Rob Hobart

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Parvez’ third module in his personal series was the closest the campaign would get to a Shadowlands module in Year One. It also would have by far the strongest lasting impact on the campaign of any of his four mods, since it introduced both a new secondary villain in the person of Moto Yoshi (the Last Dark Moto) and originated the theme of Go competitions as a recurring cultural/social element of HoR2's Rokugan. While I would love to take credit for all of this, in truth Parvez came up with almost everything in this module; my only contribution was to decide that the Dark Moto would leave and thus become a recurring figure – a choice which I made in part simply because I did not want to force low-Rank PCs to fight a Dark Moto.

I really liked the whole concept of the PCs getting stuck as caretakers for a Go game between two dedicated Grandmasters. Much like Kanrinrin’s Duty in HoR1, the module presented the PCs with a series of non-martial challenges (such as keeping birds from disrupting the Go game), followed by an unexpected combat challenge at the end… but since the PCs’ Honor and reputations were involved, the fight did not negate the value of what they had accomplished (or failed to accomplish) earlier in the mod.

The two NPC spirits/ghosts who appear during the module, Hida Hiroku and Moto Tetsuo, were notable PCs from HoR1 whose players gave Parvez permission to use them in this alternate storyline. In fact, Parvez’ original draft also referred to two Phoenix PCs from the first campaign, but I had to drop that element because the players had already sent me a new background fiction for their characters’ storylines in HoR2’s universe that conflicted with Parvez’ idea here.

The fight with the Shadowlands creatures in the climax of this module was written by me (Parvez still did not trust his combat-balancing skills). I decided to include one of my favorite creatures, the mocking Oni no Genso, an obscure creature from the original Book of the Shadowlands that had never appeared subsequently anywhere in canonical L5R. (For that very reason I made a point of getting him included in the Oni chapter of 4th Edition’s “Enemies of the Empire.”) I also included another Oni, the ox-headed Oni no Gorusei, which had been released as a card in the Jade arc (I used him in a follower-driven Shadowlands deck) but at that point had never been written up for the RPG. Since there were no official stats or abilities for him, I had to come up with something on my own, and gave him a fairly straightforward grapple-and-bite ability that produced an increased likelihood of victims getting the Taint. Many months later, AEG published “Creatures of Rokugan” for 3rd Edition, which included the Oni no Gorusei and depicted him as being wreathed in heat and flames (it was possible to interpret the original card art in this way, though it wasn’t obvious). After that book came out, I revised the Oni in this module to match it – the change, as it turned out, was actually fairly minor. As noted, there would be a LOT of long-term impact from the NPCs and concepts introduced in Unquiet Graves. Moto Yoshi himself would become a major secondary villain, first in the service of Moto Temujin and later switching his loyalty to Akodo Gintaku. Go competitions would be a recurring sub-theme in numerous modules and the two Grandmasters introduced here would both make return appearances; this module’s reference to the Crane Grandmaster, Kakita Fujimura, being poisoned by a rival would also become a recurring sub-plot, with the rival eventually murdering him at an Interactive two years later. Even the physical setting of the module – the isolated village with its poorly-maintained shrine – would be given significance by a later player-submitted fiction, and as a result the PCs would return to it at the very end of the campaign (in the module Celestial Journey).