A tree that takes a thousand years to bud must first live a thousand years, and to live a thousand years means it must survive a thousand years in which to die. It was thus necessary that the first drop of morning dew on the seed-leaf of the new shoot, fertilized by the rising sun and penetrating the pockmarked limestone onto which it dripped, rose out of the ground as black-horned Javabhapali, the udumbara's yaksha protector.
For the first one-thousand nine-hundred ninety-nine years, eleven months, and twenty-eight days, the yaksha of the mountain haunted the mountain as a terrible demon, devouring man, woman, child, and beast alike. The mount was rendered bare, scourged of all life by its fearsome protector. Even as the other mountains clustered around it were sliced into rice-terrace, as the forest beneath was chopped down and a village grew in the mountain's' shadow, none dared climb the mountain itself, in full knowledge that should they undertake the trip, they would never return.
Such was the case until Zherong and Xirong were left on the mountaintop to die. Twin brothers, each barely a month old, left to die of exposure because their parents could no longer afford them. When Javabhapali discovered them, something strange stirred in his amber-veined heart. They were not devoured, but raised as the ogre's own sons, nursed on blood and honey, taught to uproot trees and wrestle tigers barehanded rather than how to read or write. When grown, they were just as much monsters as their adoptive father, only far more dangerous, for unlike him they were not confined to the mountain-peak and the udumbara tree.
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For years, they terrorized the region as an unstoppable menace, more animal than bandit, who killed and stole and ruined everything and everyone they came across. They too, however, began, slowly, to mature, growing, after years of unrestrained violence, to begin to yearn for something else, even if they could not even recognize the feeling, let alone know what it was they desired. It was not long, however, before both of them found what they unknowingly sought in a chance encounter as their father before them. For Zherong, the peace he found was marital - a peasant woman equal to him in hardiness (and weight), with whom he sired a large family, building a home for them atop the mountain peak. For Xirong, it was spiritual - converted by a monk of the true dharma, and retreating to pray below the sacred fig, bringing with him a host of disciples inspired by the unfaltering strength of his soul.
As decades passed, then centuries, the yaksha's adoptive family grew from brotherly duo to mighty clan. Around the tree sprouted huts, then houses, then walls - a fortress-town-monastery of stone and brick, with monks and householder side by side, each fighting with the power of the ogre who taught them. Even Javabhapali doesn't remember the cause, but unfortunately this state of peace was not to last. Some unknown dispute erupted into out-and-out civil war, damaging the tree in the process. Enraged, the yaks exiled the whole clan and sealed the gates of the fortress with two locks, each opened by one of two great keys and given to one of the two sides of the clan. The ogre swore to its children that no man should once more pass behind the walls and gaze on the udumbara until the rift in the clan ceased to exist, whether by reconciliation or eradication - only with both keys would the gate ever be unsealed.
Since the clan-war, a full millennium has come and gone, and the sides have been much shifted. Zherong's seed did not stray far from the mountain, descending to the foothills and rebuilding the village their founder had pillaged in his youth. Below the mountain now rests a small walled village, old and insular, where every last man traces their lineage back to the first of the ogre's sons. The legend of the old clan war is a distant memory, little thought of and heavily distorted. Perhaps most obviously, Zherong's spawn have forgotten that it was they who were the laymen and their brothers the monks, for the rulers of the town are the monastery raised slightly above them, warrior-monks who in their art preserve traces of the yaksha-style. The key, too, is written out of the story, long-gone - none remember that it is buried with Zherong's ashes, for in the village cemetery his gravestone is not marked with any honor save that of it's defacement. The tomb honored as that of the founder, ironically, is the one with no remains, for it was erected in-absentia in honor of Xirong - the monastic image is now celebrated by the monks who now rule.
Xirong and his followers went out in the world to preach the dharma to all who would hear, and to fight its enemies with all their might. Only the latter tradition survives at all. Of course, given their vows of celibacy, he left no blood-descendants, nor did the first of his disciples, but their disciples were not so strict. By the present day, the bearers of Xirong's lineage of the yaksha style, the inheritors of his sect and their treasures, are an ordinary martial family, career officers with centuries of service on the borderlands of the empire. Their key is still an heirloom - made into the hilt of a filigreed saber, currently carried on the person of the clan's heir presumptive.
