(My players should not read this!)
I used the "Road to Destiny" adventure plug-in from Legendary Games as a filler for the caraven trip between Sandpoint and Brinewall Castle in Book 1. The party was successful in killing the plug-in adventure's main villain, Ranulfr, and his "father" made a dramatic death monologue as was scripted.
That means that I have to find a place for Shirota somewhere in Books 4-6 of the JR AP.
My question for other JR GMs who have used this plug-in: how did you use Shirota? Where did you put him, did he have any minions or henchmen, was he helping any of the JR villains (maybe a weak one whose encounter needs beefing up), etc.?
Thank you in advance for any inspiration. :)
He's a jiang-shi vampire who is fighting against a prophecy involving Ameiko.
In my game, during book 5, between any two mini-adventures, the party were sent to meet up with Ameiko on Mount Kumijinja, on the Ikkaku Peninsula, to witness a mysterious ritual where a mysterious being called "Lord Jakabu" guides the drowned dead to the next life. The party arrived, bought traditional masks (onu, tengu, kappa, kistune, hyottoko). They bought snacks, watched a play, and ran into a couple of the boss villains, who were there in disguise, and one of the party got temporarily trapped in a mysterious maze of cherry blossoms.
Lord Jakabu (google him) turned out to be a flying whale kaiju coming out of the sea. During the ceremony, the torchlit procession leading him up the mountain was disrupted by a Control Weather ritual, and by some jiang-shi vampires trying to enter the local firework factory with lit torches. The party fought them and a giant ghost squid at the same time.
Trying to track down the culprit, they travelled to a nearby cursed village ("No-one goes to Chissoku.") beset by famine, rumored to be the place where the Jiang-Shi come from. There, the party met a Gashadokuro.
From there they travelled to a haunted graveyard. They fought a Jinmenju tree and a Danse Macabre. They released a chained Raiju that was part of how Shirota called down the storm to extinguish the torches. Finally they battled Shirota in his crypt. (He didn't put up much of a fight.)
Well, I cannot say that I know that adventure, but I ran and AM running Jade Regent in PF2e. I can help brainstorm if you fill me in a little... Who is this Shirota?
For your information, here's a wall of text. :)
The oni pursued the surviving family over the top of the world, and Shirota went with them. Whereas the oni focused their divinations upon the location of the family Seal and the general trajectory of the Amatatsu family's flight, Shirota sought them throughout time itself. Symbols, signs, and portents “speak” to a jiang-shi in ways now other being can comprehend. The slightest patterns and coincidences, from tea leaves, the migration of birds, broken crockery, to morning dew on a spider web speaks the secret language of universe to a jiang-shi, and in this way the vampire communes with the cosmos. To the obsessive Shirota, creation is riddled with hidden messages in every day events that only he can decode and interpret.
Once the surviving family changed their name and went into hiding, the oni of the Five Storms lost their trail. Shirota harnessed his peculiar oracular gifts in order to see his way around the problem. The signs which he alone could fathom led him to an impossible conclusion: he could only cross paths with an Imperial Heir after his son did so. This represented a paradox because Shirota had died childless. Unlike the vampires of the West, a jiangshi’s internal organs rot away upon their fell rebirth and all their mortal lusts are replaced with an all-consuming obsession with the circumstances of their undeath. Yet a jiang-shi rarely questions the signs that haunt their daily existence. If the signs dictated a way, then Shirota would follow them, however impossible the way seemed. With foul sorcery, he possessed the body of a Viking reaver. With his cold intelligence and the reaver’s warm living body, the vampire sired two fraternal twin sons. Neither boy shared his blood but both were tainted by his undead curse."
So the JR heroes run into Shirota's offspring and defeat/kill/destroy them. When the first one, Ranulfr, dies (shortly before they reach Brinewall), the following happens:
"Far across the world, Shirota, Ranulfr’s 'true father' senses the death of his oldest son. Ranulfr’s eyes shine with an eerie light and his lifeless lips part to permit a sepulchral voice to be heard. 'So it was foretold,' the voice intones in the Far Eastern tongue, 'so it has come to pass!' Ranulfr’s corpse moves slightly, his head lolling on his neck unnaturally so the corpse can regard the PCs. The voice then speaks in perfect Common. 'My first son is dead. If she hasn’t already, the Kinslayer’s Heir shall soon discover the past. On that day my second son’s heart shall beat its last, but still you must defeat him battle! Only then shall I be unbound by the chains of fate. You have my gratitude, both now and for the day when you bring the Heir to me at long last.' With that, Ranulfr’s corpse shudders with an unwholesome laugh before it becomes still."
Shirota is statted up in the appendix as a human jiang-shi sorcerer (destined bloodline) 11 (CR 12). Further information is as follows:
"Ranulfr’s (the eldest son) obsession is inherited from Shirota, and is a facet of what it is to become a jiang-shi. The vampire’s motivation is revenge for his murder at the hands of his family (after he sought to betray them), but this goes deeper than surface thoughts and feelings. Shirota’s very undead existence bound up in this obsession. Were he to be free of it his soul might move on, or he might be finally liberated to a contemplative existence unfettered by the past.
Shirota places himself somewhere where he anticipates that the PCs will pass through on the way to Minkai. His desire to prove his superiority over those who have questioned him, including some of the oni of the Five Storms, provides motivation for his acting alone or with minions loyal only to himself. There is no special game mechanic for the jiang-shi’s unique form of divination, but the GM should feel comfortable granting him some measure of “meta-game” information in regards to the party’s location — strictly for the purpose of creating future adventures and encounters (and not to acquire specific insights used to defeat the party).
Shirota appears to be a Medium sized human with pale skin bordering on cyanosis. His physical form remains unchanged since the day he was raised from a corpse four days dead. His hair and mustache are jet black, pulled into a ponytail and waxed. A small prayer scroll is nailed to his forehead and dangles between his eyes. He dresses in an exquisite robe which buttons down the front and wears a black velvet cap with a round knob at the top. Like all jiang-shi he moves by means of swift but short hops."
Anyway, I'm open to suggestions! :)
Working on something, but I would consider placing him allied with the bandits in Tide of Honor. That's just the initial thought... And easy enough for him to divine...
Thank you for that idea! :)
If you (or anyone else) has any more inspiration, then I'm all ears. (Or is it "all eyes" when it's in a text forum?)
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Looking at it, perhaps it would be better to have him ally himself with the governor of Enganoka. He is at least a cousin of O-Sayumi, and might be interesting if you have a reveal that he is O-Sayumi's brother. This can be especially dramatic if she thought he was dead and he strides in to face the PCs.
Shirota's been dead for about 61 years, plus he's an Amatatsu, so he shouldn't have a lot of living relatives (apart from Ameiko).