Nanking, 1937.
Amidst a grand guignol of violence and pillaging, Captain Hojo sat on a heap of loot taller than a man, a fat bladed dao with a jeweled hilt laid across his knees. Beneath him: antique furniture, gold and silver, wine and rare spirits. There was a Mercedes in there somewhere, half buried under a massive bolt of silk. A pair of kempeitai goons came in with a crate of pure morphine and left it at the base of the pile.
The Captain leaned forward and grinned at a trio of Imperial Japanese Army privates.
The Captain leaned forward and grinned at a trio of Imperial Japanese Army privates.
- Katoki the gambler, in need of money
- Suzuki the addict, looking for his next fix
- Takeo the glutton, always hungry
Anything else you find in the temple is yours, you can keep it. I’ll keep the others out so you’ll have the place to yourself.
Go!”
To refuse the Captain would be unwise.
Without wasting time on preamble, the three Privates made haste for the iron gates of the Temple of the Crying Buddha.
The Privates had at least a passing familiarity with the Buddhist religion. They knew that the "Crying Buddha" was a sort of esoteric term for Guanyin, Buddha of compassion, venerated in Japan much the same as in China. The layout of the temple was likewise familiar enough. There was a pond with a little teahouse on an island with a crooked bridge, a dormitory against the Western wall, a rock garden, a ginseng screen in the Northwest corner, and the actual temple itself.
The group began their exploration at the tea house. There was nothing inside the hut, save a pair of benches and a huge copper tea kettle with an eight armed image of Guen Yin on the side. Suzuki noticed the arms on the statue moved like the hands of the clock. He played with it for a bit before giving up, if there was some combination that did something it would take too long to brute force. The kettle was empty and there was nothing else to loot.
The temple had been stripped of its furnishings. The image of the Buddha was missing, but the outline of her many arms was visible on the wall against which it had lain for so many years. The Privates searched the place and came up with a few trinkets the departing priests missed:
- Loose prayer beads made of pearl, silver, red coral and other precious materials.
- An amber knob from a Quing dynasty Mandarin cap with a fly crystalized inside.
- A large fire opal, cut in the shape of an orange for use in votive offerings.
- A black and white photograph of a naked man with a woman whose head was a hypodermic needle
The Privates went up to the second floor and out onto the roof. They noticed a modern HVAC unit behind one of the decorative turrets, behind which was a vent leading down through one of the support pillars and into the ground beneath the temple. The shaft was wide enough to climb through, and when they removed the grate the Privates could see silver light shimmering at the bottom. They decided to find something they could use to climb down. The dormitory was the obvious place to look for a rope.
The dormitory had a kitchen, a prayer room, and a couple sleeping areas. The Privates could still smell residues of tobacco, alcohol, opium, and roasted meat. The place had electric lights, which came as a surprise. There weren't any power lines leading to the temple. Either there was an underground cable somewhere, or a generator on the premises supplying power. The Privates were concerned there might be an underground bunker on the property, which would explain the air vent they found on the roof.
A search of the dormitory found more trinkets the temple's occupants missed.
- Several thousand dollars in silver Chinese yuan, hyperinflated Guomindang fabi, German marks, and American treasury certificates.
- Several sacks of cereal grains.
- A couple drawers of spices, both powdered and dried leaves/roots.
- An elephant ivory opium pipe with enough accumulated resin in the bowl for a single hit.
- A Qing era erotic miniature painting of a man with a woman whose head is an acupuncture needle. She penetrates him as he penetrates her.
- A half full bottle of kaoliang sorghum liquor.
Private Suzuki's face lit up. Then the opium in the pipe lit up, because he smoked it. Then his face lit up again, taking on the lividity typical of opium smokers. The other two negotiated for a bigger share of the loot, if he was going to smoke up their profits.
The gang decided to check out the rest of the surface temple before climbing down the ventilation shaft on the roof. The ginseng garden was trashed, the wooden shade pulled down and the plants exposed to direct sunlight. The Privates probed the earth in search of buried loot but didn't find anything. The rock garden was similarly bereft of anything interesting, no hatches buried under the sand.
