Greetings, Honorable Players!
Okay, I did experience. Zenako has made it to 9th level as expected, and Til'k'chek has reached 8th level. Hatori and Noku are within 1000 xp of 9th level themselves.
Thangs that are intended to happen as far as the GM is aware:
Til'k'chek I believe intends to be trained as a Temple Champion, which will involve about a week (~6 days) spent with another champion at Waterstone Temple, so he will have time to go to Marike and arrange purchases etc., then return to Waterstone for that training. Zenako, a fellow sohei, could pick up anything that wasn't immediately available but would be ready after a couple weeks, and bring such items to Waterstone on the way back to Ming Yo.
Tsuruchi Zenako intends to spend a solid 10 days in meditation and sacrifice, petitioning her ancestors for additional boons for her ancestral weapons.
Miya Hatori, after arranging some matters with Ashiko, will be travelling out to the Ogre Smith to collect some hardware. Hatori has other activities as well, which I will leave to him to illuminate more articulately.
Soshi Ashiko intends to pack her days with item enchantments. 4 days have already been earmarked to craft a Cloak of Resistance +2 for Hatori -- with Hatori providing the materials coost. However, Ashiko canot craft such an item alone, as it requires someone with access to Resistance spell. Thus she needs an assistant, who would need to spend 4 days of their time working with her on the item, who can provide that spell knowledge.
Isaku, as a shaman, I believe you can cast that spell, and as far as I know, have no specific plans for this break? Would you be willing to donate your time for 4 days for this purpose? Or perhaps even longer, if for example Ashiko were also willing to craft such an item for Til'k (who has expressed an interest in buying one already in separate communications), or if some other item also requires a spell you can cast that Ashiko cannot?
Hiruma Mulan will be spending some time with her father continuing to practise the skills of the Shadow Scout and/or the manners of the Aristocrat, but could also conceivably be available to provide knowledge of any 1st level ranger spell useful in an enchantment, were Ashiko to request her aid...
Gorvak, on the other hand, I am not sure of his activities -- presumably spending time in the local Korobokuru enclave, but perhaps also accompanying Hatori on his trip to the Ogre Smith, whether or not anything he has on order is ready yet, as a bodyguard?
Noku I anticipate will fill his days with some combination of (a) learning/scribing spells in his spellbook and (b) scribing scrolls, with perhaps some shopping added in.
Everyone will probably take a day -- or at least an evening -- to enjoy the celebration of the New Year with their family, friends, and so on.
A note on Masterwork Mighty bows -- unlike magical items which can be enchanted at the rate of 1000 gp value per day, and as has been noted in separate emails to various folks, these items are not generally available 'off the shelf', as it were, but must instead be commissioned. There are enough competent bowyers in Marike these days, including some who have only recently set up shop, so that orders for these bows can be filled concurrently, starting almost immediately, given the prestige of the heroes, but they still would not be deliverable until late winter or early spring, depending on the type and power of the bows, as these are as much works of art as they are masterpieces of the bowyers craft skill. Normally, Masterwork weapons ARE available off the shelf -- they are made on speculation based on the fact that a masterwork item is required for enchantment -- but Mighty bows are generally made to order. Furthermore, the normal economics of crafting mean that a daimyo is more likely to want mighty bows for his retainers (the extra +1 to hit is as expensive as getting a whole new mighty daikyu +2 to damage, and two daikyus at +2 damage is a better deal than one daikyu at +1 to hit and +2 to damage) -- and the daimyo would then buy some magical arrows and reward his loyal retainers with them, so that if some foul oni were to be fought, all the best archers in his retinue could fire a few shots that are magical and do have a minor bonus to hit and a big bonus to damage. So it is only mighty heroes who want their bows both masterwork (and eventually enchanted) and mighty, for the huge potential total bonuses that they sometimes need against the most powerful of foes...
