Rob Hobart

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My initial contribution to the 20GW (before I came up with Failure of Courage) was written with several different purposes in mind: introducing key Crab NPCs to the players, establishing the current status of the Shadowlands (and especially of the Lost), and bringing back the Crab treasure-hunter Kaiu Sumata for another adventure.

The opening scene featured the first “on-screen” appearance by Hida Gojiro, the violent and brutish heir to the Clan Champion. In keeping with my ongoing theme of hitting the PCs with “defeats” they would have to endure, I had Gojiro literally assault and beat up any PC who showed him the slightest disagreement or disrespect. Of course, since he was a Clan Champion’s son, the PCs had little choice but to grit their teeth and endure the incident, and Gojiro swiftly joined Kagekaze on the campaign’s “most hated NPC” list. Of course, in this case the impact was magnified by the module’s final scene, in which Hida Masakazu chokes to death on a piece of fish (drawing on the many historical instances of famous lords and monarchs dying in this way) and the PCs are left with the ominous knowledge that Gojiro-the-thug is about to take control of the Crab Clan.

The other major NPC introduced here, Kuni Yuriko, was the exact opposite of Gojiro – a highly sympathetic NPC who many players came to like and admire (not least because she fearlessly faced down Gojiro). Personally, I also saw Yuriko as a sort of counterpoint to O-Doji Koneko… another “formidable old woman” NPC, but without Koneko’s flaws and failures. Of course, since Yuriko was popular and sympathetic, I eventually killed her off in Doom of the Crab.

This module saw the first of two appearances by the infamous “Hunger Oni,” a kaiju-level Oni who was impossible to kill and would simply eat any PC who was unfortunate enough to fall into its clutches. I put this into the module specifically to drive home the point that surviving in the Shadowlands sometimes requires one to suck it up and take an Honor loss (in this case due to hiding rather than fighting). This also gave Kaiu Sumata, formerly depicted as a somewhat comedic nerd, a chance to gain respect from the PCs by demonstrating his expertise in the Shadowlands. An entertaining story emerged out of this encounter when one PC – a super-honorable Akodo who had trained in a Crane school, nicknamed the “white Lion” – decided he would not hide and instead attacked the Hunger Oni. The module text specified the oni would simply eat any such PCs at the rate of one per Round, and the PC would “scream all the way down.” The Akodo declared “I do NOT scream” and made an Honor Roll to back up his words. Later, the player wrote a very good death-fiction to earn extra Kharma for his next character.

The side-encounter with the haunted Shrine of Shourido was actually from the original draft of Strength from Weakness – I felt that it made that module run too long, and I needed some interesting Shadowlands encounters for the PCs during their journey to the City of the Lost, so I lifted it from that module and inserted it into this one. Although I was not a fan of the concept of Shourido, I liked the idea of having it be long-forgotten by the time of Rokugan 1500, and thus potentially be able to seduce one or two PCs into a false path. I also liked the mysterious writings in the shrine, which could be especially unsettling (and deceptive) to players who were well-educated in L5R lore. At the time I had no larger plans for this little sub-plot, but later module submissions from other authors would build on it – for example, the mysterious Shourido-corrupted Hiruma who built the shrine would eventually appear as a ghost who could haunt/possess the PCs.

I had a lot of fun depicting the actual City of the Lost as a half-abandoned ruin, fought over by rival groups of Lost and goblins. I was very much not a fan of the Gold/Diamond/Lotus era storyline about the Lost making themselves into a “dark mirror” of the Empire – it seemed to me to be a misguided attempt to “Westernize” the Shadowlands, and vitiated the stark Japanese-style horror of the Taint. Depicting the City of the Lost as a crumbling semi-abandoned ruin, fought over by squabbling factions, was my personal finger-in-the-eye to this aspect of CCG canon. I also threw in some subtle hints in this module (in the form of the city’s Western-style sewers) that some Thrane gaijin had fallen to the Taint at some point and joined the Lost; I would reinforce this a year later in Into the Darkness, in both cases with the long-term goal of eventually depicting a fleet of Lost gaijin making landings on the Rokugani coast (which ultimately happened in Doom of the Crab).

The climax of the module put the PCs into a trap (their location is surrounded by the two warring Shadowlands factions) but gave them multiple options for getting out. The overwhelming majority of tables chose the option that resulted in a battle with Lost cavalry, making for a suitably dramatic and dangerous finale. For the most part this played out as a tough but winnable combat that served to remind players of how viciously nasty the Lost could be… but we did have one table that ended in disaster, with all but one of the PCs either slain outright or reduced to Down/Out and thus captured by the Lost. This resulted in some cool character-death fictions, and two of the captured PCs – in particular one named Moto Chiniua -- would later reappear in the module Loyalty.

[Side Topic: Moto Chinua’s Fate and Taro’s First Appearance]

The player for Moto Chinua sent in a nice fiction about her character’s defeat, and I decided to add an Afterword to this fiction in order to establish that Otaku Taro – Nishari’s Taint-fallen lover – existed in HoR2 and would eventually appear in the campaign as a villain. This was what I posted on the HoR website and listserv:

Chinua blinked as her vision slowly cleared. She was lying on something soft, in a dark room lit by pale candlelight. A lean, handsome man with long black hair sat across from her, watching her awaken with glittering eyes. "Ah, at last you awake to us, beautiful one," he said, in a voice as smooth as fine silk.

Chinua struggled for the strength to rise and flee, but her body was still too weak. She could feel some new strength within her, something she could tap if she truly wished, but her soul recoiled from that. "Who..." She shook her head and forced her eyes to focus. "You are one of the Lost. A Dark Moto. You think to keep me as a prize?" "Moto?" he chuckled, low and rich. "No, I never claimed that name, even when I still lived within that weak and decadent Empire. I am called Taro. But you, my dear, will soon call me... Master."

[End Side Topic]