[The Mountain Witch] Weight in gold
Jaakko Koivula:
Play report! Brilliant session again, wonderful.
Takayama couldn't make it to the last session, so in the start I again played a small solo adventure for him. Ueshiba Sensei had sent him to do a penance-thingie up on the mountains. Takayama's family had missed their tithe and Takayama had to go and pray and appease the spirits etc.
I asked three players to frame scenes for Takayama and three to frame scenes for the boat ride up the mountain. Also, the scenes would have to have something to do with the framing character's destiny.
Takayama leaves the shrine and begins to descend towards the Temple of the Crazy Monks. First, he sees a beggar pinching the food that he brought to the shrine as a sacrifice. Takayama assumes that the beggar must be some sort of a god or a spirit. Because who else would take the food meant as a sacrifice and what would a beggar be doing at the mountains anyways? So he leaves the beggar in peace and continues downward.
Next Takayama meets a luxuriously dressed, but also somehow messy looking woman. She has her hair falling open and is acting somehow curiously. "Must be another spirit." Takayama thinks and is extra courteus to her. Woman strikes up conversation and asks Takayama for a favour: Her friend, Kanai Miki has been enchanted by the Witch and only whispering her name to Miki, can the spell be broken. When the woman leans in to whisper Takayama her name, her hair moves enough so that Takayama can see that her throat has been cut from ear to ear.
Takayama agrees to help the woman and proceeds downwards. Next he spots a tree that vividly reminds him of one of Kanamaru's haikus. He is so struck by it's beauty that he slips and rolls down the hill, straight into a boggy lake. Takayama manages to get himself up from the mud and realizes that he's already at the Temple.
At the Temple the rest of the ronin are waiting. Takayama isn't really surprised at all the blood, feathers, broken walls, etc. after all he has seen today already. After cleansing rituals demanded by Kanamura, they get into the boat and start rowing upstream. First part of the trip is uneventful. They get to the spot where they have to abandon the boat and proceed by climbing, but then the action start.
First, Shinta's dog Renshin jumps to the shore from the boat, starts barking like mad and suddenly disappears. Just vanishes into thin air. Shinta also looses consciousness and tumbles overboard. Matsushita manages to fish Shinta from the stream and get him ashore. When questioned, Shinta just says that Renshin went ahead and that they'll meet him later again.
Meanwhile, Takayama has jumped ashore and spots large golden coins in the sand. Huge oval-shaped chunks, made out of solid gold. With Daimyo's personal stamp etc. on them, marking them to be specially made and given as a gift to Takayama's family. They had also been lost to the evil merchant along everything else, but now there are bunch of them lying around there in the sand.
Brief argument ensues. Takayama tries to keep the coins for himself, so he can give them to his father. Matsushita demands that the coins be handed to the Daimyo. They are daimyo's property and it would be his duty to decide if Takayama's father is still worthy to get them back after he had already lost them once. In the end the coins are handed to Kanamura, for safekeeping until further notice.
Next, a couple of monks approach to take the boat back to the temple. They haven't heard anything about the massacre and the ronin don't happen to tell them. On the other hand, Imai obviously recognized the other man. Imai is noticeably furious and starts to draw his blade and follow the man around. When the other man leaves downstream with the boat, Imai starts to follow the another man, obviously going to kill him on the spot.
Matsushita is outraged about Imai going to kill a defenseless man, and tries to stop him. Shinta steps in though and tries to stop Matsushita from stopping Imai! After a brief argument, Matsushita stares down Shinta and manages to get between Imai and the man. Imai arguments that the man has made his life living hell for years back in tha days. Matsushita says that killing him in anger would just make Imai even a bigger bastard. Neither is willing to step aside, so dice are rolled.
It's a draw, but Matsushita declares Ai-Uchi. Imai has his sword drawn and Matsushita steps right into it. "If someone's blood has to be spilled, let it be mine!" etc. Unluckily, he's obviously way too drunk for dangerous dramatics, and he actually manages to cut himself rather badly on Imai's sword. Imai is forced to fold though and he turns away.
