Tomika's Letters, 8/28/1583: The Fall of the Crab
8/29/1583
off the east coast of Japan, somewhere
Dearest Yukiko,
We spent part of the morning dividing up the (thankfully clearly-labeled; Lin had a tidy mind) potions that we found in Lin's workroom in the sewers. The librarian popped away for a little bit to go talk to some of his people, and came back to report that, well, there isn't much news. Hideyoshi hasn't been seen for a week in Tokyo, but that's not unusual.
Funitsu used his orb to spy on Tsutsako, his half-sister who is calling herself Minaku and married to Arenro. She was bathing in some sort of yellow-green light that seemed to be healing cuts, bruises, and even some scars. (The question being, what had she been doing to be injured like that?) He also looked for the woman who used to occupy Minaku's position, who was Hiroshi's foster mother. She was alive, surprisingly enough, and appeared to be in some sort of exile.
Midmorning, as we prepared to get underway, Thomas told Panda that he could see a Crab ship approaching from the north. We decided to investigate, keeping out of cannon range and looping around so we could meet up with the Benevolent. Gryphon went off to warn the Benevolent that there might be a battle going on between us and them.
After a half hour, we could see that the ship was being pursued by hengenyokai ships, three of them. Tadaki went to talk to the lead ship, and came back and reported that General Shiro was aboard that ship, and they were pursuing. They also said that the Crab Clan home had been destroyed by the Scorpion(!) and that killing Shiro would more or less end the Crab Clan line. We all decided that it would be a good idea to block their escape route so Panda took the control webbing of Shrike, and the rest of us waited to see what we could see.
I decided to try something I've been wondering about, and imbued Panda with the ability to cast a lightning bolt. I thought, perhaps, Shrike could cast it if Panda could and was in the control webbing.
The sailors on the ship looked terrified and exhausted, as if they hadn't slept for days. Instead of there being someone at the helm, the wheel was tied in place with rope. Something was very, very wrong. Tadaki set their sails alight, and the sailors scrambled into dinghies and tried to leave.
But out of the hold came four people, and one of them aimed a small crossbow at one of the boats--which exploded. Something was definitely wrong here. The four people were even pulling swords and killing sailors!
Shrike cast Panda's lightning bolt, which crackled across their deck, and three of the four people were staggered by it. The fourth person raised his arms--or perhaps hers, it was a relatively small person--and let the lightning bolt wash over her. Reiko, watching next to me, said, "The little one's lit up like a festival barge with magic."
At this point, the librarian, Funitsu, and Haku decided to go over to the other ship to see if they could take down the four warriors. The enemy ship had mostly stilled and Panda pulled us to a halt, so they could open one of those doors in reality and cross the hundred feet over to the other boat. As we watched them fight, it became clear that the three larger fellows weren't nearly as strong as the small one, who now that we were watching her fight, was definitely female. They were dressed very strangely, and had weird lenses over their eyes. (That reminds me, I must remember to ask our prisoners what they were for.)
While the three larger ones were quickly dispatched, the smaller one was most stubborn, and was handily defeating the librarian and Haku put together. At the same time this was happening, the lifeboat that hadn't exploded pulled up beside us, and a man looked up at our curious faces peering over the side of the boat, asking for sanctuary.
Panda was most noncommittal, but allowed them on board, telling them we'd sort them out later. They were an exhausted-looking bunch, the man who led them even more so. Panda had freed herself from the control webbing and come up, and she appraised the group with a practiced eye. "General Shiro, I assume?"
He nodded. Panda said, "Have a seat over there."
Behind me, I heard Jeron say, "The librarian and Haku aren't going to last much longer, Reiko. I'll take care of Shiro."
She replied, "Give him some of this. I'll be back." She handed him a vial and dove through the door, casting as she did so. Jeron walked forward and calmly asked Shiro to drink from the vial he offered. The general did so without argument, and then closed his eyes and leaned back against the crates he was sitting against.
