Rob Hobart

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My wife’s second module and the one which drew on the largest share of work and inspiration from her – she actually wrote a full draft for this one, which I then revised. The basic theme of this module was distantly related to “A Walk Through the Mountains” from HoR1 – much as in that module, the PCs are pursuing a missing samurai (in this case a young Lion samurai-ko) who has heard the calling of the Dragon tattooed orders. We even did another take on Walk’s idea of the “module-as-flashback” -- in this case, the whole story is being recounted by the PCs for the amusement of a child, with a Shiba illusionist from the Korede Gokko theatre troupe using magic to illustrate the PCs’ words. (Years later, when working on 4th Edition, I would revise the spell “Flight of Doves” to replicate this specific story-illustrating effect. Privileges of rank!) Of course, we knew this could potentially create a discontinuity if some of the PCs were killed in the course of the module, but rather than try to finesse this we decided to embrace it – at the end, the child says “Wait, I thought there were more of you, but I guess I was mistaken.”

Basically this module is a classic pursuit/travel scenario, as the PCs follow the missing young woman out of Lion lands, through the Dragon territories, and finally to the gates of the High House of Light. We had fun coming up with different encounters along the way, some of them offering physical challenges and others more diplomatic (getting into the Dragon lands is never easy). My personal favorite bit, of course, was the clash with the giant boar Goro – an idea inspired by both the Miyazaki film “Princess Mononoke” and by the traditions of kaiju films. Although it was a fairly straightforward combat challenge, it did end up having consequences… from the moment Goro appeared, I had the notion lurking in the back of my mind that he was the child of a boar-god from Chikushudo and someday the PCs might encounter the angry parent.

The climax of the module is IMHO the best part of it, and is purely role-play: the PCs catch up with their quarry and must then choose which path her life will follow. It is a classic samurai conundrum: Do they keep their word and drag her back to her father, thus denying her the chance to fulfill her destiny? Or do they break their word and help her to reach the High House of Light and become a Kikage Zumi? Neither option is inherently “right” and both have a cost for the PCs. Some parties deadlocked or even fought duels over this problem, and more than one PC tried to find some way of finessing the issue in order to avoid Honor loss (not possible). Probably my favorite story about this involved Kevin’s character Daidoji Tokiru, who fought a duel, Honor-tested to try to win the duel, and failed… he wound up losing over two Ranks of Honor, and decided to spend the next year’s worth of modules on musha shugyo as a ronin.