Pathfinder 1E Kali's Journal — A Jade Regent Campaign

[skyschemer]

Desnus 25 (Seinaru Heikiko, Predawn)​

The women warned us not to enter the secret garden at night. Come to think of it, Kamuy-Paro said much the same. This was Kamuy-Paro’s rule, and he knew what he was talking about. Based on what we learned about him? I wouldn’t be surprised if he was somehow responsible.

I have no idea what those things were. It was like a pile of firewood just stood up and attacked, ignoring all of our magic as if it wasn’t there (except, unsurprisingly, for magical fire). This makes me suspect they were some form of golem, but who knows? Now they are kindling and splinters, so it hardly matters.

Ivan and Radella are talking to the women and helping get them settled in. I have not been included in that discussion because I am quite obviously not in a state where I can be a calming influence. Right now, I am not what they need, and even if I tried, I’d almost certainly make things worse rather than better. It’s for the best that I stay out of it.

It’s been a long night. The sun will be up soon, just in time for us to go to bed. Later today, I teleport with Qatana to fetch Ameiko and Jiro because we suspect we’ll need the Seal to open the vault. They will come back on Qatana’s spell since it’s faster than the chariot I can conjure. I’ll teleport back because I am impatient and not likely to be good company.

And we have a new problem to worry about. While we were fiddling around in Kamuy-Paro’s garden, my spell that detects magical scrying alerted me for just a couple of minutes.

Someone is watching us.

Desnus 25 (Seinaru Heikiko, Late Afternoon)​

Sandru is leaving. This is not really a surprise: he was hired to get us all here, and now that job is done. He and Ameiko are very close friends, but he still has a business to run and taking up arms in a revolution was never part of the plan. Bevelek and Vankor certainly didn’t sign up for it, either, and they have family waiting for them back home.

Their return trip should be a lot easier. There are no crazed disciples of Sithhud commanding winter storms, no armies of the dead, and no enraged white dragons standing between here and Avistan. On top of that, he’ll be crossing the Crown at the proper time of year. To accomplish the latter, though, he has to leave now. It will take over a month just to reach the Pass, and he needs to be on the ice by the middle of Erastus. That doesn’t leave him much time to prepare, provision, and hire any help he’ll need to get safely across.

The finality of the caravan departing is sinking in. For nearly a year it’s been about the journey, but now we are here, and there is no more going back. I mean, we could, but we’d either have to leave the Seal behind us or run away with what we can carry. Neither option is particularly attractive, much less realistic, so here we are.

It took only an instant for Qatana and me to return to Jiro’s camp. Heading back here took a little longer because we needed to bring the Seal, and that meant relying on Qatana’s spells. And then we had to explain to Olmas why Ameiko wasn’t with us (which didn’t take very long, but sure felt a whole hell of a lot longer).

What can I say? She’s not going to just sit quietly in her room while everyone else goes outside to play. She’s an adult and capable of making her own decisions. If she’s going to build support among the people here, then she’s going to have to demonstrate that she’s worthy of it. The Seal can only prove her claim—it can’t rally people to the cause, or inspire them. And establishing trust with Jiro before he knows who she is does make a certain kind of sense. The impact of the Big Reveal, assuming this all works, will be that much greater when it happens.

That being said, we need to rein this in. Ambushing second-rate bandits on horseback is one thing, but some of the filth we get mired in goes way beyond that. Ameiko can’t claim the throne if she’s dead, and there are some forms of “dead” that can’t easily be undone. If she’s going to take risks, then we need to make sure they are measured ones.

Fortunately for us, and for Olmas, wiping out the raiding parties seemed to go off without a hitch. We had this elaborate plan in case any of those bandit teams made it back to the fortress, but ultimately we could have skipped all that work and just slept in instead. Literally one horse returned. One. It was scratched up a bit, but it had obviously fared better than its missing rider, whose blood was all over the saddle. Radella used a spell to talk to it (the horse, not the saddle) and we learned the raiding party had fallen afoul of either Jiro or Hatsue. Just to be certain, Dasi used one of those creepy spells of his on the rider’s blood and got much the same information, only with a lot more attitude.

It’s been several hours, and this whole place still smells like bacon. This is what happens when you put Ivan in the kitchen. Not that I am complaining about the food, but gods, that smell lingers.

 

[skyschemer]

Desnus 25 (Seinaru Heikiko, Evening)​

We needed to use the Seal. Obviously this was not a surprise, but we weren’t really eager to pull it out and start waving it around. I mean, sure, it’s not a beacon or anything. It doesn’t actively alert people that it’s out of the box, but if anyone associated with the Five Storms happened to be looking for it at the exact same time, then we’d be standing in the center of a giant bullseye.

How likely is that? We don’t know. A few months ago I’d be skeptical that anyone would spend the resources to search for it day and night, but now that we’re sitting in their backyard? If it was me, I’d try my damnedest to make it happen. I can only assume they’d do the same. So literally no one was comfortable with the idea. We spent quite a bit of time, in fact, grasping at straws for ways to avoid it, but we were just delaying the inevitable. The vault would not open no matter what Ameiko tried. It wanted a scion in possession of the Seal, and nothing short of that combination would do.

