N<\/span><\/p>\n ow I can add \u201ccopulating hobgoblins\u201d to the list of things I neither want nor need to ever see again.<\/span><\/p>\n Ichirou was one of Munasukaru\u2019s children. The hobgoblin women he was\u2026<\/span>ahem<\/span><\/i>\u2026entertaining said as much when we descended on them. They avowed that we would never take the great spawn of the even greater Munasukaru from them, and bravely fought to the death, giving their lives to shield him as he even more bravely begged and pleaded to not be killed, and surrendered and bound himself at Radella\u2019s demand. While the battle raged on. Yes, you read that right: he surrendered at the <\/span>beginning<\/span><\/i>, while one of his concubines fought and died in his honor. What madness is this?<\/span><\/p>\n In the interest of accuracy, only one of them actually fought. The other one was caught up in the web from my spell, and she burned to death in her lover\u2019s bed after we set it ablaze. Incinerating her was more satisfying than watching the aranea roast, though it was <\/span>probably<\/span><\/i> no less disturbing. I think. Yuka\u2019s memories are pretty clear about what the hobgoblins did to <\/span>me<\/span> her, so maybe not?<\/span><\/p>\n I overheard the others talking earlier and someone, I am not sure who, said \u201cKali seems more bloodthirsty than usual.\u201d It didn\u2019t make sense at the time. But now? I think maybe it\u2019s true? And I know I should, but I just can\u2019t feel bad about what I\u2019ve been doing. Or her memories won\u2019t let me.<\/span><\/p>\n Ichirou kept referring to himself as the greatest or the chosen spawn of Munasukaru. I have my doubts about that. Not about him being her son, but about that bit where he is \u201cchosen\u201d. Given how quickly and readily he surrendered, how desperate he was to spare his life, and how he was all too eager to sell out his own mother\u2014an Oni of the Five Storms\u2014in return, it\u2019s difficult for me to see what\u2019s so great about him, and why anyone would choose him for anything of any importance.<\/span><\/p>\n I didn\u2019t sit in on the interrogation because Yuka was urging me to burn him alive, so I had to settle for the executive summary. He was supposedly the \u201coverseer\u201d (those were his words) of this level of what his mother calls \u201cThe Penance\u201d, but his official duties seemed limited to bedding hobgoblin women. The answer to every one of our questions apparently got sidetracked into women in general, the Sisters of the Broken Path specifically, and when and where he\u2019d rendezvoused with all of them. Even the map he sketched out for us was more or less referenced in relation to his sexual escapades. Do I need to keep going on here? No? Good, because I have had enough of it, too.<\/span><\/p>\n The Sisters of the \u201cBroken Path\u201d. That\u2019s what he said the hobgoblin monks (all of them women, obviously) are called. What does that even mean? The path to where, exactly? And how or why is it broken? The name is as ridiculously arbitrary in Tien as it is when translated to Common, seemingly chosen for its edginess and mysteriousness.<\/span><\/p>\n Ichirou wasn\u2019t the only one passing the time here with romantic interludes. His mother has, apparently, been busy herself. Ichirou says he has siblings, and there may even be some he <\/span>doesn\u2019t<\/span><\/i> know about since he doesn\u2019t get downstairs too often. He talked a lot about his two sisters. They are \u201cmean to him\u201d (gods, it\u2019s like talking to a child), and more helpfully, that they are large, snake-like beings with faces. We put our heads together on that one and concluded they are naga of some sort.<\/span><\/p>\n So Munasukaru lays with hobgoblins and gives birth to naga. How does that work, exactly? I mean, sure, oni are demons in the flesh, but the biology just doesn\u2019t make sense and even magic has limits. And, is it a failure or a success, anyway, when an oni mates with a hobgoblin and gives birth to a naga? On the one hand, her daughters are apparently still alive so that points to the latter, but on the other hand, Ichirou was still alive, too, so that\u2019s not much of an argument. Maybe we\u2019ll ask Munasukaru when we see her.<\/span><\/p>\n Ivan shot and killed Ichirou after we were done talking to him. While he was still bound. I should probably be feeling bad about that, too.<\/span><\/p>\n W<\/span><\/p>\n hy are there so many oni still here? Why is <\/span>Munasukaru<\/span><\/i> still here? I mean, what is the point? The Kami said they couldn\u2019t enter the House as long as even one oni remained. Well, we are up to our <\/span>ears<\/span><\/i> in oni here: Fujai, Ichirou, and of course Munasukaru and however many other oni she has spawned over the years. If it only takes one, why do they <\/span>all<\/span><\/i> stay? They can obviously get out because the rest of the Five Storms did it, so what\u2019s keeping everyone <\/span>else<\/span><\/i> here? Can\u2019t they take shifts or something? This makes no sense.<\/span><\/p>\n The only explanation I can think of is that Munasukaru has gone completely mad. She must <\/span>want<\/span><\/i> to stay here, and that means she is out of her gourd.<\/span><\/p>\n The rest of this place makes no sense, either. There are all these hobgoblins down here, and they are living in filth and squalor like it\u2019s paradise. Why? To be closer to their \u201cliving god\u201d? What god chooses a garbage pit for their domain? Who follows their god into a sewer? What could she possibly be giving them that makes <\/span>this<\/span><\/i> worthwhile? Maybe we\u2019ll ask her that, too.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pharast 28 (The Penance, Late Morning) N ow I can add \u201ccopulating hobgoblins\u201d to the list of things I neither want nor need to ever see again. Ichirou was one of Munasukaru\u2019s children. The hobgoblin women he was\u2026ahem\u2026entertaining said as much when we descended on them. They avowed that we would never take the great […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-3642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-kali"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3642"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5712,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642\/revisions\/5712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Pharast 28 (The Penance, Noon)<\/h3>\n