Farewell, Sweet Prince

Just when the party was feeling good about successfully tricking Prince Batsaikhar into accepting a worthless ring as the priceless artifact they’d won at the Ruby Phoenix Tournament, everything started falling apart. The Prince shocked everyone by asking Bella to marry him, and Bella shocked the Prince by not accepting immediately. Knowing that the Prince was not the sort to take disappointment well, the party decided to slip out of town before he could decide what form of punishment would be most appropriate for this insult. The streets of Ordu-Aganhei were packed with citizens celebrating the Feast of the Dragon, with fireworks going off everywhere and long paper dragons parading through the narrow streets. Suddenly, one of those dragons was cast off, and the people underneath were revealed as black-clad ninjas, who immediately attacked the party. Could this night get any worse?

The Sting

As the new Ruby Phoenix Champions, the party were the guests of honor at an elaborate celebration to mark the end of the Tournament. Amid the fireworks and entertainment, the Emissary told them that they would be escorted back to Goka first thing in the morning to access Hao Jin’s Vault to select their prize.

That brought the party back to their unresolved dilemma: Prince Batsaikhar was expecting them to bring him back some priceless artifact from the Ruby Phoenix’s vault, but they needed to come away with the Slate of Hiroto, an artifact that Suishen told them would allow Ameiko to command an army of terra-cotta warriors (assuming they could locate the matching Baton of Command). How could they satisfy the mercurial prince without losing Ameiko’s first chance of assembling an army? They stayed up late into the night brainstorming options, but ultimately decided that since they had no idea what type of treasures the Vault might contain, they really couldn’t decide on a strategy.

Champions!

After winning their semi-final match in the Ruby Phoenix Tournament, the party sat back to see who they’d face in the finals. The other two surviving contestants were the hobgoblin, Gomwai, facing the Scarred Ninja, Seishuku. As soon as the Emissary gave the signal, Gomwai took the fight to Seishuku, and in short order simply beat the snot out of him. As he stood over the fallen ninja, he picked out the party in the crowd and gave them a cold glare before striding out of the arena.

A Plot Revealed

Marthysan, the previous champion of the Ruby Phoenix Tournament, had apparently been kidnapped, and the party had followed the clues to the deserted New Harbor waterfront. While everything appeared quiet, the party expected the worst, and prepared for trouble. They weren’t disappointed. Sandoval had teleported out to one of the ships, and heard muffled voices coming from a nearby fishing boat, and as he went to investigate, he was attacked by Darys Shrike, the hulking fighter from the Aspis Consortium’s team.