Rob Hobart

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This module was inevitably and unavoidably a bit of a let-down from the ultra-intense Compassion, although it still had one of the meaner punches of the Bushido series – the finale forced PCs to “fess up” to nasty secrets about themselves in order to succeed. Much like Compassion, this module went through several back-and-forth discussions and revisions between me and Claudia before it assumed its final form; in particular, I spent a lot of time in rewrites to make sure the PCs could credibly follow a year-old trail and eventually catch up with their target. (I came up with the idea that he had spent the winter in a remote village after murdering everyone who lived there.)

This module was basically a sequel to Bayushi Lineage, but also drew on an interesting collection of ideas and inspirations from other parts of the campaign and from the previous campaign as well. The scenario’s basic “investigation” structure was the result of the last two Interactives, where players had pushed for the Emerald Magistrates to look into the fire in Traitor’s Grove (largely out of a long-shot hope that they might somehow prove that Akodo Mako was the culprit). So, the adventure began with this investigation, and the major Scorpion NPCs were all drawn from Bayushi Lineage. (The module’s NPC magistrate was actually Claudia’s current PC.) Moreover, the specific “villain” of the module was one of the souls freed from the Grove.

However, he is eventually revealed in the module as Bayushi Tanaka, “the Steel Scorpion,” a PC from HoR1 who had married Nishari (and been betrayed by her with Otaku Taro), so the module was also very much a tribute to HoR1 character stories. In fact, successfully ending the scenario entailed Nishari confessing her actions in order to free Tanaka from Toshigoku’s influence, thereby allowing him to depart for Meido and the judgment of Emma-O.

This module saw HoR’s first-ever visit to the Sparrow lands, which are shown as suffering badly from the recent droughts and floods. The “random bandit” encounter was thus given depth by making the bandits into starving peasants who were desperate for food. Thus, although some groups simply killed the bandits, others actually tried to help them in various ways, which I found interesting… especially since these choices sometimes did not match up to clan affiliations in the ways one might expect.

I made this module Low/Mid Rank in order to keep it accessible to PCs coming into the campaign after the casualties at Origins and in the Twenty Goblin Winter. I also made this the only Bushido module that could award the “Haunted by Nishari” cert to two different PCs at the same table. In regard to Nishari, it is also worth noting that this was the module which really made her a much more controversial figure with the player-base, since it is here she reveals her major sins from her mortal life: not only betraying her husband due to her love for Taro, but also hiding Taro’s Taint until he succumbed to it and murdered her (along with many others). Tanaka ended up being the fall-guy for Taro, condemned to the Grove as an innocent man. All this was included both as part of a gradual reveal of Nishari’s backstory and to set up the eventual appearance of Taro himself at the end of the Bushido arc; however, many players – especially Scorpions -- reacted quite negatively to the story, seeing Nishari as nothing more than a traitor who did not deserve Jizo’s mercy.