As we work, she say to me “Neiki had some interesting theories about the magic that Seaonus is using. She thinks (Princess lowers voice) it might be blood magic.” I nod. “Oh yes, sure to be maho-magic. Smell like rotten meat, even earth smell like bad meat and rust, yes? Even you smell?” She sit back from human she wrapping. “But, but blood magic is punishable by death! Who would do that?” She clutch her neck, where jade pendant lay.

Recently old Mir’Itus help me with English. No more saying “me” now say “eye” for me. Confusing. I am me, yes? Point at me-self and remember to say “eye”. I do that now: “I not knowing what make man, or Nezumi, go to Taint side. We heal people and then deal with him, Mister Seaonus-san.”

Nya looks on as Tatsuoh directs rescue efforts

Some human, we save. Some we get and they having bite-bite marks all over legs. They say “Dark down there. No ideas what bite.” Some we get and they look chewed up, from bottom to top. Too manys of the bites and too much time gone.  I ask Grandpa to help those spirits go where they go, those humans.

Nightfall and we done with dead and wounded. Nezumi get stable all to ourselves. Human stay in houses with smelly human. Poor, poor human – they all smell of Taint. Some more, some less, but Taint. Gami-Gami, she insist sleep near door for the protection. We warm and cozy with horses, Princess wagon and plenty warm hay. At midnight, I wake to say prayers and think thoughts of spells. I no bad-bad shaman for to do dark things in night. I like the quiet black of night. Good for the reading and the thinking and memorizing. At my books, and I remember spirit walk this town – people shaky-fearful of spirit. Te’Ka’Mok would know if spirit is real. Creep-creep slow so to not wake Gami-Gami. Tell puppy Ookami to “sshhhhhh.” I sit on step. Wait. Listen. Look. I see lights in Twilight Mountains. Nothing else. Cannot say spirit or not spirit. Too bad.

Seaonus grovels before the Princess

Next day, early: Princess has Seaonus on knees and he shaky and crying over maho-magic. Try to tell her it for good. He asks for chance to kill self with sepooku ritual of killing. Bah! Stupid idea. Why that better than to be killed by beheader? Snick-snick and head gone. Better to die way, I thinking. Stomach stabby silliness. Princess say NO. Wait for the Magistrate to come by.

After he dragged away by mayor and sherrif, Neiki say to Princess “The Taint is strong. It is….. affecting me and will hurt everyone soon. We must find the crystal orb that Seaonus mentioned.”  I hitch up robe. Scratch leg and think. Must be in tower, yes? Bad feeling there. I think about spell book. Pages under my finger. Smell ink.  I sensing magics now. I walk to tower door. “Here. Crystal orb here. I go find.”

Discussions of who can enter the tower

Much talk-talk about tower and safety-ness. Princess no go up. Neiki can no go up. Lion come with me. Scorpion stay with Princess. And then old Mir’Itus must come and Gami-Gami. Yes-yes. Come all. We go up stairs. Crooked tower now so crooked stairs. Up-up-up. I telling Mir’Itus to be careful with crooked tower stones and one fall and hit me on head. Hurt-hurt muchly, but I Nezumi and I go on!

We find big orb. Big bad orb. Down-down-down stairs. Telling Princess we find orb and Neiki say we must draw the Taint from orb. Princess look at me. “I no learn this magics. I not live long enough to learn this magics.”
Nya Scorpion come over. “Princess, I have heard that we can use Nezumi blood to draw the Taint from the crystal.” She paused. “It has been done by great wizards of the Scorpion clan. It would not require a lot of blood. Just a small amount will do. Or so I have heard.”
I turn to Mir’Itus. “They talking about our blood, yes? Blood magics for to heal blood magics? No-no.” I shake my head. Princess see and say “I want to know what all of our options are. I have not made a decision.” I nod. “Use old Mir’Itus! He old! He blood still good, but he have not long to live, yes?”  Princess laugh and Mir’Itus glare at me.

Princess bite her lip and say “I have not made any decisions.”

They looked amazing and I wanted to show off a few of them….

Close up of a dragon column

The full temple

I happened to have a few of our old friends to use as props inside the temple

More odd alien-like creatures we would have encountered

Aw crap, is that a dragon?

