My older brother is 27 now.
Now that it’s out of the way, I did have D&D (5.5e) last night after all, but due to scheduling, the session was held over Discord. Our heroes (9th level) were as follows:
Jiaming, Human Draconic Sorcerer/Devotion Paladin, my character
Lynne, Drow Soulknife Rogue
Muyang, Human Grave Cleric
Scramble, Tabaxi Artillerist Artificer
At the start of the session, we had reached Nichiben-occupied Yingkou. Before entering the city, Jiaming disguised his distinctive appearance (he has the eyes, scales, and claws of a long) with the technique of Alter Self. Draped over the gate to the city was the Imperial flag and banners proclaiming “Long Live the Emperor!” Within, it might as well have been a ghost town. There were more soldiers than civilians along the main thoroughfare, and we counted around 25 military police acting as guards.
A young woman (around 18 y/o) in traditional robes bumped into Scramble, and a sheaf of papers was scattered on the ground. Jiaming Nat 1’d on two separate perception checks to notice what they said, but as she gathered the papers and hurried away, we noticed that on the back of her robes was a dog, the emblem of the Beggar Sect. Given his backstory, Jiaming silently whispered a Message into her mind:
“The Third Eye Opens.”
The girl, Pingguo, hurriedly led us to the Sect’s safehouse in this city, a cramped apartment where two dozen of Jiaming’s Sect Brothers and Sisters were lying low, trying to avoid being trampled under the jackboot of the Rising Sun. The Beggars of Yingkou have been gathering intelligence on Imperial activity in the region. Nichiben’s been engaging in the kind of stuff you’d expect from a conquering host: seizing farmland and productive assets on behalf of the state-owned Montetsu corporation, imposing arbitrary restrictions on speech/movement/association, starving out the population with rationing (with increased rations for collaborators), etc. We also received intel on certain experiments of unknown but most definitely horrific nature. Naturally, we had to Do Something™ about this. As we plotted out our course of action, retrieving the Jade Rooster Statue from occupied Gorguryeo, came up. This was why we’d originally come this way, after all.
Pingguo casually pulled the rooster statue out. Because the Third Eye Looks Away, Jiaming didn’t press how it came into her possession. However, it looked and felt off, and Jiaming could detect that the divine qi flowing within the statue had been corrupted. His training atop Mount Hua had blessed him with the secret of purging corruption via Laying on Hands, drawing the poison into his sea of qi, and transmuting it. Regardless of exactly how the Jade Rooster had been corrupted, the rot ran deep. Jiaming was only able to remove three-quarters of the demonic energies within before he was struck by a vision.
He was in a concrete interrogation room, and his interrogator was a clockwork doll of Nichiben make, imitating a gnome. Interrogation is probably the wrong word, since Jiaming wasn’t being questioned. Rather, the autognome was gloating and invited the party to the Nichiben headquarters in the north. When Jiaming came to, he was troubled, to say the least. The western continent lacks traditions of qi cultivation; they’ve pursued a different road. Imperial Nichiben’s adoption of Western ways extends beyond technology and ideology to their magic: in the last session, Jiaming noticed that although the Nichiben commander he fought had impressive body cultivation, the “Tiger of the East” could not extend the flow of his qi into his katana, so Jiaming was able to spit acid at the blade and corrode it into uselessness. By all accounts, even the strongest cultivators in Nichiben shouldn’t be able to corrupt an artifact of this power. And yet, within the jade, Jiaming could see sickly yellow embers cracking the stone around them.
We determined that the best course of action would be to head north sooner rather than later. Rail wasn’t an option, nor were the main roads for the most part: each would attract too much attention. This meant we would have to take secondary or tertiary roads with fewer patrols. We also had to leave before the curfew kicked in, which gave us a few hours of downtime.
The five of us, since Pingguo tagged along, left Yingkou just before dusk. We were bound for a Nichiben bunker outside Shengyang. We foraged for some fish and some garlic; although garlic is normally frowned upon for Jiaming as one of the five pungent vegetables, the alternative made it tolerable. While traveling, we also encountered a parade of collaborator forces being led southeast from Shengyang, sacrifices to the war machine being led to the slaughter. Contrast this with a peasant we encountered shortly thereafter, impossibly gaunt, leading an equally gaunt ox pulling an empty cart. Or another three peasants who turned to banditry out of desperation after their lands were seized. Despite their courting death, it was obvious that they posed no threat to us, and after sharing some of our food and water with them, we convinced them (Jin, Peng, and Li) to turn their guns not against their countrymen but against the fascist invaders looting Manzhu.