Next the ronin start the climb. The way is surprisingly easy and there seems to be actually steps carved into the stone. They make good progress and manage to get to a larger plateau, just suitable for camping. At the plateau Takayama spots the beggar from the first scene.
The beggar is there with the same rice-balls that he pinched earlier from the shrine. He offers them to the ronin. He tells that he is doing this as a way of redeeming himself. Before he was an evil merchant that fooled nobles of their wealth and... Takayama goes a bit ballistic and starts to rough up the merchant immediately. He demands to know what the merchant has done with all the wealth that he has stolen and that he will never be redeemed before he pays back every last penny that he stole. Merchant breaks down completely and tells that he spent the money all around and just threw it away when he realized the error of his ways.
The merchant continues that he realized himself that he would have to pay back all that he stole... and then he looks at the rice-balls and suddenly throws all of them away, down into the stream. Lightning fast Shinta manages to grab one of the rice-balls from the air and eats it, on top of the four others he already had. Takayama is completely obsessed about his revenge by this point already and even though Umiroya tries to stop him, decapitates the merchant in one single strike.
Umiroya flies off the handle completely and chews horribly on Takayama about disgraceful behaviour and being obsessed about the past etc. Takayama is trying to grab the head to take to his father, but Umiroya, Kanamaru and Matsushita together manage to bury the body properly. Also, Takayama gets -1 to the rest of the rolls for this act. Takayama himself is just proud about the whole thing, but I guess it's just Karma that cocks up things for him for a while.
After things have calmed a bit, Shinta realizes that his innards are on fire. Matsushita offers a drink from one of his bottles to Shinta and soon Shinta has thrown up all the poison. All the poisons leave him spent and weak though and he also has a -1 for the rest of the act.
During the night, the ronin can hear music from the Witch's castle. Umiroya is transfixed by the music and skips sleeping for a third night running. Morning comes and the black gaijin Chipo appears from somewhere. "You've been tarrying long enough. Im here to lead you to the Witch's castle. The ball is tonight." While guiding the group, Chipo also gets questioned by the ronin.
They find out that the ring that Chipo has, is a mark of servitude to the Witch. All Witch's slaves wear one. The ronin also try to ask Chipo about the gold coins that they found before, but Chipo just discards them as something immaterial. "I don't look at money that closely. The Witch provides for me everything I need."
They finally arrive at the Yamashina -castle. It's hewn straight into the mountain, with architechture pretty much out of a H.P. Lovecraft's books. No common aesthetics seem to apply, it's just a grey, solid collection of forms, generally sloping towards the mountain face. No guards or anything at the walls, just random windows. It's not a huge fortress or a castle-town or anything, but more like a large mansion built completely out of stone.
Front doors open and the ronin are lead to their own private rooms by soulless-seeming servants. Who all naturally have the rings. The ball will start in about three hours and it will be a sort of masquerade. Costumes are provided by the Witch.
Umiroya asks if there's a young woman staying at the castle. The servant informs him that yes, there is and no, you'll have to wait until the ball to see her. Meanwhile, Shinta leaves his room and wanders a bit around the castle. He enters a chamber, where the Witch is lounging around, kneels and pleads: "Master, please, let me go, these centuries have been too long."
First time that the Witch appears in the game btw! Theme music Tom Waits, especially stuff from the Black Rider -album. The Witch looks lika a sort of mix between Patric Stewart and Jack from the Nightmare before Christmas. Bald with a goatee, completely dressed in black and thin as a rake. Really tall with no really obvious racial features. Sort of past all those bits when people still look like people.
After this, the ball starts. The ronin are lead to the main hall, where Shinta is curiously already waiting for them with Chipo. The hall is filled with really non-descriptive people mingling about and them some curious characters. A young and beautiful lady at the other side of the room stands out like a sore thumb. At the other corner, there is a group of four slumping figures sitting around a table, and the rest of the guests seem to give them A LOT of space for some reason. Same happens at the other side, where there is a small group standing around in the dark, with no-one near them.
