Minkai at Last!

Sawyer staggered back against the wall, clutching his stomach. Marie’s healing had stopped the worst of the bleeding and closed his wound, but his insides still didn’t feel … right. Munasukaru’s wicked blade had all but eviscerated him, and it still felt like some of his parts weren’t where they were supposed to be. When it was obvious that no one else was going to come screaming out to attack them, Sandoval began to sing quietly. His Soothing Performance bathed the group in waves of healing sound, and Sawyer felt his organs shift back into place.

As Bella ensured that Munasukaru would not regenerate (a violent and bloody process), the others moved to examine the pit in the far side of the room. They expected it to lead down to yet another level of the Penance, but instead, it was only about 30’ deep. The sides and floor of the pit looked like it had melted and reformed, and hundreds of contorted human faces and limbs lay frozen in the stone. Sandoval had a sudden memory, and dug in his pack for the book he’d taken from the library. Sure enough, there were sketches in the book that were disturbingly similar to the scene below them.

The book itself was written in Common, but it was full of notes in Tian, written in an obsessively neat hand. They returned to the library, and Marie began to translate the notes. It became clear that the notes had been written by Anamurumon, the leader of the Five Storms. The book documented an ancient legend of a magical demon gate, or kimon, a way unbound by mortal magic through which spirits can pass and vanish like an echo. It was clear from Anamurumon’s notes that he saw this kimon as the key he had been searching for to escape his prison. The creation of a kimon would require the sacrifice of many hundreds of souls, but Anamurumon was not constrained by mortal timescales. The Five Storms began a harvest that spanned generations. They sent feelers out among the dark things of the Forest of Spirits, and the twisted, evil hobgoblins inhabiting the forest answered their call. Worshiping the oni almost as gods, these hobgoblins acted as the hands of the Five Storms, scouring the forest to gather souls for the kimon. While the kami were able to kill many of the hobgoblins, they could not kill them all, and slowly the harvest of souls continued until there were enough. As the completion of the kimon approached, Anamuruon realized even if the oni passed through the kimon, they would still be pursued by the kami, for as soon as the Five Storms left the House of Withered Blossoms, the kami would be able to enter the pagoda and learn what they had done. So Anamurumon resolved to sacrifice one of his own, the least of his commanders in fact, to stay in the House of Withered Blossoms for all time. With Munasukaru still imprisoned within the pagoda, the kami would be powerless to cross its threshold and discover the oni’s treachery.

This explained much they had found so far, including Munasukaru’s feelings of betrayal at Anamurumon’s hands, and her labeling this place as her “penance”. As they read, dozens of kami began to flit into the library with them, freed after centuries from their prohibition from entering the House of Withered Blossoms. The guardian kami, Noburo, approached them and bowed deeply. “You have our eternal gratitude for ridding this place of the last of the oni, allowing us to learn how they escaped.” The group led him to Munasukaru’s sanctum, showed him the kimon, and told him what they had learned. As they spoke, Noburo’s expression grew grim.

“So now you guys can just go kill all the oni, right?” Bella asked cheerfully when they finished. Noburo frowned. “That would be … most difficult,” he said after a long pause. “The oni have had decades now to scatter and hide themselves throughout Minkai. And most of us cannot leave the Forest of Spirits. I fear it would take us a very long time to even locate them, and we would find it difficult to muster the numbers to defeat them.” He saw the party’s disappointed looks. “Perhaps after we have time to study their library, we will learn more to help us.” Already, dozens of kami were pouring through the books and scrolls, absorbing their content at an inhuman rate.

The kami escorted the party back to the surface. As they reached the ground floor of the pagoda, they could hear screams and muffled explosions from far above. “We are taking care of the aranea problem,” Noburo said with a small smile. Ameiko and Sandru were delighted to see them safe and sound once more, and they were all grateful to spend a night under the stars, breathing air that was fresh and clean and not filled with the overpowering stench of death.

The next day, they began to study some of the records they had brought out of the Penance with them. Ichirou’s strongbox held a pile of letters, scrolls, books, and scribbled notes, most crumbling with age. All had to do with the politics and factions of Minkai, although Shinjiro noted that many of the imperial or noble names were many hundreds of years old. Some appeared to be reports from spies, while others were mundane writings on the history or culture of Minkai. All were densely covered with notes in the same, neat handwriting that indicated that the author, presumably Anamurumon, was obsessed with the nation. Many notes included disturbing hints of the punishments and torments he intends to inflict once he rules Minkai.

