"Hey," he says, lamely. "Have you guys noticed anything. Weird?" They're NPCs, they can't give much feedback, but they sometimes give 'reports' so maybe they know something?

"Do you mean the clouds disappearing?", he says out loud.  Which is a feature the devs had talked about adding but never gotten around to. Largely because they were perfectionists and while voice synthesization is doable lip syncing is still firmly in uncanny valley.

That's evidence in favor of Soreiyu's theory, at least. "Yeah," he says. "I'm trying to figure out if something we should know about happened."

Possibly he should check the other NPCs. He's worked enough on most of them over the years to be worried - and also he has a sneaking suspicion he should ask one of them if they have internal experiences. But that would be really weird.

"Could it be an outsider used weather control in our domain without permission?

If so I request you allow me to properly chastise them."

"It looks like the outside also changed? I remember us being surrounded by rice paddies, there's plains there now, and - I want to confirm whether my memory has been altered or we've been moved."

"Sure that we were surrounded by rice patties, that I am. 

A scouting party, arrange I shall."

"Thanks. That'd be appreciated. I'm going to check with everyone else, see if anyone saw someone or something out of place."

"Understood!"

In YGGDRASIL bases have two broad classes of NPC.  Those that are created by the guild owners from a pool of levels, and "POP" monsters that autospawn based on the general theme of the guild base. The later have incredibly primitive AI that cannot be modified by the PC's.  Furthermore POPs are at most level 80 which is very week in direct combat against max level PCs.  However, these NPCs can still serve as a living wall/alarm system and fight against the hordes of disposable monsters summoned by many classes.  Additionally they have the benefits of being relatively plentiful and auto respawning after a certain amount of time has passed since they were killed.

After swallowing a brief moment of distaste Ranmaru decides to call upon the castles "hanzo" POPs to form a stealth group, sending them out in every direction.  It will be about an hour before they report back.

He updates Takeko and Soreiyu on the apparently actually-existing NPCs, runs through his mental catalog of his NPCs (sure Soreiyu helped with the code, but Kuchinawa was the one breathing life into them), checks on a few to get their perspective, and then finds one - a shy servant girl who usually plays the biwa and tells old stories for atmosphere - who is extremely, immensely unlikely to spread tales about Kuchinawa behaving strangely, and approaches her to ask, "Hey, this might sound weird, but - how far back do your memories stretch? I think someone might have used a world item to mess with us, so I figured I'd be a bit extra thorough..." It's more indirect than asking 'so do you have internal experiences,' but - he gave her a few hints of backstory, but far from as much as he usually does, since she's one of the more recently instantiated NPCs and with Yggdrasil shutting down he hadn't had the motivation to continue writing.

"Eeh! A world item! How scary!"

She takes a second to calm her self then bows again.

"I apologize for my outburst master. I can remember being rescued by the guild and somethings before that." She has an extremely brief look of confusion before giving you her life story.  She remembers what explicitly in her backstory, but not anything else that happened before she actually existed. She also remembers things that happened since she existed and her role in them, and doesn't see anything odd about having not had any agency or even very complex orders until today.  Similarly, after that one brief look she had no trouble reconciling the family from her backstory with Kuchinawa being her god and creator.

Weird. So it's not filling in backstory - but she's talking like a person, just one who had fantasy-style amnesia and was 'rescued' -

"Thanks. That sounds like what I remember, too. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."

She bows, again.

"If master says so it must be true!

Would you like a song before you go?"

"Sure. Thank you, that'd be lovely."

She plays. It turns out just a few levels in bard are enough to make someone rock star good by real world standards.  At least if you can get over the idea of a servant girl playing "Rock Over Japan" on a biwa. I mean technically the 20th century is classical music, but that still seems like a bit of a glitch.

Okay he probably shouldn't have allowed Takeko at the song list.

He claps politely when she finishes. "That was great, thank you!"

She looks extremely pleased, bows again, and wishes "master" a nice day. Then she returns to idly retuning her instrument.

He disengages politely and leaves. It's probably been an hour, so he wanders in Ranmaru's general direction.

Ranmaru bows.
"Kychinawa-Sama. Reported back the Hanzos have. Discovered a village, a forest, and a 100 strong fighting troop to the North they have.  Western knights and some sort of magic users. Preparing to attack the village they are. Plains in all other directions."

Well, shit.

"We can't just let that village be destroyed," he says. Especially if people here are real. Which, holy fuck, has implications for fighting. He, Takeko, Soreiyu, and the warrior customized NPCs are no slouches, but he doesn't know the levels of the attacking force - probably low with numbers that high - can't assume that though and ahhhhhh this is why he's not in charge of fighting. "I'll inform Takeko. Good work on the information."

"It was nothing."

"Still. Keep up the good work," and aaaaaa how do you part from someone who didn't exist until like just an hour ago. Awkward parting routines ahoy?

Once that particular nightmare's done with, he hurries to find Takeko and update her on the situation.

"Well, that's no good," she says. "I'm not comfortable leaving the castle undefended, especially right now, we don't have that many high-level retainers - we don't have concrete information on the enemy's levels - you and me should be enough for the offense, Soreiyu's the best of us at defense. What're our current forces look like - I like the sound of 'overwhelming force' so we'll take a fourth if that's not ludicrously many, a larger chunk if that's too few, I'll leave exact numbers to you and the retainers."

"Right. I'll. Get that set up." 

He nods to Takeko, then goes to find... Someone.

Masamune is still were he was left and has a fairly good idea of what forces are available. It also looks like he is talking to one of the Hanzo's so he probably has a good idea of whats going on.