We had a long talk about the right way to do this. The worst thing that could happen would be that we’d find ourselves in the middle of a small army of oni, so the idea was to prevent that from happening. With the right spells, they could see the room we were in and teleport straight to it, so we had to make that as difficult and unlikely as possible. Fortunately, I have already fallen into the daily routine of preparing a spell to detect this sort of scrying, and I prepared a spell that suppresses all magic (including my own!). These two together were about as effective a defense as I could prepare. Just to be safe, though, everyone readied themselves for a fight. Olmas even set Suishen ablaze. I am sure this did not make Jiro or Hatsue nervous at all.

That advanced planning may even have saved us. When Ameiko touched the statue with the Seal, the floor in the center of the room slowly sank down into a hidden vault. And within seconds, my spell alerted me to magical sight, focused somewhere in the room. I immediately cast my next spell, and all the magic around us went dark. Save for Suishen, whose flames continued to burn inside the field. I remember thinking, That’s interesting.

When my spell expired, the scrying was gone.

Jiro has pledged his service to Amatatsu Ameiko. Seeing that vault open, and finding his family’s ancestral weapon inside, were proof that he was in the presence of an heir to the throne (in fact he was in the presence of six of them, but we decided not to muddy the issue). I got the sense he had been waiting for a moment like this for a good part of his adult life, and it had finally arrived.

Building a rebellion, however, is going to be a lot harder than knocking two statues together. The good news is, the Jade Regent is as terrible a ruler as he is a person, and that gives us a significant opening. He’s relying on brute strength to take and hold the throne since he knows he does not have a legitimate claim. A significant piece of his military is a private army that he calls the Typhoon Guard, and of course armies, private or otherwise, must be paid. This has resulted in a plague of surplus taxes, and the internal strife in general has strained Minkai’s relationship with other nations in Tian Xia.

As Jiro sees it, Ameiko needs the support of the nobility, the military, and to some extent, the criminal underground to take advantage of this situation. Testing that theory through concrete action is, of course, the rub.

First, the nobility. Merchants are the key to Minkai’s economy, and Minkai’s souring diplomatic relations are putting a damper on trade. That, in turn, is driving Minkai into a recession which is clearly not endearing the government to anyone. The ruling class, in the meantime, is dealing with the additional tax burden, which they are either soaking up or passing on to their subjects.

The geisha of Minkai have some influence with the merchant clans (or guilds, or whatever they are called here), and political influence inside the nobility in general. Jiro suggests that this is the best way to start. There’s a renowned teahouse in Sakakabe owned by a particularly notable geisha named O-Kohaku. It turns out, her uncle was the governor of Kasai…before the Jade Regent had him killed. We’d have to be outright incompetent to not get her as an ally.

As for the military, they see the Jade Regent’s private army as direct rivals, if not an outright threat. This also means more political rivals for the military, all vying for leverage inside the government. Officers who once found themselves in positions of power may be seeing their influence wane as the Typhoon Guard takes their place.

Convincing the military to turn against the government in an honor-bound society, however, is tricky business. Before they will take any such step, there needs to be a crack in the dam, and that crack takes the shape of the local daimyo in the north, Sikutsu Sennaka. Already locally famous for allowing these bandits to prosper, Sennaka has other wonderful qualities, such as using blackmail, intimidation, violence, and outright cruelty to maintain his authority, and using his power to bully the neighboring provinces. Cutting that thread may be the catalyst we need to bring at least part of the military on board.

The underground is the one that worries me most because I am not convinced they would be reliable support. One would, in fact, think that a corrupt government works to their advantage. Jiro, however, has suggested that the ninja clans may be sympathetic to a regime change; they have their own sense of honor and, morality aside, the Jade Regent’s government may be something of an affront to their principles. The theory is, even if we can’t get them to side with us, we might be able to convince them to not get involved at all. To do that, we need to travel to Enganoka, where representatives of three of the more powerful clans gather every month during the new moon. It is one of the few times you can meet with them to discuss matters more complicated than hiring them for their “services” (and I am sure I don’t want to know what those include).

Of course, we’ve had some experience with ninjas that makes me skeptical of all of this, and I said as much to Jiro. We explained about Kimandatsu, the Frozen Shadows, and of course our good times in Ordu-Aganhei. Hatsue turned to Jiro and said, “Oni’s Mask?”

As you might guess, anything with the word “oni” in it gets our attention.

There are many ninja clans within Minkai, but over the years four of them have risen to a level of prominence: the Black Lotus, the Dragonshadow, the Ruby Crypt, and the Emerald Branch (which is more of a vigilante group). About 80 years ago, however, a new clan emerged and quickly rose to the same heights through a string of ruthless assassinations and a penchant for targeting government officials. They call themselves the Oni’s Mask. The more he talked, the more it sounded like an extension of the Five Storms, and of course the timing was right, both for the oni’s campaign against the royal families of Minkai and the appearance of the Frozen Shadows in Kalsgard shortly thereafter.

