Rob Hobart

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The third and final module in Kevin’s mini-arc, this mod finally reveals the villain behind the mysterious gray pearls – an insane Naga abomination called Two-Tail (“the Master”) who has managed to gain the powers of the Taint by grafting an oni’s arm into its own body. Although this module had strong Shadowlands themes (since Two-Tail has Lost followers/slaves), it actually takes place in the Shinomen Forest, and in fact is HoR2’s only visit to the legendary forest and its Naga inhabitants.

Kevin used the ongoing topic of political Unicorn-Dragon marriages (also used in Shadow on the Court) as the framing device to get the PCs into the vicinity of the Shinomen, and setting his wedding in the Moto lands let him have fun coming up with ideas for what a “traditional Moto wedding” would look like. The actual Quest Giver for the module is the NPC monk Hoshi Karasu, “the Crow”, who Kevin had introduced in his first module, Secluded Village. (I think he had some hope that Karasu would become a recurring figure in the campaign, but no one ended up taking up that particular gauntlet.) I liked the chain of investigations that Kevin used to get the PCs to their goal – Karasu sends the PCs after a mysterious folk-healer (partly in the hope of curing a Moto lord’s crippled son), so the PCs have to track down the man and in so doing can figure out that his activities are actually spreading the Taint. However, the healer is not actually a villain, but rather a chump who is being mind-controlled by Yamiko (the now-returned undead fiancé of Kevin’s character) and Two-Tail. There was the possibility here for the PCs to screw up and have the Moto lord’s son “healed” with the Tainted pearl, although I don’t recall any instance of this actually happening.

The finale saw the PCs fighting their way into a ruined Naga city to confront Yamiko and Two-Tail. Much as with Loyalty, I presented this as a dramatic battle but one which the PCs ought to win after a hard-fought struggle. In particular, I took away Yamiko’s Blood Armor spell which had been the source of all the casualties in her previous appearance. And just as with Loyalty, I ended the module with a “postscript” in which Moto Yoshi rallied Two-Tail’s followers for future mischief.

An amusing side-note: During the PCs’ advance into the ruined Naga city, they had to fight an Oni no Ugulu, one of the few straight-up oni fights in the campaign. We had one table where a Scorpion courtier with high Jiujutsu tried to grapple the oni. This particular player was in the habit of using his absurdly high Jiujutsu Skill (which in no way meshed with the character’s other stats, personality, or history) to immobilize opponents while the rest of the party beat them up, sucking all excitement and drama out of the fights. The player rationalized this bit of power-gamer nonsense on the grounds that it was his way of “contributing” to combats. When he tried to do it to the Oni, the GM agreed to let him go ahead and roll… and then gave 10 Free Raises to the oni, for being a 12-foot-tall demon who weighed a literal ton. The player was unhappy. :)