DAY 4

  On the fourth day, Sagacious Brother will walk into the village and 
attempt to meet the P.C. with the highest status.  He will call on him 
socially and show all possible politeness and respect.  He will ask to 
take tea with the character (he has some if the P.C. does not).  Over 
tea if possible, he will attempt to convince the P.C. to take his 
friends and leave the village.  The situation is hopeless, he will 
assure them.  He will explain that though the characters are brave men, 
they are simply outnumbered and out-magiced.  Although Sagacious Brother 
is not above lying, he will primarily stick to purely rational arguments 
based on the observable facts.

  If, after he has made his attempt, the characters are still resolute, 
he will ask the P.C. he originally approached whether he wishes to 
fight.  If the P.C. declines, Sagacious Brother will bow and simply walk 
out of the village.  If the P.C. accepts, Sagacious Brother will desire 
to cast Daze on the character before resorting to martial arts.  He is 
quite willing to arrange a formal dual and then cast the spell suddenly 
from behind while the P.C. prepares for it.  Like all the Brothers of 
Thunder, killing Sagacious Brother will only remove him from Hung Lian 
for the time being.

  As if the characters didn't have enough problems, Cheung Ch'i will be 
enraged from jealousy when he learns that Sagacious Brother came to 
negotiate with a P.C. instead of with him.  He is in charge in this 
town, and he doesn't want any fancy outsider trying to usurp his 
position.  He will grill the poor character over why the Brother decided 
to speak to him instead of to the village magistrate, and will do his 
best to trick the P.C. into saying something subversive.  The characters 
will have to calm the angry magistrate down while leaving his honour in 
tact and still carry on organizing the defenses - something that the 
arrogant Cheung Ch'i is unable to manage personally.  Diplomacy skill 
will be very helpful, but once again, don't let the P.C.s get out of 
this situation with a mere roll - make them roleplay it!

  At nightfall, probably just as the characters are managing to calm 
down Cheung Ch'i, one of the members of The White Knife Society will 
come riding down the path to Hung Lian from the west, bearing a burning 
brand to light his way.  Like Sagacious Brother before him, he will seek 
out the P.C. with the highest status to talk to instead of going to 
Cheung Ch'i.  Oh dear - another slight to the magistrate's honour and 
another reason for him to get angry at the player characters.  The 
warrior, who will give his name as Chan, will bow and politely invite 
the character and his friends to dine with the White Knife Society that 
night, courtesy of their leader, Gentleman Yung.  If the characters 
decline, then the messenger will inform them that the war will begin 
tomorrow.  He will then ride back away to the west.  If the characters 
attack him, he will be astonished.  He will get to his horse and ride 
away if possible - otherwise, he will fight to the death, promising that 
his comrades will avenge him.  If the character(s) agree to go with him, 
he will take them to the camp of the White Knife Society.  He will not 
take more than nine people however, so the P.C.s cannot too heavily 
bolster their numbers with locals.

  The White Knife Society camp exists in a clearing in the forest and is 
formed by three tents of white silk arranged around a central campfire.  
Gentleman Yung sits on a folding wooden stool, while the other bandits 
sit cross-legged on the grass.  Yung is entertaining them with a tale of 
how Chao Kung Ming, patron god of soldiers, gained his flying tiger 
mount by killing its previous owner, the god Shin K'o.  The telling of 
this story is a ritual among the White Knife Society, and is a tradition 
observed on the night prior to any attack.  No matter how well any of 
the P.C.s makes a roll against Theology (Animist), they will not have 
heard this legend, nor even have heard of a deity by the name of Shin 
K'o.  The messenger Chan will whisper to the characters that they must 
wait until the story is finished before speaking.

  When the tale is finished, the bandits will all rise and Gentleman 
Yung will great the strangers respectfully.  Quite an impressive feast 
will be provided, including wild geese, wild sow, roast dog and lashings 
of millet wine.  The meats will be cut up into small pieces so it will 
not be obvious what they are until either they are tasted, or the P.C.s 
ask what they are.  Hopefully, the P.C.s will ask, for otherwise they 
will eat dog-meat and suffer penalties for breaking their taboo against 
dogs.  If asked, Gentleman Yung will not lie about the origin of the 
third pile of meat.  He doesn't even know about the taboo - Sagacious 
Brother simply gave them a slain dog earlier in the day and told them 
that eating it would be lucky.

  Gentleman Yung will appeal to the P.C.s to give up on the idea of 
defending Hung Lian against the Society.  He will express how pointless 
it seems to him for such brave men to die needlessly.  It would be 
impossible to defend the village against the strength of arms of The 
White Knife Society combined the magic of The Five Brothers of Thunder - 
so he is giving them one last chance to back down without dishonour.  If 
the P.C.s accept the chance to back down, then this adventure is over.  
If the P.C.s decline, then the Society will play gracious hosts to them 
for the evening, and then send the messenger Chan to escort them safely 
back to Hung Lian.  If the P.C.s claim to accept Yung's offer, but 
really intend to defend Hung Lian anyway, then they will have to find 
their way back in the dark without a Society guide.  As the Five 
Brothers have made sure that the sky is full of clouds, it will be very 
dark indeed.  With a roll against the highest IQ in the group, the party 
can get back to the town in one hour.  For each failure, they will be 
lost for 1d hours before they can try again.  If anyone has Absolute 
Direction, the group will automatically find their way back in 45 
minutes.  If the characters wish, another IQ roll can be used to find 
the campsite again at some later point, but after the first night, the 
White Knife Society will no longer be camped there.  Having said this, 
the new campsite can easily be found by starting at the old campsite and 
rolling against Tracking +2.


