O<\/span>ne of Itsuru\u2019s more immediate problems is that there are dozens if not hundreds of oni infesting his province. It\u2019s like finding weevils in your pantry. Sennaka used them for his personal guard, as his advisors, and of course to project his power when exacting punishment on his subjects so they are quite literally everywhere. Since several of his guard\u00a0ran away<\/em>\u00a0from the fight that removed him from power\u2014and from this world\u2014it\u2019s a good bet that most of the oni up north learned of the regime change long before we had a chance to spread the news ourselves. The rabbits smelled blood on the wind and went to ground, and now Itsuru has to root them all out.<\/p>\n I met with his court wizard. He is capable enough, and he has the right spells, so he should be able to see those oni that are relying on a human appearance to escape notice. That is half of the battle, but unfortunately it is also the\u00a0easier<\/em>\u00a0half as all it requires is a modest sum of gold and a bit of time. The tricky part will be taking action once the veils are lifted; the kind of action that proves fatal, but without spooking the others into running.<\/p>\n Itsuru actually came up with a pretty good plan for that and I honestly wish I could be there for some of it because there is nothing quite like the satisfaction of killing an oni. Except maybe tricking them into walking up the gallows and putting the noose around their own necks,\u00a0then\u00a0<\/em>killing them. Which is more or less what he has in mind. I can\u2019t believe I\u2019ll be missing out on all the fun, but I guess we have larger matters to attend to.<\/p>\n One of those matters was, apparently, making treasure maps from Sennaka\u2019s skin, as has become a grotesque custom of ours. That Itsuru actually\u00a0agreed<\/em>\u00a0to this was pretty stunning, but then again Itsuru was, himself, stunned to find the ancestral weapon of the Higashiyama family sitting in the Sikutsu family vault. So Sennaka had been keeping all manner of secrets, and I guess Itsuru wanted to know if there were others.<\/p>\n There weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n Our meeting with the Emerald Branch is tonight. Thanks to Itsuru\u2019s generosity, we have a bit more money to spend which means we can actually afford to hire one of the ninja clans. We universally agreed that, if we are going to do this then we should go with the good guys; unlike the others, the Emerald Branch is more of a vigilante group. That\u2019s something that is near and dear to us since vigilantism is pretty much our whole\u00a0thing<\/em>. That, and presumably they have Minkai\u2019s best interests at heart, and are thus motivated only\u00a0somewhat<\/em>\u00a0by money.<\/p>\n Dasi spent a good part of the day making good on his promise to research sovereign dragons. There\u2019s a whole nation in Tian Xia that\u2019s ruled by one, of course, but that\u2019s probably a bit impractical so he\u2019s looking for something closer to home. He uncovered a bit of mythology (or perhaps history?) that was interesting, but nothing that brought us any closer to our goal. So that particular search goes on.<\/p>\n T<\/span>his stupid coin is causing all manner of grief and I am itching to be rid of it. While the Emerald Branch was more than happy to accept our payment for their support, their representative spent a lot of time pelting Dasi with questions that suggested they knew more about Kaibuninsho\u2019s secret than they were letting on. How did he acquire such magical talent? Did he have any unusual items or talismans? And on and on. Eventually Dasi just had to tell them that we weren\u2019t spilling all the details because we are not idiots, though he used more diplomatic terms.<\/p>\n Their parting comment was a warning to us about items of power having motives of their own, and to be careful. Everyone\u2019s an expert. While I won\u2019t be so bold as to claim that we know what we\u2019re doing, we do know what we are dealing with so we are in a better position to be handing out advice. Especially since I did the gods-be-damned\u00a0work<\/em>\u00a0that got us there. But, sure, go ahead and share your copious wisdom, gleaned from rumors, legend, and hand-me-down stories. I am sure that\u2019s all very valuable.<\/p>\n To be fair, they do want what\u2019s best for Minkai, and that includes us not becoming the enemy. And, they\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0the good guys so their motives are genuine. But, still, we didn\u2019t get where we are by being careless so is it too much to ask that you give us the benefit of the doubt?<\/p>\n On the up side, they offered their services for half their originally quoted price, which was pretty stunning and equally generous. Our direct involvement in the coup that put Itsuru in power seems to have gone over well with them. It\u2019s nice when things randomly go right.<\/p>\n Call me a pessimist, though; I am waiting for the other shoe to drop.