In the commander’s quarters, they’d found a set of leather-bound ledgers (and the leather appeared to be made from human skin). They contained a comprehensive and apparently oft-updated genealogy of the five imperial families of Minkai, listing every known legitimate and illegitimate member of each family, and notes on which had died. These notes, all in the same hand but in different inks, spanned hundreds of years. The handwriting was the same as on the notes found in Ichirou’s chamber. The last update on the Amatatsu line show’s Ameiko’s great-great-grandfather still living, and her great-grandfather as his heir, along with several brothers and sisters.

Noburo joined them shortly thereafter, and briefed them on what the kami had learned from the contents of the library. There were several key elements:

• The Five Storms can’t just simply conquer Minkai. Just like the kami, the gods set in place strict laws preventing the oni from taking direct action to seize worldly power. In order to create their private empire, the oni need to do so subtly, infiltrating all levels of society.

• The linchpin to the Five Storms’ plan is the extinction of the five imperial families of Minkai. If no one can claim descent from the divine line of emperors, then no one can challenge the claim of the pretender the Five Storms place on the throne.

• There are numerous examples of correspondence between Anamurumon and various mortal agents in Minkai (almost certainly long dead by now). The oni promised these mortals great rewards for their service, and the Five Storms are well known to honor their promises.

• There was voluminous documentation of literally centuries of breeding experiments between Anamurumon and various human subjects (most captives, but some, disgustingly, willing). Anamurumon was apparently obsessed with siring a half-human progeny. He needed the “perfect” grandchild — a tiefling who would not only be unquestioningly loyal to Anamurumon, but could also pass as human. Such a child would be the perfect agent to infiltrate the imperial families of Minkai, but all of Anamurumon’s descendants were deemed “unsuitable” and killed by the oni – at least as of the end of this record, over a century and a half old.

• Anamurumon also had an obsession with weapons imbued with royal honor — such as the ancestral weapons of the five imperial families of Minkai, including Suishen, Guardian of the Amatatsu. He kept careful records of who possessed each of the royal families’ weapons over the generations, where they were kept, and speculative notes about how they might be destroyed.

Noburo faced the party and hung his head. “I fear there is little we can do to help you. From what you have told me, Anamurumon is already well on his way to accomplishing his plan to conquer Minkai, and I fear that any small help we kami of the Forest could provide would come far too late to prevent his success. I think your best chance is to continue with your plan to place the Princess Ameiko on the throne.”

“How do we know that anyone we meet in Minkai isn’t already working for the Five Storms?” Bella was worried about the letters they’d found documenting centuries of bribery and subversion. “I guess we’ll just have to ‘question’ everyone we meet to make sure they’re telling the truth.” The rogue fingered one of her daggers meaningfully.

“No!” Ameiko stepped forward. “We have to win supporters to our cause, not show that we’re just as bad as the oni! If the Jade Regent is as bad a ruler as we’ve heard, there have to be people who oppose him. We just have to figure out who they are and recruit them to join us.”

“And don’t forget – we have the seeds of an army already.” Everyone looked around for the source of the deep voice, then realized that Suishen was speaking. “We have the Slate of Hiroto, and if we can locate Hiroto’s Baton, we can bring Hiroto’s army of terra-cotta warriors into our service.”

“Do you have any idea where the Baton might be?” Ameiko asked.

“The last man I know who held the baton was the general Hirabashi Akikaza,” Suishen replied. “Of course, that was several hundred years ago, but I’m sure such an important artifact would have stayed with the Hirabashi family. If we can locate his descendents, they might be able to lead us to it.”

And so the party resolved to continue on to Minkai. The kami could tell them little about the people, customs, or geography of Minkai. “We kami avoid mortals if possible, and seldom venture beyond the heart of the Forest,” Noburo explained. “Miyaro has been our eyes and ears to the mortal world.”  Unfortunately, Miyaro knew little more. She, too, was uncomfortable around civilization. However, she did know the way to Minkai, and something of the northern provinces.