And let’s not forget the telltale sign of the Five Storms: the painfully obvious name, “Oni’s Mask”. Only the Five Storms could come up with something so dumb.

Where does all of this leave us? The new moon is two weeks away, and we’re obviously not ready to launch an assault on the daimyo, so that means starting with door number one.

 

[skyschemer]

Desnus 25 (Seinaru Heikiko, Night)​

Hatsue is a sohei of Irori. That took me by surprise. I tried to talk to her about it since we had some common ground, but she was a bit more focused on the sales pitch for coming back to his church than just talking. Honestly, I think this was my fault. I inadvertently made the conversation about me, which is pretty disingenuous.

That little faux pas aside, this explains her rather intense (some might say “fanatical”) devotion to her deity. It probably also explains why Ivan’s infatuation with her soured quickly. He wanted to learn a little bit about Irori, but Hatsue doesn’t do “a little bit”. It’s like asking Qatana about Groetus, only less disturbing.

Desnus 26 (Osogen Grasslands, Midday)​

Zosimus and I are heading back to Seinaru Heikiko again. Yes, I said “again”. Zosi needs his wagon, and with Sandru leaving, we had to bring it back ourselves. Technically, Zosi doesn’t need me for that, of course, but teleporting there shaved a day off of the round trip time, which was in everyone’s best interest.

I could have just teleported back, but making him travel alone didn’t seem wise or polite. And, in all honesty, I was interested in spending the day in his alchemy lab. It’s a little cramped, but there is no shortage of stuff to look at, and it’s another opportunity to let him rifle through my spellbook for whatever he can adapt to alchemical formulas. We just need to take turns up top to make sure the wagon is still headed in the correct direction.

We’re being pulled by an animated gorgon. The gorgon we killed back in the House of Withered Blossoms. It’s more than a little unsettling, and for all appearances we have blurred the line between hero and villain, but in a way this works to our advantage. Who is going to walk up to an armored wagon being pulled by the animated corpse of a gorgon? You’d have to be out of your damned mind.

We were both up top for a while, just talking about random things when he asked me out of the blue, “Have you ever died?”

It’s not the kind of question you’d typically ask in polite conversation, but we’ve been together long enough now that this is the sort of thing that passes for normal.

“Never, but there were times I thought I might.” I sensed he was looking for more, so I said, “I was knocked unconscious once. When I was younger. I was told I had a concussion.”

“What was that like?”

“I…I don’t remember a lot of it. When I came to, I had no sense of time and couldn’t put names with faces. I was hit very, very hard.” The way he had asked was all very clinical, which made me uncomfortable. And I really didn’t like talking about it, anyway. “I…don’t really like talking about it.”

I was better conversation than this one moment, honest. But it’s what stands out.

 

[skyschemer]

Desnus 26 (Seinaru Heikiko, Night)​

Okay. I just had to know. While Zosi was guiding the wagon, I climbed up front and asked, “Why were you so curious about whether I had…about what had happened to me?”

He turned to stare at the gorgon, or what he’d made out of it. “There is so much to life and the shells we occupy.” He looked out ahead at nothing at all, or something I couldn’t see. “I have enjoyed this cycle as a gnome. They are astounding for their size.”

Wait. What?

He shook his head dismissively, as if he knew what I was thinking. “No, I don’t have any attachment or recollection of my past incarnations. But I do believe that they did exist. Much like the power of Alchemy, we transform the physical and migrate the anima into the next shell. But this time? I plan to gather that information.”

He was talking about reincarnation.

It is widely believed among followers of Irori that those who achieve perfection in life go to his side to serve him in death. Those who fall short are reincarnated to begin the journey anew. That would make him the only deity that embraces it as part of his tenets. Most others frown upon it, though they don’t necessarily object to it, either (that includes Pharasma).

Otherwise, the practice is the domain of the druidic faiths and witchcraft.

Zosi turned to look at me. “Should something extinguish this shell, I don’t want to be anchored to it. My chosen method of restoration will be reincarnation so that I may experience the transformation of matter but retain this stream of consciousness. My plan is to purchase a scroll and keep it handy.”

I nodded. “I understand; I’ll honor your wishes.”

“The only problem I see is…the one who is all fixed on endings.” Qatana. He shook his head. “Groetus. I don’t know much about the divine; I appreciate all they did to create this world. But this Groetus, if the crazy one speaks truth about it, will be the undoing of it all. It’s a dark god with a dark path, and I don’t want her involved in my return.

“I don’t trust that her very own transformation is not happening right now, moving her anima toward a destructive darkness. Her delight in the death of others is unsettling. It is one thing when it is a monster from another realm… but fellow humanoid races.” He shook his head sadly, “I know my words hold little weight. You’ve traveled for so long that you are mostly blind to the madness that dictates her conduct, but someday, I think this veil of trust will be lifted. I just hope it is before she turns on Ameiko.”