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This is the situation as it stands - in three days, the Udumbara will bloom, and its miraculous aroma will instantly regenerate any who take in the scent, healing every form of poison and plague, curing the blind and crippled, even regrowing lost limbs and giving further years of life to the elderly. This is widely known - already a thousand lepers, led by the crippled prophet Wei Yong, crowd beneath the hill, hoping to be touched by the healing air. If by that time the gates of the fortress have not opened, that number will be exactly zero, for the wind will not blow the pollen beyond the crumbling walls and it shall sit and moulder within for another three millennia, of no use to anyone. They know this, and would already be rushing to scale the walls were it not for the town that guards the only road up, and the unfriendly attitude taken by its monks to their visitors. Guarding the caravan is an attached group of soldiers, led by a young officer completely unaware that his warrior family is themselves heirs to the udumbara-fortress, or that the sword he carries is half the key to the inner sanctum, but following the pilgrimage in hopes that his own disease might be healed by the bloom.
At present, the soldiers are greatly displeased with the town, and less than trusting of Wei Yong's ministry, but their most pressing threat is neither. Rather, their focus is on is fending off the bandits and highwaymen, which swarm the land like locusts and have already attacked this pilgrimage several times, a specific band having tailed and repeatedly attacked throughout the entire journey. What the soldiers don't know is that the band in question is not ordinary group of thieves, but actually cover for the machinations of the eight-isles - this "band", though indeed mostly local ruffians, is led by Li-ben Len, an agent of the Empire of the Eight Pillars ought to steal the udumbara in full blossom and transport it back to the islands of the west.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
Wei Yong
A crippled, blind, half-deaf beggar, widely hailed as an incarnation of boddhisattva Infinite Grace and leader of a thousand-man army of lepers. It was he who, a month ago, received the prophecy of the blooming of the udumbara, and spread the message of it and its healing powers across all the slums of the capital. Incapable of walking more than a few steps unassisted, his followers carry him in a palanquin like a noble - he has, of course, no combat capability at all, but he has genuine prophetic powers and more importantly the ear of every one of the thousand-odd pilgrims crowding around the mountains base. Noncombatant, and entirely helpless if you do kill him, but the result will be both the violent enmity of the entire leper-mob and enough negative karma to irrevocably doom yourself to thirty kalpa at the bottom of Avici hell.
Yao Qing
24/24 HP, 3/3 MD
Guts 3 (Power + Guarded)/Guile 1/Glory 2 (Support)
Basic attack: +1 to-hit, 1d8+1
Three Fingers Imprison Evil: +3 to-hit, 1d8+3, if hit target slowed until end of next turn, augment target is fully immobilized + target takes -[dice] to attacks and defense until end of next turn
Earth-destroying Yaksha Kick: +3 to-hit, 1d10+3, can be used w/out Aug when would use basic attack, +[sum] damage, +[highest] to-hit on augment
Hell-prison stance: Whenever user attacks an enemy with impaired movement you can make a basic attack against that enemy
Meristem cultivation: Once per long rest you can use a minor action to Recover and and regain +2d6 HP
The most senior bhikku of the monastery of the base of the mountain, and through that the head of the village that supports it. A short, bald old man clad in the two-piece monastic robe and mantle, wrinkled skin clinging to Unbeknownst to him and the rest of the community, he, as well as everyone else in the village, are direct descendants of Zherong, who they currently castigate as schismatic, falsely believing themselves to have been the followers of Xirong, having rewritten their history after adopting the same dharma that their true father cast out. As the head of the monastery, he is a - or rather the - master of the Fierce Ogre Dharma style, at 4th level. There are three monks under him with the experience in the style necessary to fight, but they're all novices (0th-level).
