Wedding at Kyotei Castle AAR

Will there be a fight? Oh yes and it will not be an easy one

After Yoshi had decided to pray under a waterfall (see here ) it had left the band slightly un-purposed. It seemed dangerous to continue pursuing the maho user South so a sudden note from the Dragon Clan Champion requesting that `Sakura attend the wedding of a young Crane Daimyo to a Phoenix bride (as the Dragon Clan representative) came as a useful side-task. They wrote to the Jade Champion informing her of their progress and requesting assistance before journeying to Kyotei Castle at the junction of Crane, Phoenix and Lion Territory. Masako decided to come as well being well acquainted with the history of that unfortunate piece of land.

The journey was uneventful until they reached Crane Territory where  they came upon some bandits preying on local peasants and claiming to be Lion representatives. This was treated with scorn by our two heroes and they soon dispatched the Bandits with the assistance of a Phoenix Shugenja who happened to be in the area. This was Asako Natsuki a talented assistant to Azako Maezawa and a close personal friend to the bride to be (Shiba Itsuyo) who had known him since childhood.

Masako had no qualms about handing the captured bandits over to the Crane Samurai or about mentioning their claim of working for the Lions - which was fortunate as a Lion Clan Samurai would otherwise have been about as welcome as a bowl of cold sick at this point. They were asked to investigate the massacre of the local Crane's (birds) and accepted. Things went slightly awry at this point as having seen the bloody mess of the dead animals our heroes decided to not spend too much time looking into it and went to bed instead. Meanwhile Natsuki used his own considerable connections to the Kami to receive a disturbing vision of the future.

The Pre-Wedding Feast

This was an uncomfortable process for all three of our heroes. Natsuki doesn't (won't?) speak so is obviously not the most verbose of companions. He therefore sat next to our other two heroes so he could glower at Masako suspiciously. Both Sakura and Masako are also both more combat orientated so 'faffing about' at a party making small talk was not appealing. They tried their best until the arrival of Maeda alarmed everyone. Masako curiously did not approach to find out what was going on. The primary reason was that that would involve politics and she hates politics but everyone else thought it was most suspicious. So suspicious that Natsuki went wandering to see if he could find out anything else - and didn't and thankfully decided against breaking into the Takashi's rooms.

The Wedding Trip

So we rapidly arrived at the journey to the Shrine and the ambush that follows. Sakura had rolled an exemplary initiative roll with a 10. Masako was ahead of the redshirts (Ashigaru and Ronin Bandits) with 7 but behind the other combat npcs with Natsuki being so surprised at this turn of events that he failed entirely so would be last behind everyone. Sakura would be key as to which side would be supported and she rapidly moved to intercept a Bandit taking the Wedding Parties side. Masako had a more challenging decision and some hefty honor/glory and status penalties were in play dependant on choice and actions. She took the hit though and rather bravely moved to intercept Maeda on her own! Remember that Maeda is a conflict rank 6 so would need all three party members to safely take down and the other close combat specialist had started on a ronin. Finally Yu moved to attack Natsuki and combat was started.

Things went South relatively quickly. Sakura dealt with her opponent easily (and with some cunning use of her Dragon two hand technique managed to prevent a couple of hits against her) and even with just a Wakizashi took down the next two who attacked her as well. Masako got into trouble fast though. Maeda was using fire stance and fighting like a woman possessed with some huge attacks. One massive attack was too much for Masako who was incapacitated after taking around 17 fatigue (and six or so over her endurance total). Maeda then turned on Itsuyo and knocked her unconscious allowing the Bandit who Itsuyo had been fighting to kill her with one thrust of his Yari....Meanwhile Natsuki had done damage to several with a fire storm and then used grasp of earth on Yuu who unfortunately failed to be knocked over. Natsuki showed remarkable spirit taking a critical hit in his earth ring rather than be knocked out but to no avail. A Tempest of Air pushed Yuu to his limit (and over endurance) but next turn a calming breath re-activated him and even with an extra turn running at Natsuki his next attack missed and Yu managed to knock Natsuki unconscious as well.

Phoenix Shugenja can be scary to face in a fight

It all depended on Sakura who had run over to Masako. The spare bandit who Isuyo had been fighting started moving to kill Masako and to prevent this Sakura used a commanding shout to force the bandit to fight her as well. This she did and took on both. It was too much for one as even though Maeda was almost defeated she was still active, angry and strong - so instead she managed to incapacitate Sakura and then the Bandit had knocked her unconscious.

