Rob Hobart

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The last Interactive of the campaign was specifically designed to “set up” the final arc by – among other things – establishing that no one would be able to unite the Empire due to the remaining Imperial children’s questionable legitimacy. Naturally, that didn’t stop the various factions from trying to promote their favored choices (the Crane, of course, pushed Yukihiome since she was married to one of their own). I added a player-generated subplot to the mix in the form of an illegitimate son of one of the Imperial Princes (the mother was a PC who had made a die-roll to see if her affair in Topaz resulted in a child, but was later forced to drop out of the campaign for health reasons). This resulted in even more confusion and complexity in the negotiations, which just made the whole thing more fun to watch. I played the Imperial Chancellor, Otomo Keisuke, while my wife intermittently played Toturi Chisa and contributed further to Chisa’s repute as the cutest thing in all of Rokugan. (At one point we improvised a dialogue in which she demanded to take care of her pet monkey and I pointed out that this was properly the responsibility of the Imperial Monkey Keeper.)

A fun sub-plot in this event involved a female Scorpion PC (the “secondary” character of Shawn Edwards, better known for his primary character Toku Riku) who was Tainted. He had played her at a couple of Interactives, wearing a full costume and face-mask that completely concealed his identity (I remember being startled to realize who was under the mask the first time he showed up in full costume, at GenCon 2008). For this event, he decided to depict her final descent into the Taint by concealing a laptop with a remote microphone system beneath the costume. My wife Becca would speak through the laptop, supplying the PC’s “normal” female voice (but with it not always matching the character’s movements), but periodically Shawn would speak in his own male voice, producing a startling impact. It was a great little sub-plot that ended, as Shawn expected and wanted, with the PC being arrested and executed by Jade Magistrates.

The notable diplomatic results at this event included a Crane peace-treaty with the Crab (who were desperate for any help they could get at this point), a Unicorn-Phoenix peace treaty, and a Lion commitment to support the Crab as soon as possible. (Of course, this Lion “help” would turn out to be a two-edged sword…) Notably, the Dragon refused to make peace and instead withdrew defensively into their mountains; this resulted in their clan contributing more to the subsequent formation of the Shogun’s army than anyone else except the Crane, who were the primary sponsors.

By this time, I was leaning toward Toturi Kobe becoming the leader of the underdog “good guys” at the end of the campaign, and I was thus more than pleased when the Interactive resulted in Kobe being chosen as Shogun. I was also starting to lean toward the idea that Toturi Chisa needed to go away in order to both clear the path for Kobe and to further emphasize the campaign’s tragic themes, so I ended the Interactive with an ominous prophecy (whose wording, alas, I no longer have) that strongly implied Chisa would not live to adulthood. And to cap things off, I had Otomo Keisuke die of a heart attack when he heard the prophecy, eliminating the Empire's one competent Imperial authority.