THE STAR-CROSSED BLADES OF THE GREEN PEONY SESSION V

This is the fifth 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, session IV 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. 

THE ECORT MISSION 

The party took an escort mission for the Tu Association, hoping to grow their skills and reputation. They agreed to escort Madame Wang Peng to Yue Manor in Yue Town. Because they did not have someone with knowledge of the plains, they asked Chief Tu Wan for a guide. he assigned Tu Li to travel with them. 

They set out early and met Madame Wang Peng at the Fair Weather Inn in Lanyin, where she had a sedan chair and bearers waiting. She carried herself like a noble, with plum blossom makeup, expensive green robes and a valuable looking turquoise necklace. 

From there they made their way to Li An and stayed at the Jade Gourd. To protect their charge, they took watches in the street beneath the window to Madame Wang's room and had her bearers guard the doors. During Xing Ge's watch, he failed to see an intruder sneak Madame Wang Peng's room. But he soon heard a scream and saw a man crawling from her window. 

Without hesitation he used Blast of the Dragon to send the intruder into the air so he crashed down with a great splat on the pavement below. Xing Ge noticed a metal staff clutched in the man's hand, from which a hooded snake slithered into the shadows. He grabbed the snake and stabbed it through the brain. 

QI Yun and Tu Jin Shi awakened from the scream. Qi Yun rushed down to the street and inspected the body of the intruder, finding Madame Wang Peng's turquoise necklace clutched in his hand. Tu Jin Shi checked on Madame Wang, finding her ashen faced and poisoned by the snake. 

They sent a message to Lanyin asking Lu Li to join them (Lu Li had stayed behind). Then they summoned a physician. An old man named Gui Daniang came to the inn and examined Madame Wang, then looked at the snake. 

"This is a corpse snake...a very complicated case. The antidote is only known by the leader of Relentless Corpse Sect." He then explained to them that so long as she did not resist the venom, it would not be lethal, that it just made the person zombie-like and compliant.

Tu Jin Shi and Xing Ge searched the city for someone who was familiar with the sect. They found a vagrant name Chang Lei, a very serious man who claimed to have fought with the sect. 

He explained that the leader of the sect, Relentless Corpse Queen was very powerful and used the venom to create corpse disciples. He also told them that the sect headquarters was a place called The Palace of Divine Sabre. They asked if he would join them but the man refused, but handed them a pair of emei daggers and said "Use these to slit the queen's throat should the need arise". 

The party then deliberated on the best course of action. They decided that it would be wise to send a message to Relentless Corpse Sect offering to trade the staff and body of the intruder for the antidote (they had inspected the body of the man and noticed a section of skin flayed off, so assumed he was a member of the sect who had simply removed evidence of his membership). 

In Li An they found a place called Guan Chu's Messenger Services. Inside was an eccentric man, painting, surrounded by cages of pigeons. He explained that for his birds were fast, and would travel 600 miles a day, for a fee of 1,000 spades a day. They agreed and sent the following message: 

We were attacked by a person who identified as previously having identifying  markers of the Relentless Corpse Sect, which had been removed. He perished in this attempt, and we recovered a golden scepter, hollowed interior which contained a corpse snake. Someone important to us has been afflicted with this poison and we require an antidote. We hoped we could exchange the corpse of this person and his staff to yourselves for assistance with the antidote. We should meet halfway. 

A couple of days later, they received the following reply:

On behalf of Relentless Corpse Queen: We accept your offer with the caveat that the Queen's new corpse slave be replaced with someone suitable. We shall meet you at Beishang Manor. Be sure to bring the staff, the body, the snake, and the replacement. 

This is where the session ended.