The Witch is sitting at the other side of the hall in a largish throne. He greets everyone and welcomes them to the ball. He just oozes self-confidence and diabolical laissez-faire attitude: "Yeah, I know you've come to kill me, so I threw you a ball. That's how bad I am." He is also stroking a small white porcelain dog... He then leaves to attend to his other guests. Takayama shouts after him that isn't it discourteous for the host to leave them waiting here, but the Witch just amusedly waves him off and walks out from the hall.
Umiroya goes straight for the young lady, Kanai. Touching and romantic scene ensues, for about 4 seconds, until Umiroya notices the ring in her lover's finger. In a nutshell, Chipo rescued Kanai from the White Wolf and so now the Witch owns her. Umiroya demands and pleads that they leave the place immediately, but Kanai just repeats through the tears that she can't leave and Umiroya himself should leave immediately.
There is a curious steady clanking sound that can be heard over the music. It's the sound of a man throwing back drink after drink after drink and slapping the cup down between each shot. It's obviously the crazy monk from before! Imai grabs a spot where he can stalk the monk in peace.
From the other side of the hall, a bunch of seven ladies approach Kanamaru. Each has long hair and a full-face mask and we're served a bunch of flashbacks from Kanamaru's past: Kanamaru is reading a poem to a beautiful young lady proclaiming his undying love etc. Later, the lady dies a horrible accidental death. This also happens seven times, all with different women.
The women grab Kanamaru for a fiery dance, draggin the poor old poet around the floor like a rag-doll. When the third woman has her turn, Matsushita can hear a small "...help" groan from Kanamaru.
Matsushita pulls out a long thread of firecrackers and sets them alight. The whole room is filled with horrible racket and zig-zagging lights and smoke. The women drop Kanamaru on the ground and gather as a clump, hissing at Matsushita. One's mask has dropped hanging on a thread and one can see that the lifeless, eyeless face behind it. At the other side of the room, the mad monk and his three zombie-ninja friends jump up and draw steel. They start proceeding to the middle of the hall and all the excitement. At the other end, Kanai breaks finally completely down and bolts out of the hall, tears streaming all over the place.
Meanwhile Takayama has managed to slip out and follow the Witch. He finds a small room and sees the Witch staring right at him lazily. Witch's guest notices that the Witch is staring over his shoulder and turns to look... and Takayama recognizes his father's face.
*End of session*
Phew! Now that was a session. And there's tons of stuff that I've just skipped and propably more that I just forgot. This time I managed to make pretty decent notes though, which is nice.
Cool moment: Matsushita framed the beggar into the first scene. Then later I brought him back and made him the merchant that swindled the Takayamas. Which actually was exactly what Matsushita's players had planned in the first place. Brilliant!
Also, we had only three hours to use for the session. And I just realized how much I love it about this game that you can actually get so much game out of it in that time. Comparing this and some dice-heavy D&D for example, is like comparing old Naruto-anime to any other series in which something actually sometimes bleeding happens!
It's great.
Pekoraali:
I would like to bring up some details that in part answer some of Newsalors's questions, and in part strenghten the picture of the whole story so far. As I play the character Matsushita, I'll mostly bring up facts that are important to me and his dealings with other characters.
There is a whole story arc in the game that has not been told about in this thread. It concerns the Red Ronin Umiroya and black ronin Matsushita. The funny thing is I believe every other player has disregarded it, including perhaps the story guide? As the last session of the game is about to happen I feel free to bring them up for all the players and readers alike.
In the first game we saw that the Red Ronin is a boastful and proud younger ronin with a special skill with throwing weapons. Some of the ronin are irritated by his behaviour, but it is actually he who is first contacted by the Black Ronin Matsushita who is gathering a strike team.
It is quickly established that Umiroya has a special reason for joining the quest. He has killed one of his daimyo's servants, and must redeem himself by taking down Oyamna. It seems that this is no secret and could be known by any of the other characters. The details of his past are still unknown. The player of the Green Ronin Kanamaru strikes a deal with the player of the Red Ronin by suggesting that they both come from the same area. Kanamaru served the previous leader of the adjacent domain, who died by choking in a rice-ball. Umiroya serves the new lord, who is in the middle of the session identified as (if I recall right) Hatsuki-domo.
