STAR-CROSSED BLADES OF THE GREEN PEONY SESSION IV

This is the fourth session of our Star-Crossed Blades of the Green Peony campaign for Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate (session I can be found HERE, session II can be found HERE, session III can be found HERE). It is set in Zhang Chang prefecture (which I hope to release a blog entry for). In this campaign, every player rolled randomly to determine who their family are, how many siblings they have and whether individual family members are still alive. The players also gave very rough sketches of their background (no more than a few sentences) and I secretly added a "20-year" backstory to each one. I have implemented a special rule in this campaign that every encounter has a 3 in 10 chance of being connected to their secret backstory in some way. Note in this session I was play testing a specific scenario and the players were made aware prior to play.

Very early and rough map of prefecture 

CHARACTERS

QI YUN: A roaming martial expert who has secretly learned his martial arts from two different masters (and the masters have no knowledge of one another). 

XING GE: A traveling pipa player and the son of Lu Guiying the Iron Flower. His father died when he was five, and his mother married Gongsun Yuan, the chief of Black Parrot Society. Gongsun Yuan despises Xing Ge. 

TU JIN SHI: A wandering fighter seeking to be the strongest and most upright hero in the region. His father, Tu Haitao sent his mother away when he was young, after being consumed by grief over the passing of Jin Shi's brother, Tian. Shortly after his father died consuming a lethal concoction in a misguided effort to become immortal. 

LU LI: A traveling physician who comes from a family of successful fishermen. 

ATTACK OF THE TURTLE DEITY 

Just as the party were finishing off the bandits, they felt a rumble beneath their feet. The shaking of the earth came in waves and Tu Jin Shi put his ear to the ground hoping to detect its source.

"He Shen..." the villagers began to mutter. "He Shen is angry."

Lu Li asked who He Shen was and Guan Mo, the village elder, replied.

"He is the river deity, and is angry because the bandits forbade us from making regular persimmon offerings." 

From beyond the steep banks of the river, they heard a terrible roar, and saw a massive soft shell turtle, the size of a small junk ship (50 meters), rise from the river. 

Tu Jin Shi scrambled for the river, sliding down the bluff towards the enormous creature. Its long neck stretched towards him, and it clamped down with its jaws but missed. Tu Jin Shi countered by climbing up the turtle's head and working his way towards it rear leg, which he grabbed and held onto. 

Lu Li rushed to the edge of the river and fired down a rain of arrows, filling the River Deity with arrows. 

He Shen crawled easily up the bluff and into the village, quickly snapping the heads off three villagers and and biting Lu Li, which left him with a vicious wound. 

Qi Yun began meditating to activate his Jade Rending Claws.

It continued its rampage and as it did so, Tu Jin Shi tried to observe its bite closely. 

Xing Ge Leapt forward and struck the turtle deity in the head with his Fragrant Fist of the Snake Technique. This caused the creature's mind to dull, and it fell into a kind of stupor. 

"Kill it!" Shouted Tu Jin Shi

Guan Mo stepped forward and pleaded "Please to not kill He Shen, he is the deity of this river, and we can quell his anger with an offering."

"But it has killed, and will kill again," Said Tu Jin Shi. The party silently nodded agreement with one another and Qi Yun impaled He Shen's brain with his jade claw. The deity's body trembled, then slumped to the ground. 

"You have committed a grave offense," Said Guan Mo. 

"As far as I am concerned, we acted righteously, against a threat to your village."

"You defy the order of the world," Said Guan Mo. 

Tu Jin Shi argued with the elder, explaining that he believed individuals must decide what is right and wrong in the moment, but Guan Mo disagreed, saying what they did was wrong, and would lead to bad outcomes. 

Lu Li, who had knowledge of the classic texts, cherry picked a quote from The Sayings of Kong Zhi, to justify Tu Jin Shi's position. Guan Mo could not form a response but huffed and turned to the villagers. 

The villagers gathered around in shock. Guan Mo's fury grew and he said "You saved us from the bandits, so we owe you for that, but from here on out, you are our enemies!"

The party tried to reason, but Guan Mo's will could not be moved. He asked them to leave the village and return no more. 

The party dragged the giant turtle carcass down river, realizing its parts would be useful components for medicine. Xing Ge used some meat to make a stew and the party ate it. Soon after eating the stew they each felt a profound hunger for persimmons, which they sated by gathering fruit from the nearby trees.*

Lu Li decided they should use the shell to make a boat, and gather as much meat as they could and preserve it. They realized they would need ship builders and a way of transporting the meat. Xing Ge began gathering the meat and curing it. 

Tu Jin Shi, Qi Yun and The Well-Tempered Arhat headed north to Lanyin to find shipbuilders. There they went to the Tu Association, a lineage society formed by Tu Jin Shi's siblings. They appeared before the chief, Tu Wan (Tu Jin Shi's brother). 

"I have heard rumors brother," said Chief Tu Wan. "That you have taken a new master, a mysterious swords woman."

Tu Jin Shi explained it was true, and added that his companion Xing Ge was studying under the Well-Tempered Arhat. Chief Tu Wan expressed concern about the Arhat's reputation for bursts of violent anger, but they dissuaded him of this notion. 

When Tu Jin Shi told Chief Tu Wan that he had ignored his master's instruction to learn the saber, his brother rebuked him, not understanding why he would do so. However he said the association could use strong martial artists to help with transport and that Tu Jin Shi was always welcome. 

Tu Jin Shi asked for some ship builders, and his brother gave him 6 of the best in town as the Tu Association controlled ship building in Lanyin. They also connected the party with a persimmon merchant named Liao Qiu, who could take them back towards the village as he made regular shipments there. They would return to the carcass by river and haul it back to Lanyin where the shipbuilders would form a hull from the shell. 

On the journey down river, Liao Qiu explained to the party how to cultivate persimmon trees (they realized they would need to do so to satisfy their hunger). He also agreed to sell them cases of persimmons at a good rate (once a month, with enough to last them the entire moon). Once they reached the carcass, they towed it on Liao Qiu's boat back towards Lanyin. 

On the way, they made a deal with Liao Qiu, explaining they had acquired divine turtle meat that imbues eaters with a deep hunger for persimmons. He did not believe them, but tried some of the cured turtle meat himself, and was convinced once he felt the hunger. They pointed out, whoever ate the meat, would be a ready customer for large quantities of his persimmons. 

They sold several tons of meat to him for 125,000 spades (and he agreed to give them monthly persimmon shipments free). The persimmon creates would be left at the Tu Association on the first of every month. The shipbuilders began work on the hull of the ship, and said it would take them about three months to complete the job. 

This is where the session ended. 

*This meat conferred a permanent hunger for persimmons but also a permanent +1d10 bonus to Survival and Swim in rivers.