Qiang Li
16/16 HP, 2/2 MD
Guts 3 (Power + Guarded)/Guile 0/Glory 2 (Support)
Basic attack: +1 to-hit, 1d8+1
One Finger Ensnares Evil: +3 to-hit, 1d8+3, if hit target slowed until end of next turn, augment can use technique as minor action but only once per turn
Earth-shaking Yaksha Kick: +3 to-hit, 1d10+3, can be used w/out Aug when would use basic attack, +[sum] damage and targets each creature within [dice]x5' of user on augment
Chains of King Yama stance: Whenever you attack an enemy with impaired movement each of the users allies gets +2 to hit that enemy until the start of their next turn and user ignores the first 2 damage they''d take before the start of their next turn
Xirong's heir, by tradition though not blood, and the commander of the force of 50 soldiers (2 hp, +1 to-hit 1d4+1 damage) sent to guard the pilgrims. Dressed in full military garb and head filled with every rule and regulation of the civil code as well as all the required classics and gentlemanly pursuits, the product of a childhood in a family of career military bureaucrats. Afflicted by an incurable cancer, he used every bit of his influence to get permission to follow the pilgrimage, even with his official mission merely being to prevent it from causing disorder. Has no idea that the key-hilt of the heirloom sword he carries with him at all time unlocks the very hill he's been sent to guard, nor that the self-defense training their family drilled into them was the product of the ogre at its peak.
Li-Ben Len
18/18 HP, 3/3 MD
Guts 0/Guile 4(Power+Guarded)/Glory 2 (Support)
Basic attack: +4 to-hit, 1d6+4 damage, all techniques can be used up to 25' range
Explosive flame release: +4 to-hit, 1d6+4 damage , technique targets each creature within 5' of any location in range, can slide each creature it hits 5', on augment deals +[sum] extra damage and gets +[highest] to-hit
Incineration Glare: +4 to-hit, 1d8+4 damage, on augment can be used as minor action but only once per turn
Finger of Light: +4 to-hit, 1d8+4 damage, on augment blinds target on hit til start of next turn
Rising Sun stance: If user would be reduced to 0 or fewer hit points, immediately set to 0 hit points and then recovers, also can fly but must end turn on solid ground
Parhelion step: Once per short rest, user can take half damage from an attack, then teleport up to 4x10' away.
A foreigner, user of the Sun Fingers style, born and raised in the empire of the eight isles, but one with long experience as a pirate assaulting towns on the coast of the empire under heaven. When the isles agents heard the rumors of the udumbara, it was him who was hired to steal it away and bring its healing aroma to the court of the eight-corded emperor, currently wasting away from syphilis. To that end, he has rallied a force of 50 local bandits (1 hp, +0-to-hit, 1d4 damage), who've been trailing and continuously assaulting the pilgrimage ever since it wound it's way out of the capital. Even now, the bandits are camped nearly in view of the pilgrims they've been following, only bothering to disguise their camp in the mountains to avoid having to fight with the soldiers sent to guard them from their predations - their spies within the former group constantly reporting back to them of the news of the proceedings, the bandits preparing to strike the moment the gates are thrown open and the opportunity presents itself. Li-Ben himself carries with him a single magical item - the chest of delayed impermanence, a lacquered icebox in which he intends to shove the severed bloom of the udumbara for transport as soon as he acquires i.
Javabhapali
28/28 HP, 3/3 MD
Guts 4 (Power + Guarded)/Guile 0/Glory 2 (Support)
Basic attack: +1 to-hit, 1d8+1 damage
Two Fingers Capture Evil: +4 to-hit, 1d8+4, if hit target slowed until end of next turn, on augment targets each creature within [dice]x15' in one direction
Yaksha Kick: +4 to-hit, 1d10+4, can be used w/out Aug when would use basic attack, on augment deals +[sum] damage and targets each creature within [dice]x5' of user
Naraka stance: Whenever user attacks an enemy with impaired movement, they a +1 (stacking) bonus to all future attack rolls in that combat
Invulnerable Ogre soul: Once per long rest you can use a minor action to get 1d6+2 temporary hit points,
The black-horned ogre who guards the top of the mountain, still yearning for his children to return and refusing to open the gates til they do.
