You hesitate for what feels like an age, mulling over your options. There's just so many possibilities on offer before you - the tea house, the famed Kakita Duelling Academy, a long walk to stretch the legs and enjoy the natural beauty of the Crane lands… in the end, though, it is the simple act of sniffing yourself that determines the appropriate course of action. You, not to put too fine a point on it, stink. Not unreasonably so, given the length of your journey and the natural aromas associated with a horseback ride through the countryside, but enough that you can already picture the wrinkled noses of your contemporaries.
Will they even need that excuse, to make comments and remarks they think intelligent about the barbarian princess from the west? You doubt it, if your mother's words are to be believed, but there is no sense in handing your enemy a blade even if they are yet armed with their own. Your Clan already has too many traditions that others see fit to mock, from your fur and leather to the traditions of your priests, and you would be poorly served to make yourself vulnerable in other ways as well.
Satisfied with your reasoning, you nod firmly to yourself and head off into the streets of Tsume, and within a matter of two dozen heartbeats are completely and utterly lost. It takes you longer than that to notice, of course, and longer still to actually accept the idea, but apparently the ability to lead an entire army group a hundred miles by the light of the stars doesn't entirely translate to picking your way through the overly-clean streets of some tiny village on the far side of the Empire. Already, you think you hate the Crane, for surely this is their fault in some undeniable if obscure fashion.
"You there," you growl, drawing to a halt and pointing to the nearest passer by, "I smell terrible. Direct me to a bathhouse."
"I… you mean me, samurai-sama?" The man is some kind of farmer by the look of him, and for reasons entirely beyond your understanding is currently as pale and trembling as a criminal before the spike, "I, uh, yes… there is… oh! Yes, of course, you are here for the Championship! The Laughing Carp is a teahouse and bath all in one, and has facilities for all you could desire!"
"Good!" You say, remembering at the last moment not to show your satisfaction too openly, "Direct me there!"
It takes a good minute or so to get workable instructions out of the man, and eventually you give up on the finer details and resolve to make your way to the general area of town and ask someone else. It is by the river, apparently, so you resolve to follow the nearest one until you find an informant of more directly applicable knowledge. Ideally someone less inexplicably terrified of your very presence, for unless the Crane are vastly more terrifying than anything you've ever heard about them there has to be at least a handful of souls in this village with the courage not to shit themselves over a simple question.
So preoccupied with the strange demeanour of the man are you that it takes a cry of genuine alarm to shake you from your stupor. You glance up, blink, then throw yourself backwards just in time to avoid the grinding wheels of a runaway cart as it crashes its way wildly down the street. A stone catches in the wheel with a great crunch, someone cries out in ever mounting horror, and on a wake of fluttering paper sheathes the whole contraption crashes through the wooden railing on the nearest pier and submerges itself violently in one of Tsume's many rivers.
"A thousand pardons, noble samurai!" The scuttling, frantic form of an old man bent double under the weight of a large sack appears from further down the road, studying you with a kind of horrified awe even as his wrinkled arms dart back and forth to try retrieving the various shreds of paper dislodged by his runaway carriage, "No, ten thousand, a hundred! I was but distracted for a second, and oh… you are not injured, this lowly one hopes?"
"I am fine," you say, still more bemused than anything else. You have been in this village for less than an hour and already you have been confused by the locals and nearly killed by a piece of infrastructure. Fortunes only know what the samurai will be like when at last you cross paths with one, but… for now, you turn your attention to placating the peasant's obvious panic and grabbing the nearest piece of paper fluttering in the breeze. You think it is a letter, and a brief glance at the first handful of lines confirms it.
...you have often told me that you are a better father to my children than I am. I can only hope the Fortunes bless you - or curse you - with children of your own one day, that you could see the true challenges of fatherhood…
Wow that is absolutely not something you should be prying into, so you clear your throat and hand the letter back to the peasant. He seems torn between profusely thanking you and grovelling on the ground by your feet, which… to be fair, if he actually had hurt you in any serious fashion your mother probably would have had him executed in some incredibly painful fashion. You love her dearly, but she's always been a bit prone to over-reaction.
"You are a courier?" You say, if only to give the poor man something to latch onto that isn't the endless destructive spiral of panic and self-recrimination.
"Ah, no, that is… no, samurai-sama, I am not, I am but a humble scribe and assistant," the peasant babbles rapidly, gathering the last of the drifting papers in his boney arms and casting increasingly concerned looks at the slowly submerging cart a dozen paces away, "Ryu is my name, servant to his highness Doji Satsume-dono, the Emerald… that is to say, the former Emerald Champion…"
...oh wow that is even worse. You don't know all that much about politics in the wider empire, but even you know of the Grinning Crane and his mysterious death but a handful of weeks past. When the chief law enforcement officer of the entire Empire keels over dead for no discernable reason people tend to get antsy, and if that wasn't bad enough he seems to have spent the time before his death writing really personal letters to… who?
Bah. It doesn't matter. Well, ok, it does, but it matters to someone else, someone whose job and ordained role in the perfected hierarchy it is to give themselves stomach ulcers worrying about this sort of thing. Probably one of the Ide, they tend to get all the terrible political assignments that come your family's way. Your job, by contrast, is to kill people and lead others to glory and maybe, just maybe, help a frantic old peasant man rescue his cart from the river before something unfortunate happens to it.
Ryu the peasant has almost lost his cart to the fast-flowing rivers of Tsume, and with it his old master's possessions. You could help him retrieve it, but this would entail hard physical labour and quite possibly getting rather mucky; such acts are considered beneath samurai, and word will get around quickly.
[ ] Assist Ryu. Compassion is a virtue, and it demands that you help those less fortunate whenever you can. If you get dirty, so what, you're going to a bathhouse anyway. (+2 honour, -1 glory)
[ ] Move on. The peasant appears halfway to a heart attack just at the thought of having inconvenienced you; better to leave him to it, instead of making a public scene of this whole mess. (No effect)
[ ] Organise aid. There are enough able-bodied folks nearby to make retrieving the cart a simple deed, and you are of the kuge. That said, for a guest to start ordering around their host's vassals is arguably a violation of courtesy… (+2 glory, -1 honour)
