Rob Hobart

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This is one of my personal favorite modules in the whole campaign. It was influenced by many different sources, including the Prince of Persia videogames (especially the first one), the Thousand and One Nights, Call of Cthulhu scenarios, and even the old Ray Harryhousen Sinbad movies. Ironically, the one influence that did NOT affect it much was the actual Legend of the Burning Sands CCG, about which I knew very little at the time. For example, I did not realize that the pseudo-Egyptian Senpet Empire and the pseudo-Arab Mekhamite city-state of Medinaat al-Salaam were completely different things, so the module depicted a “fusion” Senpet culture of pseudo-Arabs with pyramids. (A few months later, I edited the Burning Sands sourcebook for the RPG and got a crash-course in Burning Sands canon, in the process discovering how wrong I’d gotten things in this module. Rather than go back and have to rewrite large chunks of the module, I decided my explanation would be that after the Yodotai Empire collapsed, the Senpet and Mekham cultures merged into a single 1500’s “Senpet” culture, much like how modern Egypt is now an Arab society.)

In order to send the PCs to the Burning Sands I needed some kind of reasonable justification -- samurai don't just up and travel to the gaijin lands, even in 1500's Rokugan. The best one I could devise was to have them be forced to escort a Tortoise emissary – after all, it is part of the Tortoise Clan’s official duties to have dealing with gaijin, but the tiny clan is rather desperately lacking in both bushi and shugenja. This also tied into a subplot from some of the recent Interactives in which the Mantis had forced the Tortoise to share the right to trade with the Thrane; this module portrayed part of the Tortoise response, with the clan attempting to horn in on the Unicorn Clan’s trade with the Burning Sands. In order to make this whole thing believable, however, I had to prohibit Mantis PCs from playing the module unless they were allied or obligated to the Tortoise – the first time, but not the last, that I would impose such constraints in order to keep things realistic and avoid weird discontinuities that would shatter the suspension of disbelief. In doing this I was basically rejecting a standard “doctrine” of living campaigns, which dictated that every character should be able to play every module… but then, I had been gradually abandoning such doctrines ever since Living Rokugan had originally launched.

The “gossip” section of this module contained some interesting little foreshadowing tidbits, such as the Emperor proclaiming a new Fortune of Peace (the location of its first shrine would be a negotiating point at a future Interactive, and I was already toying with the idea that Shikan’s heart would be hidden within it) and the Emperor outlawing the cocaine-esque drug Crimson Flower (which would serve as backdrop for the module Corrupted Region).

I had great fun developing both the desert-journey encounters (which included an obligatory appearance by the Naar Tebaan “fire snakes” and of course the return of the much-hated bandit Jafar) as well as the exotic world of Hijaz el-Asab once the PCs reach their destination. I really went all-out with the “Arabian Nights” theme for the city and the Caliph’s palace, with things like exotic gardens, foreign foods, diplomats from even more distant lands, etc. Naturally, the evil khadi sorcerer Al-Azar (who many of the PCs previously met in Charge of the Baraunghar) is also the Caliph’s evil vizier – one must uphold the stereotypes before they can be broken! The bazaar was also fun, and some PCs went berserk and spent vast sums of money buying “gaijin curiosities” to take back to Rokugan with them.

Of course, the payoff for all of this was the meeting with the Doomseeker Ferez, in which the PCs can realize they killed the good guys back in Charge of the Baraunghar and gain the first solid hints at what is happening with Miya Shikan in the Empire. This in turn leads to the PCs potentially assisting Ferez in defeating Al-Azar, letting me create a unique series of challenges around their breaking into the vizier’s quarters, overcoming various obstacles, defeating a Djinn, locating the sorcerer’s hidden heart within his bizarre (somewhat Lovecraftian) laboratory, and finally escaping from Azar’s mind-controlled slave. Of course, there was nothing forcing the PCs to do any of this – I relied on the combination of inherent player curiosity, memories from Charge of the Baraunghar, and Ferez’ revalations to motivate the PCs. I also made a point of establishing that the khadi’s heart was sorcerously protected and could not simply be stabbed by any old blade (foreshadowing for the eventual mission to kill Shikan), and I actually included a scene in which PCs foolish enough to confront Al-Azar directly would be insta-fried by his gaijin magic.