With his decision in the process of solidifying, Maru-maru feels that there’s still more that his former liege can help him with. Suddenly he is struck by the idea that he could be able to summon the ghost of drunk Oda with the help of his trusty sake gourd, for no particular reason… and it works! Stellar writing, really. >_>
And, yeah – that’s the official spell to summon the drunk version of Nobunaga Oda. And it works. Although he will only appear if you’re an old friend… or he’s desperately bored. You can, however, use other words as well – the summoning is mostly done by shaking the sake gourd, not by the words themselves. In his lifetime, Oda was easily summoned by loudly shaking a sake gourd around, and he hasn’t kicked the habit in death.
Once he’s there, Oda offers some pretty solid advice on the motivational strategies that had saved him well in life. Motivating your team by crucifying somebody as an example…burning everything to the ground…or offering financial and/or sexual benefits. The pages of history record how well these methods worked for him…and, in slightly modified form, they’re still core tools of every human resources manager today, more or less. If Oda would have any need to earn money in afterlife, he could easily find work as some kind of spectral management coach.
Unfortunately, none of these methods seems a good fit for Maru-maru. He can’t make an example out of any player, since he simply doesn’t have the luxury to sacrifice even a single one. He can’t burn everything to the ground, since that would inevitably include all of his own belongings…and job prospects. And he can’t go for the marriage alliance thing, since he doesn’t have any children…or any money. (Oda suggests using the combo, since you never know what any given person might focus on…of course, in Snuka’s case we could have told Oda that Snuka would be far more aroused by the bag of money than the bride.)
More on Monday.