While relaxing at the Inn of the Orange Blossom, having a cup of tea and some sake (not together, tea or sake, sheesh), the inn is attacked by a giant beast, an Oni! The monster tears into a group of Crane merchants that were sitting together at a table. Our group currently unarmed (all civilized people leave their weapons at the door) do their best to battle the monster empty handed.

The party manages to get their weapons and mount an offensive. The battle ends with several dead cranes, the tavern owners daughter slain, and an escaped Oni. Not bad for their first few hours in the big city, eh?

They meet another Crane, while the bodies are removed from the inn and taken to the place where they take dead guys, the crematorium. The party races there and gets into a brawl with the bandits robbing the dead bodies. One of them ended up in a fishery and was draped in fish guts after botching a roll.

Anyway, they gets some clues and end up at this house where they once again do battle with the Oni. Now, I warned my players at the beginning of this adventure that it was tough. They had to fight smarter not harder. An my players...well, let me put it this way, their idea of subtlety is sneaking up to a door, lining up in a nice orderly fashion, then kicking the door off it's hinges.

There is a battle of epic proportions inside the house with a giant Oni, and a bunch of smaller Oni. Kozo soaks up so much taint from these things that his skin turns milky white. It appeared that he died at one point only to ressurected by the Shadowlands Taint coursing through his body.

From here they bumble around a bit more and finally end up at a Scorpion Warehouse. They charge in and have a another titanic battle with half-dozen or so Bushi. Moto Buta and Hida Tagasuru wade through the guards at the door. Kozo, using his new found Shadowland Powers vaults twenty feet up onto a catwalk where archers are shooting at the party. Daidoji Kage gets into a brawl with more bushi, taking on 3 by himself. Isawa Ahiro makes his way into another room, where the rest of the group soon follows, all except Kozo and Moto Buta. Buta takes this opportunity to use the Bloodsword to reanimate a dead body and takes it into where everyone else is saying, to their horrified looks, "It's okay, he's with me.", pointing a thumb at the walking corpse. The party quickly dismantles the corpse unsure of what else to say or do.

Needless to say, our group plows through one encounter after another taking each combat on the chin, and the DM having to save the group with healing shugenja, until the final battle at the lighting of the Dragon Globe at the Temple of the Sun Goddess. Which Ahiro takes this opportunity to shake the temple to its foundations with a massive Earthquake spell, and the evil shugenja is cut down with arrows, in the nick of time to avoid the evil plot of the mad shugenja.

It's been a long time since we went through this, that's why its so vague, I apologize for that. The few notable moments are, Kozo's transformation into a Shadowlands corrupted being, using his Taint left, right and center, pretending he's a super hero.

And Moto Buta's reanimation of the dead Scorpion bushi. The party is still unsure of what to do about this. Maho is an executable offense, and Kozo saw him cast the spell, but Kozo is corrupted by the touch of the Shadowlands. What to do?