So they had lost! Maeda has no interest in ensuring more enmity from the Pheonix so she did not kill Natsuki and killing two Emerald Magistrates including one who was a 'full' Akodo family member would be most unwise so she did not kill anyone else once she had won. She has a mean streak though so ensured they were all honoured, unhappy, guests at the wedding. That is after they has assisted half the castle's Samurai in committing Seppuku. Having married Takashi a large contingent of Lion clan Samurai then arrived to enforce her claim .

The group were left to recover from their marginal wounds and consider what to do next. A note from the Jade Champion gave them some more information on their primary mission and gave them permission to pursue her anywhere so they decided to do so. Natsuki requested to join them as he had no home here anymore and would not have enjoyed being gloated at by Maeda. Masako meanwhile was moving to almost as dark a place as Yoshi had been. Success, glory and honour had been her bye words but now she had stood against her own clan and utterly failed. Her brother would have a field day. Moving south of the Wall would  give her a last chance to save her reputation or at least disappear with honour.

GM Notes

This was an attempt to introduce a new player who was unfamiliar with both the system and the world into the group. She coped very well with the basic mechanics. As gm I was somewhat stymied by some engagement issues. Having refused to investigate the Crane's death it made it somewhat difficult to run a purposeful pre-wedding scheme but these things happen and if players really don't want to carry out some actions then that is their right (its not a read your own adventure after all).  The mass fight was interesting. To save time I had rolled initiative for all the npc's prior to the fight and had then rolled the entire npc fight round by round so I knew in advance who would be out and when. I then prepared two scenario sheets for whether the group attacked the interlopers or supported them.

Defiant and going down fighting. Much like the group...

One thing I did know in advance is that regardless as to the Ashigarus superior armour they were rapidly taken out by their opposition so the bandit numbers would rapidly increase. IF the party supported the Crane/Phoenix then they would have a hard fight which is exactly what occurred. There were three key decisions. The first was that Sakura took on the Conflict one rank Bandits as opposed to focusing on the conflict 6 rank Maeda. This meant that Masako was outclassed from the start. If she had helped either Masako, Natsuki or Itsuyo then things might have gone differently. The second key decision was when Maeda made an absolutely huge successful attack against Masako. Masako had a void point and could have used it to take a critical and avoid the damage but decided not to and was heavily made incapacitated instead (requiring about five rounds of calming breath before becoming active again). This was one turn the group unfortunately needed (though that is information after the fact). If she had taken the critical then Sakura would have arrived and between the two of them had a good chance of dealing with Maeda. Though the group did not know this Itsuyo happily took out all the bandits on her own so was under no risk from anyone who was not Maeda.  As it stood this gave Maeda and the last bandit an extra attack against Itsuyo causing her death.  The final key decision was when Sakura was fighting Maeda (and Masako had pushed Maeda to the limits of her endurance) and the Bandit who had killed Itsuyo moved to repeat the same on Masaklo Sakura deliberately pulled the Bandit onto her and without the Bandit she would probably have beaten Maeda.

Lots of 'if' and 'but' and knowledge after the fact but it does focus on the fact that target choice and can be key in L5R combat.

An amusing rules dive occurred at the end when Natsuki cast Tempest of Air - managed to do so without gaining Strife (he was bleeding at this point) and zapped several people including the incapacitated Masako. Thankfully the critical this caused was only a strength two which could be 'defended' against but it did knock him unconscious. It did look amusingly likely that a blue on blue kill might occur due to an emergency area effect spell.

I liked the tidyness of the explanation for Natsuki to join the party (if they had won it would have been more a casual request and harder to explain) and now all party members are well into their second level which should help with encounters moving forward as well.  Protecting the caster may be key as Shugenja really don't like being stabbed whilst casting invocations but equally casters are so powerful it will really help enhance the combat effectiveness of everyone. One of the issues with Shugenja strength is that every invocation is essentially available to them but this in itself needs the player to know which one would be useful at any given point and for new players this is just not possible.  Matching the level progression new Shugenja players thus get exponentially more dangerous the more they play and the more they realise what they can do. For a look in more detail at Shugenja combat please see here.

Thanks for reading. I have droned on a bit here I think so kudos to anyone managing to reach this sentence through my bad punctuation and logic formulation..