Jiro, the partial replica of what was once Professor Kido Jiro, is dying. The blackout has consumed almost all his vital energy and he is beginning to lose cohesion, entire pieces of his memory dissipating into the photonic networks without any hope of recovery. As if corrupted by a virus, he can no longer communicate or control the machines, and is now trying to control a new body. He has almost forgotten the player characters, but the shock allowed him to remember his own death and the place where his old body is stored, in a vat in his lab.
He knows enough to remember what a Potential is, and that his destiny cannot be accomplished without a physical body. Since his own is deceased, he cannot possess it anew. Still, he needs its blood so he can inject it into a biodroid vat, in order to transfer a biological marker to it.
By going to the Kido Biological lab, under the Sumitomo Bank, the player characters will discover the abandoned establishment clearly has renovations in progress. If they remember the exit they used in the sewers, they can take it in the other direction in order to arrive directly at the third basement of the Kushu Tower. If they don’t, they must find a way of hacking the retinal scans at the entrance or climbing down the large hole into the hall.
The third level is still just as dark as ever, but the deactivated AI is no longer a cause for concern. The photos and files of Unit 731 are still in place and if the player characters search a bit they’ll find information on the Ghost Programme. Unfortunately, the details they find will say nothing of the deactivation process.
Down in one of the labs, containing several different vats and lit only with pale emergency lighting, a tiny hologram showing a reddish dragon is pulsing in an ill-omened light. It seems to be reaching out to one of the vats containing the body of a fifty-something man: himself.
Jiro will look confused, distant and will have a lot of trouble recognising the player characters. He will recite the sentence heard before the Emperor and explains to the player characters that his destiny awaits, but he is dying. He must incarnate in the AI of a biodroid being designed immediately or he will perish. He will only help to locate the ‘five spirits of electricity’ (the Ika-zuchi-no-kami) on the condition that the player characters help him in this endeavour. For that, they just need to follow his instructions to the letter and performing the physical tasks he is no longer capable of.
Firstly, they must extract his old body from its refrigerated vat and take some blood, which will be used as a genetic template to grow Jiro a new artificial body. During the process the player characters may discover files on Jiro, or he may reveal some of the details of his previous life. As they work to complete their tasks the players will discover the true identity of the mysterious Jiro and his direct link with Unit 731, the Potentials and the Ghost programme. This will leave a bitter taste in their mouths, and they may even wonder if resurrecting him is the right thing to do. After some connections, lengthy manipulations, the activation of several keys and the positioning of a plasma bag filled with the blood of the professor into a vat, Jiro will seem satisfied.
Once this is done he will reveal the exact geographical position of the Ika-zuchi-no-kami, right before injecting himself into the brain of the clone. The red dragon vanishes saying: “Now I will take the time to be reborn.”
Jiro will thus disappear from the lives of the player characters, at least for the time it takes for his new body to grow and develop in the intimacy of the small lab.
Ryugu
“Ernest Hemingway once wrote, ‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.”
– Seven By entering the geographic coordinates furnished by Jiro into any GPS programme in a Pod, the player characters will see an exact point at sea. It is a place not far from where the famous Ryugu island is supposed to appear. Time is of the essence, the five demons are already sailing the Pacific and waiting for the moonless night to activate the Shi-Tenno’s artefacts. But now the player characters know their precise location and have the tools to stop them.
To get to their location, the player characters may rent or steal a boat, unless they use Domino or one of their contacts in Kaijin. They can certainly take with them any remaining allies from the Laura Palmer and the Ruby Ribbon soldiers. This will give them a higher chance of success while facing five invincible creatures. Once again, the Ghost soldiers should make their lives complicated by chasing them through the streets of Shin-Edo.
By the time the player characters leave the harbour, twilight will start to fall and the Wind of the Gods appears to be getting ready to generate the mightiest typhoon in the history of Japan.
The Ika-zuchi-no-kami will indeed be at the place Jiro indicated, five silhouettes clearly visible on the back of a military hovercraft. One will be carrying an object: an ancient vase, reformed from the four parts hidden inside the belly of each Guardian of the Cardinal Points. The Ika-zuchi-no-kami holding the vase seems to be chanting something, eyes turned towards the sky.
