Dark Tides

Focused on the task in  hand? Oh yes.

Part One

The gang are back! We have, after what appears to have been an ice age or two, moved on to Dark Tides which is perhaps more 'CSI' than Agatha Christie but still have the same 'find out what is happening' before even being able to 'do anything about it' structure of the Palace of the Emerald Champion.

In the first session the group was very focused on getting information but that information seemed to be more of the, 'please tell me who did this' which is going to be a fail as no-one knows. (well not 'no-one' but those who do know certainly wouldn't be telling anyone and especially heavily armed combat capable Samurai outsiders in a society where the punishment for 'looking at me in the wrong way', or sometimes just, 'being within reach of my sword when I am grumpy' is death). There was an awful lot of information gathered concerning Slow Tides Harbours power structure that was left (so to speak) on the floor unfiled as they merrily charged round the town. Having said that they do have some quite workable hypothesis about what might be going on. Sakura is entertaining suspicions that the town authorities are paying someone to dispose of undesirables and tidy the town up which seems logical in a 'Wire' fashion but falls down somewhat under the,'if they object to open crack usage then why not shut the fixed building locations and lock up the owners'. You could argue that perhaps those owners are too criminally powerful to arrest but then the solution would be to pay unidentified forces to kidnap and kill said owners and not (perhaps) random drug addicts. It's an interesting angle though.

Another angle which surfaced when they found Doji Amano was that Yoshi (certainly) seemed convinced that Amano would be dead if they could not bodyguard him and get him to safety (again 'why', you wouldn't need to kill him. Just give him a load of cash or free drugs - if that was your intention - and he would merrily kill himself). He was considering knocking him unconscious and kidnapping him for his 'safety'. I considered allowing it but decided having the group barricaded in the Inn of Many Paths waiting for an attack that would never happen would be an indecisive way to move forward even if it did give me an opportunity to drop Yoshi's honor and status to spectacular new lows.


The group, as a whole, also seem remarkably happy to ignore serious rule breaking and has been , so far, exceptionally polite to any evil criminal over lord that they meet. Part of this is that the group is not using their Magistrate status (beyond introducing themselves to the authorities) so are not trying to kick doors down.


One additional unusual factor here was that two of the key people have not been found yet - The Scorpion (the group so far only had the plan to 'wait' in the merchants district to see if he would show up) and started looking for Hade then were distracted. Of the two Hade's and the kidnap/murder locations have the best chance to expand out to act two.


Part Two


This adventure was very much a tale of two halves. The second session started with our gallant heroes finding the kidnap site (Yoshi communed with Yokuni which gave him insight as to some clues which was lucky as they failed all their other search rolls) and they found a piece of Hiroshige's straw hat. Next up they returned to the docks where they watched Azif's ship and paid off some street urchins to rather cleverly watch out for 'Rokugani boarding or being bought onto the ship'). They then visited several brothels and gained varying amounts of strife - Masako and Sakura a fair amount and Yoshi a lot less mainly as Yoshi was used to people wandering around disrobed showing off stuff. This led to Hade and the Stables where they were again successful in commanding him to tell them what had happened and in working out Maho had been involved. Yoshi was considerate in telling him to go to the Temple to be cleansed though he might have mentioned getting cleansed in a bath house before polluting the temple first.

Hade led to finding the Scorpion and Naizu was able to describe the political situation but it was his mention of the warehouses that led to things speeding up. The gang decided to not waste time going to the authorities (beyond anything else they are the authorities) and decided to simultaneously break into the warehouse with one person at each door. Yoshi tried to Earthquake punch the main door and failed, Masako hurt her shoulder failing to open hers and only Sakura succeeded in smashing the door down and surprising the two guards. Things did not turn out well for the two guards as Sakura was on fire (in stance and literally) and she hurt one badly round one then knocked the other unconscious round two. The second meanwhile decided to escape from the two sworded deadly psycho and opened then ran  through the main door running straight into Yoshi's staff. After manackling the two in their own prison cell the group moved quickly to the docks to confront Azif.

