Rob Hobart

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The campaign’s running concept of a bi-level storyline, one side of things seen by the higher-Rank primary characters and the other side experienced by the lower-Rank secondaries, reached its final and ultimate expression with this Low-Rank module and its High-Rank sequel/counterpart (Celestial Journey). However, this module also had another aspect: I had decided that everyone who played in the concluding special scenarios would have to have played either this module or Celestial Journey. Partly this was done for play-balancing purposes (I had long since decided that Celestial Journey was going to involve the PCs making “sacrifices” that would be expressed mechanically in the loss of special abilities and powers) but it was also because I wanted the finale to have full emotional impact on the players – and that impact would be muted (at best!) if they had not experienced the lead-in to it. Thus, I wrote both this adventure and Celestial Journey in the knowledge that they were also serving as preludes/lead-ins to the campaign finale.

(Fun side-note: A table of players showed up for BOTH of the finale events, the court and the battle, with brand-new characters and no prior experience with the campaign. When we explained that they could not play these events without the precursors, they threw fits and declared the events were “not as advertised” – they even went to AEG to gripe. Needless to say, that didn’t get them the results they wanted.)

The plot-purpose of this module, of course, was to depict the catastrophe of Akodo Gintaku murdering the Jade Dragon (and in the process, sacrificing an entire army of honorable Lion samurai). I felt that an event this spectacular and horrible really needed to happen “on screen”... but, it was an event that any PC witnesses would have a hard time surviving. Accordingly, I chose to make this the Low-Rank half of the story so that character deaths would not be devastating, with the High-Rank characters then dealing with the consequences in the next module. This module drew very heavily on the influence of the anime series Berserk (the original TV version, of course, not the more recent movies), specifically the climax of the series in which horrific supernatural forces are unleashed and pretty much all the characters die in ghastly and hideous ways. Although viewers suspect throughout the series that bad things are coming, the absolute horror of the ending still comes as a tremendous shock, and I wanted to try to replicate some of that looming fear and visceral, emotionally overwhelming horror for HoR. I deliberately included return appearances by an assortment of sympathetic NPCs such as Hida Buso, Suzume Kizu, and Pep’chuk the Ratling, as well as Gintaku’s admirable son Akodo Soto. Since the Dragon Clan had made commitments at Interactives to send hundreds of tattooed men to support the Crab, I also had an excuse to include Hitomi Choujo in the NPC cast. Likewise, I wrote the march to the Crab lands to include a series of “comrades on the road to battle” role-play sequences – a draw-lot play, a session of “full contact kemari,” Kizu trying to sneak off to his family, a rowdy night at a gambling house, a potential eve-of-battle romance between Soto and a female PC, and so forth. All of this, of course, was to set up a heightened emotional impact for the finale in which all of these NPCs would cruelly and brutally perish.

And then…

"The figure which must be Akodo Mako seizes Akodo Soto and pins his arms behind him. A single shout of confusion, anger, and fear bursts from his lips. Then Akodo Gintaku slashes with the knife in his hand, and opens his son’s throat.

The ground shudders and lurches beneath your feet, throwing you to the ground. All across the battlefield men and monsters alike tumble and fall. A terrible roar fills the world and the soil erupts, unleashing vast black chains as thick as tree-trunks. The chains hurtle upward, lengthening infinitely, reaching toward the sun.

The sun seems to shrink and fade, and the sky grows dark, the blue of day draining out of it like water from a gourd. Something is being pulled from the sky, something vast and serpentine and glowing green, writhing in the grip of chains. The Jade Dragon falls to the earth with the force of an earthquake, smashing hundreds of mortals and beasts alike beneath its thrashing bulk.

Akodo Gintaku approaches the head of the trapped Dragon, and his voice echoes across the field with unnatural power. “I claim this power for myself, this sacrifice for the future I will build.” He raises the dagger once again, still wet with his son’s blood, and plunges it down into the Dragon’s throat. A vast gout of glowing green blood shoots forth, luminescent under the now utterly black sky. A terrible moan goes up from the mingled armies on the field – a moan of terror from the Lion ranks, of adulation from the Shadowlands creatures. Gintaku stands over the collapsing body of the great Dragon, and his body is wreathed in unnatural green fire. The earth trembles beneath your feet, and then rain begins to fall from a sky turned reddish-black. The thick, heavy liquid spatters across the suddenly darkened landscape, turning it crimson, for it is blood.

Flickers of eerie green lightning race across the plains, and in its light the blood covering everything is an unnatural glistening black. A cacophony of screams rise up around you. Hundreds of Lion samurai are rising into the air, caught in the terrible green energy, their bodies twisting and changing, huge butterfly-like wings erupting from their backs.

Gintaku’s voice rings like some terrible bell. “And you,” he says to the vast Shadowlands horde below, “you will serve me now, and not your dark master. In return, I offer you the flesh of these, my servants.” He gestures once, a wide sweep of his arm encompassing all of the blood-soaked samurai on the plain.

A great roar of gluttonous inhuman appetite rises up from the Shadowlands forces, mingled with cries of terror and impotent rage from the First Matsu Army."

I remember when I ran the slot-zero table, my Lion player Todd said, “I don’t know about you guys, but I feel physically sick.” :)

The conclusion of the module allowed the PCs to have a chance to get away, with various of the NPCs dying to help them along. I also worked in the idea that PCs could literally sacrifice a part of themselves (represented by Advantages, Trait Ranks, etc) to try to get away. In part, this was intended to create a Low-Rank counterpart of the “sacrifice” moment in the next module… but it was also, again, an influence from the finale of Berserk, where the protagonist Gutts chops off his own forearm in a desperate attempt to rescue his true love Casca.