Rob Hobart

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The campaign’s second two-round module drew its chief inspiration from a number of past scenarios (in both HoR1 and in home-play) that involved sending the PCs on a quest to find and enter a sacred site (in HoR1, for example, this was the module Kuro’s Fire). I specifically had used the Shrine of Shinsei for this in one of my home campaigns, and from the beginning of HoR2 I had been thinking of reprising this idea – in fact, I had set it up from the beginning by having the previous Emperor retire in order to go on a quest for the Shrine. In the original 1st Edition lore, the location of the Shrine of Shinsei was undefined and was said to move around for different people (the map placed it within the mysterious Shinomen Forest as a way of driving this home). It was also described as being home to kenku, the crow-men associated with Shinsei. Later on, during the Diamond Era of the CCG, other writers relocated the Shrine to the Crane coastline and depicted it in a far more boring and mundane fashion, but as with other such abandonments of 1st Edition canon, I chose to stick with the original concept for HoR. (And later restored it to L5R canon in 4th Edition.)

This module was actually quite linear in construction, especially in Round One. The PCs basically proceed from one location to another, following the clues from one to the next, until they reach the Shrine. I sought to compensate for this by making each “step” along the linear plot-path both an interesting place to visit and a challenging encounter, with multiple points where the PCs could stall-out and fail if they did not play intelligently, ask the right questions, and solve the problems facing them. This was true even in the module’s opening sequence, in which the PCs have to interpret the Emperor’s prophetic dream to realize they must seek out his father, employing Skills such as Divination and Poetry. I enjoyed creating interesting and vivid encounters at each point along the trail, but my favorite part of Round One was the visit to Koten in which the PCs meet Toturi Gendo. This let me not only present an unusual and sympathetic NPC (a young prophet crippled by a stroke) but also to seed the campaign with bits-and-pieces of knowledge from his ravings – hints that the late Empress had been unfaithful and that the “Great Hunter” (the Big Bad) would soon begin to wreak havoc. I liked this whole sequence so much that I made sure to return to Koten two years later for the special event Doom of the Crab.

If the Koten sequence was the most enjoyable part of Round One for me to write and GM, the most challenging sequence was the visit to the Oracle of Water. I liked the idea of including an Oracle at some point in the campaign – they’re iconic entities, manifestations of the Celestial Heavens, and I thought it would be good to establish that they were still around in Rokugan 1500. Also, using an Oracle to find the Shrine of Shinsei seemed very appropriate. However, Oracles can also answer literally _any_ question; this sort of thing is easy to deal with in a home game, but I knew it would be problematic in a living campaign. I included a number of sample answers and guidelines to help GMs deal with oddball questions – especially the sort of “spoiler” questions that some players would be tempted to ask. However, the most notorious incident in this sequence involved a player whose character was trying to avenge the PvP murder of his previous character… so the murderer tried to kill the Oracle to keep her from revealing his guilt. Needless to say, that didn’t work out well for him. In Round Two, the primary challenge is for the PCs to pass the various trials on the path up to the Shrine of Shinsei. In keeping with previous adventures of this sort, I wanted these to be themed around the Five Elements, but I also wanted them to be very distinct from the stuff I’d done in Kuro’s Fire. The key inspiration here was to use the Keepers of the Elements, a group that had been introduced in the CCG’s Diamond story arc. (Although I wasn’t a fan of that arc overall, there as elsewhere I was always ready to scavange any materials that would fit into my storylines.) This let me exercise creativity in creating the Keepers themselves as well as in devising the tests they would present to the PCs. Of course, in keeping with tradition the final test (Void) was radically different from the rest and was both the simplest and the hardest to pass.

The retired Crab NPC in this module – a fellow named Guro who is struggling to control the severe Taint in his wounds – was inserted primarily for role-playing interest and to add some pathos (he can’t pass the Void Test and thus is denied entry to the Shrine of Shinsei). Players turned out to be quite sympathetic to him, with some even proposing to write fictions in order to recover the long-lost Unbroken Technique and use it to save him. Although I vetoed that specific idea, I eventually responded to this player sentiment by bringing Guro back for the module Touch of Obsidian, where he could be purified.

The Shrine of Shinsei itself was based pretty directly on the depiction in my home campaign, complete with the special “inner shrine” guarded by kenku and fu lions, with only certain PCs able to enter it. I deliberately made the requirements for entering the inner shrine rather stringent in order to emphasize the module’s titular theme (“Test of Purity”). It was thus theoretically possible for the PCs to get all the way to the Shrine and still fail in their mission, since someone had to reach the inner shrine in order to meet with the Emperor’s father. (As far as I know, though, this never actually happened – every table had at least one character who qualified for the inner shrine.)

As a result of my experience with Grave of Heroes/Voice of the Emperor, I did not repeat the mistake of doing an exclusive second half of the story. Instead, I rewarded players who made the expensive trek to GenCon by creating a scene in which PCs could choose to spar with a kenku and thus be invited to join the ultra-elite Kenku Swordsman School. A total of four PCs got the special cert, of whom three (two Crane and a Lion) ultimately enrolled in the School. This later created confusion among the general player-base, since references to “kenku” led many to believe that I had allowed non-human PCs into the campaign. (I never actually allowed any nonhumans, although I did allow a Scorpion actor to acquire a nemuranai that let him pretend to be a kenku.)

This module saw the third appearance by the Sons of Destiny, intent on trying to retrieve mystical secrets from the Shrine. Since the mod as a whole was very much not a combat challenge, the presence of the Sons allowed me to justify a climactic battle in which the cultists ambush the PCs when they depart the Shrine. I then followed up that combat challenge with a final social challenge, as Miya Shikan – increasingly anxious to maintain his influence over the Emperor – intercepts the PCs and tries to make them hand over the gift for the Emperor. This was a slightly less terrifying than dealing with the Emperor himself in Voice, but still was a demanding social challenge that required PCs to demonstrate both good role-play and employ their Social Skills in order to succeed.