Why does Qatana always have to make things so complicated? It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times, and it’s one with no answer.

I know why he was worried. And I get it. I really do. But it was a skewed perception, one that didn’t accurately reflect who she was.

“I grew up with Qatana. I probably know her better than anyone, though admittedly that is not difficult, and sometimes I feel I don’t know her at all. I understand why you’re worried.

“When she was nine years old, her parents were killed in front of her, and she was sold into slavery. I thought I’d never see her again, but she was rescued by Shalelu, and she returned home nearly a year later.

“For most of that year she was forced to do…terrible things. I’ve heard the stories. They are horrible enough that I don’t feel I have the right…they are her stories, and not mine to tell.

“She doesn’t delight in killing people. Not exactly. But she has developed a strong, if not extreme, animosity towards those who abuse and exploit others. Her attachment to Groetus is…a coping mechanism, I think. She knows she can’t save a world filled with misery. She welcomes the end times not because she relishes destruction, but because it will do what she cannot: end all suffering, everywhere.”

I don’t know if this helped her case or hurt it.

We ended the day on a much lighter note: I listened to stories about his cat.

 

[skyschemer]

Desnus 27 (Sakakabe, Night)​

Someone continues to spy on us. My spell alerted me earlier this evening as we were looking for an inn. With a bit of experimentation I was able to determine that the target was Ameiko, which is just f**king great. It means whoever is watching us probably knows who she is.

I tried to get an image of the spell caster but it didn’t work. Which is also just great. Magic can be so unreliable. One wonders how casters rise to such positions of power when our spells fail half the time.

Desnus 28 (Sakakabe, Late Morning)​

Another day, another attempt to spy on us. Once again, I tried to reverse the conduit to get a look at the voyeur, and once again it failed. This time we didn’t terminate the offending spell, but let it run its course as a rough gauge of the other caster’s power, and it lasted a quarter of an hour. Which is quite a bit longer than I can manage, and that has me nervous. Very, very nervous.

Should it? Maybe. Maybe not. I know what my capabilities would be if I were that skilled, and suffice it to say that I’d be doing more than just watching. A lot more. Either they are content with watching us, or they have help. Help that is powerful, but limited in its scope.

We found a decorative samisen to present to O-Kohaku as a gift. I used a spell to etch the teahouse’s logo—a cherry blossom—on it to give it that added personal touch. Hopefully this will be enough of a gesture to secure an audience with her.

Desnus 28 (Jikko River, Night)​

Gods, what a day. We are now searching for a missing geisha by the name of O-Sayumi. As I feared, establishing Ameiko’s legitimacy is requiring us to prove our honor through an endless string of favors.

That being said, O-Sayumi’s story is rather disturbing, so we are pretty motivated to get to the bottom of it. She worked as a geisha in the Kiniro Kyomai teahouse and was apparently very popular with a long list of regular clients who ask specifically for her. One of these clients was a rather well-known pearl merchant named Yugureda Shosaito, only he was more or less obsessed with her and kept inviting her to his home for a “private performance”. For the longest time she refused, but then one day, without warning or explanation, she accepted…and she hasn’t been seen since.

Strangely enough, she seems to have predicted her own disappearance. I would have found this unusual many months ago, but now? I just accept it as fact that she may be a talented seer. She left clues behind in the form of notes, verbal messages, and curiosities: a strange puzzle box or inro, and a vase.

The inro is filled with three items that are obviously important but in a bafflingly obtuse way. In other words: we don’t know what any of it means. Either she was too clever, we’re too dim, or we haven’t come across whatever it is that will make sense of it all. I am hoping for the latter, but worried it’s the former. What if it never makes sense to us?

We traced the inro back to its sculptor, who then brought out the vase. It depicted an image of a kappa, and when we turned it over, we found cucumber-scented bath salts stuck inside the unusually deep recess in the bottom. The sculptor explained that he made these items at her request and to her exact specifications, and that she told him to give this vase to the honorable people who were seeking her. This implies she foresaw her future weeks in advance, to a level of detail and precision that I had not thought possible.

The vase led us to where we are now: the home of The Wise Kappa, Numataro-sama, whom O-Sayumi had referred to as her uncle.

Obviously, they are not related by blood. From Numataro-sama, we learned that O-Sayumi’s mother had been killed by a monstrous tiger when O-Sayumi was just an infant. Her mother knew she was being hunted, and she hid O-Sayumi’s basket under a bush before the tiger caught up to her. The kappa found the infant and raised her as his own until she was old enough to need the company of other humans.

The kappa believes it was Shosaito that had O-Sayumi’s mother killed. He also believes the merchant is a powerful wizard and an all-around s**tty person. Which would, of course, follow from the whole “killed her mother” thing. And by the way? I have to agree with the “wizard” assessment. We can see the island where Shosaito lives; it’s surrounded by dark shadows and the landscape there seems drained of color. Whatever he is up to, I am betting it is to no good, because come on. Can you be any more obvious?

