Life among the mortals is strange, and not entirely unpleasant.
Children in Rokugan have few duties and even fewer expectations, so for the most part your early years are ones of leisure. It is frustrating in many ways, easily seen as naught but an unnecessary delay thrown into your path by malicious deities and uncaring fate, but there is a certain pleasure there as well. It has been more than a thousand years since you were last a child, and even then you laboured under the weight of expectation and criticism. Gods can be such demanding creatures, after all, and your siblings were only rarely more than annoyances and potential rivals.
(Shinjo was the exception, as always. She welcomed your company without pause or suspicion, and for that you yet regard her as the finest of your entire misbegotten family.)
A mortal child, by contrast, apparently has little with which to occupy their days than play and a modest course of education. Reading, writing, basic mathematics... all topics that would bore you to tears, had you the slightest inclination towards revealing your true capabilities. As it is you swiftly find yourself devising ever more elaborate ways of avoiding such onerous duties, slipping away before class to explore the surrounding countryside or finding some unwatched corner of the monastery where you can meditate in peace.
Your conduct annoys your tutors, of course, but many of the other monks seem to find it rather endearing, especially once it becomes clear that your truancy has yet to seriously affect your performance. They all look alike at first, with their bald heads and humble robes, but once you get past that initial impression it turns out that your neighbours are an interesting bunch indeed. They seem to be of every age and gender, humble peasants and retired samurai drawn from across the length and breadth of this grand Empire by the callings of fate and the work of their predecessors. The stifling confines of class and etiquette do not appear to apply to monks in quite the same way as they do to everyone else, and the cultural microcosm that results is fascinating to observe.
The majority of the monks appear to be descended from those who followed your brother Hida, either as warriors or simple peasants, and as you would expect their manners are as blunt as the mountain stone their founder loved so much. You can see shades of him in them from time to time, and while it never fails to unsettle you there is a certain comfort to be found in the reminder as well. The bonds of blood and friendship that surround you each day are strange and confusing, and facing them you cannot help but wonder... what would life have been like, had Hantei not betrayed you at the last? Would you have fallen alongside the others, to establish a Clan of your own?
The thought fills you with curiosity, and it does not take long before your inquisitive looks attract the notice of several older monks. They seem to enjoy your questions about the Clans and the history of Rokugan in general, often spending hours at a time reciting old stories and anecdotes collected along the course of decades, and you find it easy to sit there before them and simply... listen.
Thus pass your early years.
-/-
At the age of four you finally manage to find a way to observe your new family practice their martial arts. The monastery you reside in stands atop a large hill, observing all approaches by means of four large towers positioned at the corners of the compound, and from the third floor of the southern-most tower you have an excellent view down the slope to the sparring fields.
In many ways, what you are seeing now is actually familiar. Row upon row of monks stand in a neat formation upon the barren plain, running through a rapid sequence of stances and phantom blows at the direction of an elder stood off to one side. You expect similar scenes can be found in dojos all throughout the Empire, which in and of itself is rather surprising. Your knowledge of monks as a whole is largely restricted to a few titbits scrapped from the inside of the last Hantei's mind, so naturally it is far from complete, but you would not have thought them to be a military unit...
"Furumaro!" Sakura calls from behind you, her voice stern and chastising. "There you are! Why are you not at your writing lesson with Master Oak?"
Turning to face her, you stifle your curses at being so easily discovered. You must have been truly distracted to miss the approach of one of your surrogate parents. Still, perhaps she can explain...
"I wanted to see the fighting," you say truthfully, gesturing out the window. "It looks really interesting... but I don't know
why..."
"Hmm?" Sakura frowns slightly as she approaches, before nodding in understanding as she lays eyes on the sparring fields in turn. "Ah, I see. I suppose it was inevitable that you would become interested in such things. Too many stories about the glory of war, I suppose..."
"No, not that," you frown in the most adorable way you know how, having long since learned that such tricks are the easiest ways to cajole answers from the more soft-hearted monks, "I mean, why do they fight? I thought monks were all about sleeping and reading the tao..."
Sakura laughs at that, any lingering irritation fading away before your guileful manipulations.
"Maybe some of them are," she allows with a chuckle, "but not us. We are Tengoku's Fist, after all. Did you never wonder why we named ourselves thus?"
Truthfully you had largely attributed the ironic naming scheme to some joke on Emma-O's part, but it appears that the fortune of death is perhaps not quite as omnipresent or as spiteful as you had been led to believe. There is no way to reasonably explain that, of course, so in the end you just shake your head.
