I think we should push on. After all, I do not think the road ahead is very long...
The male murmured.
check to see how close the inn is?
Legend of the Five Rings Play by Post
If Aruzhan can hear it, it's literally right at the end of that path; the only reason you can't see it is that the riverbank drops away quite sharply.
"Definitely riding on." Hekasu eyes the overgrowth, a bad feeling growing in the pit of his stomach.
Hey, sorry I was gone for a couple days. Forgot to give y'all a heads-up that I was out of town. Back now.
“Aruzhan?”
“Hey. Is it me or is it weird the gate post looks ruined? They just had VIPs come through here. Don’t they take pride in this inn?”
it's more a case that the place had a gate at some point a long time ago. There's no knowing why a previous generation would have gotten rid of it, though I suppose in fairness it's not like a traveller's waystation really
needs a heavy-duty gate like the one you'd expect an impressive stone frame like that to support.If the place was gone to rack and ruin, the path and the stone garden wouldn't be in as good a shape as they are; you'd imagine some saplings or grass would start to spread onto them if they weren't cleaned or maintained regularly.
If you want to head on, fair enough. It'll be an overnight ride or you can potentially camp down somewhere on the road - the forest continues south, and it won't be too hard to find or improvise some shelter.
Wait, I'm confused now. Aruzhan can hear people at the Inn, but it's an overnight ride?
Uimi Mura is an overnight ride. Pleasant Mooring Inn is right here, give or take the path down to it
Ah. I meant 'ride on' as in 'ride on to the inn to stay for the night.'
is there anything about the lack of gate kenshin can note? Eg, was it recently broken down or smth?
As noted
, it's been gone for years or even generations. You only noticed there used to be a gate there at all thanks to Aruzhan doing well at the survey check.
my bad, read wrongly
"So ... uh. We moving on or resting at the Inn?" asked the big Ronin
Hekasu has already started through the former gate. "Moving on... to the inn." He flashes a smile over his shoulder to Yoshi.
The path curves gently to the left, dropping down below the edge of the land visible from the Merchant Road. The drop is not - quite - a cliff face, but it would certainly have been too steep for the horses to walk down were it not for a gently sloping ramp of earth winding back and forth to the 'floor' of the riverbank below.
The side of the ramp is stacked and shaped stone, cut in quite sizeable pillars, with smaller stones and timber set between them to hold back the earth of the ramp. The pillars appear quite decorative, despite their scale, with engraved characters showing various proverbs, and water-run-offs through spouts running along the elegant stone wings and beaks of carved birds. The overall construction appears very solid, and could easily have accommodated an oxen-drawn cart - which, given Yasuki Niku's description, might well have been the intent. Certainly it proves more than wide enough for the ronin to ride down two abreast without any feeling of risk, even for the less confident horsemen in the group, and descending the ramp is uneventful.
The area below lives up to its name of 'peaceful mooring'. The River of Gold, on one of its many gentle meanders, has carved out a small, secluded natural harbour in its eastern bank. High walls of grass and bracken separate the floor of the bay from the forest above, and the bay itself is full of flowering plants, whose last few blossoms of summer add a pleasing fragrance to the early evening. Sheltered from the current of the river proper, the water is still, clear and inviting.
The inn itself is a small cluster of four buildings.
One - clearly the inn itself - is a two-story construction that wouldn't look out of place ins scale as a small town hall, or the city residence of a samurai or wealthy merchant. Glazed tiles form the tiered roof, covering timber walls, whilst the lowest floor is solid-looking stone. Whilst there are no windows in the lowest floor, and only one door, you could see as you descended the ramp that like many large houses, it is built in a figure of '8' around a pair of internal courtyards, providing the light and space the interior would otherwise lack.
A second, far smaller building adjoins the back of the first, nestling between it and the scree slope, connected by a short covered cloister maybe ten paces in length. A gentle smoke issues forth from it, wafting the tempting smell of smoked fish Aruzhan caught earlier and which the other three ronin can now smell as well. As they descended the ramp, they catch sight of someone hurrying between the two with a cloth-covered tray of something held in both hands.