One of my favorites - an amazing fountain.

There's more than one dragon....?

It is a pleasure to hold this book in your hands. The pages are thick and smooth and the art work, layout and design are superb. Oh, yeah and the content….. it surpasses the physical aspects of the book.

Let’s talk about what’s inside of Enemies of the Empire…..  Creatures, history, lore, adventure ideas, NPC builds, advice on rolling a non-human PC and more.

The book devotes just a few pages to the bestiary. A scant handful of pages lay out some of the beasts you and your players will encounter in Rokugan.

Then we get to the heart of the book — the real enemies. I mean sure a panther might be a threat to you or a village, but it is not actively trying to destroy your world. Bloodspeakers on the other hand….. or members of the Kolat…. they have an agenda.

When you begin to turn the pages and realize that the world is so vast and intricate, it is easy to get overwhelmed. New players especially could feel like just closing the book and going back to playing Halo instead.

It is more than worth your time to explore the world of Rokugan, however. The people and the history of this delicate world are as real and three-dimensional as our own. Everyone has motivations, alliances and entanglements — complications, if you will.

Of course this book is designed primarily for your GM, but players like myself benefit from its pages too. We are planning our new campaign now — finishing up our time in Serenity — and this supplemental book will give players a deep well to draw for back stories, if nothing else. And there is so much else!

Imagine that you want to play one of the non-human races. I am considering Nezumi, actually and wow, does the book go into depth about these guys. There are 30+ pages devoted to their history (prehistory, really), their customs, language, names and tribes. Do I want to be part of the Crooked Tail tribe or the Tattered Ear? Each has their advantages and as a player I have to weigh them carefully. The book has such depth about each of the enemies (or friends, depending on the race — probably not going to have any Oni player characters — big scary demon things. Some of them have lots of teeth. Nightmare-worthy, any one of them.)

The world of Rokugan is incredibly complex. The mechanics of honor are tangled up with the Taint of the Shadowlands and the politics of the Clans. Fighting Oni, for example, is the thankless job of the Crab Clan. It sounds as glamorous as being a garbage collector — and just as prestigious. So navigating this world as an adventurer requires a deftness that is missing from your average dungeon crawl.  As they say in the pages about the Oni, going around boasting that you have killed an Oni is likely going to get you a one-way ticket out of town because who wants to be around someone touched by the Taint of the Shadowlands? Thanks for the assist, now move along and don’t touch me.

There are some familiar faces too. Goblins, animated skeletons,undead, naga, assassins and the like. But each of them has a special place in the rigid world of Rokugan. Goblins are the kobold of this world. Plentiful, varied in their strength and fighting ability and none too bright.

Enemies of the Empire is a worthy addition to the Legend of the Five Rings world. It adds variety, nuance and depth to an already intricate world. Players who are looking for more depth for a back story will find much fodder here. GMs who want to change up their campaigns will dive into these pages and not surface for weeks. New players (like me) can find out even more about the world that they are inhabiting during their game sessions.

Sarah used tarot cards to lay out a random town for us to explore. That was very fun.

That way we (gulp!) split the party and all did our own thing. Roark went to a strip club. Brigid, Maggie and Prudence went to the rendezvous at the casino. (Prudence went for the Faro game) And Swei and Lu went in search of pawn shops. You never know what kind of parts you’ll stumble on…. Which might have been what Roark was thinking, too.

While Lu and I were on the tram in town, this oddly dressed man approached us. His name was David? — the question mark is there to denote the odd upward inflection in his voice when he said his name. He represented a group of travelers who wanted to get to the planet Angel. They had money and well, what the hell do Swei and Lu know about sizing up people? So we told David? to meet us at D-VA first thing in the morning. His group was pretty odd, what with the robes and the hats. But they were quiet and their credits were real.

Brigid is always ready to throw a party for people and cult members are no exception. Everyone had to sit for tea and petit fours (which Swei loves, so she changed into clean clothes for the party).

The cult members passed out one of their newsletters. Swei’s had writing on it.

