The party waits three days for Sarou to return from his fact-finding mission. He returns with a mention that he will need to get more poison. The 'escaped' ninja had laid low for two days before contacting his superiors, at which point Sarou followed the superior who would know more, only to discover that he was expecting to be followed and Marshal's cohort was ambushed. Fortunately, his training allowed him to escape with a fair number of them dead. After escaping, Sarou researched more on the fact one of the ninja in the ambush was an unusually pale orc that proved particularly resilient to Sarou's techniques.
In his own research, he determined that it was very likely to have been a vampire orc, and the source of vampiric orcs is from the Red Fang Clan to the east (prior mention had been made of them). Culturally, Red Fang vampires are incredibly reluctant to ever be farther than three nights' travel from their clan, which hinted of at minimum an outpost near the wastelands about a week's travel east.
After some discussion, the party decided a more solid lead would be to the dojo north of Naught Hill from their captured ninja. Thanks to Plank's plane shift and the royal maps, they were able to shift within 3 days travel of the dojo. They were interrupted by a pair of noble hill giants along the way (wore quality gear rather than random sticks), but convinced them that Imperials going through the land was for peaceful purposes and continued onward.
The dojo was built into a plateau that was being strip mined very slowly by hand (literally) as a method of training for the humans there. It took a moment, because Cast was trying to speak first and he doesn't know Giantish, but one of them knew the Imperial tongue. Only those sufficiently enlightened in their ways could actually receive training or wisdom of any kind from the He Who Supports the Firmament (head of the dojo). One of the higher ranking monks (titled Bellower, who spoke softly and squeakily) informed them that there existed two 'quick' ways of wisdom in their ways.
Our first method was to show that could be an immovable object, by staying true against the force of Shifting Glacier, a Jotun (half-giant stats) monk with the Juggernaut feat. After Cast was almost casually bull-rushed, they opted for the very dangerous second test, to prove themselves (individually or as a whole) as an unstoppable force. This test was to utterly defeat a stone golem without receiving a single point of damage, which the party agreed to. An unknown entity from behind a gauze curtain in the dojo seems to stare with glowing eyes, causing nearby debris & slag to rise and become a stone golem (concentration duration, close range). Thanks to Cast's ability to fight defensively and his Draw Fire ability, this was done readily enough.
Speaking with He Who Supports the Firmament, who is a Stone Giant Elder (switch transmute for the golem ability and increase by one or two HD), he informs of a group of recruiters attempting to encourage his disciples to "act like the rolling avalanche rather than the shifting earthquake". After learning of Firmament's displeasure of this practice, he suspected they recruited students who had left the dojo. As a favor, Firmament told the party that he would speak with gravestones of the recruiting ninja about their clan. The next morning, they were informed that this ninja clan was called the Shadowed Hand, and had four five fingers throughout the land, and one of these fingers lay on the border of the Empire of the Sun and the eastern wastelands. Also, this finger could only be seen under the light of the noon sun.
Bidding farewell, the party did the plane shift trick to get within three days of Cast's castle to recoup, and had Sarou do a fact-finding mission on what they've learned thus far.
Were this dojo to actually be veiled except under a noon sun, would imply a shadow well and very likely a node along such a theme. This made such an outpost quite likely the clan's HQ and guarded by shadows due to the node's theme. Considering the danger, they decide to rest for a week or so and call in some magic items to be constructed for themselves (since Cast will go in with his sun plate instead of adamantine carapace).
While resting, in the dead of night, numerous ninja from the Shadowed Hand attacked the party. One of their high elites (level 4 Samurai) managed to get into Cast's bedchamber without being heard (even after one-shotting the guards), and the surprise round + normal round, Cast was sent into the negatives. Thinking quick, Gina used her skill-based fascinate/suggestions to convince him that he'll bleed out and to leave her in her grief (which works). The rest of the party was similarly ambushed, but they were attacked by 'regular' elites (similar to the Barghest Maw regular ninja); three elites on Marshal, two on Plank and Ethedril each. With less skilled assaults, the rest of the party survived and repelled the attacks readily. Ethedril in particular managed to hear the ninja before they even got within melee, but pretended to remain asleep and killed all three the moment before they made their melee attacks.
This convinced Cast to rearrange the bedchamber arrangement so that any stealthers would have to go by Ethedril's room to reach any of the other party's, and to use the higher level followers for the guard patrols.
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