"It is because that is the role we take upon ourselves." Sakura explains, coming over to kneel at your side as she points out the different members of the temple's senior leadership currently leading the training routine far below. "We train each day so that when the time comes, we can go out into the world and stand strong against the forces of evil wherever they might arise. That might mean on the battlefield, it might mean in a back alley, it might even mean in a samurai's court. There are monks who understand the Celestial Order better than we, of this I have no doubt, but there are none who do more to defend it."
You consider this for a long moment. Then you simplify your conclusion down to something that a four-year old child might reasonably be expected to say.
"We punch bad guys?"
With a serious expression on her face, Sakura nods.
"Yes, Furumaro," she says gravely, "We punch bad guys."
-/-
At the age of seven the kami start speaking to you of their own accord, an event that startles you badly enough to be noticeable even to the half-slumbering form of your current storyteller. Old Faru cracks open a single eye and looks you over, breaking off his tale of the Clan War to do so, and despite your best efforts you cannot quite smooth your expression enough to pretend that nothing is wrong.
"Oho! What is this now?" the old monk chuckles, while over his shoulder the flickering form of an air spirit cavorts and mimics his words in its own high-pitched tones. "I'm not boring you now, am I little one?"
"No
sensei," you say dutifully, trying your best to ignore the chattering spirit hovering above his shoulder. "It's just that... this war sounds so terrible, yet you always taught me that battles were a way to win glory..."
"Ah, it is true; the Clan War was a terrible time." Faru nods seriously, looking contemplative. "At the time we all sought war for what seemed like the finest of reasons, but in retrospect... how much glory can one truly earn in battle, when the conflict itself serves the cause of the Dark One?"
You are
quite certain that the Clan War was no doing of yours, save perhaps in the most indirect sense, but if the mortal wishes to believe his kin above such things without the touch of Jigoku's vile influence... well, it seems harmless enough. Concentrating on the story also happens to serve as an excellent distraction from the increasingly-aggravated spirit, which seems to have taken personal insult at your indifference.
Over the following few weeks you slowly become reacquainted with all of the elemental kami, a process that you never really thought to experience even after being born again into this mortal form. You retained your gift for sorcery of course, loathe to set aside such a versatile tool for such a trivial reason as death and subsequent rebirth, but all of your existing techniques were built for the manipulation of
kansen and other evil spirits. To be approached by the spirits of the living world without the need for magical compulsion is an experience wholly unknown to you, and after you get over your initial shock you find the whole experience rather fascinating.
Of course, you cannot spend nearly as much time conversing with them and otherwise experimenting as you would like, not within the confines of the monastery. The compound of wood and stone offers a great many places to hide, of course, but if you were to be caught speaking with the kami then you have no doubt you would be packed off to one of the Clans at an impressive speed. Such an opportunity would allow you to learn a great deal about how to employ these abilities, it is true, but in exchange they would expect you to pledge your life in service to their lords and, by extension, one of your siblings.
Since you would rather die than allow such words of fealty to pass your lips, that leaves only a few remaining options, most of which you pursue as and when circumstances allow. Besides, once you are older you could perhaps fake your way into one of the temple-dojos of the shugenja, or find some other way to obtain the knowledge you seek without providing the loyalty your tutors would demand in turn. It is simply a matter of patience.
You are very good at being patient.
-/-
Eventually your time comes. There is no formal point at which a monk of your order is expected to graduate, but even though you are but fifteen years of age none of the senior membership is willing to argue against your readiness. You have mastered the fighting arts of the order, learned all the lore and philosophy they care to impart, and regularly stand triumphant over even the harshest of physical trials.
(You have yet to work out what being able to meditate beneath a waterfall is meant to prove, precisely, but the monks seem to regard it as being really quite important.)
All that remains, then, is to choose where you will go. A monk might wander freely through the Empire, of course, but it is considered appropriate for the order to offer at least a starting point for its newest member before sending them on their way.
Rank the following plot options from 1-5 in order of your preference.
[ ] You will go to the lands of the Crane, there to attend upon a samurai's court and offer sage advice. Assuming you can restrain yourself from strangling the pompous fools.
[ ] You will go to the lands of the Crab, there to join the retinue of a Kuni witch-hunter and hunt down the tainted. The irony is worthy of a play.
[ ] You will go to the lands of the Scorpion, there to assist in rooting out a pernicious criminal syndicate... even if your hosts would rather you not.
[ ] You will go to the lands of the Dragon, there to participate in theological debates and/or sparring matches with the tattooed monks... and to make sure that fucking Togashi is actually dead.
[ ] You will go to the lands of the Unicorn, there to assist the local peasants with... whatever kind of problems a peasant faces in day to day life, you suppose.
