as told by the cavalier Olmas Lurecia himself.
Oathday, 5 Sarenith
Dasi told us there were five basic districts in the city, but he wanted to spend a day or so learning more about them by strolling through them. He hoped he might get a better sense of the city, and maybe even news of the allegedly legendary assassin stalking us. Zos and Radella thought that sounded like a good way to spend the day so they went along.
They were learning little more than we already knew, when a curious thing happened.
Kali was scrying the scryer and she saw what could have been a monk, in a simple gray tunic, walking through streets that looked like Sakakabe. He wandered down an alley and, looking around quickly, pulled out a cloth that was wrapped around a vial and some blowdarts. Kali hastily ended the scry and yelled for Ivan.
In town, a city guard leaned in to watch the three out-of-towners soliciting stories about an assassin. They entered a shop.
Ivan sent a message to the three …
The guard suddenly slumped over and fell to the ground. Inside, the shopkeep was going on about these stories about assassins started by riffraff and how safe this city was when they were startled by a minor disturbance outside. Zos, Dasi and Radella exited the shop and gaped. The crowd started murmuring, and one voice said, “What’s up with HIM?”
Ivan sent another message.
They rushed over to the guard and found, as expected, a blowdart in his neck. Zos was able to quickly identify the substance on it as blue whinnis. He also quickly scanned the crowd looking for lawful evil, but found none.
Other guards quickly arrived, and questions were asked. Dasi is great at snatching weapons out of your hand, and he can sing like a bird, but when it comes to just talking he sometimes sounds like he’s trying to explain badly why it wasn’t him that broke the window. The guards were shaking their heads a bit and eyeing him and especially the foreign looking Radella, but Zos stepped in and vouched for her and eventually they all were able to leave.
The duality of having been scrying and seeing an attack possibly intended for us from both sides was a bit eerie. But it did underscore the threat was real …
Not too long after this, Kali detected another scrying. In an effort to draw the assassin closer, she “accidentally” let slip we’d be at the geisha house that night, and the scrying immediately ended. Kali was happy about this, but that didn’t generally extend to others. In particular, O-kohaku was not happy about her business doubling as a killing field. Kali angrily said something like you don’t overthrow the regent and expect it to be completely incident free. She made Qatana look tactful.
Expecting trouble now, Zos gave Ameiko a delay poison to drink that would provide 12 hrs of protection. We then created an illusion of Ameiko and surrounded her in relaxed and incidental poses while the image not-that-skillfully played the samisen in contrived disregard for the world around us.
Nothing happened.
Freday, 6 Sarenith
However, around 12:30 that evening, our vigilance was rewarded. The swing of a bladed instrument cut through the paper wall of the room we were in, narrowly missing Kali. Ivan had his bow drawn in a flash as Kali created an interposing hand between herself and the threat. I threw open the door and started searching for the intruder. It was Kali’s imposing hand, though, that quickly revealed the threat was gone. Careful searching did reveal some faint traces of a person and the path they took but that only confirmed what the slit in the tissue paper wall already told us. We’d been attacked, and he’d missed.
Nothing else happened the rest of the night, but it was the next morning that Kali kind of lost it. We detected a scrying again and so Kali hastily scrawled a sign that read, “C’mon, prick. Is that the best you can do?” She added another message questioning his courage, and possibly his heritage.
Receiving no reply, Kali returned the favor by scrying him, and found a dark cloaked figure leaving the entertainment district. He turned into a shadowy figure, but the scry held as he apparently entered the shadow plane. Emerging in a forest somewhere, he quickly changed his garb to that of a farmer. He seemed to be slim, with short, fuzzy gray hair – rather ordinary looking overall, according to her.
When Kali sent a message to him, he responded with a soundless but universal gesture of digital disrespect.
It was about 9:30 when we left the teahouse and Kali decided to make leaflets with the assassin’s image on it – “Have you seen this ninja?” and spread this over the town. That done, we all reconvened outside of town and flew or windwalked to Enganoka. We hired 3 adjacent rooms to spend the night in and started planning for the big meeting with the Three Monkeys. We decided to check out the venue as well as make our “reservations”, and discovered the proper protocol was to buy the table with the Three Monkeys a drink and wait for them to invite you over. Oh, and each person seated for dinner that night would be required to provide a 100gp reservation fee. We reserved 4 seats.
We’d already decided we could not take the whole group there. Not only might all personalities not be welcome, but now we found it out it would be a little expensive. The 3 would be Dasi, Ameiko, and Radella. I wanted to be there but had to admit that Suishen is not a subtle sword. Radella promised to look out for Ameiko. So we paid 300gp and decided to check out the market.