What floored Swei was that the words on the newsletter were her brother’s Spacebook user name. This is her brother who was wrongly imprisoned. The cult member who handed Swei the newsletter was named Steve! (note the inflection). And he was the shortest of the bunch, by far. Swei invited Steve! to tour the engine room.

Another member, Celeste. (you can tell she’s a serious one by the full stop after her name) came along, which annoyed Swei. She had wanted to have Steve! alone. She improvised a note to Steve! to meet her at midnight to talk.

When midnight came and no Steve!, Swei listened in to the bay where the cult members were bunked down. There was an unnatural sounding snore mixed in with the other sounds. Swei and Roark decided to check it out. What if the cult members were secretly arming themselves to take over the ship or something? But, what they discovered was nothing…. Everyone appeared to be sleeping soundly.

Next day, they arrived at Angel, where Brigid was to bid on a shipment of water that the casino owner wanted. He couldn’t make the auction himself, so Brigid was to bid in his stead. And if we lost the bid, we had a map of the house where the water would be so we could steal it.

Bidding was fierce at first. Five groups were bidding on three casks of water. Shoulda known something wasn’t right.

Things continued to be hot. Brigid’s bid is the gray block. The auctioneer allowed that people could also bid for lots using the promise of future jobs. So to extend our cash, Brigid offered over 700 credits in jobs.

When at last the gavel fell, the water was ours!

Swei, Maggie and Lu were at the ship. The cult members had taken off and the others went to the auction.

Once we had the water and a side job to perform as part of the auction bid, we were ready to take off for water delivery!

But one day, I think it was day 4 of our 2 weeks of R&R, I woke to the sound of gun fire. Hot damn! I thought. We got us a situation! But it was just Roark taking potshots at the crows. I went out to cheer him on. Those damned crows were cawwing to beat the band. It was like a, like a gorram crow convention! When we came in about 20 minutes later there was talk of a comet.

“I know about comets!” I said. “Are we going to one? Going soon? I hate to say it, but I’m a mite bored.”
Maggie swiveled the screen my way. “There’s a job we could do. Fetchin ice from a comet and takin it to Regina. Gotta go soon though. What ya call time sensitive.” I slapped my thighs as I stood up. “I’ll get my gear.”

Roark rubbed his chin. “Seems fittin somehow.” Prudence looked at him. “How you figure?” He smiled. “Ice to ice, pretty lady! Get it? Ice — diamonds– to ice.”
“Maggie, how far is this Regeena?” The Doc walked in just then. “Oh, are you talking about Regina? Are we going there? It’s pronounced Ra-jai-na, Swei.”
“What? What? Like vagina? That’s just wrong. Who’d live there knowing that?”
“Regina is named after an Earth That Was city in the north. It means queen in Latin. You know Elizabeth Regina…?” The Doc looked at me expectantly.
I shook my head. “I ain’t smart like that, Doc.”

We were out of the lake house in less than an hour. I guess I wasn’t the only one going crazy with the quiet. I heard Miss V talking to the Doc. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy relaxing, Imago. For goodness sake! But think of the people of Regina. They need that ice or things will get grim. We can help our fellow men and shore up our accounts. I won’t deny that this little windfall from the wine delivery is nice, but I’m always putting by for a rainy day.”

With that Maggie at the wheel, we made great time out towards the comet. It’s the Angel Hair comet for the way the tail streams out. It looks lovely and still out the window. I was in the engine room gettin the old girl a cool drink a coolant and I heard Maggie on the comm. “We got company!”

Turns out that a little gal named Mary Celestia was in our little patch of the Black. Well, ain’t that interestin, I muttered. “You need juice, you just say the word there, Maggie.” Next thing I knew, we were zoomin and D-VA was chugging like a race horse smelling victory. I could feel the hull shift beneath my feet as Maggie performed some whatcha call aerobatics. I hit the comm. “Maggie, are you gonna keep this up much longer? I can do some things to ease off the heat build up in the lift mechs, but you got maybe 10 minutes of –” My voice was cut off by Prudence. “Score! Hoo-hoo! They hit an asteroid!” Sure enough out the window I saw the ship.  And the comet hove into view. Miss V’s voice rang through the ship: “We’re landing in a minute, crew. Let’s suit up.”

…..to be continued.