On the other ship, I could hear snatches of conversation--my husband attempting to talk the one larger fellow who was left out of attacking him. Reiko kissed the librarian (her standard method of delivering touch spells), and he suddenly looked much better, but the small person he was fighting took the opportunity to hit the librarian hard enough to sweep him off the deck, and the shaman with him, soaring over the rails in a tangle of limbs. While the librarian and Reiko climbed back onto the ship (fortunately, the librarian only wears a chain shirt, and the kitsune flatly refuses to wear armor of any sort, otherwise they may have been in trouble, not just wet), I saw Panda evidently reach a decision. She said, "Things are well in hand over here. I suppose I should go lend a hand over there."
She stepped through the door, and appeared on the other ship. Funitsu laid a spell of some sort on her, and Panda began to move very quickly indeed. The small warrior sent Panda sailing over the edge of the ship, but instead of falling to the water, Panda tumbled in midair and then rose calmly back to the deck of the ship, her topknot whipping around her in a breeze that seemed to affect only her. In short order after that, the woman was laid out cold on the deck.
I came over, curious to see what they had found. Reiko was removing the fallen woman's weapons, and Funistu was binding one of the larger fellow's wounds, telling the unconscious man,. "See? I told you that you were insignificant."
Panda said, "That one has a spirit controlling her--an Arenro fragment." She was indicating the small woman who'd nearly killed the librarian and Haku. Reiko was puzzling over something she'd found underneath the woman's skin. When I, too, peered down with my magical sight, curious, I was nearly blinded by the glow that was coming off of what appeared to be rods of some sort under her skin, in her arms and legs. The kitsune pulled a silk roll out of her sleeve, and I recognized it as the kit she carries her surgical tools in.
The woman also had a tattoo of a dragon all the way down her left side. It turned out those people she'd had with her had them, as well.
Reiko began to slit the unconscious woman's skin, and Panda turned pale (well, paler) and left for Shrike. I stayed to watch, fascinated. From the first wound, she pulled out a rod made out of some sort of metal, covered in blood. She paused to kiss the cut she'd just made, sealing it shut so she wouldn't bleed to death, and started in on the other arm. In short order, all four rods were out of her, and the shaman roused the woman enough so that she could swallow a vial of the true source.
We carried the woman over to Shrike, and put her into the rooms we keep reserved for unwilling guests.
Funitsu, while I was watching Reiko cut into the woman, was off in the hold of the Crab ship, investigating. He came back and said that there were crates--with dead dragons in them! Eggs, babies, and, notably, one young fu leng dragon corpse.
I won't give a blow-by-blow of the interrogations that followed, but this is the information we learned.
A month ago, much of the Crab strength had been concentrated in the South, preparing to be one half of a pincer that would destroy the Scorpion Clan home. However, three weeks ago, a warehouse had been discovered that had held dragon parts and evidence that someone was trying to combine dragons with humans. They destroyed the warehouse, and were abruptly beset by assassins, who killed about two-thirds of the noble families of the Crab. After that, a full-scale force, all mercenaries, destroyed the city and killed every member of the Crab Clan they could find.
Shiro, as one of three surviving members of the Toyotomi and Kuni families, decided that living to fight another day was better than dying for what appeared to be no reason at all. Practical people, these Crabs. I found myself almost liking Shiro. He fled in the last ship, which happened to be full of dead dragons, and was still running when he encountered the hengenyokai ships--and us.
It turns out that the Crab Clan all thought that they had been attacked on Funitsu's orders! My husband looked vaguely offended that someone had been operating under the name of the Scorpion. It's not as if there's much good to besmirch there, but it sets a bad precedent.
It turns out that the small woman who nearly killed some of us is called Suzume. The dragon tattoos are a mark of the Covenant, who, as it turns out, is some sort of secret society dedicated to killing Arenro and capturing the dark spirit he holds. They had been the ones trying to combine dragons with humans to make stronger warriors, but had abandoned that and tried the metal rods, instead.