As I mentioned before, Umiroya is played as a boastful and proud character. The genious of the player is that she intentionally seems to develop the personality and behaviour of her character as the story progresses. In the first session Red Ronin is stroke silent and serious only once. This is when he sees a shrine with a statue of a young lady. He however quickly recovers and becomes his old jesting and loud bully. As a player I immediately thought that his dark destiny must be the love oriented one, even if I could not be sure. I decided to play with that card.
In the second session Matsushita confronts the red ronin and asks about his past. Umiryoa explains proudly that he had to strike some annoying servant down because the servant had disrespected him. When Matsushita inquires what kind of a man would talk bad behind his back, Umiroya corrects that the servant was indeed a woman. Matsushita grunts and says something about the women being the worst when it comes to gossip. Umiroya happily agrees. What he has done does not seem big a deal. Actually there are quite a few ronins in the group who have nothing against killing peasants, servants and such. Matsushita however does not accept such behaviour.
Later on the Red Ronin finds something disturbing from the mouth of the wolf-shaped Forest Spirit. It's a necklace stuck between wolf's teeth. I call for a roll which is won, and Matsushita notices the incident. He even sees what kind of a jewelry Umiroya is hiding. Once again the Red Ronin's cool is reduced and he is clearly battling with strong emotions, consequenly much stronger ones than before. As a player I conclude that my earlier deduction from the first session was correct and make a mental note. I decide that Matsushita actually knows who it is that carried the necklace before it got in the mouth of the beast.
In the third session Matsushita again confronts the Red Ronin while they dine in the temple of the mad monks. Matsushita asks if Umiroya is new to the region. Umiroya's player throws me a bone and agrees that this is how it is. "If so", Matsushita continues: "would you like to learn about the history of the region and things that might even concern you?". Umiroya is of course interested.
Matsushita tells about the fall of the Kanamaru's master and the wide wars that it caused. He explains how the generals fought against each other to secure the throne and how his Daimyo, Ono-Domo just let it all happen, even if he was a close friend to the deceased leader. The war however did not come to an end and was vexing the whole land. It caused famine and starvation, peasants suffered and disorder spread in the neighbouring domains. He mentiones that Umiroya's present daimyo, Hatsuki-domo, was one of these battling generals. Finally Ono-Domo decided to interfere. He led his armies at the border and let them be noticed by all sides.
After that he officially and publicly gave his support for hatsuki-sama. This was enough for all the other generals to flee or surrender in the face of total extinction. Without even one drop of blood Daimyo Ono had handed the throne to Hatsuki, who was much pleased in his choice. They both exchanged favours in a mutual effort to secure peace. Hatsuki sent his daughter to serve in Ono's court, and Ono send one woman of his bloodline to serve in hatsuki's court.
The player of the Red Ronin is astounded by the story. Does this mean that the servant his ronin killed is actually related to Daimyo Ono? It is obvious that there is a mutual agreement between us, and both of us nod. Not only did we now knew who it was that Umiroya killed, I have also hinted that Hatsuki's daughter is a potential candidate for a romantic interest Red Ronin's player is looking for.
Red Ronin goes to see Ueshiba sensei and demands information about a woman who has travelled near the temple, a woman with the very same necklace he has found from the mouth of the Forest Spirit. Ueshiba Sensei tells that this is true. There was a such woman, but she was taken by the wolves. Umiroya is devastated by the news and can no longer sleep. He is also troubled by the story the Black Ronin Matsushita told him. As the session ends, the player is forced to take some of his trust from Matsushita.
"I would give you more trust... but you had to do it, didn't you?" She explains to me.
In the last session Umiroya's player creates an interesting twist concering her character's dark fate and that of Takayama's. Takayama confronts a walking corpse, a servant lady of a some sort, who has her throat slide open. The Servant asks Takayama to help her to save one of the prisoners of the Witch. She gives the name of the prisoner, Kanai, and explains that whispering her own name in the ear of Kanai will free her. It is unclear how this works technically speaking, but I am quite sure that the dead girl is ghost of the close relative of Ono-Domo who Umiroya has killed... And the prisoner is clearly Hatsuki's daughter whom Umiroya loves.