On the roof, Takeo went down the vent shaft first, using a rope from the dormitory's storage closet. The shaft went about forty feet down and ended in a glass box, inside a strange chamber. The silver light came from a shimmering liquid that poured from the burning, blood red skull of a Buddha statue in the center of the octagonal room. The silver slime formed a little canal around the statue, crossed by decorative footbridges. The walls of the room were lined with cabinets, work tables, and alchemical equipment.
Takeo smashed the glass and stepped out into the room. The other Privates descended the rope. Suzuki searched the cabinets for the jade cup (and any other valuables) while Takeo and Katoki opened the iron door in the South of the chamber and entered the unlit chamber to the South. They could see other doors leading further into the underground temple, but the light from the burning skull on the statue through the door wasn't bright enough to read by. Something went crunch under Katoki's boot: a red balloon lantern, the type that floated up in the air when you lit the tiny candle inside.
Suzuki found a bunch of stuff in the cabinets:
- A mortar and pestle of white quartz, with a carven image of an old guy on the exterior of the bowl.
- Tablets of a silvery white metal in a vacuum sealed container.
- A jar of “dragon bone” powder made from fossils.
- A glass jar of foamy liquid with a warning label in big red characters.
- A sandalwood box containing a couple hits of cold food powder, a poisonous psychoactive drug made from crushed minerals.
- A set of metal discs with holes through the center, inscribed with tiny illustrations or pictograms in a language the Privates couldn't read.
For a moment, he was gripped by nausea and an intense fear, the type that normally indicated a bout of amphetamine psychosis or a bad trip. He leaned against a cabinet until it passed. It occurred to him that he was inhaling a LOT of mercury vapor from the channels, and ran out of the room to join his colleagues in the dark chamber to the South.
By Ben Huber
The team pulled on their gas masks to protect against inhaling more dangerous chemicals. Takeo lit one of the lanterns in the dark antechamber. Instead of floating up to the ceiling, it hovered slightly above head level, illuminating the room. And rather than floating in place, it followed Takeo around as he explored. This freaked him out, and he smashed the lantern to pieces. The others weren't happy with this, but were interrupted when a hatch in the roof of the antechamber slid open a crack, illuminating a flight of stairs going down into the dark room. The Privates grabbed cover and pointed their weapons at the hatch.
A grenade came bouncing down the stairs.
Suzuki got out of the way. Katoki was injured by the blast. Takeo was pulverized and instantly killed. A big, pissed off Mongol in a KMT uniform and beizi overcoat striped with the Five Races flag leaped down the stairs, brandishing a huge curved dao and shouting racial slurs at the Japanese invaders. She laid into Katoki with the sword, dealing him a nasty wound before Suzuki distracted her by shooting her in the back, putting a 6.5mm Arisaka round right between her shoulder blades. She turned and Katoki shot her in the back of the head with his Mauser, flipping her stahlhelm off as the 7.62 Tokarev round ricocheted off her skull. Clearly this was no ordinary warrior.
Suzuki didn't have time to bolt his rifle before the big lady was on top of him. He held her off with his bayonet, jabbing her right at heart level. She laughed and snatched the blade off the muzzle of the gun, unharmed. She grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him off the ground. Realizing that bullets weren't going to cut it, Suzuki pulled the box of cold food powder from his bag and tossed a pinch in her face. She inhaled the dose of the toxic drug and tossed him through the open door into the alchemy room. He thankfully missed the river of mercury and hit a glass cabinet on the other side. The angry Warrior coughed and choked. Katoki dropped a grenade at her feet and ran past her into the mercury room.
Suzuki climbed the rope up the fume hood as fast as he could. Katoki followed close behind, barely escaping the grasping hands of the "invincible" Nationalist soldier. The grenade had fucked up her uniform but hadn't hurt her at all. The drug had a more obvious effect - her pupils were dilated and she reached right past Katoki to "strangle" one of the metal supports for the damaged fume hood. As they climbed, the Privates could hear her shouting and smashing furniture below. When they reached the roof, they dropped another grenade down the event, just in case it would help.
