Online Gurus of the Roleplaying Experience

Last updated 12/11/2010.

Heroes of Rokugan III: Spirit of Bushido

Campaign

Character Roster

Character Name	Gender	Character Type	Clan	School	Player Name	Notes	Picture
Isawa Kasuma	Female	Shugenja	Phoenix	Isawa Shugenja	Maryrita Steinhour	"Flower of the Phoenix"
Utaku Cho	Female	Bushi	Unicorn	Utaku Battle Maiden	Curtis Steinhour	Utaku warsteed, stallion "Hachiman"

Character Creation and Informal Campaign Notes

Getting Started

• Character sheet - form-fillable PDF
• Quick reference for Skills and Advantages and Disadvantages, and Spell lists by Ring
• Module Summary - form-fillable PDF
• Important Things To Know (including Basic Rokugan Etiquette 101)
  • PCs area Samurai, and follow the Code of Bushido
  • Everyone is addressed family name first, then given name. Equals are usually addressed as "<family name>-san": (Isawa-san, Utaku-san). Given names are rarely, if ever, used except with close friends and family. Leaving off the -san is even more familiar, and there are diminuitive endings (-kun for males, -chan for females) which are only used with relatives or children... unless you're actually trying to insult the person. Use the suffix -sama to address superior or show respect: Miya-sama, Doji-sama.
  • No touching. (Ask permission if you're going to cast a "Touch" spell, or to heal someone!)
  • Do NOT touch or take anything off the dead. That's the job of a specific class of peasant, the Eta. This includes touching leather, furs, etc. (unless you're a Unicorn)
  • Do not talk about the Shadowlands in public.
  • When offered a gift, you MUST refuse twice. Then you may accept. This permits the gift-giver to demonstrate their sincerity in offering the gift.
  • Samurai do not engage in commerce; they consider money, haggling, etc. as beneath them. When they "buy" something from a merchant, they make a pretense of leaving the money behind as a gift as if it is inconsequential. Or, get a peasant to buy things for you. (Hence, money is almost always an insulting gift to offer a samurai).
  • Getting drunk in public and gambling are both (mildly) dishonorable pastimes.
• Character type summary (in Leslie's words)
  • Bushi - A quick rundown on damage-dealing, honorable fighter types:
    • Hida bushi (Crab) - heavy armor and a tetsubo (big whack-um stick). More of a tank, won't hit as well at low levels, but will do crushing damage when they DO hit. Middling honor; they're too busy fending off the Shadowlands to give a fig about pretty manners.
    • Akodo bushi (Lion) - ultra-honorable, focus on precision and tactics to do devastating damage. This is THE classic, solid samurai warrior - a soldier above all else.
    • Matsu berserker (Lion) - also ultra-honorable, but much more arrogant and confrontational about it. Focus on running screaming towards your enemy and killing them horribly. Glass cannon at low levels.
    • Moto bushi (Unicorn) - riding armor and a scimitar. Hits hard and gets to ride nice horses (though you have to be a female Utaku to get the really big horses). Seen as barbaric by snottier Clans.
    • Mirumoto bushi (Dragon) - dual-wielding whirlwind of ginsu death. However, the Dragon are also enigmatic mystics (if not outright barking lunatics) who make Yoda look coherent and direct.
    • Tsuruchi archer (Mantis) - pointy death from afar. Some are very honorable, some are very sneaky; they have a well-deserved reputation as effective bounty hunters.
    • Yoritomo bushi - pirate, hit things with double kamas a lot.
    • There are other good bushi schools, but the Crane and Scorpion both come with expectations of a certain facility with etiquette and political maneuvering.
  • Shugenja
  • Courtiers
    • Crab: We have a courtier school?
    • Crane: Do what I say because I'm pretty and I'm better than you.
    • Dragon: It was Sensei Plum-sama, in the teahouse, with the nunchaku!
    • Lion: Do what I say because it will bring the Empire honor and glory.
    • Mantis: Do what I say and profit, or else I break your kneecaps.
    • Phoenix: Do what I say because I can establish legal and historical precedent for my proposed course of action stretching back to the founding of the Empire.
    • Scorpion: Do what I say or I tell everyone what you're really doing behind that fan.
    • Unicorn: Why can't we all just get along?

A Brief History (with thanks to Leslie)

This is a turbulent time in Rokugan's history, so there's a lot to sum up. There is an excellent resource in the L5R wiki to help fill in the gaps left below.

