Qin - Tianxia

First scenario of our "Qin - Les Royaumes Combattants" campaign, "Towards a World of Lakes and Forests" was played over two sessions, between June 3, 2006 and December 16, 2006. A six-month break, then. It is the core book's scenario: merely an unthrilling introduction, but a successful one. At that point, we were not even sure we would eventually commit to the campaign.

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Characters present

• Chen Chi, "Soothing Hand"
• Liu Mei Shan
• Lu Yan Sheng
• Tian Zaisheng

Preamble

The scenario takes place in Nao, a small city of the Zhao on the border with the Qi. Lu Yan Sheng is a soldier of the local garrison, whose orders are to escort the Mohist Tian Zaisheng in his cordial inspection of the city's defenses. Zaisheng is not there for the reasons one might believe, however: nobody called on him to defend Nao; his visit aimed only to pay his respects to his one-armed ^[1] shifu, the venerable Left Hand.

For their part, Chen Chi - an itinerant by nature - and Mei Shan - returning from a fruitful business deal - have been traveling together from the Qi to the Zhao. They are not alone: a notable by the name of Mok Shi Minh accompanies them as well. He has been called to take the reins of a city in the north of the Zhao. Together, they fall into an ambush set by low-grade brigands, not far from the duo on patrol...

Session rundown

Our adventure thus opens with a fight, or rather, a simple appetizer for our Wuxia. The brigands throw themselves at the small convoy, ardently defended by Chen Chi and Liu Mei Shan. The former twirls his staff and shatters a few jaws, but his true talent lies in his prodigious fists, capable of unscrewing a neck in a few moments. Mei Shan, for her part, makes any object into a deadly weapon. Her preference goes to hairpins, with which she punctures the chests of the miserable scoundrels who attack her. No doubt these two ultimately needed no help, all the more so as the two soldiers rushing over - Lu Yan Sheng and Tian Zaisheng - make a poor impression. The first, admittedly skilled, cuts down a few thugs with his qiang ^[2] before being gravely wounded in the shoulder by one of them. The second panics on his horse ^[3]: as he tries to dismount, he loses his balance and clumsily catches himself by plunging his jian ^[4] into his mount's innards, which dies on the spot.

Despite these surprising setbacks, the four of them manage to defeat the brigands, whose last survivors flee with their tails between their legs. Chen Chi rushes to heal Yan Sheng, but the medicinal herbs he applies do not have the expected effect: he realizes too late that they have the opposite one. A good thing the soldier is a veritable force of nature, for he survives what would have felled the common man. Once back - somehow or other - in Nao, the four individuals have little time to go about their business. Tong - Left Hand's adopted son - pounces on Zaisheng and accuses him of having "stolen his inheritance". Having calmed things down and sent the importunate hothead back where he came from, our four heroes look into the reason for his anger: word in town is that Left Hand has disappeared without a trace, which a quick detour by his residence confirms. Narrowly avoiding official accusations over this disappearance, Zaisheng and his de facto accomplices take the matter in hand. As they try to pick up the shifu's trail, Yii, Tong's sister and Left Hand's adopted daughter, tells the group that her father reportedly visited the governor earlier in the day. There, he would have learned of the imminent arrival of the royal scribe Lao Li, come to Nao to conduct mysterious excavations. The rest of this first day goes by without too many hitches, apart from the persistent presence of flunkies hired by Tong to watch Zaisheng and those who supported him.

It is only at sunset that the scribe Lao Li's delegation appears on the horizon. Accompanied by a cohort of soldiers led by two officers of the Zhao - the impenetrable Su Zuo and Red Beak - the man goes directly to the governor without dwelling publicly on the reasons that brought him here. To make matters worse, the sharp eye of one of our heroes catches a pictogram tattooed on Su Zuo's wrist: it is the word "perfection", which Zaisheng had already seen on his mentor Left Hand. The mystery thickens.

True to herself, Mei Shan has eyes only for the handsome Red Beak. She tries to get closer to him, but quickly realizes she is not the only one: a suspicious and clumsy trio seems to be spying on the Zhao officer. Having gathered information, she discovers they are three brothers, come to Nao three days ago "to do business". These explanations naturally fail to convince the trader, so she braces herself for something far more twisted.

On the morrow of a hard day, the heroes in the making understand they had better stay together to each unravel the troubling mysteries piling up around them. All the more so as the vindictive Tong keeps raising the pressure, sending ever bolder men to spy on their every move.

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This session took place almost 10 years ago, so I can be glad I still retain a few memories of it. However, let me make it clear that the session's complete details are not present. I remember a few rules points and a few roleplay details that were not yet clear in our minds - "Can you move after a strike? Can you strike after a movement? What is a soldier's average pay" - but the system struck me as immediately accessible and efficient.

Regarding the scenario itself, I was forced to adapt the content for a group of characters not native to Nao. Originally, the authors wanted to instill a "first steps towards adulthood" side and suggested limiting the characters to young people of the city, but this choice seemed too restrictive to me: I prefer to leave the players every possible latitude. The consequence is that the characters were all globally less involved than they should have been, with the exception of Zaisheng. Tong did not come across as a serious rival, but rather as an ungrateful little brat taking it out on a former pupil of his adoptive father. Despite these difficulties, I can only advise GMs wishing to embark on the campaign not to follow the authors' recommendations: indeed, it is hard to fit all the personal scenario threads developed in "Tianxia" with same-aged characters from the same city.

Finally, it is pleasant to look back on the first moments of Red Beak, a character who decidedly left a mark on the players' minds. So much so that even today, they tend to refer to him when talking about an ambiguous, recurring NPC they would dearly love to skin...

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1. A term that appears often in Wuxia tales. A shifu is a weapons master and a mentor, in the manner of Japanese sensei (for those to whom that speaks more). ↩︎

2. Chinese spear, one of the four "noble" weapons. ↩︎

3. Connoisseurs will recognize here a characteristic trait not of the character, but of the player. Hoth the horse-slayer once again proved his reputation. ↩︎

4. Double-edged Chinese sword, another of the four "noble" weapons. ↩︎