The party piled their loot onto their wagons (wondering if they’d ever get a chance to sell it), and said their goodbyes to the kami. Then they set out, once more on the road. They traveled for another two weeks through the southern reaches of the Forest of Spirits, and to their relief they had no more encounters with either mischievous or malicious spirits, or monsters of any sort.

  

Ronin

 The wilds of the Forest abruptly gave way to rolling grasslands, the northern borderlands of Minkai. Miyaro explained that they were entering the Osogen Grasslands, the least civilized part of Minkai. The nearest cities were on the western coast, beyond the Sankyodai Mountains to the west. Humble farmsteads surrounded by ditches and palisades began to dot the landscape. Scattered across large expanses of uncultivated land, and surrounded by millet and rice fields, the farmsteads belonged to brave Minkai settlers who left their impoverished condition in the south to win their own pieces of land in the Borderlands. A lattice of footpaths and irrigation canals fed by the waters of the Kosokunami River connected the scattered settlements.

Two days after entering Minkai, they encountered a family headed north. Their belongings were piled into a donkey cart, and a pregnant woman holding a toddler rode in the cart, while several other children walked alongside. When they saw the heavily armed party riding towards them, the father ran forward and prostrated himself on the ground. “Please! Take anything you wish from us, but please do not harm my family!” he begged.

Marie assured them that they meant no harm, and urged the man to rise. He climbed to his feet, eyeing the party’s swords fearfully. “Why are you traveling north?” Nicki asked. The man swallowed uncomfortably, his eyes darting back and forth. “Um … well … Do you work for the Jade Regent?”

“Why, is he hiring?” Bella asked flippantly, and the man paled and began to tremble. Nicki realized that any hope of getting useful information from this man was heading out the window, so he took matters into his own hands. He cast Charm Person and the man began to look more confident. “We’re no friends of the Jade Regent,” Nicki assured him. “We’re travelers visiting your country for the first time, and wish to know more about the situation here. Why are you on the road away from Minkai?”

The man bowed. “Welcome to Minkai, my lords. My name is Mokue. I was a simple merchant, as was my father before me. We lived on the lands of Daimyo Hirabashi Hito, in a small village south of here, and our lives were good. But when the Jade Regent took power, everything changed.

“The Hirabashi family had always been loyal supporters of House Higashiyama, and when Higashiyama Shigure became emperor, Hirabashi Hito was his strongest supporter. But when the emperor went into hiding, the Jade Regent accused Hito of treason. In the turmoil that followed the emperor’s disappearance, the Jade Regent’s forces attacked the Hirabashi compound in Kasai, and Hirabashi Hito and his eldest son, Ichiro, were killed. The Jade Regent seized all their lands and distributed them to daimyos who were loyal to him.

“Since then, life has been a horror. Barbarian bandits roam the land freely, and the daimyos collude with them to rob the people. Both sides steal and kill without mercy, and the people starve. I finally decided that I could not subject my family to this kind of life any more, and hope to find a better life in Hongal.”

The party exchanged glances at the idea that life could be better in Hongal, but held their tongues for now. Marie took up the questioning. “Do any of the Hirabashi family survive?” Mokue nodded eagerly. “The youngest son, Hirabashi Jiro, was away from Kasai when the attack occurred. With his lands stolen, he is now a masterless ronin. He has a camp at the bend of the river, and has gathered several other ronin in his service. They do what they can to defend the peasants from the bandits, but they are few.” He shrugged in a gesture of bowing to the inevitable.

“And what do the people think of the Jade Regent?” Ameiko asked. Mokue shrugged. “For most Minkaians, the political situation in the capital of Kasai has little effect on their daily lives, but rumors make their rounds through the empire, and even the most isolated farmer has heard tales of vice and excess in the Imperial Palace; of the execution of so-called traitors and dissidents, be they powerful samurai or lowly peasants; and of monstrous soldiers in the employ of the Jade Regent prowling the countryside. If no one stops the Jade Regent, it’s only a matter of time before he crowns himself emperor.

“Unrest is beginning to grow throughout Minkai, but as yet there is little organization, and the Jade Regent and his allies have been thorough in rooting out dissidence and opposition to his rule. The Jade Regent’s hold on Minkai is most tenuous here in the northern provinces and territories of the empire, however, and a few daimyo here have stopped paying their yearly tribute to Kasai after a steep, and to many, unjustified, increase in the Jade Regent’s demands. In addition, many ronin like Jiro and other exiled dissidents have come to the north, struggling to survive while keeping the flame of rebellion burning.”

