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Yumi glared at Yuuta for a brief moment before turning to Terasaka and nodded twice to his request. She was still in a slight bit of shock after having obvious just woken up as well, but nevertheless got up and started searching about the perimeter for any signs of tracks.

( Dave: tracking check )

Katsurou's and the two brothers' equipment include: 482gps (split 4ways for 120 each), masterwork glaive, +1 katana, katana, mwk longspear x2, breastplate x2, heavy shields x2, silver pocketwatch (from the gate battle), and a drawing looted from the keep ("highly-detailed drawing made from multicolored ink; it depicts some high-ranking Hojo mage with a 3-dimensional map of the Shikoku region right in front of him."). Of course, all three have your generic adventurer's gear set.

"Are you sure we want the bomber to be setting up the pyre? That seems like a poor idea..."

Yuuta pokes around for tracks.

(Tracking 8+15=23)

Terasaka holds onto the pocketwatch and map, putting the rest of the gear into the common party pool.

Yuuta finds no tracks leading away from the camp. Yumi kept trying for a while, but after half an hour she returned to sadly report the same thing...

(Perception: 18, 21)


Shigeru goes about the task of preparing a pyre for the three, more out of a respect for the dead than the fact that the berserker told him to. As he gets the bodies in position, he examines them to see if he can find more information about who, or what, killed them.

(Heal Check to get more info about what killed them: )
(Spellcraft check (trying to figure out what killed them): )
(Know(Arcana) Check (trying to figure out what killed them): )

Shigeru didn't figure out anything more than Yuuta did. The spells seems to be of very esoteric necromancy.

After the burial, the four remaining finished up their rest and headed out back towards the gate again. Yumi, instead of always keeping a scouting eye ahead of the column, had been spacing out as in a brooding frame of mind for most of the time... fortunately nothing really happened for nearly two days. Then, on late afternoon of the second day, the group encountered--- a small group of oni heading roughly towards them. There were 4 blues and 2 reds, just moving over a shallow hill 300ft away. They spotted the party at the same time, and shifted their direction for an intercept...

( as far as you know, the oni have absolutely no ranged attacks... )

( initiatives ! and surprise round action... )

..... [ time passes ] ....

The rest of the went by uneventfully. The group continued their trek back towards the gate without coming across anybody. It was not until the next day, less than a day's walk from the gate, did they spot something. Ahead of the group and to the east, they saw a group of people, about a dozen and half, who were frantically running away from the gatehouse's direction and towards the south. Every once in a while a few of them would turn around and shoot with the shortbows that they were all carrying. The one furthest in the rear kept turning around the most often, and every time he turned to gesture, and eruption of vines or branches or thorns would come from the ground, hindering those who were chasing them--- there was already nine carcasses scattered on the ground behind them, but two reds were still alive and moving after them, and...

...there was a black blur...

Its outline was hard to see, its entire body seemingly engulfed by shadows even under the bright sunlight. It didn't take long for Terasaka and Yumi to remember what it is. They didn't see it before, but they heard first hand accounts from two lucky survivors of a band who was destroyed by one of these--- the black oni, powerful enough to lead entire bands unquestioned and virtually invisible during the night-time. It was rare to see one during the day, but the fact one could see it made it no less scary.

Yumi was dazed for a moment before she muttered softly: "a black oni lord..."

The skirmish was at least 300ft towards the east. If anyone laid low here there would be very little chance any of them would see the party... although its likely that those guys over there would tire out soon and they'll be forced into melee with the black.

"We should fight. If we leave those oni wandering around this close to the gatehouse, odds are the next time we see that black it will be ambushing us in the middle of the night. If we fight smart we should be able to take them. Shigeru, how close do you need to be to hit them with your bombs?"

Shigeru takes a quick inventory of his bombs and healing supplies and analyzes the situation. "Frankly, Terasaka, I think that this is a battle we should avoid. Whatever that black blur is, there's no guarantee that I could even hit it with that blurriness around it. That, and none of us are truly capable keeping that thing occupied in melee since I have to be about 100' away from it to hit it with my bombs."

( GM Note: I wanted to make one thing clear because this encounter-chance will be a pattern I plan to start, as part of the changes I'm making to my overall style since Drew has warned me about its sheer difficulty level: these are basically hard encounters that either offer great opportunities or awesome returns... the kind of encounter I'd thrown back in Penthiae to give the party a boost in gear or XP. They're not simple, I'd advice you from brute forcing it, but there will always be some circumstances to use in your favor --- in this case: there's potential allies, the enemy is probably wounded, and obviously slowed since oni shouldn't have trouble catching up normally. Since you can choose whether to fight or not and you'll always be forewarned about difficulty levels, it'll come down to one thing: can you think of a good plan given the circumstances??? )
( The fact all of your characters are accustomed to death and aren't paladins should help you make logical judgments on fight or run xP )

"Hmmm, that is a bit close for comfort..." Terasaka pauses for a moment to think as he observes the ongoing skirmish. "Could you use your bombs to set up a booby-trap? No matter how tough it is a dozen or so of those bombs going off beneath its feet is going to hurt. We could conceal them fairly easily, and detonating them would be simple with a normally launched rocket."

( Marty: you might be able to make something for that idea--- make a profession(inventor) check xD )

(There's an actual discovery for doing that. But I don't have it, so here's the profession check)
(Profession(Inventor): 1d20+10 = 24)

Shigeru gets an idea that he might be able to build a cluster bomb of sorts for this purpose (it'll take a hero point to use):

Tera Bomb: A massive bomb package created by grouping at least four bombs together, triggered either though a delay mechanism (e.g. Delayed Bomb) or by tossing another bomb in. A tera bomb deals the full damage of all bombs combined to anyone caught within 5ft and splash damage to up to double the bomb's usual radius (10ft, or 20ft for explosive bomb). When using a mixture of multiple bombs, certain damage types may cancel out one another (e.g. cold vs fire), and any direct hit status effects inflicted by bombs will on apply to the 5ft radius if at least four bombs were made similarly. Those caught in the blast receives a reflex save (DC = normal bomb DC + 2; +4 with at least 8 bombs).