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In Thunder's Echo (Legend of the Five Rings Quest)

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From that description...Ninube sounds likely.

Rook said:
I... do not want to jump to conclusions, here, but more than anything this makes me think of the False Hoturi - "lithe", "faceless" and "empty" just kind of screams Nothing to me.
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Also this is a real possibility. Certainly they'd have reason.
 
[X] Bring up the possibility of supernatural with Hanzo.
-[X] If he agrees this is possible. Immediately find and inform your superior. As fast and as urgently as possible.
 
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Here's the Creation myth of Rokugan:

In the beginning, there was Nothing. This Nothing felt loneliness, and desired something else- and from this first Sin of Desire, one third of the world was made.

The Nothing feared this new thing- and from the second Sin of Fear, a second third was made. And then it regretted what it had made- and from the third Sin of Regret, the last part of the world was made.

After a few other incidents, Amaterasu and... Lord Moon, I forget the actual name, came into being, and started to define everything by naming it- the Nothing escaped by hiding in the shadow of Lord Moon, drove him to madness in its first attempt to unmake all, and that caused the fall of the Kami and the creation of Rokugan.

It is a cosmic, literally existential threat- Lovecraft is one of the suggested readings for the sense of creeping horror involved, at least in the RPG.

That is what we're most likely up against. Oh, and our character won't know anything about it.
 
I'll be honest; there is a part of me that wants to twist this into some way to either save Mariko, or convince her to live. But I don't really see that happening.
 
Rook said:
@Maugan Ra - Can we get a Lore check as to what might provoke such a violent reaction from the kami? Because make no mistake, they are agitated. And there's very few things that could do that to such an extent; the moment that the Lying Darkness comes up as more than a distant possibility, you be very careful to check it out.
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Lore: Theology/Intelligence 5k4 = 20

The spirits of the Earth do not usually get angry. Actually, everything you've heard suggests that they're the most placid and unchanging of all the elements... with one notable exception. The Shadowlands Taint.

(A note on meta knowledge - at this point, Naoto has never heard of the Lying Darkness/The Nothing. Very few people have. Keep that in mind when voting for future actions).
 
horngeek said:
Here's the Creation myth of Rokugan:

In the beginning, there was Nothing. This Nothing felt loneliness, and desired something else- and from this first Sin of Desire, one third of the world was made.

The Nothing feared this new thing- and from the second Sin of Fear, a second third was made. And then it regretted what it had made- and from the third Sin of Regret, the last part of the world was made.

After a few other incidents, Amaterasu and... Lord Moon, I forget the actual name, came into being, and started to define everything by naming it- the Nothing escaped by hiding in the shadow of Lord Moon, drove him to madness in its first attempt to unmake all, and that caused the fall of the Kami and the creation of Rokugan.

It is a cosmic, literally existential threat- Lovecraft is one of the suggested readings for the sense of creeping horror involved, at least in the RPG.

That is what we're most likely up against. Oh, and our character won't know anything about it.
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At least it lost most of it's power when it created the world, so we're not dealing with quite as much power as we might otherwise.
 
horngeek said:
Here's the Creation myth of Rokugan:

In the beginning, there was Nothing. This Nothing felt loneliness, and desired something else- and from this first Sin of Desire, one third of the world was made.

The Nothing feared this new thing- and from the second Sin of Fear, a second third was made. And then it regretted what it had made- and from the third Sin of Regret, the last part of the world was made.

After a few other incidents, Amaterasu and... Lord Moon, I forget the actual name, came into being, and started to define everything by naming it- the Nothing escaped by hiding in the shadow of Lord Moon, drove him to madness in its first attempt to unmake all, and that caused the fall of the Kami and the creation of Rokugan.

It is a cosmic, literally existential threat- Lovecraft is one of the suggested readings for the sense of creeping horror involved, at least in the RPG.

That is what we're most likely up against. Oh, and our character won't know anything about it.
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One of the really scary parts of the Nothing is that its servants lose all form of identity, instead becoming literal extensions of the Lying Darkness's will. Its sort of like Harbinger from ME2, except its assuming direct control over everything.
 
