a particularly skilled snow-sculptor might be able to make a sturdier-than-normal body.  If a character has an Identity uniquely suited to building a particularly-sturdy snowman, then the snow-body has a wound threshold equal to the character's roll or 20% of the demon's Urge, whichever is higher.  Likewise, such a snow golem might deal additional damage on a successful Struggle roll, such as dealing half standard hand-to-hand damage, whole damage, or even weapon damage (for a sculptor adding sticks and knives to the snowman's construction).  Such a snow golem might even maintain its integrity when it makes hand-to-hand attacks.
     It is exceedingly unlikely someone could make a snow sculpture sturdy enough to use a gun, but who knows?
     A character living in a cold climate or otherwise with access to a sufficiently-large, frozen place could potentially keep a single snowbound demon around for a long time, if they so chose.  It's possible that a particularly demented charger has a demonic snowman familiar stashed away in an old restaurant freezer somewhere.