This is a closed game attached to the June/July 2018 Online GM training school.
Upon returning with the map to Mai Chun, the Tian elder responds with a smile. "While you were in Xiwu, I had another lead for information open up." She offers a new note to the party. "I hope your trip to Changdo is as prosperous as your trip to Xiwu."
The trip through Po Li is uneventful, owing itself to the steady presence of guard patrols. The sight of the city of Changdo is further accented be the sight of The Eternal Emperor, a colossal statue that has been under construction for the past 3 centuries. A busy trading yard just outside the city gates is populated by all manner of people from across Tian Xia. To one side of the yard stands a well encircled by a low stone wall. A young Tian-Shu man wearing a broad straw hat stands beside the well, the line of his bamboo fishing pole disappearing into its depths.
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The various calls of the early-to-rise peddlers and songbirds wakes Treble from his sleep. The dream/memory he was having of one of his previous incarnations slips from his mind as rapidly as a mirage is obscured by a desert sandstorm. Why that analogy? he wonders. Perhaps yet another undiscovered life I have lived? He shakes the thought away.
As he rises from the comfortable bed provided by their host, he habitually scans the room, verifying everything is just as he left it before he faded off to sleep.
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Kneeling on the floor, he reaches into his pack and finds his divination bones, wrapped in their usual piece of blue and green striped cloth, and a small vial of ink. Removing the bones, he spreads the cloth flat on the floor in front of him. Holding the bones in his hand, he speaks his three-part prayer as he paint two dots above each ear with the ink.
”Great Magdh, of the ever intertwining loops of fate, guide me this day to fulfill what fate has in store. Mistress of Three, may your all seeing eyes of your faces let me know the course to take. Lady Seer of the Eldest, may the complexity of the First World and all others continue to unfold before you.”
Finishing his prayer, he casts the bones and attempts to divine the new mission’s outcome
As always, things will unfold as Fate plans.
Upon arrival in Changdo, Treble starts asking around about Yue Xin and where he might be found.
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Eyden shifts his pack from one shoulder to the other, and rubs the spot where the strap had chafed his skin through his thin shirt.
Horses, he thinks. Would we be so much more conspicuous if we rode horses?
He spies the young man fishing - in a well, of all places - and gives Treble Tan a nudge.
"We're supposed to find our contact at 'his habitual fishing hole,' right? That man," the sylph whispers, pointing at the fisherman in the hat, "is literally fishing in a hole."
As the party approaches the young man, he looks up at them, then looks at the fishing pole in his hands with a vaguely confused expression before tossing it into the well. The clattering echoes of the falling pole are just audible above the sounds of the trading yard. The young man with the round hat approaches, hands outspread.
"Greetings, friends of my friends, yes?" He states with confidence. "Yes, I am Yue Xin, and I assume that you are Mai Chun's associates? She has said much about you and after all, To fish where there are no fish is to know wisdom.”
"Yes, Yes!" The excitable bureaucrat proclaims as he absently digs out a bundle of ragged papers from a satchel at his side. He quickly places the papers into Elemenar's hands, before pointing to a section circled in red ink on the top sheet. Yue Xin gestures to a section of the Tian characters within the circle, proclaiming that, "This is why Mai Chun was interested in my find. After all, a firework in the hand is worth two in the shed." When Eyden and Ohm-Eran get a chance to look over the papers, though, they only have enough time to decipher a section about 'words written in fire', before Yue Xin snatches back his precious research.
"When Imperial Lung Wa controlled these lands,"the young bureaucrat begins," quick and accurate communication was of paramount concern to the Eternal Emperor and his servants. Relay stations formed a network covering much of the continent, speedily carrying imperial dictates to the farthest corners of the realm. In these dark days, those relay stations have fallen into ruin."
"But into darkness comes light, as into memory comes charitable action. My researches indicate that some of the messages that passed through these redoubts were secretly recorded. A clue to the location of the palace Mai Chun seeks is certainly to be found in a ruined communications station just half a day’s walk to the west, down that road and left at the first crossroads you reach. Directions to the palace are said to be ‘writ in letters of green fire.’ Surely heroes of your mettle will have no trouble traveling to the ruin, avoiding the soldiers who guard it by day, exploring it by night, and overcoming the ghosts said to haunt it. The restless dead offer no threat to he who sparks the tinder."
Ruins associated with Lung Wa are frequently said to be haunted, if not literally by undead then by mystically bound guardians of various types, such as creatures from the spirit world or from other planes.
Lung Wa’s Bureau of Communications made use of fireworks to send messages over great distances. Trained alchemists at relay stations would read messages outbound from the capital in the night skies, then prepare and fire rockets encoded with the same message so that watchers at the next station could repeat the process.
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"Yes, I've studied these relay stations before. It was an interesting system that Po Li set up." He agrees with Yue Xin's assessment of the guards and the haunts at night but the last bit confuses Elemenar. "I know that the alchemists at the stations would use fireworks and rockets to relay the messages. Is that what you mean by saying that the dead offer no thread to he who sparks the tinder?"
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Eyden scribbles, "...into darkness comes light, as into memory comes charitable action" into his journal.