We now learn that Umiroya has changed. When Takayama decides to kill the unarmed merchant, Umiroya interferes. Perhaps it is the burden of guilt that drives him I wonder, and it is obvious that he has lost his calm completely and attacks and shouts at Takayama. Takayama and other ronins (but not Matsushita) are quite astonished by his behaviour, unable to comprehend his fiery emotions. In secret I lift my hat for the player. Could it be that a ronin that previously boasted about killing the innocent servant woman has now finally confronting his responsibility?
When the episode is over Matsushita comes to Umiroya once again. He encourages Umiroya to abandon his anger and hate he feels towards Takayama. After all, the actions of the Blue Ronin were well justified. If he had not decapitated the merchant, it might have been Matsushita himself who had eaten the poisoned rice cakes. This is not enough for the Red Ronin. He demands to know why Matsushita did nothing to save the beggar merchant while a moment ago he was willing to shed blood for another unarmed stranger. Matsushita answers plainly that the beggar was already given a death sentence.
This goes according with what one might have learned about the true identity of Matsushita Yoshi. He clearly belongs to a group of assassins operating in the Daimyo's region. When Umiroya asked in the second session why is Matsushita taking the quest, Matsushita explained something like this: For years the Daimyo Ono had a lot of missions for him, but then suddenly they stopped. Now, for reasons kept secret, Daimyo has summoned him for this one final quest. Umiroya thought then that it was Matsushita's drinking that had been the cause of his unemployment,laughed, and thought nothing more about it.
In the Wizard's castle the group has now gathered all his guests and is throwing a masquerade for them. Matsushita of course needs no masks of any kind even if other ronin's have been given a suitable ones. Every mask tells something about their character and their dark fates. Blue Ronin has a rabbit mask. Kanamaru is dressed as a clown of some sort. White Ronin is wearing an obscure mask that leaves others contemplating it's possible meaning. Pink Ronin, Shinta, wears a mask of a loyal dog. It is in this little banquet where Umiroya finally finds his love and offers to take her away. Too bad the Witch already has her as a servant. Kanamaru's player explains that she is to become one of the brides of the witch.
The session ends with confusion as Matsushita leaps into action and throws a long thread of firecrackers at the dark brides freeing the old ronin Kanamaru from his dance macabre. I have not yet decided will Matsushita follow Takayama and face the witch. Or will he follow his real goal and pursue escaping Kanai. What say the readers?
Jaakko Koivula:
Goddamn. I've missed some really obvious stuff :D
Didn't remember the thing about the killed servant at all and now it just seems to click in place perfectly. Same with the Matsushita's and Umiroya's discussion. I couldn't really follow it at game and then naturally pretty much just forgot it.
I guess it's good to write these things up :)
Starting to understand more and more how GMing The Mountain Witch is really different from more traditional games. You don't maybe need to think up so much cool by just yourself, but you have to be really alert and sort of try to follow six detective stories running at the same time. Put the puzzles together enough, so you can start feeding more pieces to the players etc.
Phew, Im starting to miss my fiat.
Jaakko Koivula:
Finally! I got sick and then timetables broke down, so it took a long time before we got to play the epic finale. But it was worth the wait! I'll run through the main happenings very shortly quickly and finish up with some thoughts and general hallelujah on the game.
First, AP:
In the main hall: Matsushita and Kanamaru are confronted by the seven grey women. They are utterly undead, and as we now know, ex-brides of Kanamaru. The women aren't aggressive though. The leader of the women just says to Kanamaru, that the dance and all the horde-play it was just a bit of harmless fun. They have no claims for Kanamaru anymore, as they are the brides of the Witch nowadays. The women show him the wedding rings, that proclaim their servitude to the Witch:
Grey woman: "As long as we have him, we don't really care about you."
Kanamaru: "You mean, you won't be coming after me... as long as the Witch is alive?"
