Rob Hobart

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This was a one-time experiment – a module that would be a direct sequel to the previous one (Grave of Heroes) but would only be playable at the premier convention, in this case Origins 2007. The idea was to provide a tangible reward for players who went to the effort and expense to attend a big convention and play in the premier. In this case, the reward included not only the Experience Points but also, more importantly, access to a lot of meta-plot information – the Emperor’s character and emotions, the first hints that some or all of his children were illegitimate, and the first evidence that Miya Shikan had become a khadi.

However, this whole concept didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped, in large part because attendance at Origins was much lower than in the past so the number of players who got to play this module was much lower than I had anticipated. (The convention was going into a downward attendance spiral that almost killed it, and we would pull out of running HoR there after getting an even worse turnout in 2008). I also came to feel that I had short-changed the rest of the campaign by not letting anyone else have a shot at talking to the Emperor and seeing/learning the meta-plot hints. In retrospect, I think a better choice would have been to simply combine Grave and Voice into a single two-Round module and have some other one-off reward for people who attended the premier (I used this idea in the GenCon premier, Test of Purity).

My favorite part of this module was the various interactions with the Emperor, and I spent a lot of time developing his dialogue and role-play descriptions. My depiction of Toturi XII was influenced in part by the portrayal of the Chinese Emperor in the novel “Empress Orchid” – a weak man tormented and driven to despair by impossible responsibilities in a kingdom facing unprecedented dangers and changes. (Of course, my Emperor was also tormented by the knowledge that his wife had cuckolded him and that the only children he really believed to be his – the twins – were now dead.) The encounter also included the opportunity for the PCs to endanger their own lives simply by saying the wrong thing to the Emperor… forcing them to make an extremely difficult Social roll to save themselves. (I especially enjoyed this feature because

a few players had been griping on the campaign ListServ that Social Skills didn’t matter as far as keeping your character alive.) The climactic attack on the Emperor’s barge saw the “payoff” of a minor sub-plot from Topaz Championship, involving a Crane NPC who (due to most players not paying attention to him) had sold out to the Scorpion Clan. Now, that moral compromise forced him to poison the guards on the Emperor’s barge in order to create an opening for the Spider’s Fangs to try to assassinate Miya Shikan. In addition to dropping a big clue that Shikan had become a khadi (he appears to get stabbed but is unhurt), this also was a subtle clue that the mysterious Spider’s Fangs ninja were connected in some way to the Scorpion Clan. Of course, then the whole thing gets disrupted by the return of the Tsuno, which gives the PCs a chance to kill the Ravager and retrieve the heads of the Emperor’s twin sons.

Unlike Grave of Heroes, this module was not designed to be intrinsically deadly to play, merely tough and challenging. However, “Black Blake” struck here yet again (his fourth deadly table of the con), with a table where his dice were on fire while those of the players went cold as ice. The table ended up as a near-wipe, with one PC taking the Emperor (and Chisa) and fleeing into the river.

[Digression: Illegitimate Imperial Children]

Voice of the Emperor contains the first major clues to the key idea I had come up with in order to create a sucession crisis for the Empire: the Emperor had been cuckolded, and most of the nine “Imperial heirs” were actually bastards. Where did this idea come from?

Like many aspects of the campaign, it came from player influence. At the beginning of HoR2 I had invited players to submit ideas for the various “daimyo slots” that I had not filled with my own NPCs. One player had submitted several ideas for Dragon daimyo (the only Dragon NPC I had created was the Clan Champion), including Mirumoto Jinzaki, who was depicted as having been “broken” by losing a duel to master swordsman Kakita Saburashi. I felt like something more had to lie behind a man being so completely shattered by losing a single duel – plus, since Saburashi was already my poster-boy for the obsessive pursuit of dueling perfection, and I didn’t want to dilute that with a second NPC on the same personal path. Then an idea occurred to me… what if losing the duel had forced Jinzaki to confront another, much more serious personal failing?

Out of nowhere, I suddenly thought: what if Jinzaki had cuckolded the Emperor? The idea of a nobleman doing that had been broached in the old L5R adventure “Code of Bushido,” but in that one it was a cousin of the Emperor rather than the ruler himself. Such a scandal would not only create a huge legitimacy issue for the dynasty (opening the door for the Big Bad) but would also add tremendous depth to the Emperor’s lingering grief and misery over his late wife. It would fit very nicely into the Three Sins theme that had emerged in the campaign’s first two years (Desire and Regret, in this case). Finally, it would make Jinzaki himself a much more interesting character and introduce new complexities into the Dragon Clan’s confused leadership situation.

Having made this decision, I immediately introduced the first hints to the campaign in Voice of the Emperor and followed up in the subsequent Interactive (Imperial Funeral) which saw Jinzaki announcing his impending retirement.

[End Digression]