Outside, Private Mori was supposed to be guarding the gate against (further) looters. He heard gunshots and grenade explosions from somewhere inside the temple complex, and went inside to see what was happening. He spotted Katoki and Suzuki on the roof, and went up to join them. The pair explained that the place was still infested with Chinese soldiers, who had just killed one of their comrades. The gang went into the dormitory to grab a normal (non magickal) lantern, then into the tea house. Sure enough, the tea kettle and the hearth beneath had lifted up to reveal a stone staircase, leading down into the antechamber where Takeo lay dead. Suzuki noted that the arms of the Guanyin effigy on the vessel were arranged in the same pattern as the ones on the outline where the statue used to be in the temple.
The Privates went back into the underground chamber, weapons at the ready. They didn't hear the invincible warrior raging and breaking things. Private Suzuki rushed forward to close the iron door to the alchemy room. In the flickering light of the Buddha statue's cinnabar skull, he noticed a body sized silvery hump in the river of quicksilver flowing from the statue. The sword wielding goon had fallen into the channel while tripping on cold food powder and presumably died of intense mercury poisoning. He shut the door before she could get up and prove him wrong.
In the light of the nonmagickal lantern, the Privates noticed a couple things about the room they missed earlier. Like the corpse of a Japanese officer pinned to the wall ten feet up by a sword through his belly. It was an obvious mirror punishement for what Japanese soldiers had spent the last year doing to Chinese people, and an unsubtle caricature of ritual self disembowelment. The Privates got the dead guy down and went through his personal effects for clues. They found a Nambu 8mm handgun, some ginger candies, a zippo lighter probably taken from a Western shop, papers identifying the dead man as Lieutenant Tokugawa, and a scrap of paper with a cipher on it. Mori was able to decode it:
BROTHERHOOD LEAVING
GET CUP BEFORE HOJO
The dead man was working for the competition, whoever that was. The Privates also took the sword off (or rather, out of) the dead man: a shin gunto new model army sword. Though not a work of art like a traditional sword, the factory made blade was ironically more durable than the genuine article, made with modern heat treated steel rather than iron sand and charcoal.
The lamp also let the privates read the characters scribed on the doors. Though the Japanese ideographic script diverged from Chinese 1,500 years ago, the library of pictograms was similar enough that the Privates could basically understand what each door said.
- West was DIVINATION
- North was ALCHEMY
- East was LAKE WINE TREE MEAT
The door to the East sounded like the most likely place for a drinking cup, but it was locked. The Privates went West in search of the key.
The room to the West was long and dark, lit dimly by a blue mist in the air. There was some furniture at the far end. Weapon at the ready, Katoki covered Mori and Suzuki as they crossed the chamber.
They realized fast that the North and South walls of the long corridor were mirrors, which reflected them infinitely. They continued down the hall, stopping only when they saw an enormous shadow pass behind them in the mirror. They spun around but saw nothing - Katoki hadn't even noticed. The Privates hustled a little faster, and the thing in the mirror swam by them again: an enormous carp, which existed only in the mirror, circling their reflections.
By Eric He
Suzuki narrowly avoided his reflection being bitten by the big fish, dodging at the last second. The pair ran for the end of the room, passing out of line of sight of the mirrors before the carp could get them. At the end of the chamber was a table made of interlocking metal discs, with a compass in the center pointing South. The discs were attached to a system of gears under the table, mated to a big hand crank and a set of levers and dials. The entire system was locked in place by an iron spike driven through the table, preventing the discs from turning.
While Suzuki fussed with the desk, Mori examined the other furniture around the table. More mirrors, most of them broken but one still intact. Instead of displaying his reflection, or a giant fish, the mirror showed a beautiful woman, totally naked. She pressed herself against the glass excitedly, and motioned Mori to smash the glass. Suzuki found an iron key under the table around the same time Mori broke the glass, and the woman rushed forward to embrace him. She didn't pierce him with needles or leech his life energy, it was more like that scene from Ghostbusters where Dan Aykroyd bangs a ghost. Thus distracted, Mori didn't see the giant orangutan come through the broken mirror, clad in a suit of shining four mirror armor. The beast ignored the fornicating Mori and went straight for Suzuki, who fled back across the room.
