Rob Hobart

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The last module in the campaign was one I had been planning, in a vague and general sense, pretty much since Year One. I had known pretty much from the beginning that I wanted the villain to sacrifice a Celestial being and for the PCs to undertake an epic supernatural quest to restore that being. I was leaning toward the Jade Dragon from the start, but once Obsidian came along and I knew the two of them would become the Sun and Moon, the whole idea really came together – since the twinned dragons represented virtue/Honor on the one side and sin/selfishness on the other, it made perfect sense that in an Empire struggling with corruption and moral decay the Dragon of Honor could become weak enough to be murdered. And thus the PCs, who had been beaten over the head for five years with the theme that Honor still mattered, would be the only ones who could restore her.

The module opens with the PCs witnessing the death of the Sun. This was an idea that L5R had explored once before, way back in the Hidden Emperor arc of the CCG, but I had always felt that story did not properly explore just how cataclysmic such an event would really be in a society where religion and magic were _real_. Accordingly, I was more than happy to explore the idea in HoR2. Fittingly (and in keeping with the campaign’s recurring themes) the PCs are sent on their quest not by an earthly authority but by supernatural visions and then a meeting with the Obsidian Dragon himself. This latter event served to drive home the point that the Obsidian Dragon was not actually the “villain” – it was, instead, reacting to (and being driven insane by) the out-of-control sinfulness of mankind. The scene with the Dragon also was a call-out to metaplot storytelling by two different players, one who had “volunteered” one of his PCs to become the next Obsidian Avatar and one who had sent his PC to the village from Unquiet Graves and rebuilt the shrine there to be dedicated to Obsidian.

Journeys through the Spirit Realms are always fun, and I enjoyed creating various interesting encounters along the way. Kitsu Mokuna got to reappear here in a battle which also paid tribute to the Tsuruchi PC who had sacrificed himself to the Tsuno to save his party in Essence of Toshigoku. Even better, Mokuna’s return fulfilled an unspoken promise I had made to the player-base by freeing and restoring all the PCs who had gotten lost in the various spirit realms during the entire campaign. The subsequent trip through Yomi was also fun to write, and a chance to again tackle some of the same ideas and themes I had examined in Ancestral Dictate way back in HoR1. Nishari makes her final campaign appearance here as well, now serving as an anonymous messenger for Bayushi, making sure the PCs are allowed into Yomi to pursue their quest.

Ultimately, the whole point of this module -- and in a sense, the whole point of the campaign -- was the final sequence in which the PCs enter the Heavens themselves and are given the chance to ensure the rebirth of the Jade Dragon. This sequence not only fulfilled the Great Destinies of any PCs who had them but also provided a last chance for those PCs with Dark Fate (acquired back in Touch of Obsidian) to transcend it and change their destinies. PCs who had become Forsaken by Destiny in that module were also able to purge that spiritual penalty and restore their position in the Celestial order. All of this led to some very dramatic role-play moments in which PCs confronted their own flawed natures head-on, which was exactly what I wanted to happen.

In the end, the PCs are required to make tangible game-mechanic sacrifices in order to restore the Jade Dragon. Metaplot-wise, this had two purposes: the first was to make the players really _feel_ that they were making sacrifices, and the second was to exercute a mild “power-down” by purging the campaign of some of its worst mechanical excesses. In addition to losing Great Destiny/Dark Fate, PCs also lost overpowered spells, Dragon Clan tattoos (goodbye Hurricane!), and various potent Advantages. All of this ensured that the PCs would have to approach the final battle in a much more serious way, with a real sense of their own mortality and without blithely assuming that broken mechanics would see them through.