The third forms a second side of a 'square' of clear ground with the inn proper, along the water's edge, and looks to be a stable block. There are enough sounds to indicate that at least one or two horses are already in residence.
The final building is a small storage building forming the third side of the square, running from the side of the 'square' right to the water's edge and beyond, stretching out over the bay as a solid-looking jetty, with smart coils of rope curled up waiting for a river-boat to arrive. It is broken up into many separate sections, each with its own large and imposing double doors. A few loose crates are stacked under the shelter of the roof at the end nearest to the foot of the ramp. The splashing sounds Aruzhan heard earlier are coming from the far side of the building.
Welcome to Peaceful Mooring. Generally sizing the place up can be done as you approach by various skill checks - assuming you can't figure out the implications of what you're seeing anyway.
Survey/Commerce to see how the inn is laid out as a business
Survey/Labour to look at the buildings themselves (with a specific extra detail not strictly to do with the construction noticeable on a
)
Theorise/Tactics to look at the layout of the place with a soldier's eye.
We'll call it TN1 for each, but bonus successes will obviously yield more details
rolled survey/labour. Got one opp, one strife
😕
Kenshin has no eye for the building techniques, but does notice that the kigumi joints (the interlocking wooden joints holding up the tiled roof) are ornately carved with an inlaid bird mon. It doesn't look like it has quite the right proportions to be a crane - if anything it looks like the slightly fatter, longer-necked hook-beaked bird Hekasu pointed out at the Seido Hikora shrine.
The carved kigumi are up underneath the roof on the upper floor, so they're not easy to see. Kigumi easily reachable from the ground floor have no such carving - either because the carving was never present, it has been removed, or the whole structural member has been replaced.
Hekasu dismounts, walks the pony over to the stable block, and looks for an attendant to hand the beast off to.
As Hekasu leads Sanko across the courtyard, there is a scurrying noise, a thump and a slightly sodden-sounding scramble.
" Greetings, Honourable Samurai!" announces a voice from the corner of the storehouse building. " And welcome to Pleasant Mooring Bay!"
The speaker proves to be a very young, shaven-headed boy, stood proudly on top of a spare storage crate with his hands on his hips like it was an imperial dais. He is wearing a sturdy-looking tunic, dripping wet from the waist down, but is doing his level best to stand tall and affect a look of unflappable dignity. Unfortunately for him, the overall impression is more one of someone trying not to admit to a mild stomach upset.
After a moment, the urchin's failing attempt at remaining dignified cracks completely, and he grins, hops down and scampers over to Hekasu. He makes a passable attempt at a ridiculously convoluted court-style bow which would be extremely respectful if he actually knew how do it properly, before taking Sanko's reins and gently leading her into the nearest empty enclosure.
"Welcome, Lord Samurai! I am Tamago."
He repeats the process for the other three samurai, before sliding the gate over and dropping a peg through the latch with a degree of satisfaction. Once done, he looks quizzically at Aruzhan, and a degree of confusion and doubt crosses his face.
" Erm,,,You are Samurai, aren't you, Samurai-sama? Only you..er ..." The young boy pauses, nervously, obviously racking his brain to try and come up with a circumspect way to phrase the question. Eventually, failing, he shrugs, gives up and asks the question openly, if nervously, ". ..Your clothes are all odd, your hair's purple, and you have a weird lump of mud on a chain round your neck. You don't look like other Samurai ."
Edited by Magnus Grendel
"Aruzhan-san is not merely a samurai, but a shugenja. She speaks with the spirits of Rokugan and ... mediates between them and the people who do not have her gifts." Yoshi glances at Aruzhan to make sure he's on track. Then...while still mostly affable, his voices firms somewhat as he looks at this young, wet, rapscallion, "It is not entirely appropriate for one who does not speak to the spirits themselves to judge the practices or taboos of those who do."
::Thinking about business.... Water2/Commerce 2. I roll a success, two successes with strife & an option. I'll keep the success and and the option. I spend the option on removing strife as I relax a little at this very fine inn::
Edited by Void Crane"I am not trying to judge, Lord Samurai!" says Tamago, apologetically. "I just wasn't sure. I have never seen anyone who looked that way. For that matter, Lady Aruzhan doesn't even wear...." he stops, looking around at you , "...none of you...wear....clan...mons..." The boy's voice trails off. Yoshi, realising where Tamago's thought process is going, half braces himself for concern or panic before the boy rubs his head, bites his lip for a moment, and his grin returns and - if possible - spreads even wider than it was before.