Eventually, we reached the bunker and began to stake out the situation. Under the cover of night, we saw ordinary people, their wrists and ankles chained, bags drawn over their heads, herded into the dark, crying and screaming for mercy. We noticed which of the guards posted outside seemed groggiest, and Lynne pulled a similar mind trick (masquerading as their consciences) to the one Jiaming used last session:
“How can you stand by and ignore the distant screams echoing from the dark?”
The soldiers were sufficiently spooked that they went back into the bunker, giving us ample time to set up traps and prepare our dawn raid. The bunker itself was dug beneath a low hill amid sparse-ish woodland, its entrance facing south. It was fairly shallow, enough that, standing atop the hill, Jiaming could sense the desecration within and get a rough layout of the base. Pingguo went to check for hidden escape routes. Scramble set up a flamethrower by the entrance to keep the soldiers caged in when the raid began.
I’d describe how combat went, but the session was cut half an hour short due to the fire alarm in the DM’s building going off. We got through about half a round of fighting, and we’ve stacked the deck heavily in our favor. I’m very excited for the next session. Afterwards, I watched a bad, dumb, but very entertaining movie called Attrition (dir. Mathieu Weschler, 2018), starring chudhisattva Steven Seagal. I wouldn’t be the first person to point out that Seagal plays the same character in every movie, and that the Venn Diagram between this character and Seagal’s self-image is a perfect circle, but that phenomenon is very much at play in Attrition, which was written and produced by Our Boy™ as yet another vessel for his bloated ego. This movie is set in Thailand, but it was made by a guy who named one of his energy drink flavors Asian Experience, so it’s more accurate to say it takes place in the Exotic™ and Mysterious™ East™. It’s a trainwreck from start to finish, but I’m glad I could see it. I needed a bad movie last night.
Another day dawns. In Property this morning, we covered Fair Hous. Council v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157 (9th Cir. 2008) and Effel v. Rosberg, 360 S.W.3d 626 (2012). For the former, we read and discussed an eloquent opinion penned by (if you recall) the probable sex pest Alex Kozinski. The question was whether the Fair Housing Act applies to the selection of roommates. The FHA prohibits discrimination based on race, sex, etc., in the sale or rental of a dwelling, after all. Well, to the Ninth Circuit, the Constitutional right to association means that people can pick and choose their personal relationships free from interference, and roommates are a fairly intimate relationship. Tying this into the interpretive modalities we’re learning about in LegReg, Kozinski asked whether the Congressmen who wrote the FHA in the 60s would have considered it discriminatory for a woman to want only a same-sex roommate. The answer’s “no”, btw. Since Prof. Kahan emphasizes policy considerations, the Act was intended to address systemic discrimination, but private individuals are within their rights to discriminate. That’s the short of that, anyway. Effel was discussed in the context of the four non-freehold estates. From my notes:
Term of years tenancy: Has a fixed duration that is agreed upon in advance (such as six months, two years, or 100 years).
Periodic tenancy: Automatically renewed for successive periods unless the landlord or tenant terminates the tenancy by giving advance notice.
Tenancy at will: Has no fixed ending point.
(So-called) Tenancy at sufferance: Is created when a person who rightfully took possession of land continues in possession after that right ends.
The main question in Effel was whether the lease created a tenancy at will, which Rosberg could terminate. As above, for a lease to be anything other than a tenancy at will, it must be for a certain period. See, Effel was a 97-year-old woman being cared for by her nephews. Said nephews settled a suit with their landlord, Rosberg, and in the settlement, there was a provision stating that Effel could remain as a tenant in the house until she died or left. Kind of like a life estate but with rent payments, a “life tenancy”. Rosberg agreed to this, but still tried to evict Effel, and was found to be legally in the right for reasons that should be apparent. (Hint: can you find “life tenancy” in the list above?)
I tried a new food cart today and got vegetable lo mein. It was pretty good. I had lunch with my NLG friends, and we discussed the war, the polls, and other such matters. Unfortunately, I couldn’t have my advising meeting with Career Services today because the person I was scheduled to meet is sick. I went to the 3rd Floor Gallery, made small talk with Colin about classes, and then started writing this entry to pass the time before LegReg. I’m feeling more like myself today.
Sierpinski Tetrahedron 