The year is 1137. Rokugan is recovering from more than a decade of civl war and strife. No one came out of it smelling like roses: between the corruption and machinations of both Fu Leng and the Lying Darkness, on top of usual Clan rivalries, there were acts of great heroism and terrible villainy from every single Clan. The Scorpion Coup led to the Clan War and the Second Day of Thunder, which in turn led to the establishment of the Toturi dynasty and the War against the Lying Darkness, which ended in the Battle of Oblivion's Gate. In addition to the massive casualties and the loss of faith created by so many terrible betrayals on all sides, there are legions of ancestral spirits who returned through Oblivion's Gate - who are now in mortal form once more, often struggling to find a place for themselves in a broken Empire far different from the one they left behind.

What you need to know about Toturi: he used to be Akodo Toturi, the Lion Clan Champion. Half the Lion hated him from day one for not being militant enough. He defeated the Scorpion Coup, but spoke up for the honorable treatment of a defeated enemy and got the Akodo family dissolved for his trouble. As a ronin, he led an army through the Clan War and eventually became Emperor. He was kidnapped by the Lying Darkness, imprisoned, and tortured. Then he went nuts. Then he regained his sanity and managed to commit seppuku before the Lying Darkness could claim his soul. Rokugan went to war against the Lying Darkness, and Toturi came back through Oblivion's Gate to reclaim the throne.

You can go through each of the Clan entries to learn what they did over the past decade of war, but the primary highlights are these:

• The Crab teamed up with the Shadowlands for a while, sacked a lot of Crane and Scorpion holdings. Their invasion of Rokugan is typically seen as the beginning of the Clan War. Hida Yakamo, once Crab Champion, is now Lord Sun.
• The Crane took an awful beating, both on and off the battlefield. Toturi I is one of the first Emperors in history (the last Hantei was married to a Scorpion) who does not have a Crane spouse - a massive blow to their prestige.
• The Dragon were a key component of Toturi's Army, and thus instrumental in ending the Clan War. They also produced Mirumoto Hitomi, now Lady Moon, who went so homicidally insane that the Agasha family left the Dragon to join the Phoenix. A lot of Dragon are still pissed about that centuries later, so with the defection being only a few years old at this point that will be a sore spot.
• The Lion fought amongst themselves and pretty much fought everyone else. A lot of the Akodo went into nameless exile with Toturi and remained loyal to him; the Matsu were keen on killing him during the Clan War to support the Hantei emperor (and because they hated him anyway). The Jade Champion during the Clan War was a Kitsu who corrupted the Lion by practicing maho. The Akodo have only been restored as a family for a few years, now, and many of their number are returned spirits. So different Clans hate different factions within the Lion for different reasons, with the net result being that pretty much everyone hates them.
• The Mantis became a Great Clan less than ten years ago, because Yoritomo pulled together an Alliance of the Minor Clans and threatened the Great Clans with an attack just as they were trying to gather strength for the Second Day of Thunder. Claiming that the Phoenix were too weak to defend their own lands after the war, the Mantis invoked their new charter to defend Rokugan's coastlines and invaded. After a year they were finally kicked out again, and the invasion was eventually proven to be a trick of the Lying Darkness, but the Phoenix and the Mantis have not gotten along since the death of Osano-Wo and certainly don't now. The Fox Clan chose to abandon Yoritomo's Alliance to maintain their ties to the Crane; the other surviving Minor Clans are still on the fence about whether the Alliance is in their best interests.
• The Phoenix, as always, had a lot of very powerful shugenja on both sides of the fight; about 80% of the time, when a shugenja goes Dark Side, it's a power-hungry Isawa. As previously stated, they took a nasty beating during the Clan War. The current Empress, Toturi Kaede, is a former Isawa and the Oracle of Void.
• The Scorpion... wow. Their Clan Champion had a magic sword that told him bad things and read some prophecies that inspired him to kill the Emperor. Said Coup was eventually defeated, but Bayushi Kachiko married the new Emperor and kept her Clan in play. Plot after plot after plot... then the Scorpion got blamed for Toturi's disappearance in 1130. They were exiled to the Burning Sands, and all children under 12 were fostered to the Crane. A couple years later, a disguised ronin won an Imperial tournament and claimed as his prize the return of the Scorpion Clan to Rokugan. So they've been back less than 5 years. Even more than usual, nobody's sure what they're up to and nobody trusts them.
• The Unicorn did lots of heroic things in the service of Toturi during the Clan War, including playing a key part in the Battle of Beiden's Pass. Unicorn magistrates got sent after the Lion maho practitioners. However, when Shinjo returned in 1132, she exposed a massive Kolat (a secret society devoted to man ruling themselves rather than serving the Kami) conspiracy within her own Clan and wiped them out by the thousands, removing the family who shares her name from power and placing leadership of the Clan with the Moto family. So the Shinjo name is now mud.

© Maryrita Steinhour, 2010.