The Way of Shadow: Death at Ichime Castle

A Review

The Way of Shadow, translated by Jennifer Wick, published in 1999 contains four adventures centering around the Lying Darkness, an adversary of cosmic proportions intent on unmaking the universe. I’m in the midst of running them and will post a review of each adventure and tweaks that I believe improve them. As I have never seen a serious review online.

Spoilers. Obviously.

An Overall Assessment of the Text

The book continues the wonderful tradition of early L5R books being presented as diegetic texts in addition to reference books. In this case, it takes the form of Kitsuki Kaagi’s journal, which chronicles his own experiencing of each of the four adventures.

On the surface, this is fantastic. Not only does the GM see how the adventure might unfold, but much of the text can be used verbatim in their game. However, it does make the book feel like it’s adventures adapted from short stories, rather than the reverse.

For example, in the first adventure, the murderer has no clear motive. This is even called out by one of the characters in the story, but is dismissed as irrelevant by the protagonist. PCs like motive, and they don’t like loose ends. It helps them feel sure of their decisions. Missing adventure pieces pepper the text. None of them are catastrophic, but resolving them does make for a stronger adventure.

The adventures, perhaps due to them being turned into short stories about a Kitsuki investigator and his servant, feel oriented towards parties with a Kitsuki and a servant with a particular set of skills. Meaning, the characters in the story get information via means that are not available to your typical party. For example, using chemistry to determine the nature of a substance relevant to the investigation, or performing an autopsy.

The book also contains lore and rules for minions of the Lying Darkness. Much of this is reproduced in later editions, but I love reading texts from before the lore had fully codified.

Death at Ichime Castle

The first adventure brings the PCs to Ichime castle, a small fortification in Lion lands. The discovery of a strange mark on the recently deceased lord of the castle has brought rumors of a family curse out of the shadows and people are openly speculating as to whether or not the heir apparent should stand aside. It’s up to the PCs to solve the murder that has already happened and prevent the one that is, unbeknownst to them, about to occur.

Overall, I enjoyed running the adventure. It’s compact geographically and there aren’t too many NPCs. All the NPCs felt different and my players enjoyed interacting with them. The question of who committed the murder is revealed to the players, and they must figure out that a larger plot exists and thwart it. As mentioned, the journal entries helped a lot with descriptions and important dialog, which was a big help when it came to prep.

There’s plenty of places for the PCs to find information. The castle has a library, the various NPCs are vested in getting an answer, truthful or not, and if you’re desperate, you can have the old general help out more.

My players explored a number of different theories. At one point, one player was convinced Toshiin was the villain while another was sure it was Nari. It was even suggested, as a joke, that the murderer was framing Amai by expertly poisoning her hand without her realizing it. That said, I had to help them to get across the finish line, for reasons I’ll detail below.

The blowgun felt a little out of place. My players didn’t search that room, so they never found it. But it feels like setup that would pay off later in the story, but Hiroru shows up as the old man, then just disappears.

Thinking about it now, the whole text feels like it was meant to be a novel where Kaagi and Hiroru eventually team up, but the project got changed into adventures and a sourcebook.

That said, there are a number of issues.

Amai doesn’t have a clear motive. In the journal, Kaagi dismisses this as unimportant, but something a little more concrete would’ve helped my PCs realize there was more afoot than just her accidentally killing Maouri and then herself. To fix this, I added something about Sokoi being threatened by by Shosuro Geru.

Similarly, there isn’t a lot to point to a motive for convincing Amai to kill Maouri. While my PCs figured out that someone got Amai to kill Maouri and herself, they didn’t then assume the family curse was to get Hakenka disposed. So Sokoi could be put on the throne. So he could be manipulated by Shosuro Geru. To unspecified ends.

I was okay with that. It’s more important that the PCs realize there is more going on and that someone might kill Hakenka in short order. His death would be disappointing to most groups; they’d feel like they’d failed the adventure.

To help my PCs realize there was another murder happening, Akodo Tomaru asked one of them to read his tea leaves, which told them that Hakenka was in imminent danger.

The adventure needs an indicator that there’s more to the story than just the first murder. This is particularly true once you learn that Geru hired Toshiin almost a decade ago. That’s quite a long time to be planning to usurp a minor lord. Even if this is some inscrutable plan by the Lying Darkness, someone in the chain of command would still need a justification for committing Geru to infiltrating the castle for 10 years.

The final issue I had was that the story assumes that Geru will escape and that Matsu Hiroru will kill him. That’s not very exciting for the PCs, and there was no contingency for the players capturing or killing Geru, nor for them totally missing the final murder.

I placed this adventure within a larger arc, so having the PCs capture Geru ended up being helpful. He was able to provide them with information that kept them moving in the correct direction, and eventually to The Haunting of Hida Dasan.

Final Thoughts

The adventure feels 80%. It’s a strong 80%, but unless your PCs are especially devious and don’t care about characters’ motives, you’re going to have to put some work in to finish it. It’s worth it though.