Mokue shrugged again. “Everyone I know thinks that the outnumbered dissidents are bound to submit or be crushed. The negotiations between the rival daimyo and the Jade Regent have stopped, and it is unlikely that they will resume before an armed confrontation takes place. The forces opposed to the Jade Regent are too small individually, and too divided. If something or someone could unite them, they might stand a chance, but as it is …”

They thanked Mokue for his information, and Bella offered some advice about staying on the Prince’s good side when he arrived in Hongal. Marie checked the family to make sure everyone was healthy, and gave Mokue’s wife some potions and herbs from her healer’s kit to help her with her pregnancy. Nicki gave Mokue 50 GP for his help, and the merchant was overcome with gratitude. “Here! I have one last thing for you.” He rummaged through his cart and came out with a small bundle wrapped in a tattered blanket. He withdrew a small book, entitled Minkai Gazeteer. “This was written by a foreigner, to help visitors learn about our land,” he explained. “But be careful. The Jade Regent’s ministers determined that the book was … unflattering. Anyone found with it in their possession is to have their eyes put out.”

Armed with Mokue’s directions, the party set out for Hirabashi Jiro’s camp. Two days later, they saw a broad river curving around the northern spur of a chain of mountains (the Kyojin Mountains, according to Mokue’s book). As they approached, they came upon a cluster of wooden huts with thatched roofs standing atop a hillock overlooking the northern riverbank. The area seemed somewhat inhospitable, with most of the surrounding millet fields overgrown with brambles. Barely visible in the distance west of the hillock, several figures were at work digging a ditch and demarcating the boundaries of a paddy. Closer by, a group of youths were training with shortbows before a line of straw targets. Next to them, a tall woman yelled orders in a husky voice.

When she became aware of their approach, the woman ordered the youths back to camp and strode forward to meet the party. She had a long naginata slung easily over one shoulder, and moved with a confident grace. She seemed unfazed by the party’s foreign appearance, and greeted them with a small bow. “You look to be far from home. What brings you here?”

The party was suddenly unsure what to say. They hadn’t discussed a cover story, and weren’t comfortable blurting out Ameiko’s identity and mission to any stranger they met on the road. After some hemming and hawing, Nicki spoke up. “We’re here to try to reunite some of our friends with long-lost family.” He nodded vaguely in the direction of Shinjiro and Ameiko. The woman smiled. “A noble goal. Good luck with that.” She kept smiling, but made no move to turn her back on the party.

“We’d also like to learn more about your country, and the state of affairs here,” Bella tried. The woman nodded. “It’s very gratifying that you’ve taken an interest in our country. Your best bet would be to visit the cities of Enganoka or Sakakabe; there are many scholars there.” She pointed southwest, and stood her ground.

This wasn’t working out at all the way they’d hoped. Nicki decided to be more direct. “We heard that Hirabashi Jiro lives here – we’d like to speak with him.” The woman’s expression didn’t change, but Shinjiro noticed that her grip on her naginata tightened ever so slightly. “I’ve heard that name,” she said warily, “but have no idea where he lives. Why would you want to meet with an infamous ronin?”

Nicki turned on the charm. “We have reason to believe that our interests coincide. We think we can help Jiro, and that he can help us as well. We are no threat to him, and give our word of honor that we will take no action against him.”

The woman eyed them for several seconds, then relaxed. “Very well. If nothing else, this promises to be the most entertaining thing that’s happened here in weeks. Follow me.” She led them on towards the center of the village. They made their way past her young trainees; contrary to her orders, they’d hidden themselves along the path to gawk at the strange foreigners. She ordered one off to fetch Jiro, and then led them to the camp’s main hut. The interior was spare, with little more than a clay fireplace and a single low table. Several bamboo mats and thin cushions were scattered across the floor, and she motioned for them to sit, while she served green tea and millet cookies. “I am Habesuta Hatsue,” she said, introducing herself. “I am a sohei, a warrior-monk of Irori, and I am honored to serve Hirabashi Jiro.” As the group waited for Jiro to arrive, Hatsue motioned to a shogi-ban, a Minkai chessboard, set up on the table for a game in progress. “Do you know shogi?” she asked. Ameiko and Shinjiro both nodded, and Hatsue perked up. “Perhaps we can play a game or two while you’re here! Shogi is my one passion – it’s the only thing preventing me from fully embracing the peace of Irori in my life.” She then launched into a spirited description of her favorite strategies, and a replaying of highlight moves from memorable games she’d played or witnessed.