The player character’s assault should be thunderous, pitiless and epic, made more frightening by the typhoon roaring in the distance, rocking the vessels. The player characters may attempt a boarding action against the enemy boat, unless they try to reach the evil spirits by diving into the sea. Time is still against the player characters and four of the Ika-zuchi-no-kami do anything to protect the bearer of the Ryujin vase. The only means of defeating them is by wounding them (with a knife, for example) and placing the blood on the blade inside one of the tea boxes. The spirit touched in this way will immediately scream in anger and in pain, and release the body it possesses. The spirit will burn in the air around the body like a fire in the wind and vanish. The possessed victim will fall to the floor, alive but unconscious.
When all the Ika-zuchi-no-kami are beaten, after all their allies have fallen like flies, the player characters may retrieve the vase and break it up again in order to end this infernal project. The wind blows with wrath, and as they watch the giant waves, the player characters may think they were successful in their mission.
Transport
To set up an even more spectacular assault, you can choose not a boat but a Ruby Ribbon helicopter. It will quickly be thrown into the water by the typhoon, but the player characters will have time to swiftly abseil onto the Ika-zuchi-no-kami’s boat. The Gamemaster can make this quite a cinematic action sequence.
Chaos
“Everything that has a beginning has an end…”
– The Oracle, The Matrix But it will be too late. With a titanic rumbling, the waves will seem to plummet, disappearing into the unfathomable depths. It is as if the sea vanishes from under the vessels. The typhoon and the rain will only add to the disarray as the boats eventually capsize, pitching their passengers into the raging ocean.
As they watch helplessly, something monumental will appear out of the sea, beginning with the first peaks of an immense arid island, with red sand. On one side of the island is a Cyclopean temple covered in seaweed, shells and slime. Soon the entire island of Ryugu will emerge into the open air. The player characters will be washed up onto its beach. With a deafening noise and a wash of pure fear, a cataclysmic quake shakes the island. Black shades suddenly surge from the temple in a horrific wave towards Japan with shrieks of rage and vengeance.
Wounded and exhausted, the player characters are nothing but tiny ants stuck on an accursed island watching a huge typhoon descend upon them. The typhoon starts acquiring a reddish tint as it advances towards this piece of land so recently released from under the water.
The end will seem inexorable, inevitable. The temple itself will be far too far to be used for shelter. On the darkest night, in the middle of indescribable chaos, the Children of the Kami will watch the red storm coming to devour them. To annihilate them.
At the moment when the first gusts almost project them into the firmament, a simple phrase will sound again in their heads, like a warning. It is the same words they heard in their vision in front of the Emperor: “Children of the Kami, the time to fight
back has come. When the Red Storm rises and passes through you, you must make a choice: to live or die.
Shapeless lights will appear in the storm, as if waiting for something, a sign… A simple choice: live or die. It is time for the players to make that choice, according to what they wish to do or the Gamemaster’s design for the campaign. You can ask this question individually to each player so that it remains secret, or ask it directly to the gaming table.
To Live
If a player chooses to ‘live’, his character will resist the rage of the typhoon, his feet solidly anchored to the ground. The kami will probe his mind, whirling in diffuse lights around his body before disappearing. No god will ever possess him and he will remain completely human. He will lose consciousness at the end of the deluge and will awaken on the island later. His head will be full of troubling memories but he will still be alive.
If you choose to move on to Kuro Tensei, the player can still play the character, but he will have no supernatural faculties. Otherwise, you can launch the character into a new Kuro campaign, or let him have a more dramatic fate. Thus, maybe he will forget everything about recent events and will wake up in the Sumitomo Bank’s waiting room, where everything started… but no robbery will ever take place.
To Die
If a player chooses to ‘die’, his character will be carried away by the typhoon. The winds will sweep across him and a blinding light will strike him in the face. He will feel an ancestor spirit penetrate his soul, a feeling of power and eternity spreads throughout his muscles, bones and veins. Finally everything will become clear: he is the heir to the powers of a god and everything on this path has driven him inexorably to this fateful instant.
Jiro, Furinkazan, Ao-Andon, the Shi-Tenno… a kami has finally chosen him as the worthy heir to his wisdom, in order to gift him with the capability to fight the dark forces of Yomi-No- Kuni. He has the power to repair the breach made at the time of the Kuro Incident and to strike down the creatures reinforced by the arrival of the island.
After this brief sensation of strength and invulnerability, the eyes of the player character will be covered in a dark veil and he will fall into a void. Is he dead or gifted with a new life? Only time will tell…
We will meet again in Kuro Tensei, where the final secrets will be revealed.