After getting a glance at the bureaucrat's research, he wanders off to see if he can find anyone who knows anything about the old imperial communication protocols.
When Eyden meets back up with the group, he tells them what he has learned.
"Yue Xin wasn't joking about the soldiers. Sounds like they are all over the old ruins during the day, but they don't worry about guarding them at night. Probably because everybody thinks they're haunted. Maybe by the undead, maybe by -" he checks the haphazard notes he took in his journal "- 'mystically-bound guardians, such as creatures from the spirit world or other planes.'" The sylph looks up at his comrades with a grin. "Sounds like fun. And still better than dealing with living soldiers!"
"If you herd cats to water...." Yue Xin quietly mutters to himself before speaking up and giving the party some detailed instructions on how to reach the old station. "Now then," he concludes, "this trip should be as fruitful as a crow's flight through a vineyard. May the seeds you sew grow without weeds."
The trip west from Changdo is actually quite pleasant, and the party finally spots the crossroads that Yue Xin directed them to take, leading toward a rocky outcropping.
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Eyden scrawls in his journal, "May the seeds you sow grow without... " He looks up suddenly, and says, "Hey, that almost made sense!"
As they approach the crossroads, Eyden motions to the others that they should get off the path. If there are trees that provide cover, he gestures that they should get out of sight of anyone going past the crossroads in either direction.
"Maybe we should just wait here until it gets dark," he says in a stage whisper. "If the soldiers stop patrolling at night, we may be able to avoid them altogether. Ohm-Eran, will you be able to see well enough?"
As the sun sets, it's easy to spot the guard detail gathering up and traveling to an encampment a couple miles away from this compound. After giving them several minutes to travel, and for the sun to further drop into the horizon, It's child play to sneak in.
A number of crumbling buildings make up this compound. Lit only by the stars in the cloudless night sky above, the ruins take on an empty, haunted aspect. An eerie silence pervades the ancient buildings—even the wind has died away to nothing.
Just off the central courtyard, a curious stone structure resembling an exterior hearth with narrow, twinned chimneys rises into the sky. These chimneys are far better preserved than the surrounding buildings.
From what you remember, that structure was used to launch fireworks in pairs.
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"Hey, those are pretty nice chimneys," Eyden whispers to Treble Tan. "Any idea what they were for?"
As they approach the structure, he pauses for a moment and casts Mage Armor from a scroll, and Heightened Awareness, one of the two real spells that he knows.
Examining the structure quickly finds a section of the nearby flagstones with a pattern of distinctive cracks in it. Upon further searching, the section appears to be a heavy lid of some sort.
After a couple tries at moving the lid, it opens to reveal a dozen skyrockets. There are 2 each of the following colors: White, Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, and Violet.
When lit, this foot-long wooden tube begins to shake and emit a handful of white sparks, shedding light as a torch. One round later it takes flight, moving at a speed of 90 feet for 1d6 rounds before loudly exploding in a burst of light and sound, dealing 2d6 points of fire damage in a 10-foot-radius burst (Reflex DC 15 halves). Anyone who takes damage from the explosion is either blinded or deafened (50% chance of either) for 1 round.
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"Remember that old slogan for the Ziploc bags? 'Yellow and blue make green'?" Treble shakes his head, then looks at the party, confused. "I'm sorry, what were we talking about again? I was lost in one of the memories of my past lives...". His voice trails off as his eyes return to a slightly glazed look.
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Eyden slaps a palm to his forehead.
"I have no idea what 'Zy Plock Bugs' are, but I am an experienced enough painter that I should have realized we could fire the blue and yellow rockets to make green fire!"
Eyden puts the rockets in the chimneys, then pulls a pair of tindertwigs from his belt pouch and holds them out to the group.
"Who would like to do the honors?"
After a couple swift strikes from the tindertwigs against the chimney's side and the fuses on the skyrockets begin to sizzle. Smoke billows out from the stone tubes and the two rockets roar into the sky, trailing sparks of blue and yellow. At a surprisingly low altitude, they simultaneously explode, blue and yellow flashes combining into sizzling green. The green sparks coalesce and twist in the dark, forming enormous words written in Tien.
For the 15 or so seconds that the green writing is in the air, Ohm-Eran and Eyden can easily read the characters as the Tian Zodiacal symbols for the Dog before the firey shapes begin breaking up. However, not all of the shapes dissolve before hitting the ground, and 2 of them coalesce, holding together enough mass to reform, and roar maddeningly at the party before surging forward.
One of the shapes very swiftly reaches Ohm-Eran and attempt to barrel into the mindweaver, only to miss wildly.
Combat Order
Round 1
Yellow - Charge Ohm-Eran
Treble
Elemenar
Eyden
Red
Ohm-Eran
Combat Order
Round 1
Yellow - Charge Ohm-Eran
Treble
Elemenar - Mage Armor casting
Eyden
Red
Ohm-Eran
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Grabbing hold of Magdh’s holy symbol he wears around his neck, Treble shouts, ”Maghd beannaich cinnidh!” A wave of divine guidance fills the party as divine magic fills them. He then regards the elementals. ”Magdh judges you shall not win this day.” Then, readying his scythe, he moves forward, waiting for an opportunity to see Fate's inexorable will fulfilled.