Rob Hobart

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The Low-Rank counterpart to High House of Light, this module served as the conclusion of the story arc begun in Bayushi Lineage: the PCs must deal with the last of the Scorpion souls freed from Traitor’s Grove. It also answered the question of what Akodo Mako had intended to accomplish by setting fire to the Grove in the first place – his goal was to free _this_ soul, Shosuro Kumade, who had tried to murder the Scorpion Clan Champion in his first life and could be counted on to do the same again.

Structurally, this module was basically a series of murder mysteries as Kumade kills off the descendants of those who defeated him the first time, leading up to an eventual attempt on the Clan Champion when he visits the court at the end of winter. This meant I had to construct three successive crimes, each with their own sets of clues that could be uncovered through investigation – a considerable amount of work. However, much as with High House of Light, I made sure there were plenty of other things going on for the PCs to do and see, with a suitably large cast of NPCs. There were winter festivals and celebrations, a potential winter romance, and more Scorpion-specific things like the struggles of a Scorpion playwright and the Clan of Secrets’ revenge on one of its enemies -- Shiba Yota, who had killed a prominent Scorpion’s son in a duel during Bayushi Lineage. It seemed only fitting to show the Scorpion Clan’s sadistic vengeance on him in the module that also resolved the escaped-souls plotline in Bayushi Lineage. (I also felt it was important to show that revenge “on-screen” to remind people of why the Scorpion Clan is feared throughout the Empire.) Since this was a Low-Rank module depicting a Winter Court in a secondary Scorpion castle, the cast of NPCs included a lot of “oddball” types who had character flaws – the rapacious Crane couple from Shiro Hanagensai, the Kitsuki-trained Kasuga from The Tortoise and the Hare, the womanizing Mirumoto from Tears of a Fox’s Heart, and so forth.

In order to make the villain unique and threatening without letting him be grossly overpowered relative to the PCs, I decided to make him one of the Soshi Deceivers, the secret Scorpion school that exploited the powers of the Shadow. Of course… *shifty eyes*… this choice may also have been influenced by the fact that I was the one who updated this school and its spell-list for 3rd Edition in the book Masters of Court (my first official L5R project, published in spring 2008). In any case, it worked pretty well for supplying Kumade with an unusual set of abilities and also for explaining why he was able to carry out his various murders without being caught.

It was possible, if a majority of tables failed to track down and capture Kumade, for this module to end with the assassination of the Scorpion Clan Champion. That would certainly have made for some interesting changes to the Scorpion storyline for the campaign’s final 18 months, and since this mod was played by “backup” PCs rather than experienced primaries, I felt there was a distinct possibility it could happen. As it turned out, however, pretty much all the tables succeeded, and Bayushi Tamoru was able to stick around and pick up the pieces after the PCs finally took down Shosuro Hido.