"You're ronin , aren't you?"
" You really are! I've read all the stories! Warrior pilgrims and elevated servants and wrongly exiled samurai and secret heirs and everything ! Are you on an adventure?"
The building jutting out into the bay is - as you've probably figured out - a warehouse of some kind. Given the separate double doors, it's presumably used for storage both for the inn and for any guests - with each guest important enough to matter being afforded their own section. The fact that there is cargo stacked up under the far end of the warehouse roof suggests it is full to bursting!
There is a space next to the stables where carts could be laid up, but for the moment these are empty. Since Peaceful Mooring is a quay for river trade, and the exchange between rivers and road traffic, it's not impossible that people might arrange to have goods stored here or delivered here to collect later.
The crates you can see have a variety of family mons on them. Some you recognise, some you don't, but the ones you do are from all over south-western Rokugan. Presumably, carried west until they reached the river, whoever has shipped them across the river has collated them here to meet whoever they're for.
You obviously don't know what the crates contain, but they are presumably legal and not dramatically valuable given that they've been stacked in the open without much concern. If they're not, at the very least there are more than enough chop-marks from the Crab, Fox, Sparrow and various other minor clans stamped onto the side to indicate that they've been through customs posts.
The stables certainly indicate the inn could host a pretty large group of high-ranking individuals, as does the fact that the inn boasts a second story, and given that according to Yasuki Niko, relatives of the Crane Ambassador to the Black Crane Estates was put up here, presumably it's fairly luxurious. Certainly it looks clean and well maintained.
The inn doesn't sound packed tonight, but it sounds busy enough.
Yoshi paused a second to share a small smile with Hekasu and Kenshin. “ Yes. And yes. Obviously.”
The big Ronin continued , ”Ronin can mean many things Tamago. In addition to the stories you have apparently read, Ronin can also be the sons and daughters of other Ronin, low ranking members of a daimyo’s court, or even sad bandits who have all but forgotten the tenets of Bushido. Ronin is only one word but the ‘wave men’ come in many different forms.”
”Thank you for seeing to our horses. Now, please explain to me why you soaking wet.”
Edited by Void Crane"Um...I was in the bay, Lord Samurai. There's a trick of skimming stones a monk showed me ...and I'm not very good at it. He could get them all the way across the neck of the bay! He said he learned it with thin bits of metal like coins, and you really need a very flat stone for it to work. All the good, small, flat stones get washed down a few paces from the waterline, so if I thought if I can find some, I have a better chance of getting it to work. I wouldn't go any further than the other end of the jetty, so I can still hear someone coming down the ramp or out of the inn, and I can get to the stables before they do. If I run."
He bows, a bit sheepishly. As he does so he produces a handful of apples as he does so from an inside pocket of his tunic. The tunic chinks a bit with the sound of wet pebbles in the process, and one lands on the square with a gentle thump .
"There's a sack of apples for the horses round the back, too. I brought these for them, so they can have something nice to eat with their feed. I don't think they can eat smoked fish. I think they're just serving food now."
Edited by Magnus Grendel
"Quite an adventure, little Egg. After an evening meal, I would enjoy sharing tales with the present company. Have you heard the one of the lion and the mouse?"
Hekasu begins sharing that fable as he helps feed apples to the horses.
Tamago listens, fascinated by Hekasu's story.
As Wildfire munches on the last apple, an attendant from the inn, dressed in a long dark blue kimono, materialises at the door of the main building, and stops to slip on some outdoor sandals from a rack just hidden out of view. Heading across the square, she bows and invites the ronin to enter.
Call it a TN1 fire/performance check for the story-telling
Hekasu tells the story with gestures, changing his voice for the different roles.
Once he's finished, he thanks the attendant, removes his sandals at the proper room, and enters the inn.
Fire 2, Perform 0:
,
. Keeping both.
Resolve Opp: Doing it flashy.
Resolve success: 1 v TN1; success.