My throat is all scratched up, and I haven’t the faintest idea why. Granted, a mild amount of scratchiness adds a very pleasant timbre to my voice, but the pain is a problem. I can push through it if it’s still like this on Tuesday, but still. This weekend will mainly be spent prepping for Oral Argument. My suits are at the dry cleaners and will be ready by Tuesday. I should have more details about MontCo in the coming days, but they got back to me and really liked my resume and interview, so I’ll refrain until I have laurels to rest upon. It shouldn’t be much longer before it’s finalized.
Class registration yesterday afternoon was one of the experiences of all time. I was able to get a full schedule, thankfully, and I’m waitlisted for six classes (always waitlist, I was told). Hopefully, I can get into McGrain’s Professional Responsibility and Kahan’s Bioethics. Fingers crossed!
Last time on “A Thousand Years Of Jade”…
“It is a day that will forever live in my mind: the day calamity struck. It wiped out towns, burned down forests, looted cities, and killed, oh yes, it killed. Men, women, children, anything that drew breath, gone. If there is an eternal punishment in this world, remembering your cruelty, your bloodlust, the horrors you inflicted upon us, that is punishment enough. For those who survived the initial massacre, only hunger and thirst met them. And for those like you, who sold your souls to the Archdemon, I pray for you. I pray that you feel misery like I have felt, for suffering like I have felt, like the people of the land have felt. I pray that the righteous will smite you, slowly, cruelly, with such majestic force that the bones in your body crumble to dust, ashes to be blown to the wind and forgotten. I pray-“
The katana slices through the woman’s tattered red robes and malnourished body, as she drops to her knees, straw hat fallen to the ground, dead. Nichiben soldiers, watching the execution, walk towards the woman. They lift the remnants of her body up, carry it to a nearby hill of destruction, piled high with the dead, and toss her there: the ultimate desecration of the people and their land…
Michael’s opening monologue aside, our heroes last night were
Evelynn, Half-Orc Bard, would win against the devil
Jiaming, Human Sorcerer/Paladin, the youngest Elder of the Mt. Hua Sect in history
Lynne, Drow Rogue/Ranger, MVP yet again (see below)
Scramble, Tabaxi Artificer, mad scientist & Marshal of the Eighth Route Army
Also accompanying the party was Jiaming’s steed, the Hurricane Beast Bingqilin, and his sidekick Lin Haoran, a former bandit (whom Jiaming spared in the first session) and the first disciple of the reborn Huashan Sect, trained in the incanting of mantras and so forth. We have so many people with Lynn or Lynne or Lin as names, goodness. At least it’s the surname of my character’s sidekick. The players of Goog the Great and Powerful, Shengshi, and Yulan could not make it.
I’m gonna be focusing mainly on Jiaming’s POV because we kept bouncing around until combat started.
Eight weeks have passed since our heroes destroyed the Crimson Sun, but the war continues. For Wang Jiaming, the Dragon of the Immortal Bodhi, the war reached the one place under Heaven he considered home. While he was traveling through the tunnels beneath Manzhu with his companions, the Tangle Sutra cult raided Mt. Hua, killing or capturing all in their way and desecrating the sacred grounds of the monastery. Thankfully, the cultists were unable to breach the innermost sanctum, where the mountain’s sacred treasures were kept. Jiaming claimed the treasures and became master of the Sect and steward of its teachings.
His skills as a teacher were put to the test with the arrival of Brother Lin, a former bandit seeking liberation from pain. Though Jiaming is a master swordsman, and Lin had some knowledge of fencing, Jiaming cautioned Lin against using the blade; instead, Jiaming’s training focused on blunt weapons like the bian and gun as a form of discipline. Particular emphasis was placed on studying the Dazangjing; Jiaming used this opportunity to preserve the rites of the Sect for posterity, learning the secrets of how to commune with higher realms and how to forbid evil from breaching the Mountain again, among other things. Since Jiaming performed the latter ritual every day for a month, he ended up burning all of the Sect’s finest incense. Worth it.
One day, while Jiaming and Lin were searching for information about the tomb of the First Emperor, a loud knock sounded at the gate. Jiaming lept over the walls, gracefully landing behind what appeared to be a courier in the uniform of the Eighth Route Army. He bore a message from Marshal Scramble Zone, quickly turning away to run back down the mountain. Jiaming decided to make things easier for the courier and called upon Bingqilin to fly the Courier back down to the foot of Huashan. Jiaming accompanied, surfing atop the brilliantly gleaming, slender blade of his Full Moon Plum Blossom Luck Jian of Flying. Jiaming read the note on the ascent back to the summit, hovering about a foot above Bingqilin while Piccolo-posing. Scramble told him to meet on the banks of the Yellow River.
When Jiaming returned up the mountain, he was just about to re-enter the monastery when he received a transmission on his handheld radio. It was Scramble, who had apparently come to Mt. Hua himself. Odd. Jiaming tells Lin to pack and ride down upon Bingqilin, while Jiaming descends back down Mt. Hua, again, to talk to Scramble face-to-face. Scramble received a note allegedly from Jiaming (the calligraphy was just as exquisite as Jiaming’s), saying to meet on the banks of the River. Suspicious. Also with Scramble is a mechanical terror he constructed with help from junior artificers on loan from Soviet Kestrel, loosely based on the Crimson Sun’s design: a mech with rooster-like legs and many needles for injecting poison. Jiaming, being wary of those who practice the foul art of gu, was horrified.
Eventually, Brother Lin, riding upon Bingqilin with far less aura than Jiaming, floats down to the ground. The companions make their way to spring the trap. They eventually reach a clearing where hell has broken loose. Lynne and Evelynn were there, as were Tangle Sutra forces in possession of the Jade Dog statue, and a big cloud of magical darkness. Junior Disciple Lin began to pray, finding his center and blessing Jiaming, Scramble, and the poison mech with good fortune and protection. Jiaming himself uttered a prayer and was shielded by his faith before lunging into the darkness to strike at the Tangle Sutra leader. His Jian struck true, piercing one of the leader’s meridians.
We ended mid-combat with one of the coolest things done yet in the campaign, and I’ve been itching to describe it since I opened WordPress this morning. So, as we fought the cultists, Lynne’s player (Avery) had the idea to throw a psychic blade down the leader’s throat and teleport inside, a la Ant-Man and Thanos in reverse. Michael ruled that calling one’s shots would be rolled with disadvantage.
We ended the session with the Tangle Sutra boss getting chunky salsa’d into a cloud of gore as Lynne materialized from within. The henchmen are still very much a problem, though. Hopefully, we can have a full house next week.
The clouds were beautiful last night on the walk back to Anova. I wish I had gotten a picture. It was like looking at an old map of the world, shadowed continents drifting atop an ocean of night.
I have another session of Wolves Upon The Coast tonight. I missed Incunabuli last Saturday, but I should be able to make it up this upcoming Saturday. I also need to do some DM prep of my own, but my studies come first.
Sierpinski Tetrahedron 