KEY:
1. Leper camp
A mess of hasty tents and improvised shelter, cobbled together by the thousand-odd desperate diseased waiting for the udumbara to cure their ailments, at the center of the camp the shrine tent of the prophet Wei Yong. Slightly behind them is the vastly more organized camp of the fifty soldiers sent to supervise the mob, and Qiang Li, their commander.
2. Village
A small village of around a hundred peasants, rice-farmers living in thatched-roof huts with a stone wall. At the center of town is a small brick temple, the town's only landmark, inside of which resides Yao Qing and his four disciples.
3. Cemetery
The gravestones of countless generations of villagers are placed slightly above the homes of their descendants. Most of the graveyard is just simple cenotaphs - at the peak of the cemetery, though, are two stone statues, one for each brother. Xirong's grave is exalted, piled wth flowers and fruit as the supposed village founder, while Zherong's grave is defiled, his statue chipped, cracked, and covered in filth as heretic schismatic. It is under Zherong's feet, however, that the other key is to be found.
4. Old fortress
An ancient fort, all paint long since washed off the stone but otherwise miraculously preserved, the bricks held in place by the roots of the udumbara. The only entrance is through its great iron doors, 12' tall and 6' wide, sealed by a demon-head with a split mouth, inside of which two keyholes can be seen on close inspection. By its side is inscribed a sort poem.
Two brothers, family, torn apart,
Two keys, to mend a broken heart,
Until the rift between them heals
On this door remains a seal
Attempting to break through or climb over the fortress before the doors are opened results in great spikes of rusted iron erupting from the wall (+4 to-hit, 1d8+4 damage, repeated at start of targets next round until they die or flee the fort). When opened, the gate leads directly to the courtyard of the fort, wherein lies the trunk of the udumbara and the branch at whose end lies tumescent the flower-bud, as does, Javabhapali, watching and waiting.
TIMELINE
If the party doesn't intervene, the expected course of events is this:
Day 1:
Wei Yong and his army of pilgrims, camped at the foot of the mountain, petition to be let past the village and up to the gates of the mountain shrine. The villagers resolutely refuse to let the lepers pass through the gates at the base of the wall, fearing infection, despite the pleas of the pilgrims and the threats of the soldiers.
Li-Ben Len sends a few bandits to attack in the middle of the night, whipping the lepers into a frenzy, and they force their way past the wall trying to escape - the attack by the monk, intended to drive them back down, merely splits them in half, part of the mob, Wei Yong included, remaining at the base of the hill while another part breaks past and run to the gates of the hilltop temple, a few of Li-Ben Len's soldiers sent with them to guard their flank.
Day 2.
The soldiers, having found the gates of the temple locked, and read the poem on the gates, send down a messenger to talk to Qiang Li, who in turn consults Wei Yong. The prophet delivers the following prophecy:
The brother of abundant seed,
beneath his feet there lies his key,
the brother of the dharma true,
his treasure already lies with you
Wei Yong, interrogating villagers taken captive in the preceding nights clash, learns the (distorted) story of the two brothers and begins searching for the keys - ordering, simultaneously, the search of his own encampment and that of the lepers for the key he's supposed to already possess, while readying a mission to raid the cemetery and rob the statue of Zherong. When night falls, he leads the charge to the cemetery - easily breaching the gate and robbing the grave, but upon extracting the key he and his party are set upon by Yao Qing and his disciples, both leaders perishing in the fighting. The soldiers and disciples both scatter.
Day 3.
News of the midnight duel make their way down to the camp, who surge up the mountain and loot the corpses, finding both keys. As the gates swing open, and the crowd begins to surge inside, a man leaps from the crowd and plucks the flower off the tree right before it opens. As Javabhapali rises to confront the thief, he is pelted with a rain of boiling blood and carbonized flesh, then blinded by a beam of burning light piercing through the crowd. As the lepers scatter from the slaughter, Li-Ben Lin slips away, the blossom imprisoned in the lacquer-chest, its medicine snatched away from the mountains to be delivered to the emperor across the sea.
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