Season of Ghosts: Sessions 1–5

It is the first day of summer in the year 7108, and in the remote lumber town of Willowshore — tucked into the wooded reaches of Shenmen, far out on the continent of Tian Xia — the people are bracing for the strange weeks ahead. These are the days the locals quietly call the season of ghosts, when the dead walk a little closer and the old superstitions (don’t whistle at night, don’t call a ghost a ghost, and never turn around if a voice calls your name from behind you in the dark) feel less like folklore and more like good sense. Into this nervous season come our four hometown heroes: Shen the bard, Mojian the magus, Dintriel the druid, and Yamagoro the guardian.

Willowshore was dressing itself up for the Reenactment Festival that marks the turn of the season. The early celebrations were all warmth and good food — the group filled up on buns from Mama Bao, reputedly the best bao seller in town, and made the rounds of local characters. There was Old Matsuki, the ninety-eight-year-old carpenter and elder spokesman of the traditionalist Southbank folk, rarely found entirely sober; Granny Hu, a stern retiree with the bearing of the former imperial guard captain she turned out to be; Jen Peng, the guard captain; and young Ba-Ming Ouh, the sixteen-year-old priestess of the fox-goddess Daikitsu who tends the Nine Ear Shrine and was charged with leading the festival ceremony. When the festival’s central rite arrived, the four heroes played the role of the victims — chased out of town by shrieking “ghosts” (villagers in costume) and left to pass the night in the forest.

Morning came wrong. A villager was supposed to wake them and bring breakfast, but nobody came. Setting off on foot back toward town, the party met a thick, unnatural fog creeping along the river and had to fight off a swarm of aggressive centipedes. Closer to Willowshore, they found the statue of Ugly Cute gone from its place and ran headlong into a band of jinkin gremlins. At Dawnstep Bridge the news was worse still: the town’s Eternal Lantern stood unlit — no small omen in a place where a lit lantern is all that tells the spirits a town is still lived in and defended — and a drunken Gurglegut was causing mayhem at its foot. The heroes confronted the fiend and brought him down. To rekindle the lantern and restore the town’s protection, they would need to bless three copper coins and place them within it, the old rite by which Willowshore’s shrined deities lend their aid — no simple task, for the Nine Ear Shrine, where Ba-Ming could usually be found, stood abandoned.

Next, the group drove a ghost out of Mo’s house, then went to the Matsuki Estate — its walls whitewashed long ago with blessed salts — where they found survivors sheltering. They learned the coins had originally been consecrated by Master Ji Hui through a ten-minute prayer, and set about repeating the rite themselves. It did not come easily: Shen and Yamagoro both faltered at the Abadar shrine before Dintriel managed to bless the first coin, then consecrated a second at the shrine in his own home. The cathedral of Pharasma, the Lady of Souls, was found abandoned like the Nine Ear before it. With the final coin blessed at the shrine of Daikitsu, the party at last relit the Eternal Lantern, and the three deities’ blessings settled over Willowshore’s defenders. Along the way they heard troubling news: hunters were abroad, searching both for the missing statue of Ugly Cute—which had been seen to move–and for the town’s farmers.

Chasing those leads downtown, the heroes made a far stranger discovery — the mansion of Governor Heh Shan-Bao had simply vanished. A jailer spotted them and, when approached, revealed himself to be no man at all but a strange creature luring them into an ambush. The party cut down two more jinkins and the creature itself, freeing the guards and several civilians it had trapped in the jail house. Worse followed: the Gray Butcher, a floating butcher’s apron, compelled them into a grotesque parade through the streets, until the group realized he was one of the powers behind the town’s troubles and put him down. In the paddock nearby they found a trail of bloody footprints that led to the nearby bathhouse.

The hunt then turned toward the tea house. First the heroes talked five kappas into vacating the bath house peacefully, then flushed out six jinkins holed up with a pair of terrified teenagers. After a brief rest they pressed on to confront Mo the Boss in the tea house proper. They encountered a grisly scene inside. The strange leader of the attack had been feasting on flayed villagers in the tea house. A tense fight ended with Yamagoro and Mo landing two well-placed hits, killing both Mo and his demonic toad before they could do more damage. A lingering scorpion in the tea house was dealt with shortly thereafter.

With the immediate threats cleared, Willowshore turned to grief and preparation: the party helped bury the dead and ready itself to travel to the nearby city to solicit additional help. Sifting through the tea house’s paperwork, they turned up a curious will — the whole establishment would pass to whoever recovered the two pearls that had been cast into the eyes of Fumeyoshi, the grave-god. Granny Hu sent the party East to get help from the nearby garrison. The party was turned back by a solid wall of fog that would mysteriously teleport them back any time they tried to advance. The heroes had to camp in the wilderness and were woken by a blood-red moon and intense blood rain. Frightened and confused, the party returned to Willowshore the next morning. Back in town, they reported in the strange happenings. They also encountered a traveling merchant in town named Shinzo and his raven, Yix.

As the chapter closed, three mysteries stood plainly before the group. There was the vanishing of Ugly Cute, which pointed back to the hunters; the impassable fog, which Granny Hu indicated more could be learned about from the Great Willow, the ancient kami-haunted tree that looms over the town; and the disappearance of the Governor. That last thread ran deepest of all. Years ago, a bard named Fan had come to Willowshore and visited the Governor’s mansion; screams were heard, she fled, and guards were dispatched to the Canary Inn to root out criminals. They burned the inn to the ground. The bard died in the flames — and every one of those guards later vanished without a trace. Willowshore, it seems, has been keeping its ghosts for a very long time.