Frst, we had to pay the guards 10pp + 10gp to enter with our weapons. That seemed a bit steep but nobody batted an eye. We did not, after all, wish to draw attention to ourselves.
At least, that is, for the next ten minutes. After that, apparently, we abandoned that premise.
We’d only been in the market a few minutes when the guards came in and surrounded some man and accused him of being a spy. He was certainly the most frightened looking spy ever born if he was one. He shakily denied it, but the guards announced that because he was lying to them, the punishment would be death. Out of the corner of my eye I saw both Kali and Qatana step forward.
I was tempted to jump in but I hesitated, mindful of our need to keep a low profile. I turned to Ameiko and said, “You can’t be seen around this. We should leave.” She also seemed torn before nodding yes. I did not want to leave my friends but it was not the first time that Qatana, and increasingly of late, Kali, had taken matters into their own hands without consulting the group first. And now, in my role as protector of the Heir, I would need to do the same. Ameiko and I (and several others in the group) moved away from the disturbance. Glancing back I saw
- an increasingly panicked crowd
- a flash of what surely had to be chain lightning
- at least one body already on the floor
Later I would learn that Kali, Qatana and Zos together defeated the 8 guards before disappearing (literally, apparently, via either teleport or invisibility) and taking the dead commoner with them. Worse, they discovered during battle that the guards were all oni. Nobody at the market seemed surprised by that; it is apparently an open secret that the guards are magical demons.
It’s different here, I guess.
Upon returning, Qatana and Kali kind of kept to themselves. I assume they were talking about how to get the body to the appropriate party. For my part, I talked with Ameiko and said this provided a good opportunity to set the tone. Although she is not sitting on a throne yet, I told her, my job is to keep her alive so she can. I will defer to her wishes if she expresses them, but my default actions will tend to be the ones that keep her out of harm’s way. She agreed that our roles are changing, and she herself is having to consciously stop herself at times. This was one of those times.
Qatana, this time, attempted a scry and succeeded, seeing a wealthy-ish woman entering the mall we’d left earlier. She asked about the mess and disarray and was told that some evil wizards had attacked a man and killed all the guards.
Kali tried scrying the assassin and connected. He was simply walking through city streets somewhere.
Starday, 7 Sarenith
It wasn’t long after midnight that Qatana cast a special spell. Because she’d been able to scry on the assassin, she was also able to send him nightmares that would leave him tired and exhausted the next morning. Her plan was to do this every night now, leaving him at a disadvantage for any battle or even using his skills.
After rising that morning, Dasi and Radella returned to the market on the theory that they would neither be recognized nor even associated with the fracas the previous day. After all, we still didn’t get to scout the area. One vendor seemed friendly andd they chatted some time with her. She read some tarot for Dasi, but the longer he was with her, the more his gut told him something was up. When he declined some tea she’d brewed and he asked her some pointed questions, she simply vanished.
Looking around her area, Dasi found an unconscious woman on the ground. Reviving her, they learned she’d been accosted while arriving at the market that day. Dasi brought back some of the tea and napkin he’d been offered and Zos later identified it as being tainted with oil of taggit, a poison that would have caused him to fall unconscious. That suggests the assassin might be looking for a hostage rather than a corpse. Hmmm.
Speaking of corpses, Zos had a crazy idea to steal a corpse and “sculpt” a replica of Ameiko that he could animate, on the theory that it could be an alternate target. Sort of a living mirror image spell. Ugh.
Meanwhile, Dasi tried a scry himself … but failed. He did squeeze a divination from the samisen …
HOW CAN WE BEST BE PREPARED FOR THE NEXT ATTACK?
-= stay together =-
Well, ok.
Qatana did a scry, and caught him down at the docks, chatting wth someone who was moving cargo. He spent a fair amount of time there before moving back into the city .. maybe a noodle shop.
And that evening, Qatana gifted him with nightmares again.
Sunday, 8 Sarenith
The big day. We timed a tea ceremony with the magical tea set to maximize our chances with the Three Monkeys.
Zos rolled out an animated – oh my god, he DID make a copy of Ameiko. So that means he DID steal a corpse and .. so he was serious? Well too late now but this pushes the envelope a little. I didn’t really envision us as grave robbers …
Dasi brought 3 of the really good sake bottles he took from the pearl merchant’s collection, to impress our hosts with.
When the time came, they were impressed.
i wish I could have gone along, but Dasi, Radella, and Ameiko summarized the meeting for us.
5,000gp to any clan we wished to remain neutral.
15,000gp to any clan we wished to actually engage.
So 15,000gp just to keep them all out of it. Wow.
One hitch, of course. They won’t make any deal with us at all so long as there is a contract out on us. Professional courtesy, I guess. Well, that’s fine … we’d rather planned on taking care of that problem anyway.