Grey woman: "Kweh kweh kweh."
After that, the women leave the ronin in peace. Meanwhile the Crazy Monk has been making his way towards them also. He heads straight for Matsushita and shouts: "You have something that belongs to me!", pointing at all the bottles that Matsushita has collected from the ninjas. "Besides, you have stolen something else from my friend also!" and he tugs the ninja-mask off from one of the zombies: "Matsushita wants his name back, you imposter!"
Matsushita is slightly taken aback by the last claim, but after pondering for just a second he and Kanamaru decide to bolt towards the exit where the Witch went, skipping an unnecessary confrontation with the dangerous monk and his zombie-buddies. Crazy Monk tries to pursue them, but Imai steps in to stop him, with murder in his eyes. Payback time!
Too bad, that the Crazy Monk is still way too good for Imai. He slaps Imai's blade aside and grabs him with the other arm tossing him across the floor straight to the feet of the three zombie-ninjas that are slowly shuffling behind. Matsushita notices what's happening and that Imai is in trouble and stop to help him. Kanamaru carries on to the exit.
Matsushita is trying to get to Imai to help him, but the Crazy Monk casually kicks him down when Matsushita's trying to circle him. Meanwhile, the ninjas lay down the hurt on Imai, cutting him repeatedly. Imai's starting to be pretty savaged at this point, with -3 on all rolls until the end of the campaign.
Meanwhile, Umiroya finds the woman that he went after. He's obviously utterly obsessed and plain grabs the girl and heads back into the hall. He's not listening on any whining or reason, he wants the girl. He enters the hall and sees Matsushita and Imai in a really tight spot. Matsushita even shouts for help and after pondering for a moment, Umiroya takes out the whole ninja bunch. He nails zombies' hands to their torsos with thrown weapons leaving them helpless and impales the Crazy Monk from behind, before he realizes that he had a new opponent. What a guy.
Meanwhile meanwhile, Takayama has just seen his father having a meeting with the Witch. Without his knowledge, Shinta has followed him. Takayama realizes instantly that the man is not his father, but rather some elaborous ruse of the Witch. He then decides not to listen or believe anything that the man will say. The Witch and the father try to convince Takayama for a moment that a deal with the Witch would actually be the only way that their family could regain their standing, but Takayama's having none of it. Takayama tries to challenge the Witch for a duel for a while, but then grows impatient and tries to decapitate the Witch there and then. ...but Shinta appears between them and blocks the strike. Minions of the Witch seem to have this "appear out of nowhere" -ability in general, and Shinta is also Lightning fast.
Takayama is pissed off as fuck and decides to kill Shinta for stepping in his way. Shinta is trying to disarm Takayama. Kanamaru also pops in and tries to make everyone stop fighting. Witch watches this for a while and then stands up: "Takayama senior, this is your son causing the disturbance, so I'll leave it to you to handle the situation. Now if you'll excuse me..." and turns to leave. Takayama junior throws a wakizashi at the Witch's head, but Kanamaru manages to bump him enough to cause the blade to miss. Witch doesn't seem to notice and just leaves the room.
Shinta manages to disarm Takayama junior, but at that point Takayama senior has had enough: "STOP! This is silly. You two strangers, leave the room. I'll talk to my son in private." The two ronin exit, but leave the door open so they can follow what's happening. When Takayamas are alone, junior promptly closes the door and tries to knock his father unconscious. Father gets pissed off and throws the young ronin around a bit and manages to get him to sit down and listen.
He explain that their family can't regain their honor and prestige by taking crumbs from the Daimyo, but they need to forge their own glory, by allying with the Witch. Takayama listens for a while, but stays true to his belief that the man is an imposter. Father realizes that he can't turn Takayama's head and just sits silently, when Takayama stands up, retrieves his sword and exits to follow the Witch.
Takayama takes a few turns and arrives at the proper throne room. It's a cathedralic hall, with raising staircase and the Witch's throne at the top. Grey, nearly featureless, hewn into rock and sort of cathedralic in shape, narrowing towards the top, etc. Takayama repeats his challenge, but the Witch just sits on his throne, idly playing with his katana. He gestures for Takayama to climb the stairs, bring it on -style.
