# Groundhog Day, with ninjas!



## ZuulMoG (May 13, 2005)

First off, hello everyone.  (First post.)

Since I actually have a good story to tell (the title should intrigue a few people), I'm going to, and see what y'all think.

Basically, a few years ago, I was running an 'Oriental' campaign in my own campaign world, Ergos.  (Ergos was, at that time, a hypercube torn from the surface of a Dysen's sphere and folded into the 4th dimension to create six seperate realms joined by a portal network called the Nexus.  My Oriental realm was the southern half of one facet, the northern half being a Celtic realm, the two seperate by a swamp full of batrachi, grippli, swamp behemoths and disease.  It was modelled after the Three Kingdoms period of China's past.)

The PCs include a brother and sister, the brother a Samurai-in-training, his sister a ninja.  (Don't ask.)  Also in the group were a hengeyokai (halfling) sorceror, a spirit-folk (half-elf) shukenja, and a korobukuru (Dwarf) fighter.

For their first adventure, I basically lifted my plot from two major sources: the movie Groundhog Day, which I love to death, and the episode of Xena in which she has to prevent the suicide of a couple of lovers so Aphrodite will let time continue to the next day.

The story went like this: a ronin leading the Swords of Justice, and a drunken master leading the Singing Gorillas, both good and honorable men, loved the same local beauty.  They had tried non-violent means of working it out, but neither could give her up, and so they reluctantly agreed to duel to the death for her hand.  Their duel occurs at noon, and ends with both taking mortal wounds and dying.

The PCs arrive in town of Gamina the night before, the samurai-in-training having been assigned to this town, with the party as his advisers and companions, to learn at the feet of the jito (local samurai judge/police chief).  They have a vivid dream that night (actually about a year's worth of nights later, after just about everyone else in town has failed dozens of times) in which the Goddess of Time, Breend, implores them to save her faithful warriors from this tragic turn of fate, and warns them that if they don't, there will be no tomorrow.  They will begin remembering the events of this day, and have ten tries to achieve success.

Meanwhile, several other tragic events and minor mishaps (IE ways for the PCs to earn bonus XPs) besides the duel also occur this day:

1)  (~0530) The innkeeper's mother falls down the stairs and breaks her neck, resulting in a morning meal of cold rice gruel for the guests, and a very sombre start to the day.

2)  (~0800) The samurai PC's scabbard breaks just before his appointment with the jito, placing him in the position of possibly losing face for being sloppy.

2a) (1200) the deadly duel.

3)  (~2330) The local jito's accountant, who has been pocketing money, fires a signal rocket into the stall of the fireworks merchant that night, blasting the entire caravanserai to splinters and killing dozens of people to cover his thefts.


By the end of the first day, the samurai, his sister, the hengyokai sorceror and the half-elf were all dead, the samurai cut down in an early duel with the ronin, and being slaughtered by the duellist's seconds for attempting to interfere in the duel (the rest).  Much to their surprise, they awoke that morning, and everyone started in surprise as once again the old woman fell down the stairs.  

Day 2 was already shaping up to be a bad day... It ended with the entire party being blasted into mulch as a signal rocket streaked into the merchant's pavillion they were at to try and stop the accountant (whom the ninja had found incriminating papers in the home of).

Day 3 had a very auspicious beginning, the old woman was saved by the quick-thinking korobukuru.  The PCs abandoned any pretense of stopping the duel this day, and instead investigated the town rather thoroughly.  They learned that the jito and the oyabun (mayor) had strong deja-vu regarding stopping the duel, and surmised they had been selected and failed already (true that).  They attempted to see the girl the duellists were fighting over, and got a very cold shoulder from her.  Turns out she ain't so sweet as she lets on, and that gave them an angle of attack.

Day 4 began with 5 stalwart adventurers bursting out of their inn rooms and nearly gang-tackling an old woman, who nonetheless survived.  His equipment carefully tended and mended, the newly minted samurai makes the acquaintance of his new master w/o a hitch.  His sister meanwhile arrests the accountant 'on her brother's orders', and presents the hidden evidence to the oyabun, thereby saving the merchants.  The shukenja, samurai, sorceror, and the korobukuru arrange for the duellists, the girl, and Thumock, the village's half-orc idiot (clipped by a mule in the head as a lad) to meet in the garden, where the warriors are delayed just long enough to let the girl begin her usual savage treatement of the poor night-soil bucket emptier.  Her rotten nature revealled, the putative duellists call off the fight, and everyone enjoys a fine repast at Wu's House of Happy Meals, the two-tiered pagoda-style restaraunt that serves the best Kung-Po in town.

The only major hitch was when the ninja's player, who'd been green and groaning all night, left for home, and then the emergency room, with what turned out to be an appendicits.  He spent his 21st birthday in the hospital instead of drinking legally.  After getting over their initial shock at the lethality of the adventure, and realizing that they stood a good chance of survivng if they played their cards right, the player had a blast.  It was the most fun I'd had GMing since driving a 6th level party screaming back down a dungeon corridor minus one Jesse Ventura meets the Predator-ed paladin with a pair of eye killers...


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