Rob Hobart

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The final episode of the 20GW mini-arc, written and released a month later in October of 2007. My inspiration for this module came from two sources: the old 1st Edition adventure “Twilight’s Honor,” which depicted a Crab commander succumbing to PTSD and engaging in suicidal behavior, and the sidebar “Full Metal Kimono” from Bearers of Jade, which suggested putting the PCs in command of a worn-out Crab unit (full of stress-cases, drug addicts, and drunks) and then letting them deal with both the trials of command and the tragedy of fighting the Shadowlands. I wanted to try to evoke all of these ideas and themes in an HoR module, especially since there was a tendency for players to ignore the more tragic and unpleasant aspects of the Crab Clan’s duty.

Of course, in a living campaign the real challenge with this idea was to come up with a suitable justification for the PCs to get such an assignment. My solution was for the assignment to actually to to Otomo Hiroshi, with the PCs going along as his escorts. With the Crab Champion having died, the Hiruma daimyo is stuck dealing with Gojiro’s ascension and needed someone to look into the reports of trouble at a border post without directly insulting the local commander (which could be disastrous for morale), so he sends a “foolish Imperial” to have a look at the border.

A lot of the fun for this module was coming up with the various Hiruma personalities at the outpost, introducing the full range of “soldier archetypes” from offensive drunks and harsh NCOs to sympathetic rookies. And of course I had to include a “draw-lot play,” one of the few new Crab-culture ideas introduced in 3rd Edition (the rest of this module drew entirely on 1st Edition materials). Naturally, once the PCs get to know all these Crab fellows, many of them wind up dying tragically and/or horribly. In this regard I especially liked the night attack by the goblin sneaks, who – if not detected – would murder the likable young Crab who was lying sick in the infirmary. Ultimately, the survival of the entire outpost is in the hands of the PCs… either by convincing the PTSD-crippled commander to break out of his funk, or by taking command for themselves.

Of course, since the PCs technically have no official assignment (other than protecting Otomo Hiroshi), there was nothing to stop them from abandoning the Hiruma outpost to its fate and running back to the safety of the Empire. I expected that PCs would generally stay around due to the combination of samurai honor, connections to the Crab NPCs, and players’ desire for Experience Points… but there was nothing FORCING them to do so, and in fact I know of at least one table that rationalized to themselves a justification for bailing out (and then were angry when they didn’t get full XP).