Takayama: "Come down here and fight like a samurai!"
Witch: "And why do you think I am anything like a samurai, hmm?"
T: "Come down here!"
W: "I AM THE MOUNTAIN WITCH .. and you will come to me." (Ooo, that line was so fun to get in there!)
Takayama starts to run up the stairs, but suddenly a big shadow fall over him (player: Oh crap, I forgot about him) and the ronin runs straight into Bwaddene Chipo's sixpack.
The rest of the ronin manage to get into the corridor just in time to see Takayama fighting Chipo. Chipo is swinging around wildy, mashing rock into dust etc., but Takayama is doing most of the damage. Getting in nicks here, wounds there. Shinta manages to get between the fighters, again. Takayama goes straight for Shinta time and Matsushita arrives to help him. Chipo joins Shinta at fighting off the two ronin and actually manages to land a horrible blow on Takayama... except Shinta seems to decide differently at the last moment, stepping between Takayama and Chipo, blocking the blow. Takayama reacts too fast, and impales Shinta, though. Meanwhile, Matsushita manages to trip up Chipo, who falls straight down the stairs, also on Takayama's sword. Shish-kebab.
(Mechanically, Shinta declared ai-uchi and killed off both himself and Chipo. In hindsight, not sure how this happened as they were on the same side of the conflict, but still. You get to narrate your successes and your own damage, so I guess there's nothing really wrong with it. Onwards!)
Kanamaru and Umiroya dodge the melee and ran straight up to the Witch. The Witch has actually bothered to stand up at this point. Before anything can happen, Umiroya offers his sword to the Witch, if he just lets him have Kanai-Miki (the obsessed-about woman). Witch just chuckles at Umiroya and turns to Kanamaru:
W: "And what about you?"
K: "Please, release me from your curse! Have pity on an old man."
W: "Curse? I fulfilled my part of the bargain and gave you what you wanted. Why should I release you?"
K: "You need all the blades that you can get."
*Witch looks down and sees Chipo and Shinta dying*
W: "Hmm, it seems I do have a sort of.. deficit. You will take Shinta's place, then."
*Kanamaru remembers Shinta saying, how the centuries serving the Witch are just too heavy to bear and how you should never do it* (actual in-game conversation, brilliant!)
K: "...no. The price is too high. Will you not have pity on an old man?"
W: "Pity, pheh. Well. If you won't accept my terms and as I've already.. taken custody of the side-effects of your curse (licks his lips really disgustingly), you have no reason to be here. Turn around and leave.
*Kanamaru turns without saying a word and starts to walk down the stairs*
Umiroya has been patiently waiting and now asks what about his offer. The Witch accepts gleefully:
"You and Kanai-Miki, surely. Now and forever." (Players go: oouuucchh! :D)
The Witch grabs his hand and slides in his signet rign.. and when the Witch releases his grip, he has a small statue of rooster (Umiroya's star sign) in his hand. Umiroya is super-happy about this turn and turns to face Matsushita and Takayama, as they start to ascend the stairs.
Matsushita declares Ai-Uchi and Umiroya and he do the samurai "run next to each other, stand around a while, then both drop down dead" -bit. Aww.
Kanamaru is just leaving the room, when he bumps into the grey women. They just wave him goodbuy and head into the throne room. Kanamaru has a sudden change of heart, turns around and runs up the stairs to Takayama. "I might be lost, but I will not let him do this to anyone else ever again!"
The Witch gets serious for the first time during the game, draws his blade and descends to fight the ronin. The Ronin are buffeted by memories of their comrades sacrificing themselves heroically etc. and after only a short exchange, they cut down the Witch. Takayama creates and opening and Kanamaru impales the Witch. The Witch whispers something to Kanamaru, who is flown into the wall by the force of the last curse/something.
