The Sutra of Pale Leaves, The Bridge Maiden, Part One

Carcosa Manifest

We have left Twin Suns Rising in the past, dear reader. Things can only get darker from here. Today, we move onto the second and final book in the Sutra of Pale Leaves campaign for Call of Cthulhu. We’re still in Japan in the ‘80s, but the plans of the Association of Pale Leaves are moving to the next level. For my thoughts on the previous book and its scenarios, click here.

This is the book that attracted me to this campaign in the first place. I’m not too proud to say that I saw the cover on the shelf in my local game store, Replay, and realised I had to have it. It was only later that I discovered how it formed the perfect intersection of some of my own interests, namely Japan, and nameless horrors.

The book starts with a campaign background chapter that is very similar to the one in the first book, but with less detail. I guess this is needed because you’re supposed to be able to run any of the scenarios in the campaign in any order or even to run them as independent adventures. So you need that info in both books. Anyway, if you want more on the contents of that, check this post out.

Then we move swiftly on to the first of four scenarios in the book. As usual: SPOILER WARNINGS! Don’t read past this point if you want to be a player in this scenario or campaign.

The Bridge Maiden, Part One

This is a short scenario compared to the others I’ve looked at in this campaign so far, only 26 pages long. However, it is only part one of a two-parter. Part Two is the third scenario in this book and, ostensibly takes place about a year after the events of this one.

The intro to Part One tells us this is a suitable place for inexperienced investigators to begin their adventures with the Sutra of Pale Leaves, which is interesting. I have repeatedly come back to the fact that you are encouraged to run these scenarios in any order, despite the chronology of events laid out in the campaign background chapters. You can also skip scenarios you don’t want to include. And all of that is fair enough. Any of them would work well stand-alone. But, I think you would be missing out if you skipped ahead to this point.

Beginnings

Once again, we’re given a number of hooks to get our investigators involved; no fewer than six hooks, in fact. All of them involve the PCs hearing about the disappearance of a man named Umezono Minoru. In some instances, this will come from one of their confidants and NPCs from other adventures such as Nagatsuki Kaede of Fanfic fame. In others, they will be approached directly by his sister, Umezono Kaho. She thinks he has gotten in trouble with the yakuza since he’s got bad habits and money troubles. Honestly, everything we learn about this guy during the course of the scenario would lead you to think he’s a bit of an asshole and deserves everything he gets. This is one of the reasons that there is a reward for finding him, I think. No one wants him found because they love him. Even his sister only does so out of some sort of obligation to their parents, it seems. The scenario even suggests one or more of the Investigators might have known the Umezonos when they were younger, just so they have some extra insight into the personalities of the two and more of a reason to help them out.

What’s interesting about the Umezono family is that they are proud to be related to one of Japan’s foremost historical warrior women, Tomoe Gozen. The APL is convinced that she was the Hashihime, or Bridge Maiden. She was integral to a ritual used in the past to summon the Prince of Pale Leaves to Kyoto during a time of war. Although the ritual failed due to the fighting, the APL knows that, if they could just find a likely candidate to fulfil the role, they could still make it work. Enter Kaho and Minoru. The APL used an artefact, the Mandala of the Divine Eye to search the minds and memories of passersby in Tokyo, searching for any sign of a suitable host. In this way, they discover the debt-ridden and beleaguered Minoru, and through him, his sister, Kaho. They determine that she would be perfect, but, in the meantime, due to his exposure to the Mandala, Minoru gives himself up to the Prince, only to be transformed into a subterranean monster of a man, a tentacled mockery of his former self. And, he, dear reader, is the subject of this scenario.

A Model Mystery

The whole scenario has a theme of fashion and modelling to it. Kaho is a small-scale fashion designer garnering some interest in Tokyo and her brother runs a modelling agency in his spare time. But Minoru is a dirtbag, as has been stated. His inappropriate behaviour has caused most of his models to take off and his receptionist to spend all her time looking for new jobs. There is a parallel to be drawn between the way the fashion industry used women for its own ends and the use of Tomoe Gozen and, in the future, Kaho herself, for nefarious purposes.

Some of the locations the investigation takes the PCs are related to the industry. The main one is Minoru’s model-dispatch office, where they will encounter the job-hunting receptionist. She will just confirm what they probably already know: that he is an asshole, a womaniser and is in debt to the yakuza.

Of course, this might lead them to talk to their local yakuza businessmen, and from there, we start to see a seedier side to “modelling” in Tokyo for young women. Its not overt, to be honest, but in the “Somewhere with Payphones” section, they will find the spot where the mandala had been placed by the APL, pasted to a wall by a line of phones, somewhere public and busy like Shinjuku Station. On the walls around that spot are pinned flyers and little cards for illegal brothels and entertainments. The mandala itself has been removed but it has left a hole, a spatial anomaly of sorts known as the Eye Socket, which makes the witness feel like they are being pulled into darkness where the Prince of Pale Leaves waits. This feels appropriate to the themes. It portrays the seedier, darker side of the industry and its discovery may eventually lead them to Minoru, formerly a monster of a man who abused women and now a true monster who attacks them.

The film industry gets a look in here too. A well-known documentary film-maker has become obsessed with filming the place where the mandala once spied on the city. He and his staff have all been exposed to the sutra in this way, though not to the extent that Minoru has. The staff, convinced the film they made is possessed of some unspeakable evil try to burn down their production offices. The investigators will need to prevent this if they want to see what they filmed. Of course, watching the film will endanger their sanity because this is Call of Cthulhu.

Seedy Underworld

Our investigators will follow some more leads until they find Minoru’s hiding place in an old culvert beneath the city, where once a canal flowed. He can’t stand the light anymore. His skin has gone pale and his eyes only work in the shadows now. He looks terrible and his arms are long and snaking tentacles. In their exploration of this place, they will discover his little shrine of objects taken from the various women he’s attacked since his monstrous transformation. That’s when he will attack them. There is not going to be a non-violent end to this one. The investigators can defend themselves, they can die or they can run. Those are the three potential endings we get here. Afterwards, if they don’t defeat Minoru, he and all his creepy mementoes will get washed out of the culvert and into the river after a big storm, putting an end to him. But he’s not the only one gone, when the investigators go looking for their reward or just to tell Kaho about her brother, she will be missing. And this is what leads to the Bridge Maiden Part 2.

Conclusion

Upon my first reading of this scenario, I was underwhelmed. I thought the monster was not particularly scary, the plot was thin and I thought we should be focusing more on the Bridge Maiden herself. It was only while writing this post that I began to see how well the themes are represented in this scenario and how satisfying it might prove to be to put an end to Minoru. If the investigation progresses in the way the scenario wants it to, it should feel like a spiral from the relatively normal world of fashion and modelling, down to the darker side, the street-level prostitution controlled by gangsters and the violence that’s part of that life for many women.

It makes me interested to see what they pull out of the bag for part 2. I should get to that in a couple of weeks, dear reader. Next time, though, we are entering the computerised world of Wonderland.