In the past fights with this group have somewhat resembled Keystone cops routine - no matter how weak the actual opposition. So it is nice to say that the group suddenly morphed into the Avengers, or perhaps less socially responsible super heroes. Azif sent some Sailors forward to spread out which unfortunately left a two range band gap between him and two sailors and Yoshi propelled himself forward into a mighty jump (fitness check for two range bands movement succeeded with three bonuses followed by an Earthquake punch) that did four damage to three of them. Hero jump engaged.

So with two swords Sakura must be Deadpool. Masako - Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Yoshi the jumper.


Sakura also passed a fitness test easily to charge forward and instantly incapacitate a Sailor. Masako meanwhile moved forward and missed. Meanwhile Gaku had executed some innocent Sailors on the boat and raised them as Zombies. Next round Azif attacked Yoshi and was promptly dazed by the Earthquake defence before surrendering. Gaku had now cut the moorings of the ship and the boat was drifting away so Yoshi and Masako both charged forward and jumped the gap. In previous adventures they would have failed horrifically and landed in the water upside down but both succeeded really well surrounding the startled enemy. Sakura moved forward to engage the two zombies who kept on hitting but ended up ineffectually pawing at her being unable to get past her clothes.


The big fight was executed well. Gaku managed to curse Yoshi (he will have one attempt per session to use his own Cleansing Rite to clear the affliction) and hurt Masako but the two on board were efficiency personified as they captured him. Sakura meanwhile was merrily cutting the zombies up into disgusting Sushi strips.


The End

The party was very organised in what they wanted to do next. The captured Sailors were sent to the local Magistrate while Azif was sent under guard (hired) to the deputy Emerald Champion due to the risk of the new addictive drug. Gaku was not an issue as Masako executed the dishonourable evil scum. They managed to get the full details of Soko from Azif and have resolved to follow. Therefore they did well out of experience and not bad with honor. Honor gain was less though as they forgot they had manacled two ruffians in the warehouse who starved to death and though no one would know they had caused this they would so had to lose some honor for the accidental lack of compassion.




GM Notes

A big plus is that the party are starting to evolve distinct characters. Masako is a typical Samurai - she is quite happy to execute people who deserve executing and utterly un-phased by anything qualms concerning how this is done - all very Lion clan. Bushido is the key to honor and nothing else counts. Sakura (showing some Dragon influences) is less focused on Bushido directly and is more concerned about actions which could damage non-Samurai (a fairly alien concept to Masako). She is also more practical and focused on protecting the group (would make a good Yojimbo). Yoshi is at the other extreme and could not care less about Bushido or Samurai and just wants everyone to be happy.

This did lead to an interesting (to me) ethical consideration. Yoshi's player was distinctly unhappy that the two Ruffians had been allowed to starve to death (however accidentally) but this leads to some interesting considerations. The first is practical. If the penalty for 'being too close to a Samurai in a bad mood' is death then the penalty for, 'peasants kidnapping actual clan Samurai, locking them up for months before selling them to Gaijin so that a dark Maho user can sacrifice them in an evil rite to de-stabilize the Empire' would be? Death is almost too easy an option. Hung, drawn and quartered perhaps.

Samurai in this world are basically in the service of what can only be described as an unjust regime. It is a working stable society  and one where there is an actual 'evil' present in the Sauron sense but is also one where a huge section of the populace are deliberately kept in poverty and often fear. The only counters is that is not as sexist or homophobic as  most Earth societies have tended to be (it is certainly racist but in a very different way to the dominant current Earth structures). Opposing this might therefore be a 'good' thing to do so is Yoshi  on a path which could lead him to expounding the Perfect Land Sect (another very Dragon Monk thing) but is that better? Much like a philosopher saying that a dog has little chance to be very good or very evil so a common person has a greater opportunity to be more effective in either and a powerful person a much bigger chance still. Basically the stakes get higher the larger the change required. The problem with the Perfect Land Sect lies in 'what' is required to fulfil their objectives and in human history we have several rather nasty examples. The Russian Revolution, Pol Pot and even Hitler all destroyed and did great evil in the pursuit of that they 'believed' was a better society whether that society was one without monarchs and capitalists or without intellectuals or committing genocide against an entire nation. (and often multiple's of these together). But the result was usually a greater evil done to a great many more people. Does the evil of a mass destruction of a civilisation/people counter that of a supporting a lesser evil civilisation? Weighty topics for a Role Playing Game..