Why did O-Sayumi agree to visit him? Everyone who knew her agrees that Shosaito made her uncomfortable and that she would never willingly go to his home. Which suggests she wasn't willing at all: she was coerced or blackmailed somehow. It's only a theory, but right now it's the only one that fits.

We now have a dilemma on our hands. We must go see this pearl merchant turned wizard turned kidnapper, but we also have Ameiko with us because we’re currently being hunted, and she’s arguably safer with us than sitting in an immobile fortress that is far from being a secret. And because we have Ameiko with us, we also have Shalelu and Koya with us, and there is absolutely no way we are bringing Koya into something this dangerous, and I have strong reservations about Shalelu as well. But we can’t leave them alone, either, because see above.

 

[skyschemer]

Desnus 28 (Jikko River, Late Night)​

One way to help unravel the mystery of our missing seer was to involve another seer, so I took Koya aside and asked her if she could do a Harrowing.

I could manage one myself, of course, but as I explained, “I am a little worked up. I’m not sure I can focus.”

“Of course,” she said with a smile. “What is the answer you’re seeking?”

“The best path to finding, and if necessary rescuing, O-Sayumi.”

She considered the question, then spread nine cards in front of me for the Choosing. I turned over The Lost.

“Not the best beginning to any journey, to be sure. See the bleak on the card? He’s mad, lost in a world of lunatics, insane asylums, and worse.”

“It signifies a loss of self and identity.”

She nodded. “Whatever is ahead, be mindful not to lose your place in chaos.”

She gathered up the cards and cast nine of them face-down on the table. “Now let’s see the past,” she said as she turned over the left-most column. “The Locksmith. The Foreign trader. The Juggler. Interesting.” She held up the middle one.

“Deals and bargains?” I asked.

“These have certainly been part of your path here. You’re no stranger to bargains with high stakes. That may yet prove important.”

Next she turned over the center column, representing the present: the Unicorn, The Snakebite, and the Cricket.

“The Unicorn offers what you seek, but it’s not in a strong position.”

“So don’t count on it.”

“Not entirely. The Snakebite, though, is troublesome. There are many kinds of venom. Ambition. Manipulation. The desire to control others. Beware of trust betrayed.”

The Cricket sat as an opposite match, and misaligned, but I couldn’t reconcile it. “And the Cricket?”

“Probably nothing, despite its position. It does not match the present.”

Finally, she overturned the last column, representing the future. The Joke. The Wanderer. The Demon’s Lantern. The former and the latter were true matches.

“The Joke, in its true position. A terror will need to be overcome, but it reminds us that not all of them can be beaten with strength of arms alone.”

“I’ve been here before. Some solutions are…unconventional.”

She nodded again, then continued. “The Demon’s Lantern, also in true position. The will-o-wisps represent traps and tricks of a particularly devilish sort.” She closed her eyes for a moment as she reflected on this. “I can’t say exactly what this means. But someone may be laying a trap, and doing it cleverly.”

I sat quietly for a moment, too, trying to put this all together. Past, present, and future seemed to fold in on one another, the divinations of O-Sayumi mixed in with my own. Had she been forced to come here? Was Shosaito seeking something that only she could provide? It would explain his apparent obsession. At the same time, she left clues for us to follow, and the cards reflected that as well.

“What is the spell telling you?” Koya asked.

“It’s not encouraging any particular course of action,” I said. “More importantly, it’s not discouraging one, either. Though it seems to think we’ll need to be…fluid. Adaptable to a changing situation. More so than usual.”

We had O-Sayumi’s inro and her note, both of which contained clues to…what? Her disappearance? Or how to find her? Or maybe they are one and the same. The answers lay in Shosaito’s home.

And, now, we also had this odd shogi piece from Numataro-sama, the angle-mover. It jumps out at me because Jiro had jokingly referred to Hatsue this way when we first met them. As she was explaining the game to me. The kappa said, “it can summon the greatest shogi player in all of Minkai when broken”. Shogi keeps coming up. This piece keeps coming up. Is there a connection here?

Is the sky blue?

Desnus 29 (Namikadame Lagoon, Morning)​

A grand magnolia tree sits on the shore of the Jikko River just upstream from where it empties into the Namikadame Lagoon. It’s nearly in full bloom, with flowers large enough to cover my hand and a creamy, sweet fragrance that would be the envy of bath houses in Magnimar. We never stop to enjoy wonders like this. Not anymore. Nature’s grandeur has become a backdrop, a measure of our progress as we travel from here to there. How sad is that?

Yugureda Shosaito’s home lies on a small, private island in the middle of the lagoon. The surrounding landscape is unnaturally muted, drained of color, bathed in gloom and breathing stagnant air. Leaving Numataro-sama’s home for Shosaito’s is not a fair trade by any stretch. We’re told his pearl divers have a small village over there. How anyone at all manages to live within that umbra and maintain their sanity is anyone’s guess.