A few minutes later, a stocky figure entered the hut, leaning a staff by the door and brushing dirt and dust from his robe. When he saw  his lieutenant lecturing the PCs about the rules and strategy of shogi, he rolled his eyes in dismay. As Jiro sat to take a cup of tea, he gruffly murmured that Hatsue was probably an “angle mover” (the “bishop” piece in shogi) in a previous life.

Hirabashi Jiro

When he was settled, he folded his hands in his lap and looked at the party with a stern expression. “What are you doing so far from home, and what has it to do with me?” he asked.

Once again, the party fumbled around how to broach the subject at hand. Jiro’s responses to their vague statements were brisk and dismissive, and they began to grow frustrated. Nicki asked directly, “Do you oppose the Jade Regent?” but Jiro merely waved the question away. “I am more concerned with digging irrigation canals, feeding the peasants under my protection, and playing shogi.” Despite his outward attitude of unconcern, Sandoval clearly read the innuendo behind Jiro’s response: that the government is no longer providing infrastructure or protection to its people, and that patience and strategy are required before more deliberate action can be taken.

Finally, Ameiko stepped forward. She was tired of beating around the bush, and willing to accept the consequences of being forthright. “I have not introduced myself,” she said in a strong, clear voice. “I am Amatatsu Ameiko, last surviving heir of House Amatatsu and rightful Empress of Minkai!” Jiro and Hatsue stared open-mouthed at the noble woman standing tall before them … and then collapsed in gales of laughter. “I’m sorry young lady,” Jiro finally said, wiping a tear from one eye. “I don’t mean to be rude, but that is just so improbable as to be impossible!” Hatsue tried unsuccessfully to suppress another round of giggles.

Marie decided to take a different tack. “I understand that your ancestor possessed the Baton of Hiroto – do you know where it is now?” Jiro smiled at her condescendingly. “Surely you don’t believe that old fairy tale?” Marie bristled. She was already angry at their treatment of Ameiko, and now they were all but calling her a liar. She reached into her pack and pulled out the Slate of Hiroto. “And I suppose this is a fairy tale, too?”

Jiro shook his head sadly. “I hope whoever sold you that fake didn’t take too much of your money.” Now it was Bella’s turn to bristle. She rummaged in her haversack, and withdrew the phoenix feather they’d been awarded as Tournament Champions. “We got that slate at the same place we got this!” she stated defiantly.

Jiro’s eyes grew wide and Hatsue’s mouth dropped open. There was a long moment of silence, then Jiro asked quietly. “You are the Ruby Phoenix Champions?” Marie nodded, and held up the Slate once more. “Yes, and if you know where we got that,” nodding to the feather in Bella’s hand, “then you know that this is no fake.”

Jiro looked at them with new respect. “Forgive me for my rudeness. I assumed you were either foreign fools or agents of the Jade Regent. I was wrong.” He turned back to Ameiko. “But if you truly were the last surviving heir to the Imperial families, and were safe and anonymous on the opposite side of the world, I don’t understand why you would return to Minkai, to the country where everyone in power wants you dead.”

Ameiko drew herself up, and her eyes burned with intensity. “I am the rightful ruler of Minkai, and I intend to take my place on the Jade Throne!”

This time they didn’t laugh. Jiro stroked his chin thoughtfully, then he and Hatsue exchanged a look. “If you will indulge me, I would like to pose you a riddle.

“A samurai and a peasant are brought before a ruthless daimyo. The daimyo wants to know whether a matched katana and wakizashi set are capable of killing a man with a single cut, so he commands the samurai to kill the peasant in order to test the swords. The samurai is faced with two dilemmas—first, he has two swords, but only one would-be victim, and second, he loathes his duty. He does not want to kill an unarmed, innocent man, but his lord has commanded him to do so. What does the samurai do?”