DAY 5

  The morning of the fifth day will be misty and seem unnaturally quiet, 
as if nature is waiting for something.  Before too long, an eerie, 
wavering, high pitched whistling will be heard.  There will be changes 
in the note produced, but no recognizable tune.  Animals will become 
increasingly nervous and if the P.C.s have horses, they will need to be 
calmed down.  The human residents of Hung Lian will be getting 
increasingly nervous too and it wouldn't hurt if the P.C.s tried to 
reassure them as well.

  If anyone goes scouting for the source of the noise, they will be able 
to find it easily enough.  Eldest Brother stands menacingly upon a 
hillock in the mist, whistling away with a volume that is almost 
deafening close up.  As is usual with ancient whistling Chinese men, he 
is casting a spell, and any P.C.s who know anything about magic will 
suspect that he might be doing so.  As it happens, all that the spell is 
doing is making sure that the whistling can be heard throughout the 
village, but Eldest Brother is not going to admit that.  He reasons that 
as long as the villagers aren't sure what spell he is casting, they will 
get paranoid and lose morale.  If left alone, he will whistle for about 
an hour and then go home.  If asked what he is doing, he will admit that 
he is casting a spell and then smirk, giving only cryptic answers to 
questions about what the spell will actually do.  If he is attacked, 
then like his brothers, he will fight until "killed" and then disappear 
in a puff of yellow smoke to reform later.  If it does come to combat, 
don't forget that as well as his kung fu prowess, he has the Lightning 
spell at 16!

  The P.C.s have now been visited and taunted by each of the Five 
Brothers of Thunder.  They may now be figuring that they won't see them 
again individually until the final showdown.  If so, they are quite 
wrong.  Lying Brother has one last card to play.  He will alter his 
appearance to that of Li Hsien, the Taoist hermit that advised the P.C.s 
on the means to defeat the Five Brothers in the first place.  He will 
then come walking down the road into Hung Lian at midday and calmly 
announce to the P.C.s that he has arrived to lend his skills in the 
final battle.  What he has really come to do is to trick one of the 
P.C.s, preferably the one who would be most dangerous in a fight, into 
breaking the magical taboo against taking an oath.  He may bide his time 
in this task up to a point, but must have achieved it by about four 
o'clock if he is to achieve it at all.  Otherwise, he will content 
himself with changing sides at the worst possible moment in the middle 
of battle.

  The actual oath that Lying Brother tries to get the P.C. to make will 
depend on the situation.  However, under no circumstance will Lying 
Brother use the word "oath" (or, for that matter, its Mandarin 
equivalent ;) ).  Rather, at some tense moment when the character has 
expressed his intention to do something important, Lying Brother will 
ask him whether he will swear to do his utmost in achieving it.  If he 
can get the character to agree, Lying Brother will begin to laugh 
hysterically and rather nastily, still in his guise as Li Hsien.  He 
will then taunt the character mercilessly with the mistake that he has 
made, dancing around in his glee.  This will continue until Lying 
Brother is attacked, or the taunting gets boring.  If Lying Brother is 
attacked, he will fight to the "death" as usual.  If not, he will 
eventually run away cackling with laughter.  In neither case will he 
abandon his disguise, although he will be more than happy to give his 
name if he is asked.  If he is killed, he will briefly be visible in his 
true form before his body dissipates into yellow mist.

  At about four o'clock, which they believe to be a propitious time, the 
White Knife Society will begin their attack, aided by the Five Brothers 
of Thunder.  Both groups will take the matter very seriously.  The White 
Knife Society must fight to the death for the sake of their honour, 
while the Five Brothers of Thunder will lose their power if the incense 
is not extinguished before dawn of the next day.  Having said this, both 
factions are too smart to simply indulge in a head-on attack.  They will 
gauge the defenses as best they can and make use of their three big 
advantages
1.  The range of the Society's crossbows.
2.  The speed of the Society's horses.
3.  The magic of the Five Brothers of Thunder.  In particular, remember 
Eldest Brother's Lightning, Lying Brother's powers of illusion, 
Sagacious Brother's Mass Daze and Mass Sleep, and Brother Thunderclap's 
Thunderclap.  These spells offer excellent opportunities for disrupting 
the village's defensive tactics.

  The White Knife Society are quite happy to engage in a guerrilla war - 
sniping and riding out of range, if they think that it will help.  
Moreover, under no circumstances will any of the thirteen "villains" 
give up.  Given all of this, if the P.C.s are going to save the village 
of Hung Lian, then they will need to come up with a cunning plan or two 
- brute force alone won't be enough.