Qatana and I can see there’s magic pretty much everywhere. Not anything overt, but a sort of faint aura that permeates everything. Why do people do this sort of thing to themselves? By all accounts, Shosaito’s pearl business is quite lucrative, and he’s clearly a wealthy man: you don’t spend your money on geisha and private islands unless gold flows like water. Yet his home is draped in malaise. What’s the point of opulence if that’s how you live?

One possibility is that it’s a function of the means he used to achieve his success. Some actions leave scars on the world. That thought is certainly disturbing, especially because it’s far from wild speculation. If Numataro-sama is correct, this is a man who killed O-Sayumi’s mother, knowing that she had an infant child. We’re also reasonably certain that he is O-Sayumi’s father, which would mean that he intentionally murdered his wife or lover. What kind of person would do these things? (Uncomfortable answer? Ameiko’s father. Which may in part explain why Ameiko has taken a personal interest in the matter.)

We’re leaving Koya here. With someone spying on us, that was not an easy decision, but we can, at least, mitigate the risks, and it’s arguably less dangerous than her tagging along. Numataro-sama has agreed to let me cover his home with my spell that will keep it, and them, hidden. That way, if they try to come for us, it won’t be so easy to do it through her. At least for the immediate future. Long term, we need a better solution.

 

[skyschemer]

Desnus 29 (Yugureda Shosaito Home, Late Morning)​

Sometimes, a coincidence that is far too unlikely to be more than just a coincidence really is just a coincidence. And sometimes that magical trap that you see, which is quite obviously a magical trap, and that you’re told outright is a magical trap, is, in fact, a magical trap. These are the valuable lessons I have learned today.

Honestly, I thought the shogi board was important because shogi just kept coming up: meeting Hatsue and her passion for the game, the large set in Numataro-sama’s home, the piece he gave us that could summon a great shogi player when broken, and even Shosaito himself. So there had to be more to what we were seeing, right? Wrong. It was just a trap for the unwary (or, I suppose, for people with a penchant to out-think themselves); retaliation against anyone motivated and clever enough to come looking for O-Sayumi, but careless enough to casually touch things as they explored.

The shadow realm we were trapped in may not have been entirely real, but the undead shadows that stalked us were no illusions. One of them touched me, and I felt my strength draining away as a horrible chill pierced my heart. It was an unwelcome reminder of my own fragility and mortality.

One odd thing did happen while we were in there. OK, fine, the whole thing was odd, but I mean relatively speaking. Zosimus broke the shogi piece Numataro-sama had given us as soon as we realized we were trapped in a giant shogi board made of shadowstuff, and Hatsue appeared. Not her, but a spectral image of her, as though it were some sort of projection. She looked at me and asked, “What are you doing in my dream?” I didn’t really have a good answer.

She may have saved our lives. Her image or projection, or whatever it was, was real enough to the shadows. She tore two of them apart with relative ease.

Curious. I’ll have to ask her about this later.

The shadows were not our only encounter with undead. I recognized his housekeepers as manananggal, though only after we found them curiously difficult to restrain, both physically and magically. From what I remember of the Tian legends, they are significantly more hideous by night, when they tear away from their lower torsos and fly around to feed on the living. We didn’t get to see that part. I am not really broken up over it.

Normally, I’d say that invading someone’s home is best done after dark. That makes this the exception that proves the rule. Our original intent wasn’t even to break in. We were just going to see the man and ask a few pointed questions, but things got pretty weird from the moment we landed on his island, and entered a downward spiral soon after.

Yesterday, I asked who would choose to live in this faded landscape, and the answer to that turned out to be “no one”. The pearl divers were lacedons, which implies rather strongly that there was an outbreak of ghoul fever in their village at some point in the past.

I would not be surprised to learn that this was also Shosaito’s doing, because just look at his cleaning staff. It’s not like he couldn’t know, which makes him either complicit or responsible. Ironically, Zosi and I were making offhand remarks (perhaps in poor taste) about using undead, or at least animated dead, for pearl diving. We had no idea how right we were. It seems Shosaito figured out long ago that his pearl business could benefit significantly from employees with no overhead, no upkeep, and no need to breathe air.

All of this went a long way towards answering my other question from yesterday: we more or less know what kind of person we are dealing with, and that’s someone who cares little for human life, or for anything beyond his own self-interests. It’s still not clear how his daughter fits into the picture, but it’s a fair bet that he needs her for something. For what, exactly, is still not clear, but…the fact that they are related by blood must be the key.

Earlier, we came across a set of cards from the Minkai game uta-garuta. I was thumbing through them idly as we explored, and noticed that several of the cards had arcane writings mixed in with the poetry verses. It took me a little time to decipher it all, but the writings were similar to a spell I am vaguely familiar with, though I don’t know myself because it is abhorrent. This spell transfers a person’s consciousness from their own body to a receptacle of some sort, typically a rare gemstone of modest value. From there, the caster can forcibly possess another living body. What I was reading, however, seemed both different from this spell and incomplete in some fashion.