Meanwhile Imai has been cutting the eyes off Umiroya and Matsushita (remember the Spirit of the Forest and the contract they had). Imagine his surprise when he removes Matsushita's mask and realizes, that he is actually the Daimyo. Whoops. Well, no matter. Imai grabs the eyes and legs it. He didn't participate in any of the fighting, he just watched and bided his time.
Takayama and the broken Kanamaru exchange some last epic words and Kanamaru declares that he will finally be free. He grabs a tanto and plunges it into his stomach.. except a bony hand grabs his wrist at the last instat: "We are brides and we need a groom after all..." Takayama just watches, as the women drag away the screaming Kanamaru.
After the game:
Imai heads into the forest and is never seen again.
Takayama takes the corpse to Daimyo's son, but after realizing that the man in the castle actually WAS his father, commits seppuku.
Rest of the characters stay dead.
Really whistled past lots of important stuff, but the players can fill in more. For example, I didn't really write anything about the whole daughter-exchange stuff etc. I'll make a new post for all the other stuff. I'll need it.
Jaakko Koivula:
Right! Brilliant brilliant campaign, even though Im not sure if I as a GM got everything out of TMW that I could have. I could have been more observant about the hints that players dropped about their fates and yank their chains more. Still, the game was honking huge barrels of fun and cool, atleast for me. Hopefully for the players too. Some random observations about our game:
FATES:
Takayama: Old debt. The whole thingie with the family, pretty in-your-face.
Umiroya: Love. Another obvious one. Except to add another twist, the girl didn't even like the bastard. He just thought/was brainwashed by the Witch to think so.
Shinta: Deal with the Devil. Minion of the Witch, dun dun dun.
Imai: Worst fear. The player struggled really hard with this one and in the end couldn't really get it into game at all. Turned into a sort of fear and loathing towards civilization and humans in general. Adopted the contract with the Lord of the Forest as a sort of semi-fate.
Kanamaru: Own agenda. Wanted to lift the curse on jinxing poems or to get rid of the women. I thought until the end that Kanamaru would have worst fear: dead women. Close enough, I guess.
Matsushita: Revenge. To kill Umiroya. Really twisting plotting abound here, I didn't even try getting this one during the game. Just hoped that it would become apparent at some point.
Even after everything, I got most of these right. Or at least close enough for the Witch to go mindrapey on the characters :)
THE WITCH
Loved the way the Witch turned out to be. Necrolecherous ming-power-gaming bastard, who's just so cool that he can do whatever he damn well pleases. No fireballs, no flashy demon-summonings, just a guy lounging around making really horrible soul-and-mind shattering deals. Kweh kweh kweh.
SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT GMING etc.
I sort of realized at the end, that the fewer survivors the story would have, the better. But no way could the ronin be killed by any mere mooks or GM throwing ten buckets of dice at them. So I tried to think up enough offers you just can't refuse and situations that you just have to avoid, to have the ronin off each other. In the end the Witch managed to out-right convert only Umiroya, but I think he plain terrorized most of the rest to practically commit suicide, rather than have to face up to him or the consequences of killing him. Which was cooool.
Also, Takayama was the perfect, and the really only possible, choice to kill the Witch (even though Kanamaru rallied in the end to come and help him). Everyone else was just too involved or too broken mentally at the end, but Takayama was such a sociopathic honor-bound money-grubber, that he didn't even stop to consider any sly suggestions that the Witch might make. He was practically so unlikeable, driven and villainous himself in the end, that the Witch just couldn't compete with it. Even though as he started out seeming like just a pleasant youngster, the further the game went, more draconian did Takayama become. Dramatically, it just made perfect sense for the great evil to be killed by the only colder and more vicious bastard than himself in the story.
In the end, I think the whole story made surprisingly much sense in general. Really vicious blood opera, violence leads to violence, only evil trumps evil - and in the end: everybody dead and nobody wins. Beautiful.
I think Takayama's father, The Lord of the Forest and Imai were the only named characters alive at the very end of the game. 3 left out of 15 NPCs and 6 PCs. Pretty well, eh?!
Can't remember when I've had so much fun roleplaying. Huge cheers for all the players and for Timothy, what a brilliant game!
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