PATHS FROM NOWHERE SESSION TWO

This is a sandbox campaign for Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate, operating in "Condor Heroes Mode". I used a lot of the procedures described in the wuxia sandbox posts. This is a campaign with three players. Before the campaign started we spent time establishing their family connections, rolling randomly for both their mothers and fathers (normally only one parent is randomly rolled, but in this case we wanted characters with potentially scandalous backgrounds). These characters each started play with just one Kung Fu Technique. 

CHARACTERS

XIANG GUIYING: The daughter of Jade Fist of Twin Fisted Eagle sect and Pale Fox, a notorious bandit. She is seeking pelts from Pearl Tigers. She is beautiful but wears a disguise to hide this from others. 

ZHENG BAO: Short and burly, he is the son of Zhang San of Bone Breaking Sect and of Reckless Storm. However San is married to Chen and has maintained the presence that Bao is Chen's son. Unfortunately due to crucial background information, Chen knows that Bao cannot be his son so is distant. Zheng Bao's uncle, Bone Breaker, is fond of him. He is seeking the Thousand Painful Deaths Flower to please his uncle. 

PAN JU (MOGHA): The son of the Witch of Zhaoze Zhou and Nergui Mogha, Pan Ju grew up in the Kushen Basin but has returned to the Banyan and Hai'an, where he knows his mother resides. 

TO THE IRON TEMPLE

The characters headed back to Lu Hai after Guiying and Bao awakened from their pearl tiger induced slumber. Along the way, perhaps jovial from the influence of the tiger heart, Bao convinced the others to all join as sworn brothers and sisters. However the heart also made them groggy and it was a difficult journey back. 

They passed a group of priests and nuns from Perfect Heaven Lineage sect, who nodded to them. One of them engaged the party in a greeting. When Bao told himhe was the nephew of Bone Breaker, a nun of the sect grabbed the man's arm and told him they shouldn't be dealing with such folk. The party did little as the members of Perfect Heaven Lineage left. 

Along the way they took a path lad led to a ravine and Bao fell trying to navigate the slope. Injured but alive, they returned to Lu Hai and went to a local Geomancer to trade their tiger pelt and parts. 

The Geomancer's name was Xiang Ju, and during the conversation Bao realized this was the person he had mistaken his companions for. He was the one that knew where to found the Thousand Painful Deaths Flower. 

Guiying and Bao traded the pelt, bone and other parts for a Phoenix Crown, 500 spades and the directions to the flower. They learned that it wasn't a literal flower but a powerful weapon. Xiang Ju also spoke of a disaster that occurred there some years ago*. 

Going to the temple they found the place scorched and saw several stone Raksha statues toward the entrance. The temple itself was part of a cave complex built into a hill, but the Rakshas formed a treacherous entryway upon a stone platform, reached by narrow stone steps. 

As they passed the statues, Guiying was attacked as one animated and clawed her. The statue was clearly rooted to the stone but able to reach. Ju took out tiger meat and offered it to one of the statues, which then allowed them to pass. 

When they entered the temple a woman dressed as a Yen-Li nun, staggered towards them, her flesh rotting off the bone. 

"Come with me," She said. "You will come with me."

"Where are you taking us?" Guiying asked.

"To the abbess."

They decided to follow. As they passed through the maze of stone passageways, they could hear the deep cackling of a man flowing through the halls. As they passed a pool of water the nun asked them to anoint themselves for protection, which they reluctantly did. 

Then they were brought to a long hall where they saw an ancient figure, a woman with taught leathering skin, seated and wearing the attire of an abbess. 

As she spoke to them, it was clear she was unnatural. But she was calm and purposeful.

They told her that they came for the Thousand Painful Deaths Flower. And she informed them that it had been stolen by the Sandstone Nun. 

They asked about her appearance and she said the Sandstone Nun was a nun of Hen-Shi, with a living third eye who wore the skeletal hands of Dancing Corpse Wan Mei and her two disciples around her belt.** She didn't know where the Sandstone Nun was but had heard she was roaming the southern areas. 

She wanted them to help her find the Sandstone Nun or get information about her whereabouts, but when Bao asked for the Thousand Painful Deaths Flower in return, she became angry. However he calmed her by explaining it was for his Uncle Bone Breaker, and that he was simply being honest with her about his wishes. Thinking about the matter, the Abbess said she would give him three of the Raksha Guardian statues to present to his uncle as a gift if he and they brought back Thousand Painful Deaths Flower. 

*Iron Temple is a location in the War of Swarming Beggars. For part of my twenty years back story I had The Sandstone Nun (a NPC in my other campaign) go to the temple at the behest of Jade Fist and take the flower, then hide it to protect the martial world from its powers. This was in part because the timeline was set in the year 112 of the Reign of the Glorious Emperor. I wanted to update the location for that time frame. Also because some players had been to Iron Temple in prior campaigns, I wanted it to be different this time around.

** Dancing Corpse Wan Mei is the Sifu of the characters in my other campaign (and one of the players from this game is in that one). Because that is set ten years earlier, I liked the idea of this being after a conflict with Dancing Corpse Wan Mei. I am treating these as different realities, so what happens in one campaign won't affect the other. But since one of the players is the disciple of Dancing Corpse, I thought this would be an interesting way to make the Sandstone Nun menacing. Also because of the time gap, the Sandstone Nun is much more powerful in this campaign than the other.