The Money Tree (摇钱树)

The Money Tree (摇钱树 yáoqiánshù) is a nature spirit embodied in an ancient tree. It is hard to tell whether it moves about and appears to its victims, or if it is incorporeal and only materialises before them. Whatever the actual truth, the yáoqiánshù usually only appears before lone travellers. The GM may use the Money Tree when the PCs are lost in a forest and have lost track of each other, when they are fleeing a group of bandits in the mountains and are scattered, etc. The important element is that the victim must be alone.

The yáoqiánshù will choose to appear in the vicinity of the PC whose total Daoism + Heterodoxy allegiance score is the lowest. A slight breeze will ensure that the victim will clearly hear the tintinnabulation of the golden cash-like fruits of the Money Tree. The latter will present itself as a large specimen of whatever tree is most common in the area, its branches heavy with large, cash-like fruits made of the purest gold. The victim will be able to collect enough gold to go up one Wealth level. The large coins will be in imitation of whatever currency was official 1d8×100 years before present (this time span is actually the age of the yáoqiánshù). If the coins happen to correspond to cash that was in circulation during an earlier dynasty, and if the PC figures out he should sell them to a collector, then the Wealth of the PC will go up two levels!

This wealth, however, is cursed. At some later time, the GM should devise an unfortunate event that will cause the PC to lose all the accumulated wealth and to suffer misfortune, e.g., some local nouveau riche challenges the PC to a display of wealth through building an exaggerated mansion, which will then collapse upon the PC. Or a local cash-broken magistrate will request the PC build a bridge, or a temple, or whatever, which will cost him all the accumulated wealth plus some more. Or a travelling member of the imperial court will have heard about the wealth of the PC and will ask the PC to offer him some costly present, which he won't even like; this incident will make a bitter enemy of said member of the court... You get the idea.

Using LotFP supplements with TCE - Tower of the Stargazer

This module (blurb here) is a stand-alone adventure that can be easily ported to The Celestial Empire. It must be set under the Míng or under the Qīng. If set under the Míng, then it must be set at the beginning of the Míng so that the Stargazer was active under the Yuán. If set under the Qīng, then it must be set at the end of the 18th century so that the Stargazer was active at the end of the 17th century.

The rationale behind these time frames is the major astronomic advances that happened under the Yuán because of the presence of Arab and Persian astronomers. Likewise, there were major astronomic advances at the end of the 17th century thanks to the Jesuit missionaries present at the court of the Kāngxī Emperor.

The rest of this post is hidden because of major spoilers that it contains.

As suggested on p5 of the module, the tower should be placed away from any settlements, possibly in the mountains — which is by the way the most logical place to build an observatory.

Page 9: The dead thief is actually a dead bandit, famous in the Rivers and Lakes.
Page 10, Sitting Room: It's obviously rice wine, not grape wine.
Page 11, Sitting Room: It is the statue of a vixen lady embracing a mandarin.
Page 13, Head Servant's Quarters: His name was Tái Ānruì
Page 14, Wizard's Quarters: His name is Shěn Yùruì
Page 15: The reward is 10 gold taels. More generally, use the 10gp=1 gold tael equivalence throughout the module.
Page 17: Shěn Yùruì is a very powerful (POW 18) Daoist magician. Just make sure he has plenty of offensive spells.
Page 21, Library: The books in the library are written in Arabic if the adventure is set at the beginning of the Míng; they are written in Latin if it is set at the end of the 18th century.
Page 22, The Ghost: obviously it will be a game of go (wéiqí)
Page 23, Eldritch Library: The books in the library are written in Classical Chinese, with many unusual Daoist versions of the characters (-25% to read, unless the reader is himself a member of a Daoist sect). The scrolls will contain Daoist spells, possibly gǔ sorcery spells.
Pages 24-25, Workshop and Telescope: the book on the podium is written in Arabic/Latin (depending on the era).
Page 28, Trap Room: the POT of the spider poison is 13.

Chinese Yuletide

All peoples in the world celebrate and have always celebrated the winter solstice. We Westerners have had various pagan midwinter traditions that were later 'transformed' by the Church into Christmas.

Well, the Chinese obviously still have their midwinter festival, which is called the Dōngzhì (冬至) Festival. On this day, all members of the clan must assemble at the Ancestral Hall and worship their ancestors. Failing to do so will cause penalties to one's Allegiance score in most Chinese religions (see the rule book). Specially consecrated tāngyuán (湯圓, glutinous rice flour balls) are eaten during the ceremony. These consecrated tāngyuán serve as protective talismans to keep evil spirits from coming close to whomever has eaten them. In gaming terms, no guǐ-monster can come closer than 10m to the person for 2D6 days.

This year, the Dōngzhì Festival fell on 22 December. Sorry for having been late with the relevant post!

Pseudohistory

China and the Chinese pop up in pseudohistory. They may not pop up as often as the Egyptians or the Atlanteans, but what they lack in presence they make up in solidity. I certainly do not pay much heed to works of pseudohistory or cryptohistory, but some of them do contain disturbing evidence.

Land masses east of China are present in pre-1492 European maps rumoured to have been copied from Chinese originals. The 1475 Martellus map, for instance, shows a large land mass very similar to South America east of mainland China.

Gavin Menzies uses many more of these troubling facts to claim that Zhèng Hé's fleet reached the Americas. Although his book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World does not resist scientific scrutiny, it is great fun reading, and it surely makes for a great campaign setting for The Celestial Empire: imagine that the player characters participate in one of Zhèng Hé's voyages and embark on a long trip round the world!

Other disturbing references in ancient Chinese manuscripts would point to the mythical eastern island continent of Fúsāng being the same as America. But more on that in a separate post!

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