<\/p>\n T<\/span>he other shoe dropped. Twice. Or maybe there were three shoes all along. This isn\u2019t something I would know.<\/p>\n Both the Dragon Shadow and the Black Lotus clans upped their fees, significantly, after they learned we had hired one of their rivals. They actually used that word, \u201crival\u201d, despite the fact that the three representatives get together once a month for a dinner date. Supposedly, we had \u201caltered the terms of the original agreement\u201d, despite the fact that there were no such terms. Dasi was able to talk one of them down a bit, but the other would not budge.<\/p>\n I guess we should have reversed the order. But it\u2019s done. We have one clan on our side, and the other two on the sidelines.<\/p>\n Tomorrow we head towards Kasai. That\u2019s about several weeks or months sooner than we were expecting, as the original plan was to wait for Itsuru to consolidate his power here in the north while Jiro raised and trained an army to stand behind Ameiko. That all changed when Itsuru sent to Jiro and asked if \u201cher majesty had received the blessings of the old emperors yet?\u201d To which we all were like, \u201cHuh?\u201d Because I am pretty sure they are all dead.<\/p>\n So that would be a \u201cno\u201d.<\/p>\n We turned to Dasi for an explanation, and even he sounded uncertain. Supposedly there is this shrine on an island near Kasai, and all emperors must visit there to pray for the blessings of a bunch of ghosts. Or something. This culture gets weirder by the day.<\/p>\n We have no idea what we\u2019re going to find there because of course no one knows anything about it save for the past emperors of Minkai, and they are all dead and thus not talking. It also seems like a good place for a trap since the Jade Regent knows about us, about Ameiko, and it\u2019s a fair bet he also knows the same stories. So the plan is for us to go on ahead (with the Seal, just in case it comes up on this little errand), make sure it\u2019s reasonably safe, and then teleport back to get Ameiko in the hopes that we can avoid unpleasant surprises.<\/p>\n T<\/span>he unpleasant surprise came to us. Several oni and their fire giant lackies attacked the fortress this morning, rudely interrupting breakfast. Unlike the oni we\u2019ve dealt with in the past, these were no pushovers and it took a bit of effort to bring them down, especially with our spells bouncing harmlessly off them. So the Jade Regent is finally taking us seriously, and has stopped sending in his second stringers.<\/p>\n The fire giants, as it turns out, were just hired help. How do you hire a giant? Is there some job fair where you can go to find fire giants that are looking for work? Do you put up enormous \u201cNow hiring!\u201d signs in the mountains? Maybe being the errand boy for a fire yai oni is a coveted position. I am sure they thought this was going to be an easy gig where they smash a bunch of humans and then go home with whatever it is a giant takes for payment. And they certainly did manage to kill a few of Jiro\u2019s troops, but only one of them will be returning and he wasn\u2019t in the mood to talk about his career goals.<\/p>\n Speaking of Jiro\u2019s troops, they performed surprisingly well especially considering what they were up against. Though they did have some help from Shalelu and Ameiko, his archers nearly took down one of the giants on their own while we were tangling with the atamahuta oni and their fire yai leader. It\u2019s not easy seeing people die defending your cause, but the rest of the budding soldiers here are looking ahead, not behind. To them it\u2019s not a somber moment, but rather a cause for celebration and those that died will be remembered for their commitment, sacrifice, and accomplishments. It\u2019s a little weird, celebrating someone\u2019s death, but I understand where they\u2019re coming from. It\u2019s not often you can say, \u201cwe repelled an attack from giants, demons, and giant demons\u201d.<\/p>\n Radella is taking possession of the coin and it was a little unsettling seeing a new symbol appear as it accepted her. So here we go. This will buy us the time we need to figure out how to get rid of the damn thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sarenith 14, 4713 (late afternoon, Enganoka) One of Itsuru\u2019s more immediate problems is that there are dozens if not hundreds of oni infesting his province. It\u2019s like finding weevils in your pantry. Sennaka used them for his personal guard, as his advisors, and of course to project his power when exacting punishment on his subjects […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-4153","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\/4153","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=4153"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4156,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4153\/revisions\/4156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}(night)<\/h3>\n
Sarenith 15, 4713 (night, Seinaru Heikiko)<\/h3>\n
Sarenith 16, 4713 (late morning, Seinaru Heikiko)<\/h3>\n