Working the docks, busting up kidnap gangs, getting ready for a fancy party.

The yoriki’s investigations took them all over Slow Tide Harbour to meet the people Otomo Hiroshige knew and go to the places he frequented. Some of that was more useful than others and while they missed a lot of potential information and leads, I really appreciate that about the way this adventure is written. There are three possible culprits, you see, for Hiroshige’s disappearance and I got to pick one. I picked the one that felt like it offered up the most opportunities for PC anguish, of course.

Monte Cook Games simple scenarios from which I based most of the Numenera campaign is set up like this. They give you some options of where a Macguffin might be or who shot JR and provide notes with how these different permutations will affect the other moving parts of the scenario. I kind of love it. It lets the GM tailor the written adventure to the strengths/weaknesses/dark fetishes of their PCs and also lets you usually switch on the fly if action or tension is dragging. A good general GM rule of thumb is that the Macguffin is going to be in the last place that would work out best story wise. Not at the end of the painstakingly crafted graph paper dungeon, but where ever would be coolest at the moment and if no one is enjoying your painstakingly crafted graph paper dungeon, that’s going to be much earlier on. The other good thing is that I don’t have to feel guilty giving away on the internet the Hidden Antagonist’s identity because this is only true for THIS group’s adventuring in Slow Tide Harbour. Other GMs running this might like to put their players in less awkward positions. I don’t know why they’d ever do that though, perverts.

Okay, so at first they focused on people that Hiroshige knew. Having already found the useless Hade, they tracked down Amano the artist and got a rough picture of Hiroshige’s life and situation: not great and . They tracked down Bayushi Naizu in the cat mask and ruled out Scorpion involvement (a good first step in most investigations) as well as getting a rough sketch of the town’s underworld structure. Speaking of which, they went to kindly old moneylender Boss Kizo, needed money off Hiroshige, so wasn’t about to disappear him. Checking around town they visited some opium dens too. The recurring characteristic of all the disappeared people seemed to be that they really, really liked opium. Big fans. and with the notable exception of one highly placed concerned father, no-one would miss any of them.

While they were doing this, Doji Koji was looking into the deceased Yasuki Suzaku and came back with some useful information: she appeared to have been held captive for some time and her body was dumped in a back alley, covered in raw opium and crumbling wood fragments.

Armed with that information they deduced the obvious: a dirty foreign dog was somehow involved. They made a quick visit to the officious and tidy Harbourmaster, who was very obviously on the take, but that seems to be the way things get down around here. Gross. He pointed them in the direction of the Gaijin who was, shockingly, staying dockside. So they had an unnerving chat with opium smuggler Azif the Smooth, captain of the Obedient Slave. His ship was docked and his motley crew mostly dispersed among the dock area, although the more outlandish were confined to ship. Azif spoke pretty good Rokugani and assured them that he had nothing to do with the whole business.

Takuya meanwhile, checked in on Batākappu and found another majestic Unicorn mount in the stables. Tracking down its owner, he found a Unicorn messenger who was passing through bearing some grave tidings from the north. This news delayed Takuya long enough that he was still around the hostel when a very official invitation arrived: they’d been invited to a Moon Viewing that evening at the Governor’s estates! A party!

Out on the investigation, Lord Ono, Lady Sugi and Lady Tezuka went to track down Suzaku’s whereabouts before she was killed in what looked like a desperate escape attempt. They located a warehouse on the edges of town and clumsily broke in the door once they switched to battering it down with tetsubos.

Inside were half a dozen shocked peasants with spears, who had been given the job of guarding the warehouse by the Tortoise Clan. At least, a clan samurai told them to do it. Their guard job was only going to go one way once the door had been busted in, but they put up a decent fight. While the yoriki held the field at the end of the fight, they did so exhausted and slightly scarred.

The frightened men had only recently been assigned to this warehouse, so couldn’t tell them too much. But it was, fortunately, a clue rich environment. They found evidence of long term human captivity in the back of the warehouse, as well as opium smuggling from a ship called the Jealous Zephyr. The men reiterated that they were here on behalf of the Tortoise. Things Bayushi Naizu had told them began to line up; one of the main smugglers of opium into the Harbour was someone called Kasuga Yumiko, an out of town Tortoise with no particular connection to the Harbour’s ruling structure except the ties of family. The guards knew that the Tortoise samurai was helping Gaku: but Gaku was working for someone else, someone they’d never met.

To the docks! After they’d caught their breath. I appreciate that fights in L5R often don’t have much of an effect outside of a particular scene. Everyone catches their breath and gets on with it; rather than deciding to call it a night after a tough morning because you need to heal. Starting fresh as a daisy is great, but you aren’t out of commission unless you actually get bits chopped off you or open a vein. More of both, later!

At the docks, the found the Jealous Zephyr casting off in a hurry. That made sense as one of the warehouse guards had fled while the yoriki were to exhausted from their fight to put up much of a chase. Because it was in a hurry it didn’t have a pilot boat to ease it out, so it was slow going. But while it was still there, so were Kasuga Yumiko and her three samurai chums. After some terse greetings it became clear that she was interested in stalling them, not fighting them. From on board the ship, Gaku the Tattooed Ronin barked orders and saw that the ship got underway and into the bay asap.

Rather than waste time talking to or crossing swords with Lady Yumiko, they left, not quite pretending to leave, but actually leaving the area. They went over to where some small, probably peasant fishing vessels were stored and kicked off on one of them. The small agile craft had a much easier time getting out into the bay safely than the bulky ship, which was yet to set its sails and get properly underway. Gaku was signaling to someone (OR SOMETHING) out in the bay with a weird bladed weapon.