Jiro sat back, waiting for the group’s answer. They convened a whispered conference. They immediately agreed that the daimyo had to die, but after that it got fuzzy. Bella wanted to use one sword each to cut off each of his arms, and allow him to bleed out, but Shinjiro pointed out that that would not satisfy the objective of proving that the swords could kill with a single cut. Nicki had a solution to that: “Kill him with the big sword, do a Raise Dead, then kill him again with the little sword!” But Marie objected. “These people are big on honor, and killing your lord would tarnish your honor. A real samurai would then feel compelled to kill himself.” Nicki and Bella stared in open-mouthed disbelief, but Shinjiro nodded.

Ultimately, they agreed to go with Marie’s answer, and she turned to Jiro. “The daimyo is despicable, and the samurai is an honorable man. The samurai should kill the daimyo for giving a contemptible order, then kill himself for the dishonor of slaying his lord. The samurai has tested both swords as his lord commanded, but his honor is also satisfied, and the innocent peasant is spared.”

Jiro nodded solemnly, and Hatsue beamed with pleasure. “That would be a sohei’s answer,” she said with pride. Then she continued. “This riddle is also a metaphor for the current situation in Minkai, where a ruthless ruler is manipulating the nobles and causing woe to the people. He forces the nobles to make dishonorable decisions like this.” Jiro agreed: “The Jade Regent forces the daimyos and their samurai to choose between their duty to their lord and their duty to their people. If you truly wish to overthrow the Jade Regent, then for that reason if no other, I will join forces with you.”

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived. “But I need you to prove yourselves first,” Jiro went on, and everyone stopped to listen. “My ronin are ill equipped and outnumbered.” He waved his hand at their surroundings. “We currently live in a muddy camp in the middle of nowhere — hardly an army capable of effective resistance. As a first step, we need to eliminate a local threat.

“Since the Jade Regent seized my family’s lands, the local daimyos have allowed a gang of barbarian bandits to terrorize the local peasantry. They steal at will, taking grain, livestock, and slaves, and split their booty with the daimyos. They are led by a barbarian named Gangasum, and have made their home in my family’s ancestral fortress of Seinaru Heikiko, a further insult to my honor. The local elders have been pleading with me to lead my ronin against them, and Hatsue has also tried to persuade me to take action, but so far I have refused.

“The bandits are usually split in two groups. The first group is always on the move, traveling the plains on fast horses to forage, rob travelers, and pillage the local peasants. The members of the second group stay with their chieftain Gangasum in their fortress hideout. We don’t have enough men to attack both groups at once, and I fear that if one group is attacked and destroyed, the other might retaliate against the defenseless peasants.” Hatsue nodded and chimed in. “The bandits have a powerful shaman, and it’s said that the winds magically inform him of everything that happens on the Osogen Grasslands.”

Jiro continued. “But with your arrival, the balance has shifted. You are clearly powerful and well equipped. I would suggest that you attack the bandit stronghold of Seinaru Heikiko, while I and my ronin lure the riders into an ambush. Working together, we can destroy the bandit threat, and also gain a safe base of operations from which to build our power.”

He turned to Marie. “There is another reason to take back Seinaru Heikiko. I lied to you earlier when you asked about the Baton of Hiroto. My ancestor, Hirabashi Akikaza was indeed the man entrusted with the Baton. It is said that before he died, he hid it in a secret vault somewhere within Seinaru Heikiko. That vault also holds my family’s ancestral sword, a legendary adamantine blade that also belonged to Akikaza. I have long yearned to reclaim it, but it is also said that the vault can only be opened by a true imperial scion of Minkai.” He gave Ameiko a small bow. If you were able to open that vault, it would be irrefutable proof of your claim, at least in my eyes.”

The group quickly agreed, and Jiro and Hatsue began laying out a plan of attack. Unfortunately, Jiro had not visited the fortress since he was a small child, and could tell them little of its layout, other than that it was nestled in a narrow canyon in the mountains. As they planned, Sawyer spoke up. “You said that your ronin were poorly equipped. We’ve got a stack of armor and weapons we took from the hobgoblins of the Forest of Spirits – would they be of use to you?” Jiro and Hatsue eagerly agreed, and Jiro’s ronin were soon testing out morningstars and washing blood out of hobgoblin armor.

