Overarching events throughout the entire Shards of Empire canon
A group of samurai called together by Shosuro Jūko arrive from their travels in Rindō. Alongside Bayushi Chūyō, Sheshen (a.k.a. Aki), and Togashi Daigo, the magistrate receives an unexpected guest in the form of Seppun Raehua from the Imperial Astrologers. Together, they claim rooms in Moonlit Rest with plans to meet the magistrate before retiring.
Led by Yogo Kōichi, the samurai travel to an introduction with Shosuro Jūko at the Magistrate's Manor. On the way there, they encounter Horiuchi Makena, whose talkative jubilance immediately puts the party ill at ease. Inside, Koichi remarks that a suit of armor has been stolen from a decorative pedestal on the manor's first floor. Jūko is obviously displeased to have an Imperial outranking her at the meeting, but she maintains a reserved disposition throughout the meeting. The samurai are there to investigate a mysterious disappearance of all the residents at a nearby village called Tamura. What few local peasants who approached the place have fled from what they describe as a "white ghost" looming over the settlement. Raehua reads a divination of ill portent from these events, with a supernatural flair that all present recognize but Jūko will not acknowledge. After the meeting, most samurai return to their lodgings and meditate. Aki and Daigo instead interview a peasant who reiterates the sight of a great white figure looming over Tamura, as well as the dire position in which this loss of a rice farming village leaves Rindō.
In the morning, Yogo Kōichi guides the investigation team to the edge of town. A coach is readied there to take them to Tamura, driven by Seppun Raehua's capable retainer, Nobuhara. They also meet Meishozo Sasara, another samurai called by the magistrate. Sasara claims to be from a vassal family of the Kuni, responsible for mixing the abjurative makeups their shugenja wear when battling against creatures of the Shadowlands. Partway to Tamura, the coach is waylaid by a group of clumsy bandits. Between the team's martial prowess and a powerful wind spell conjured by Bayushi Chūyō, these would-be ambushers are easily dispatched. Raehua accosts their bleeding leader. She learns the group was hired by a samurai in an antlered helmet, which Aki realizes matches the armor missing from the Magistrate's Manor. Under the weight of Raehua's imperial authority, the bandit leader agrees to police these lands rather than plunder them.
The samurai investigators arrive at Tamura close to noon. Here, they find no signs of human life. The great "white ghost" described by peasants turns out to be an enormous white magnolia tree towering over the village. What's more, they discover a line cut into the dirt as if by a blade, encircling the entire town. Through communion with the spirits, Bayushi Chūyō determines a kami of great power has gone berserk, and its incredible power is trapped within this barrier. Seppun Raehua divines that they are in no danger, however, so the group cautiously enters. Upon passing through the barrier, all of the pent-up spiritual power is dispersed, like air from a punctured balloon, and the great tree withers and dies before their eyes. Spirits of the earth describe to Raehua an antlered samurai with corruption in their veins visiting the village when these strange events began. Air spirits likewise whisper to Chūyō, thanking her for freeing the kami of the tree from its misery. She reasons that some great sacrifice was performed here to rapidly and violently increase the tree kami's power, which was then held by the barrier for some unknown purpose. Aki has been investigating the lumpy shapes beneath a blanket of magnolia blossoms on the ground, finding them to be the corpses of people who calmly laid down and died wherever they happened to be. They, then, must be the sacrifice. As Togashi Daigo circumscribes the village looking for any other threats, Meishozo Sasara appears strangely obsessed with the spiritual power held in the blossoms. She believes she could make extraordinarily powerful occult compounds from them. At Raehua's command, however, she takes merely a few blossoms with her. Chūyō briefly seduces a bird on the tree's branches, but it offers little useful information. So convinced they've pieced together the events of Tamura, the party returns to Rindō without further event. Yogo Kōichi meets them at the edge of town. He is to carry a short report to the magistrate, while they'll fill her in on the details in the morning.
In the morning, the samurai investigators return to the Magistrate's Manor to speak again with Shosuro Jūko. It seems she's already been mostly informed by Kōichi and Sasara, but the group discusses the events at Tamrua between themselves as well. Seppun Raehua is imperiously enraged at what she sees as a gross mismanagement of Scorpion lands. Jūko can only stonily respond that she has secret duties which prevented her from investigating the matter personally. Of more concern is that the culprit is still active and could target any other tree with a kami of sufficient strength, resulting in more loss of life. A debate ensues when Jūko claims one such tree exists in Rindō but will not give further details, as it relates to a sacred Scorpion secret. The investigators attempt to sway her from this path, while Yogo Kōichi unexpectedly takes the magistrate's side. Eventually, Jūko cracks. She is willing to sacrifice the secret (and by extension herself) to save the people of her town. Sullenly, the magistrate agrees to guide the samurai investigators to the site of this mythological tree where Scorpions imprison their betrayers' souls.
The investigators follow Shosuro Jūko and Yogo Kōichi from the Magistrate's Manor and into the forests surrounding Rindō. On the way, they spot Horiuchi Makena in the distance, striking at the ground with a hoe. The ground they're marring looks suspiciously like the same barrier line drawn around Tamura. This was suspicious, but Jūko argued against splitting the group, and so Kōichi was instead dispatched to investigate. Upon arriving at a hidden clearing containing a gnarled, blood-leaved tree, the group found a samurai swathed in a thick cloak and wearing an antlered helm. Raehua challenged the villain, only to be told it was too late as they cut their own hand and began the ritual. This was enough for Aki and Togashi Daigo to identify the mysterious samurai as Meishozo Sasara. Fortunately, through some outside interference, the ritual failed. In fury, Sasara attempted to raise a trio of undead to fight the interlopers, but Raehua's mastery of cleansing jade preempted such a move. A desparate battle ensued, with the skeletons finally bursting from the ground and nearly killing Daigo and Chūyō with their rusted armaments. Sasara was fortunately stymied from using her Maho by Raehua's abjurations, else events might have gone differently. In the chaos, Jūko was stolen into the trees and murdered by, as Chūyō magically determined, Kōichi himself. When Aki finally knocked Sasara out and the skeletons crumbled, kami of the earth urgently informed Raehua that the tainted must be killed. With a whip of her bladed fan, Raehua beheaded Sasara, just in time to stop her transformation into something mutated by the taint of Fu Leng. At this point, unfittingly jolly, Horiuchi Makena joined them. The Unicorn gardener explained they'd found the magic circle outside town and had marred it with their hoe, thinking it bad news. They went on to explain, with startling expertise, that Sasara had almost transformed into a Bloodspeaker, warped by Fu Leng. It was likely that the artisan's obsession with perfecting abjurative makeup had given the Shadowlands taint a foothold, promoting ever greater atrocities in the name of developing spiritually powerful ingredients. As for Kōichi, he was remorseless about his murder of Jūko. She had spilled a secret of the Scorpion, and thus his actions were an expression of honor and justice which would make him a true samurai. Raehua disagreed. She allowed Kōichi to sacrifice Jūko's spirit to the tree, but then took him into custody to face justice at the Imperial Court. Indeed, all of the Scorpion Clan deserved inquisition for this series of events, or so she claimed. In the meantime, Horiuchi Makena would take Jūko's place as steward of Rindō.