Some notes on enchantments added to armor and weapons, and random stuff:
Focus enchantment will be allowed on any melee weapon, not just katanas, but of course is useless unless the wielder is also trained in Iaijutsu Focus, which in Drakara is a trained-only skill.
Also, any +(gold) enchantments can be added to magic armor if they cost +3000 or less, or added to magic weapons if they cost +2000 or less -- the '4000 market limit' is applied to the total enchantment cost adder for such an item on a minimal (+1) base, i.e. magic armor +1 is +1000 so can also get a +3000 enchantment, while magic weapon +1 is +2000 so can only squeeze in a +2000 enchantment. Those are possible regardless of any other enchantments on the item, so for example Gorvak could add something to his magic armor, even though its actual magic value is higher than the +1 base. However, 'bonus' adders are limited to the 4000 limit -- i.e. if you have +1 armor you could add a +1 ability or increase the base enhancement to +2, either would cost +3000 to bring the base value (for +2 armor) up to the limit of 4000.
For the purpose of adding a random enchantment of some kind to a slotted item that already has an enchantment of some other kind -- for example, to add Resistance to a Cloak of Charisma -- the enchantment rules make the cost of the added enchantment be doubled, i.e. per the SRD, "If the item is one that takes up a specific space on a character, any additional power added to that item doubles the cost." But the rules are not specific about what exactly is doubled -- i.e. just the cost of the new power, or the cost of the overall item, i.e. do you add up the two enchantment costs and double the total, or just doble the cost of any enchantments added after the first? If the latter is supposed to be the case, that leads to weirdness, i.e. you can make an item that had two abilities in it and the cost could be different depending on which ability was put in first and which second -- also, what would be the impact of improving one of the abilities later, would you double the incremental cost for the increase or what?
This question needs more thought, and perhaps a check in 3.5 as to how they describe it there -- but right now the 3.5 SRD does not appear to be accessible to me, so I cannot check it. In any case, there then is the question of how does that interact with the market limit? What I am inclined to do is rule that the market limit -- which isn't necessarily supposed to restrict what people can make anyways, just what they can buy, though I am making it restrict access to materials needed to make stuff as well in Drakara -- only apply to the base cost, similar to what I am doing with +(gold) abilities for armor and weapons. Thus for instance if a Cloak of Resistance +2 can be made, then Resistance +2 could also be added to a Cloak of Charisma, based on the fact that the essential materials are available -- and essentially the 'extra cost' for cramming more than one enchantment into a slotted item would be merely a matter of requiring more applications of the same type of magic and materials, thus increasing the actual expense and time requires but not violating the market limit per se. So now I just need to verify what the total market value of such a combination item is supposed to have, and that would determine time and materials cost required, with only the basic enchantment cost being limited by market availability.
And once again, as a reminder from an earlier email, magic arrows (or bolts) +1 can be bought in batched of 10 for 500 gp, or 50 for 2350 gp.
P.S. -- UPDATE -- Ashiko especially take note -- I am upping the effective market limit for the purpose of PCs making stuff, i.e. unlike what I told Orion FTF on Sunday, the market limit will restrict the total cost of materials, not the item itself, that Ashiko can acquire to make stuff with. In other words, although items available on the market are limited to the 4000 gp limit, the market value of stuff that can be made by private individuals is effectively twice that (8000) as the market limits the cost of materials to the crafter (4000). (That also legitimizes the earlier crafting of the 6000 gp boots when the market limit was 3000, as Ashiko could then have gotten the materials necessary.)
Note that NPCs will only generally be making stuff that can be sold for 4000 or less -- the PC non-licensed Wondrous Item crafter, Soshi Ashiko, may well be one of the more proficient item crafters in town, but there may be other NPCs in similar situations, they are competent enough to craft stuff that is more valuable than the market limit, but they don't have licenses to do so for public sale. The market limit is just that, a limit on what can generally be found in the market.
-- Ernie III / DrakaraGM