Session 7. (22/12/99)

With Koei completely engrossed in creating magical items to help defeat the Death Squad, the three Bushi, Kimori (Anthony Hummerston), Mariko (Paul Burton) and Sugiyama (Dave Weaver) could concentrate on teaching at their various schools. At the School of the Blade, Kimori managed to recruit five new teachers during weeks 24 and 25. However, time was obviously weighing heavily on their hands, so one day they got together and decided to answer a request for help which appeared on posters around Matsuyama.

The request came from a merchant who was offering a reward for anyone who could save his daughter, Akumi. She went missing two years ago after one of many outings to the river. When the three adventurers met the merchant this was all the information he had, but once out of his earshot they learned from Akumi's maid that she had been going down to the river to meet her lover, and one day she never returned. The maid had never met the lover and didn't know his name. Privately the Bushi had suspicions that the lover was not human ("Did she come back with love bites?" ad libbed Tony "- Yes, two big deep ones!" replied Dave, unaware of the accidental pun because he hadn't read the rest of the script at this point^*).

The three Bushi then went down to the river, some distance from the city, to try to pick up the two year old trail (what did they expect, a young man waiting for the girl with a bunch of flowers?!!). They found nothing on the river banks, and started searching the river itself. Kimori noticed a dark shadow in the river bank about three feet below the surface and called the others' attentions to it. Just then a voice just behind him growled "What're you doing?" He spun round to find a Kappa sitting on the river bank (how everyone missed him is incredible), holding a bunch of wild cucumber flowers. Kimori started to ask him questions about the missing girl, but the Kappa just replied "Get lost or get eaten!" and dived into the river and disappeared. The adventurers bravely retired to watch from a distance and stayed all afternoon. Around dusk a girl appeared, carrying some food. When she got to the point where the Kappa had been she jumped into the water and swam down. She didn't reappear. The adventurers, ever the ones to leap into action, sent Kimori back to the city for camping gear and watched the river all night to see what would happen.

By dawn nothing had happened, so Mariko and Sugiyama went to investigate. With Kimori standing guard, they dived down towards the shadow in the river bed, which turned out to be a cave entrance. They swam along a passage and up into a dry, smoky cave. The girl, Akumi, looked up in surprise, then told the intruders to go away. Mariko told her she had come from her father, but this made her angry. She said that she hated her father, he only wanted to have her dragged home and her lover killed. At this point Sugiyama noticed the Kappa at the back of the cave, hidden by a Concealing Cloak spell. The Kappa now advanced threateningly on Sugiyama and told him to leave. Sugiyama stood his ground and both drew their weapons, Sugiyama his wakizashi, the Kappa a trident. Akumi screamed and Mariko appealed to the Kappa, but only succeeded in further enraging him. Meanwhile on the surface, Kimori watched the fish jumping and worried at the fact that his companions had been underwater for several minutes. As he paced up and down he noticed that the ground sounded hollow. He moved away quickly, then noticed that smoke was seeping out of the ground. What he didn't notice was that what he thought was fish jumping was in fact a group of five more Kappas swimming into the cave. When they emerged, Oshin (Akumi's lover) told them to keep Sugiyama at bay, while he and Akumi negotiated with Mariko. They agreed not to kill her if she would go back to Akumi's father and convince him his daughter was dead. Mariko agreed, and took one of Akumi's rings to help with the story. Thus the adventurers escaped and got their reward after (eventually) convincing the merchant. Was this the end of the story, or would it return like too many wild cucumbers?

^* Deep Ones are humanoid creatures that inhabit water in the Call of Cthulhu RPG.

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