A productive weekend

Last week (this week, too) I was teaching at an English camp for elementary students. Lots of fun. Usually pretty draining, but last week it was a small camp with great kids and I came out of it with plenty of energy. So I ran my TS&R Jade game yesterday.

My boys were there of course, but only two other players were free. With a smaller group, and the mapper absent, they decided to hold off on the Pits of Lao (my micro-megadungeon), and instead followed up on a rumor that there was a "dark force" in the Yokai Village. This is something they'd heard about quite a while back when they visited the first time, when they found out that the mujina weaponsmith in the village can make silvered (good vs lycanthropes & some undead) or jade-inlaid weapons (good against incorporeal creatures). 

Traveling to the village took several hours, since the large group of henchmen they hired didn't have horses and Nate's thief PC has a wagon. On the way, they were ambushed by bandits who surrounded them, covered them with repeating crossbows, and demanded payment. The party feigned paying up while the spellcasters (my boys) put 1/3 to sleep and distracted another 1/4 with a phantasmal force of a dragon. After a brief exchange of missile fire and some melee by Denis' kensei PC, they were victorious but one man-at-arms was killed. 

Carrying on to the Yokai Village, they got rooms at the inn to wait out the day for nightfall, when the village came to life. They did a bit of shopping at the bakemono market, Nate's thief inquired about turning the wagon into a battle-wagon and was directed to the Tanuki Village further off, then they went to the shrine to confirm that the 5 really nice crossbow quarrels of the bandit leader were magical (+1), and to get information on fighting undead (which they assumed...correctly...the "dark force" was). 

After meeting with the village chieftain (a six-tailed kitsune), they got some more information and a promise of one of the chieftain's magic items as payment if they could cleanse the threat.

They set off to the village's former noble estate just south of the village (the yokai took over a human ghost town), and the wu jen's (my older boy) ESP spell identified two hungry, angry semi-sentient beings inside. After checking out all the side buildings and rooms to make sure there weren't any non-sentient threats, they went in. 

There were two corporeal undead, which they had surprise on. Rather than rush in and attack, they poured holy salt around the door to fence them in. The undead rushed them -- a ghoul and a jiang-shi (hopping vampire) -- but they were stopped by the salt. My younger boy's blade mage and the kensei went in and tried to put o-fuda (paper prayer strips) on their foreheads, but failed, and were attacked back. The kensei was paralyzed by the ghoul. 

Holy salt was thrown, another phantasmal force of a burly guy slapping o-fuda on their foreheads was cast, with the jiang-shi failing its save and falling for the illusion, standing paralyzed. The ghoul was finished off, but it took time to whittle the jiang-shi down. Luckily, the illusory o-fuda couldn't fall off from a breeze or a blow. Eventually the hopping vampire was taken down. 

There was no treasure, but they chose a nine-ring sword +1 as a reward, giving it to the blade mage. Then they headed back to Pine Bridge Town (the home town) without incident. My younger boy's blade mage had been damaged by the jiang-shi, but made his save vs corruption, so he won't become one himself.

It was a fun session. They didn't get much monetary treasure, but they got a decent chunk of XP, a magic sword and some magic ammo. And it was a lot of fun. The undead were just the right level of challenge for the party, and they prepared well and survived. 

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After the session, we came home, had dinner, and got my younger boy ready for bed. Then I sat down to work on my TS&R Game Master Guide, and made some good progress. I got over two pages written, including advice to new GMs about how to set up a 'home town' for a campaign, and how much to prepare before starting the campaign depending on how experienced the GM is and how deep they need the town/home base to be for the type of campaign they plan to run.