They wasted no time. Jiro had scouts shadowing Gangasum’s riders, to try to give villages advance warning of their arrival. They were currently in an area that offered Jiro’s force a good opportunity for ambush. The party set out for Seinaru Heikiko immediately, with an agreement that they should strike within 36 hours of their arrival.

The approach to the fortress skirted the Kosokunami River, through a forest of thick, dark pine trees. After two days of hard riding, they knew they were nearing the fortress, and left the road to strike out through the trees. The forest ended abruptly; a natural clearing had been enlarged by logging, creating a broad, open expanse to ensure no one could approach undetected. Ahead of them, a row of low mountains rose, ending in sheer cliff some 200-300 feet away. A natural cleft in the cliffs was blocked by a 15-foot tall palisade, with a closed gate visible in the center of the wall. Guards could be seen patrolling the top of the wall, but nothing beyond it was visible, although smoke could be seen rising. A rocky spur thrust up at the eastern end of the wall, and then there was another, narrower gap that was also closed by a wall. A small stream ran out through an iron grate in the bottom of this wall.

Any direct approach to the wall or gate without being detected would be extremely difficult. Marie was ready to Dimension Door to the far side of the wall (after all, that had worked well for them several times before). But without knowing anything about what was on the other side, there was no way to tell if that would be a good idea or a Very Bad Idea.

They decided that some reconnoitering was in order (the kind that didn’t involve fire and explosions). Bella quaffed a Potion of Invisibility and a Potion of Fly and set out. She headed directly north, planning to come up over the cliffs to the side of the fortress, rather than directly over the wall. As she neared the cliff face, she caught a glimpse of movement below her. Looking down, she spotted an observation post, cleverly concealed so as to be all but invisible from below. A single guard armed with a bow kept watch, although he seemed more engrossed in whatever he was whittling and only cast an occasional glance at the open plain below him.

Bella soared on until she could look down into the fortress. Below her she saw a large, open courtyard. Other than a few large stacks of cut wood, the courtyard was empty. Several large buildings had been built against and into the rock of the surrounding cliffs. On the eastern side, one building was two stories tall and the other a single story; both had tall chimneys extending from their roofs. Opposite them was a large building that looked like a stable. Another small building was near the rear of the courtyard, next to a doorway that led into the cliff itself. The buildings had shuttered windows with arrow slits in the shutters, and more arrow slits could be seen cut out of the western cliff face.

As Bella circled back, she saw another small canyon on the eastern side of the fortress. It too contained some stacks of cut wood, but she could see no roads or trails, and no apparent connection to the cleft containing the fortress.

Bella returned to the party and gave her report. They immediately seized on the lookout post as their means of access. That just left the question of how best to get in. The guard obviously was there to raise an alarm if he spotted someone approaching, so how to prevent that from happening? Luckily, the rocky spur blocked the view of the lookout post from most of the wall, so the chances of being spotted by the guards there were low – if they did things right.

A plan quickly emerged, and they waited for dusk to put it into motion. Sandoval gathered Sawyer, Shinjiro, and Bella, and they linked arms, as Marie shook out her arms and took some deep breaths. Sandoval and Marie nodded to each other, and Sandoval began to count. “One … two … three!”

At the count of three, Sandoval cast Dimension Door and he and his partners suddenly materialized on the hidden platform with the surprised guard. Simultaneously, Marie cast Silence across the distance, cutting off all sound.

It was over almost before it started. The tiny platform was too small to fit all the new arrivals, but luckily Sawyer was using Suishen’s Air Walk. He skewered the shocked guard, severing his spine. Before he could even pull out the sword, Shinjiro pummeled him with a Flurry of Blows, then eased the lifeless body down onto the floor.

A short flight of stairs led down into the rock. They could now see that there was a wooden portcullis built into the tunnel behind the lookout post, so the guard could retreat and block anyone from following him. Too bad that hadn’t worked out. Bella descended the stairs, checking for traps, and the others followed. When the platform was clear, Shinjiro flashed his Gem of Brightness, signaling Marie to use her own Dimension Door to bring the rest of the party (leaving Ameiko and Sandru behind in the woods to mind the horses). They were in!

The party didn’t earn any new XP for tonight – this session was all about what you learned, not what you killed. We’ll be at Leo’s next week.