To prevent the ship’s escape Takuya unlimbered his bow, stood on the end of the rocking boat and sent an arrow soaring through the air and also through the Helmsman. The sailor collapsed to the deck, dragging the tiller/wheel with him (I actually don’t know what they had, hang on…), he slumped across the tiller, dragging it to the side and causing the big ship to lurch.

With the ship slowed, they were able to pull alongside and board, but not before Gaku sent some absolutely filthy words at them. The vile, detestable syllables he uttered settled into their bones, causing considerable pain. And he wasn’t done yet either: he raised the dead Helmsman as the rest of the crew fled and sicc’ed him on Lord Koji and Lord Takuya. To be completely sure this time, Koji separated the sailor’s head from his shoulders.

Ono-san, meanwhile leapt to engage Gaku, with Gaku trying to hold him at bay with a wickedly serrated sickle. It was to no avail, Ono could not be stopped and he delivered two sharp blows to Gaku that cut open some major blood vessel. The ronin fell back and hurling a lamp into the still-not-deployed sails, leapt into the brine of the bay. As they watched him flail in an expanding pool of his own gore, they saw his intended destination: the smaller ship out in the bay.

The smaller ship had a few inhabitants, mostly bustling around getting the ship ready to move, but dominating their view was a woman, formally dressed and attired, holding up one of the same type of curved sickle knives that Gaku had. Her arms raised as though in prayer or incantation, she stood stock still on the bobbing deck for a while, before turning and going below deck as her ship made its way out of the bay.

The yoriki rushed below decks among the frightened and confused sailors and found the missing samurai: Hiroshige, Fubato, Toru and Kumiko, alive but barely able to walk. Being an opium-enjoyer isn’t a hugely healthy lifestyle, but being chained up, beaten, terrorized and half starved for a few weeks is – and I suspect, I am not a medical doctor – worse for you than opium. Opium; it could be worse!

Getting these weak samurai off the boat was the job they decided to undertake rather than trying to save the ship and that seems like a good call because that thing went up pretty quickly. With their bony sacks of withdrawal aboard they pushed off from the bigger ship and rowed their way back to safety. I mean, Lady Yumiko was waiting for them with her three samurai buds, watching her ship burn to the waterline… but, at least it was dry land.

Yumiko’s colossal loss – the failure of whatever deal she had with Gaku’s distant mistress and the burned trading vessel – meant she was disgraced. No way around that. When the yoriki accused her, she didn’t elucidate on the plot any, but she didn’t deny it either. She surrendered herself to the Will of Heaven and requested a duel to the death. This was a sensible deal for her: win and she is innocent of the wrong that the yoriki are accusing of doing; lose and her honorable death protects her clan’s reputation.

So that was their dance card filled for the rest of the day: duel to the death then party with the opponent’s family!

That meant an awful lot of getting ready. All of them had been involved in a fight at some point that day and all of them needed to purify themselves before they went walking around town. After that they needed to get ready for the party and the duel and after that they’d need to leave enough time for Ono to purify himself again and then get ready. Not to mention finding gifts to dish out to the Tortoise hosts.

Ono was keen to have everyone – especially himself – relax. This late notice party was almost certainly a ploy by the Tortoise, either to throw them off their investigation (too late!) or wind them up (there’s always time for shithousery!). Or they were trying to get them to refuse the invitation, as a basis to make a complaint about rude behaviour (in addition to the small mound of corpses they’d created). But Ono was determined to burn both ends of the candle.

After purifying at the temple, they talked to the priests about using the temple grounds for the duel, since legal matters like this are really theological matters too. The priest had a place where they could do this, yes, since they asked so nicely. This was about the highest prestige venue they could have chosen, so this was going well (as long as Ono won).

Next they retired to a tea house and hired a geisha to help them chill. Pricey, but worth it. In addition to the centering calm Ono feels from a good tea brew, Sugi had expert (and female) help in fitting her arm our perfectly for formal presentation. The Tortoise had specifically requested the presence of the Topaz Champion in her regalia so that they could congratulate her in that capacity. Koji could play games with the Geisha, but he actually struck up a friendly conversation with a Tortoise, a Hare (I know right) and a Phoenix samurai who were interested in an under the table gamble on Ono’s victory in the upcoming duel. As disreputable as this may have been, it DID guarantee some other clan witnesses to the duel, which is a good thing.

Then, shopping, then the duel. The priests had set space aside for the duel in a small courtyard of pale gravel, lined by flowering azalea bushes. From the viewing platform, two of Yumiko’s samurai buds waited, along with a priest and assistant to oversee the affair. The Hare, Phoenix and Tortoise Samurai had cleaned themselves up a bit and added to the small crowd.

Preparations made, death poems written, combatants blessed: Ono and Yumiko faced off. Yumiko tried second guessing Ono, but with an overwhelming flurry forced her defences aside and then delivered a terrible wound to her arm, destroying her hand. The fight was done, but Yumiko wasn’t dead although taht was just a matter of time. At her signal, her second stepped in and delivered a painless death.

Justice served as the heavens willed it, Doji Koji made a bundle of money!

Okay, more ritual purification for Ono while everyone rushed to get tarted up for the party. Quick fashion montage, some rice flour makeup applied and off they went to the moon viewing.