Rob Hobart

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If you want a module that perfectly represents HoR2’s themes of tragedy and failure (or perhaps more accurately the theme of “rip your heart out and stomp on it”), it’s probably this one.

Like the earlier Fallen Friend, this mod was put together from a combination of my own ideas and a player submission – in this case, a jointly-authored idea for a follow-up to Assigning Blame. The Pekkle no Oni in that module was never uncovered, so these players came up with a scenario in which she was now operating in Kyuden Doji and the PCs could potentially discover her. I liked their concepts, but felt that the Pekkle’s story wasn’t “big” enough to carry an entire module. I also didn’t like the idea of setting the module in Kyuden Doji, since that seemed like it was inflating the Pekkle’s importance too much (the campaign, after all, was themed around human evil and I was about to launch a climax in which the human villain would enlist the Shadowlands as his subordinate ally). Finally and most importantly, though, I needed to do a module about the tragic fate of Toturi Chisa and the outcome of the Unicorn-Scorpion war, and I felt the ideas I had for those storylines were likewise not enough for a full mod. My solution was to combine the whole thing into a single module, with the Pekkle plot taking place midway through when the PCs get trapped in a minor Scorpion castle due to a flash flood. (The idea of trapping the PCs with a flood was also the initial source of the module’s title.) The module’s opening sequence, in which the PCs visit the Shogun’s army and interact with Toturi Kobe and Daidoji Kowaru, was specifically designed to create additional sympathy with those NPCs and get the PCs very much “on board” with the Shogun as the Empire’s last hope for a positive outcome to the storyline. Of course, in this regard I was willing to ruthlessly exploit the players’ affection for Chisa by establishing that there was a kharmic connection between Chisa and Kobe.

I wanted to put the outcome of the Unicorn-Scorpion war and the immediately-subsequent defeat of the Unicorn Clan’s main army at the hands of the Lion as much “on stage” as possible, so having Hizatoru run off to the Scorpion lands to try to negotiate with the Khan seemed like the perfect way to get the PCs onto a story-path that would show them all of this action. Thus, the doomed pursuit of Hizatoru (and Chisa) concludes at Kyuden Bayushi with the castle burning down amid the aftermath of a massive Lion-Unicorn battle. At the time I wrote this, L5R canon was notably lacking in wars that ended this spectacularly, so this sequence had a lot of impact. (Humorously, five years later the official L5R storyline would depict a Lion-Scorpion war that ended in the exact same way – with the Lion storming their way to Kyuden Bayushi, and the Scorpion burning the castle themselves rather than let it fall to their enemies.)

The semi-climactic sequence in which the Khan is killed was the result of considerable thought on my part. I very much wanted to show the Khan’s death “on screen” rather than in a fiction, and I wanted to find some way of paying off the Sworn Enemy: Moto Temujin disadvantages that some PCs had acquired. However, since Words & Deeds had established that the Khan was a ludicrously badass Insight Rank 14 NPC, I couldn’t just put him into a fight with the PCs. Hence the inspiration of getting him caught by a Scorpion bomb-ambush – which also had the advantage of letting the Scorpion have a “we’re awesome” moment after months of getting kicked around by the other clans. For a while I was thinking that the Khan would be left at the +20 Wound Rank by the blast and would then fight the PCs… but I soon realized that Temujin was _so_ powerful that even at the +20 Wound Rank he would probably kill half the table before the PCs could take him down. Plus, if he was still alive, any Unicorn PCs would be Duty-bound to protect him, which would trigger a nasty PvP scenario… not something I wanted at the end of the campaign when the PCs were supposed to all be coming together for the cause of Honor. My solution, ultimately, was that the blast actually killed Temujin but his sheer hateful willpower would keep him alive just long enough to deliver a final vengeful strike against any Sworn Enemy PCs who happened to be around. I found myself envisioning this as rather like the final moments of another “Khan” in Star Trek II… “for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.” The random-horrible-stuff chart that the Khan’s last strike used was intended as yet another beat on campaign’s sub-theme of lasting consequences from combat, but I was entertained (and somewhat creeped out) by how the random rolls almost always hit the PCs with the injury that would hurt them specifically the worst, e.g. bushi tended to suffer the leg or arm hits, while courtier-types always seemed to get the face-hit.

We didn’t have a true Interactive at CogCon (it was too late in the storyline for that), but instead ran a really cool Kabuki play LARP created by Peter Smiley and his fiance (now wife) Erin (IIRC this con is where they got engaged!). However, we couldn’t resist having Becca take on her Chisa persona one last time at the conclusion of the event and say, “Bye everybody.” Twist the knife!

[Side-Topic: The Missing Fiction]

The WiR Interactive in January resulted in peace between the Unicorn and the Phoenix. However, I knew that in order to make it believable that Akodo Gintaku could launch a final play for absolute power, I would have to eliminate any significant military power for either of these clans. I was already planning that Gintaku would crush the Khan’s main army in the Scorpion lands (right after the Khan finished crushing the Scorpion), but that still left the Unicorn Clan’s Baraunghar army and the entire remaining strength of the Phoenix. How to take them off the table?

I conceived of a story in which the Unicorn and Phoenix forces would meet to sign their peace treaty and share an honorable evening together in a joint camp… whereupon they would be attacked in a surprise midnight ambush by an elite Lion force led by “Akodo Mako” (Moto Yoshi). This army would be comprised of all the most ruthlessly pragmatic, slavishly loyal Lion in the clan... there was even going to be a subplot whereby some Ikoma Spymasters would infiltrate the joint Unicorn/Phoenix camp and put sleeping drugs into their food. Both the Unicorn and the Phoenix forces would be wiped out, including the Elemental Legions and all of the remaining Elemental Council except for the Jade Champion. The fiction would end with Mako/Yoshi personally killing and eating Utaku Xiuling. Afterward, the only survivors would be the Lion, who would claim that the Unicorn had betrayed the truce meeting, slaughtered the Phoenix, and then been slain in reprisal by the Lion.

Sadly, my insanely busy schedule during the campaign’s final six months (which, as I've mentioned, coincided with the final round of edits on the 4th Edition core book and ALL of the edits and rewrites on Enemies of the Empire) made it impossible for me to write that fiction. Thus, I was limited to a few brief mentions of what had happened in the “gossip sections” of various modules, leaving players from these two clans rather frustrated.

[End Side-Topic]