Suzuki stayed out of the angry gigantopithecus' grasp. Katoki fired and missed, then pushed the iron door open to make way for Suzuki's escape. The pair got through and slammed the door shut before the beast could catch up. It slammed into the door, hooting in anger. It stomped around, the mail liner of its armor jingling. It bellowed again and slammed against the floor. There was a sound like glass breaking. Then silence.
The ghost woman kissed Mori on the forehead and disappeared into a cloud of blue mist after he finished. The college dropout lay there for a second, cleaned himself up, and surveyed the scene. His allies were gone. He hadn't seen or noticed the giant ape, but the big wall mirror on the South side of the corridor was now smashed and a blueish mist was pouring into the room slowly. He went back across the mirror hallway toward the iron door that led back to the antechamber. The giant carp swam out of the hole in the mirror and chased him the rest of the way. He barely made it through the iron door, slamming it behind him.
The ghost woman kissed Mori on the forehead and disappeared into a cloud of blue mist after he finished. The college dropout lay there for a second, cleaned himself up, and surveyed the scene. His allies were gone. He hadn't seen or noticed the giant ape, but the big wall mirror on the South side of the corridor was now smashed and a blueish mist was pouring into the room slowly. He went back across the mirror hallway toward the iron door that led back to the antechamber. The giant carp swam out of the hole in the mirror and chased him the rest of the way. He barely made it through the iron door, slamming it behind him.
They were all alive, and they had the key to the final chamber. Suzuki took a pull of kaoliang, stuffed the key in the lock and opened the door.
The Privates tested the water with their bayonets to see if a creature would jump out at them. A creature didn't jump out at them, and they took a sip. It was delicious, fruity and yeasty and earthy. They said a quick prayer for Takeo, who died just outside a room that would have made his dreams come true, and went to fuck with the wine fountain. The fountain was shaped like a tree, with spouts shaped like snakes. The spouts were controlled by foot pedals shaped like lions with outstretched paws, for hands free filling. Besides red wine, it dispensed German beer, rice wine, and four varieties of baijiu. The Privates filled their canteens with booze.
They were interrupted by an old Chinese man sitting at a low table behind the fountain, who they hadn't noticed when they came in. He was bald, bearded, muscular and fat, and he shouted a few racial slurs before inviting the Japanese soldiers to join him for a drink. The Privates were especially interested in the jade cup he was drinking out of, which was shaped like a dragon skull. They sat down and he poured them a generous portion of spirits, along with a rack of ribs yanked off one of the dangling bundles. In spite of his prejudice against "yellow dwarves" from the Land of the Rising Sun, the drunken master Hsin Yao was impressed that the Privates had made it this far. He fell over laughing when he heard how they defeated Cixi - the Avatar of the Warrior who couldn't be damaged by anyone who opposed the Three Principles of the People. He was still confident he could easily kill them.
The Privates were worried that this guy was so confident. They hadn't had good luck challenging the last defender of the temple in direct combat. Katoki challenged Hsin Yao to a drinking contest for the jade cup instead. The old mage eagerly accepted. Katoki took the first couple shots for real, then used his gambler's knack for sleight of hand to dump the drinks without pounding them. Problem was, Hsin Yao wasn't fazed. He swallowed his shots for real and kept drinking. And he knew Katoki was cheating.
Katoki abandoned his plan to win the jade cup in a drinking contest. Frankly, he was sick of working for Captain Hojo. He asked if Hsin Yao wanted help killing the Captain. The old drunkard clearly had a power greater than anything the soldiers could throw at him, and Katoki wasn't interested in dying to make a supply officer rich. And the guy said he was down a Warrior now that Cixi was dead. Hsin Yao laughed and told Katoki him to kill Suzuki, if he wanted to join the Brotherhood of Harmonious Repose so badly. Suzuki raised his rifle and shot Katoki dead before the gambler could raise his weapon.
After that, Hsin Yao didn't need much convincing. It was true that, although he could kill the Privates, he probably couldn't take on the entire Imperial Japanese Army outside the temple. And Captain Hojo might send a flamethrower team to clear out the underground chambers if he didn't feel like leaving. And he was short on expendable cannon fodder...
So Privates Suzuki and Mori agreed to work for Hsin Yao, and the Brotherhood of Harmonious Repose.
I'll have the first draft of the adventure finished soon.
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