When queried about the Covenant, Suzume said that she had no idea who her superior was, but did know that she was the leader of a cell, and there were maybe three other cells other than hers. Her superior might be the leader of the Covenant, or might be leader of a section of it. She said the purpose of attacking the Crab Clan was to weaken Hideyoshi, as he was evidently rethinking his alliance with Arenro.
This, of course, is most useful information. If we could stop worrying about the armies and concentrate on Arenro, this war might be over before winter.
Reiko had used one of the potions that Lin had left behind, a Discern Lies spell. She asked, casually, if Suzume knew someone named Midori. Suzume's answer was no, and Reiko raised her eyebrows. She said, "Well, just as a passing thought...if you did know someone named Midori who was connected with the Covenant, she's one of Arenro's people."
Evidently, until that moment, Suzume had not lied. But she did know Midori, and was, for some reason, protecting her.
The Crab clan has a thousand or so warriors tucked away in various places, but other than that their strength is not great. Shiro, when we were talking to him later, said that he recognized that the Crab Clan had more or less come to an end. (I can only imagine the pain that one statement must have caused him.) He requested to be taken under the protection of either the Scorpion or the Dragon clan, so they could preserve what was left. He said, "If we must be folded into another Clan, so be it. But as we are, we will all be killed soon enough."
We argued amongst ourselves about this for a while; The Crab lands border on the Scorpion's, so it seemed logical to simply fold the Crab into the Scorpion and extend the Scorpion lands. Haku, however, objected; he didn't want the Scorpion to control all of the warriors that came with the Crab. My husband and Haku argued a bit about this, and then Reiko came up with the idea of allying them with the hengenyokai, giving the shapeshifters land larger than their island, and perhaps making what's left of the Crab less of a tempting target. Since Tadaki seems to be some sort of noble among them (but why? I think Tadaki himself doesn't know), he'll basically accept the loyalty of what's left of the Crab.
We're going to drop Suzume off on the mainland tomorrow, I believe. After that, who knows? There are many fires, and all of them burn brightly. If nothing else, a visit to the Dragon lands may be in order.
One last note--Taura, the other kitsune, has woken me up three nights running now, screaming. I have, in that time, actually seen Taura only once, standing at the rail of the ship, clinging to Reiko's hand. There is something wrong with her, but Reiko isn't allowing any of us close enough to see what it is, exactly. She only shakes her head and mutters about nightmares.
I'm glad to hear you're well, Yukiko, as is Akechi. The weather here holds warm, but being on the ocean keeps us comfortable. Typhoon season is well advanced, though, and we haven't seen one yet. If we arrive in Skyhome dripping wet and shipless, you'll know what's happened to us.
Cheerful thought, no? I love storms.
With much affection,
Tomika
Quotes:
"Tadaki doesn't look a gift carp in the mouth."
--Storm
"No one ever hastes me. You sit around and watch me get carved down to a stump."
"We like you as a stump."
--Ray and Bryan
"Scorpions, crabs, both crustaceans, right?"
"Um...no, actually, I don't think they are."
--Bryan and Graham
"That would be 33 points of healing to you, Haku."
"Wow, that's some kiss. I'm going to have a hickey for weeks."
--Reiko and Haku. (Reiko voided every single one of her fourth level spells in favor of Cure Criticals that day.)
Meta:
It appears that we're going into endgame mode shortly here, as Storm's thinking about ending the campaign in November. We're all still about 8th and 9th level, so that might get kind of interesting, since we probably won't be more than 12th level at that point. This session, I think, was all about setting things in motion to end the war soonishly.
We'll see, though. i've been wrong before. (I also have suspicions about who's running the Covenant, and it's probably not someone anyone else suspects.)
Also, we accidentally sent Gryphon off right before a big battle. Battles rarely start ten minutes into the session, though!