It occurs to me now that we never asked anyone if Shosaito is married, or has a lover, or even any children (other than O-Sayumi). His home looks lived in and neat but…neglected. Hay is molding in the stables, there’s very little food to be found, and the bedrooms are unoccupied, with only one showing any sign of use. It’s like he just stopped living here a few weeks ago.

This all occurs to me now because he has taken his own daughter, who he is related to by blood, and who has been missing for a few weeks. Because he was researching a variant of a spell that can transfer a person’s soul. A spell whose material component requires an object of value; a requirement that could quite possibly be satisfied by a pearl, of which I am sure he has plenty.

What has this man done?

 

[skyschemer]

Desnus 29 (Yugureda Shosaito Home, Early Afternoon)​

Shosaito obviously didn’t want anyone stumbling across his unseemly research, but living on a private island with a murderous pet nue while surrounding himself with undead of his own making apparently wasn’t secluded enough. To fix this galling error, he created a maze in the shadow plane and linked it between his sake cellar and his laboratory. Because that’s where everyone puts their shadow plane mazes, obviously.

I don’t know what he was thinking. The shadow plane is dangerous, and leaving it open to the material plane like that is equal parts brazen and blithe. Shadows, kytons, nightshades…these creatures and worse could literally just wander through at any time, placing untold numbers of people in very real danger. But from what I can tell from his research journal and personal diaries, Shosaito did not have a strong grasp on the concept of consequences. Frankly, I am surprised he survived his own recklessness.

O-Sayumi’s clues led us almost straight to her. It was Ivan who figured it out. It wasn’t just the objects inside her inro, but their numbers: one silk cocoon, two rings, and three camphorwood beads. She had divined the correct path through the maze and left us a tactile map of the gates in their correct order. We have no idea what would have happened had we chosen the wrong path, but if the mirror traps were any indicator, we would have been licking some wounds at best.

While we did find O-Sayumi, what we weren’t expecting was to see another woman with her; their bodies sat, unmoving, on the floor of a lavishly decorated sitting room. Ivan’s spell said they were neither alive nor dead, but I could tell there was a spell in place to prevent them from decomposing. We later learned that the elderly woman was Shosaito’s current wife, and that’s when the whole story came into clear focus.

He tried to place her soul in O-Sayumi’s body. In his journals, he comments on how much O-Sayumi resembles her long-dead mother, Kaori, the woman he had murdered. I don’t understand what goes through the mind of someone who would kill his first wife, then lust after his own daughter to the point of placing the soul of his second wife in her body. What is wrong with people?

Maybe it’s best not to ask because I really don’t want to know the answer. We’ve confronted many people who have thoroughly corrupted themselves for a supposedly higher cause, but none who had done so purely for selfish reasons. And I am not sure which is worse. There’s no scale for something like this.

I was not surprised to learn that a man careless enough to create a portal to the shadow plane was also overconfident in his own abilities. His spell went awry, and though his wife’s soul was pulled from her body, it did not enter the pearl he used as the magical jar. Unwilling to return O-Sayumi to her body, as that would permanently break the spell and leave his wife’s soul lost forever, he simply…kept them here, like this, and continued his work, desperately searching for magic that would safely reverse what he had done.

That magic was far beyond him, and it is far beyond us as well. We did the only thing we could do: forcibly break his spell and return O-Sayumi. His wife is now lost forever, her soul condemned to wander the planes, unable to pass on, out of even Pharasma’s reach, and unable to return to life. It’s a horrible thing.

At first, I was upset about this, to the point where someone—I don’t even remember who—asked why I was spending so much time trying to figure out how to fix it. I answered, “Because it was not her fault.” And that’s true. Shosaito’s notes show he tried to get his wife to support what he was doing, but she refused. But he did it anyway, without her knowledge. It’s sickening.

But then we spoke with O-Sayumi and learned his wife knew that he had corrupted the lives of the others on their island. That she was complicit in turning the villagers and their house staff into undead. It was not that, but this business with her soul, that was the bridge too far. And that is what did it for me. “That was where the line was?” I said to no one in particular. “Not ‘let’s make undead from our house staff’, or ‘let’s unleash ghoul fever on the village’?” Eternal punishment may be disproportionate to her crime, but she was far from innocent.

Perhaps, some day, Ashava will find her and lead her home.

The island is empty now. Yugureda Shosaito is dead. His wife is dead. His nue companion, the one that killed O-Sayumi’s mother, is dead. The manananggal and lacedons have been destroyed. It’s probably the first time in years that this island has seen fresh air.

I can’t wait to leave it.

 

[skyschemer]

Desnus 29 (Namidakame Lagoon, Mid-Afternoon)​

I stand corrected. Now, this island is empty. Much to our surprise, Shosaito’s personal barge was crewed by ja noi oni. Because of course it was. Oni are the flies in humanity’s garbage heap.

