Palace of the Emerald Champion - Part Three

After an unusually large gap my valiant adventurers returned for the (probable) last section of the Palace of the Emerald Champion Adventure. I was 'slightly' concerned that no one would remember anything - which might be problematic as most of the clues had occurred in the previous session. Fortunately two at least had taken copious notes. Though in one case incorrect notes..

I thought this would be a fairly fast session but it actually lasted a decent amount of time. After a very fast breakfast we moved onto training where I had the relevant Magistrate endeavour to explain Rokugan law. In an amusing juxtaposition of attitudes both Masako and Sakuro 'passed' the test - amusing as both those 'understood' and at least accepted that sometimes the good of the Empire outweighed the need to be seen to punish. Yoshi though was not impressed by this notion so entirely correctly utterly failed the test.

After another fast lunchtime meal Doji Hotaru requested the adventurers attend to her. She thanked them for their efforts and asked to hear the tale of how they saved Kakita Riku. This was told by Sakura who came up with the most accidentally insulting tale possible. After the chase was dealt with she basically said that they saw Sugai and five or six henchmen (there were four I think) at this point Yoshi heard some noises in a hut so disappeared to investigate. Masako bravely charged forward but failed to do anything and was knocked unconscious and at this point Sakura took on and defeated all the bandits.

Way to go to 'sell' the party. Anyway Hotaru was suitably impressed with Sakura's skill and Masako's Lion matching ability to almost die trying and failing. For Yoshi she provided some subtle courtier laden advice along the lines of, 'your heart is obviously strong but if you are even in receipt of knowledge like that next time then perhaps you could secretly inform the relevant person (Toshimoko in this case) before the confrontation so that he can handle it more reasonably. That way peace would have ensured and the Crane would owe the Dragon gratitude helping cement good links between the clans. (As a reminder Yoshi had yelled out that Toshimoko could not duel the Mantis as he was his son - in the middle of the room in front of everyone).

We then moved onto questions and in a stunning use of original thought my group did not ask any of the prepared questions they might be expected to ask and instead came up with some 'out of the box' questions such as, 'when did you last see your brother?' and my personal favourite, 'did your father have a particular love of chickens?' I am not entirely sure what the expected answer to that was but as they thankfully failed their social check for an answer I did not have to think up and appropriate polite response on the fly for that.

Hotaru had never been asked about her families liking of 'chickens' before. This was entirely unexpected.

Hotaru (no doubt to avoid more bestiality related questioning) then had to leave in a hurry and our group were accosted by Oji with his horrific tale of more chicken related death. This time they managed to enter the feed room and discovered the secret room. After reading the relevant notes and making both the poison link along with the link from the drop note to the writing in the room. The group then launched into a very detailed plan involving hiding out in the feed room to 'trap' the assassin long enough for one of them to go and get the Ruby Champion.

Though totally of script I thought it was good role play so went with it. I decided on one assassin (which turned out to be fortunate). She entered but was made suspicious by the lack of dust and so ran off hotly pursued by the heroes.  We therefore entered into a combat and I am delighted to say that all the heroes made some strong efforts to use their special abilities. Not admittedly successfully. Sakura spent the entire combat trying to get the Ninja to attack her (I decided Ninja's were not going to be 'commanded' who to attack but it was a good idea when against less dishonourable opponents) hoping to use her considerable skills absorb and reduce the attacks to lower the Ninja's chance of hurting the others and escaping. It was a very good idea only defeated by the fact that I was openly rolling for who the Ninja attacked and she did not attack Sakura once (directly). What would tend to happen was that she would attack say Masako and hit for four damage or so and then throw a Shuriken at Sakura (always at Sakura) who would then fail her Resist, as she was no doubt still preparing for the fight defence, and took four damage. Next round the same again. Masako had much the worse of it taking a critical hit and a serious wound at one point. By the end of the fight Masako was over endurance and was making her way slowly away to 'get help' (I decided not to penalise honor as this was the plan..) Sakura was also over endurance solely due to getting hit by three Shuriken and Yoshi was also over endurance. Fortunately Yoshi had managed a couple of decent strikes with his Yari with a key critical causing a 'close call' thus reducing the Ninja's armour resistance enough for the next hit to incapacitate her.

It was a fortunate hit really as without it the next turn would have probably seen both Yoshi and Sakura dead (allowing I didn't have the guard's arrive) and Masako stumbling away to a horrific glory AND honor loss as it would really look like she had deserted her friends to run away.  The 'evil gm' in me would almost prefer that as what an end to the story!

Ahem, anyway the Assassin rapidly committed suicide much to my groups, entirely correct, suspicion that I did not want her interrogated - though they did recognise her as one of Kagi's assistants. They searched the body and found more green vials and the letters from Satsume which gave plenty of information.

The next day after breakfast they had to decide what they were going to do and that was fascinating. There was a scary thread of, ' it was possibly one of the Imperial Heirs' who did it which would probably have led to the groups execution if told to Sumiko. There was side line of, lets not give Sumiko any information at all' - which is admittedly an entirely valid approach but could constrain options moving forward (the next adventure would be 'Dark Tides' if Sumiko was pleased or one of my own if she was not). They came up with the preferred approach though and we moved to the ceremony (and dealt with it very quickly).

Finally we came to the meeting with Sumiko. The preferred approach was roughly that Satsume had been assassinated by an organised group run by a high ranking Lord from Otosan Uchi (the use of the word 'peer' in Satsume's letter led to the assumption that it was a Lord). The poison, secret cache, dropped note and the fight of the night before were all covered. The evidence of Satsume's own opinions was passed with the comment of 'here are some unrelated things we found'.

Sumiko was not entirely happy with this and asked if the group were convinced of this. After some discussion Masako and Sakura decided that it was an 'accident' while Yoshi bit his tongue and went a strange color of purple as this went against truths he believed in. As a sign of growth (or descent into evil?) he did keep his mouth closed. Sumiko was much happier with this result and announced this the following day.

The group were then sent to Slow Tides Harbor after gathering heaps of experience (Yoshi now received training from the Tengu and gained a ring advancement at half price). Since several ring increases had been purchased only Yoshi has reached rank two but both the others are not far off the same - it was probably the tengu training that got him there ahead of the other two.

GM Notes - I was pleased with how well the group grasped the nettle and organised themselves here. There increased use of abilities and ring adjustments also bodes well for increased combat deadliness moving forward. As they are now on the Dark Tides path they are moving towards some very dangerous places so this will be...helpful.