ZCW notes Lucky Chang

Cai Wen's mission is to defeat Lucky Chang.

Ideas:

• His preparations are careful, and his luck-related talents allow him to get very improbable results. This generally adds up to a small margin of error, so even a small act of interference could be effective. Easier if he can anticipate the plan.

• Prepare to beat him head-to-head. It's hard to see how I can manage this without learning some comparable talents to his. I will, of course, be working on this. Final victory will probably require a head-to-head beatdown; but it will be a long time before I'm ready for that.

• He's much better at making enemies than making friends, so if we can find more of them, we may have help. I already know a couple.

• Provoke division among the Legs of the Spider. They're all highly ambitious. If we can figure out how their internal dynamic works, we can figure out what kind of misinformation campaign might work against them. For example, "Machan Li" thought his plan against the Butterfly Kingdom was so great that somebody must have been working against him. Any chance of convincing him that Lucky Chang thwarted him in order to win points?

Assets:

• Broken Sword: He's a Tiger, so he's not really keen on patient plans. After Opening Cages, he stole a statuette from Lucky Chang's estate in the Hon'eth Arcade. The statuette depicts some great estate which we don't currently recognize.

• Madame Song: Has offered to assure Lucky Chang's presence at a party. Any plan involving violence at the party--even goading Lucky Chang into starting it--is forbidden. (Problem: I can surely embarrass him at a party, but I'm not clear that I can accomplish more than annoying him, and merely annoying him doesn't seem like a brilliant plan.)

• Malkoha: Has offered to keep an eye on Lucky Chang's activities in the Hon'eth Arcade, along with any other indications that people have plans afoot in the Arcade. As of Opening Cages, she is distracted by the sudden decline in the quality of chi in the Hon'eth Arcade, which she attributes to some plan of Ezokin's. (As far as I know, that particular decline was caused by us stealing the Magpie Talisman.)

• Chashui: Holding down the Cup Of Five Virtues. She has agreed to refrain from trying to poison Lucky Chang if he ever goes in there. (I mean, it couldn't possibly work, so once again it would merely annoy him.)

Looking for:

• Reliable information on Lucky Chang's origins; particularly, his place and date of birth. Then Madame Qin could get his horoscope.

• The Alchemist has a widget that interferes with luck. Getting hold of this, to squash Lucky Chang's luck powers, would be handy. In auguries, this widget turns up as Lucky Chang's greatest vulnerability.

• More information about the statuette

Old Notes

Scroll 1 notes regarding Lucky Chang

In the Port of Auspicious Voyage, a ninja showed up to attack me. Someone (possibly the ninja) deposited a coin bearing Lucky Chang's symbol into Wei Han's purse before the attack. The Hunter's Map, which always shows my location (at some scale appropriate to the viewer) was dropped by the ninja.

I never had a good explanation for that attack--my assumption at the time was that it was a preemptive strike, because of my association with Madame Song, who has had some trouble with Lucky Chang in the past.

Later, in (the Precincts run where we had to cut new orders for Wei Han), my best guess of what was going on was that Lucky Chang was trying to separate Wei Han from me to make me an easier target. But all that we know for sure is that Lucky Chang engineered a transfer of Wei Han to the Bearers of Swift Response, which was unsuitable on several levels.

Master Takanata read my I Ching, and one of the lines therein was "When his enemy is victorious will the game be unmasked". We're pretty clear that this refers to Lucky Chang's victory at Bear Mountain, and the visions of the Butterfly King's investigations. If so, then the game referred to in the reading is a much bigger game than whatever I thought was going on between myself and Lucky Chang. It may still be a personal game to me, somehow, though I don't see how at this time. (I mean, yes, it's personal for all of us to some extent, but that's not what I mean.)

I'm now re-evaluating these things somewhat, because while I was at the Temple of Eternal Dream, I did a little dreamwalking, searching for insight into the reason why I was important to Lucky Chang. I found myself looking at the Hunter's Map, reflecting on the fact that all it has is an X where I am--nothing personal about me, not even a fox icon or anything. Very impersonal.