Destroying ja noi oni is something we’ve recently gotten pretty good at, to the point where it was impossible for me to take them seriously. There were only a dozen of them, which was about as threatening as a petting zoo. Of course they were too dim to figure this out, even as we were mercilessly grinding them up. But what really gets me is, they weren’t sent here to kill us. They didn’t know who we were or who was with us. The Five Storms weren’t ordering them around. They were just some random oni, fighting to the last man to protect a barge. Did it not occur to them that this wasn’t something worth dying for?

Maybe, like goblins, they really think that, no matter how bad the odds, they’ll be the one that turns it around. That they’ll succeed where their companions have failed and died. It makes a certain kind of sense.

I wish I’d had more lethal spells prepared, and said as much after the last of them had been cut down. This earned me a number of looks, and a bizarre debate with Ivan when he asked me why I thought it was OK to kill oni but not, say, people.

“They’re not real.”

“What do you mean, they aren’t real? Of course they’re real.”

“They’re not from here. Not from our world or our plane. They aren’t real people.”

“They’re both outsiders and native to this plane.”

“They’re evil spirits, manifested in humanoid bodies. They don’t count.”

Obviously, he doesn’t get it. But then again, none of the others seem to, either. Except maybe Ameiko. And sometimes I wonder even about her.

There’s a saying about how if you can’t get anyone to see reason, then maybe you’re the one who is being unreasonable. This is not a comforting thought.

 

[skyschemer]

Desnus 29 (Namidakame Lagoon, Late Afternoon)​

OK, now the island is unoccupied. We were attacked by, of all things, dragon turtles on the trip back. They were aggressive, belligerent, and unwilling to listen to reason, so we ended up killing them. This sucks. I don’t want to be killing dragon turtles. Why are we killing dragon turtles?

The answer to that is about as surprising as gravity. It’s because Yugureda Shosaito made a deal with them. They said as much: they threatened us, and when we tried to explain his daughter was aboard, they insisted we were lying because we weren’t taking “the arranged way”. The “arranged way”? Are you f**king kidding me? Was it not enough to own an island? Did he have to control the whole lagoon, too? How many boats did they sink? How many people did they drown or kill because this lunatic wasn’t satisfied with prosperity?

OK, fine. Dragon turtles can be a menace to anything both on or in the water. They are territorial and not above extorting “offerings” from sailors in exchange for safe passage. But encouraging them like this is reckless and dangerous, just like everything else in Shosaito’s life. And it encouraged conflict and violence that led to their deaths, too. It’s all such a waste.

For what it’s worth, we saved one of the bodies, and Ivan is harvesting it for meat while Zos prepares that creepy treasure map spell. May as well put it to use. It’s certainly better than just letting them all rot.

Dasi is an endless source of surprises. Piloting a barge is not a simple matter of picking up oars and rowing, and yet he made guiding it out of the docks look pretty easy. He even kept it afloat as the dragon turtles were ramming into it, intent on sending everyone into the water. I could hear dad’s voice in my head, telling me how I’d regret not learning to sail someday. How do my parents keep being right about these things?

I finally got a good look at our voyeur. They were spying on Ameiko again, and this time I was able to trace it back to what I assume was Sakakabe. I got a vision of someone dressed as a beggar, hunched over like they were sleeping on some street corner. I’m going to suggest that there’s more to this than appearances.

You think?

We’ll be spending the night at Numataro-sama’s home again, assuming of course he’s up for extended company. We’re all pretty spent, and if Zosi’s map pans out we won’t be in any shape to pursue it until the morning. That, and everyone is just tired. It’s been a long day, and being scalded by steam several times over did little to help with that.

Desnus 30 (Namidakame Lagoon, Late Afternoon)​

Zosi’s map led us to an enormous, underwater cave beneath the small island that neighbored Shosaito’s home. Inside was an extraordinary hoard of pearls, seashells and gemstones that was hauntingly beautiful even in the silty water of the cave. I’ve never seen anything like it.

My first thought was that these pearls were his end of whatever bargain they had struck, but I quickly realized that dragon turtles could get pearls far more easily than he. Since they didn’t need him for pearls, he must have been offering them something else. The range of possibilities here is limited, and most of them are awful. I am choosing not to dwell on it.

We’re spending another night with Numataro-sama. I am not complaining, as the change of pace is welcome, though the decision was made out of caution rather than a desire for extended sightseeing. Our preparations today were geared toward whatever we might face underwater, not safe transport back to Sakakabe. With someone out there watching for us, and potentially waiting for us at our destination, an abundance of caution seems like the right idea.

Ivan sent ahead to O-Kohaku to let her know when—and how—to expect us. I am sure she’s seen wind-walking before, but having a large group unexpectedly coalesce in the middle of her business would probably be equal parts alarming and rude. We are trying to make friends here, after all. That, and causing a small panic would seriously crimp our triumphant return.