Quest said:
Right, that. I put "as we know it" to include the possibility of them just wanting to turn the world into hell or something.
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As you can read afterwards that would still be a loss for the Nothing. It wants existence as a whole to be gone, so that only Nothing remains. Any kind of hell or heaven or anything basically is something that has to go, and for some reason I think the nothing learned that transformative shit only tends to add more to its plate.
 
Quest said:
Interesting.

So I guess these guys are employed void/neverborn-type chaps who want to end the world as we know it? I'm unfamiliar with L5R.

Who do we go to for this? Because it sounds way above our pay grade. (Which also means it's something we can use to increase our pay grade, so that's something to keep in mind.)
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The Lying Darkness. How to explain the Lying Darkness. Hmm.

We had a play about them earlier, so that might be a good starting place. (Foreshadowing.) The primordial void, where nothing existed, felt; and in this feeling it was no longer void. From that feeling came Lord Moon and Lady Sun, and they created the world and all that good stuff. Yet as they went around, naming things, the void remained, and the void...well I guess the best way to describe it is the void is metaphysically inimical to everything of substance just as everything of substance is metaphysically inimical to it. Even nothing, in the world of substance, is technically something. The Lying Darkness, however, is truly Nothing. Once everything was Nothing, and the Nothing would see the universe that way again.

During the creation of the world, it cloaked itself in shadow to hide while everything was being named (or it convinced Lord Moon not to name it, offering him a back door towards unmaking his creation if it became necessary), and thus in a fundamental way is not bound by the rules of Rokugani cosmology or the laws of nature. It can do things that should not be possible, interact with reality in ways that do not make sense. It works towards the unmaking of reality; but it has the patience of an immortal, and is not in any great rush. In mode of operation it can be infinitely subtle, or savage beyond even creatures of the Shadowlands, by turns. The Nothing is out to destroy not just the physical world but the metaphysical one, and at that level of do-not-care savagery is almost inevitable.

Those infected with the Nothing gradually lose their self-will and their identities. At this point in time, concepts like "families" of the Nothing's servants haven't yet developed (the Nothing is barely known to Rokugan at all, save ironically to us of the Scorpion and we're probably not privy to that, and to the Kolat), and in any case none of its servants have any kind of self-will at all until post-Volturnum, which hasn't happened. True creatures or agents of the Nothing possess no free will or mind of their own even in the perfunctory way that someone Lost to the Shadowlands appears to; this does not mean that they are unable to reason, but they are effectively remote puppets for the greater Nothing and have no individuality in terms of reasoning or behavior unless it suits the Nothing to make them seem as if they do. They can assume the form of a normal Rokugani, to greater or lesser degrees of skill depending on their relative level of power, for greater or lesser lengths of time.

Basically, this is a really good time to start hoping Pale Oak is Kolat, because they might be able/willing to help.
 
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horngeek said:
Here's the Creation myth of Rokugan:

In the beginning, there was Nothing. This Nothing felt loneliness, and desired something else- and from this first Sin of Desire, one third of the world was made.

The Nothing feared this new thing- and from the second Sin of Fear, a second third was made. And then it regretted what it had made- and from the third Sin of Regret, the last part of the world was made.

After a few other incidents, Amaterasu and... Lord Moon, I forget the actual name, came into being, and started to define everything by naming it- the Nothing escaped by hiding in the shadow of Lord Moon, drove him to madness in its first attempt to unmake all, and that caused the fall of the Kami and the creation of Rokugan.

It is a cosmic, literally existential threat- Lovecraft is one of the suggested readings for the sense of creeping horror involved, at least in the RPG.

That is what we're most likely up against. Oh, and our character won't know anything about it.
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Well... you did watch a play about the Creation Myth of Rokugan when you were on your date with Doji Mariko.

A play that had the Nothing as the narrator figure, in a perfectly featureless mask.

*looks innocent*
 
Maugan Ra said:
Lore: Theology/Intelligence 5k4 = 20

The spirits of the Earth do not usually get angry. Actually, everything you've heard suggests that they're the most placid and unchanging of all the elements... with one notable exception. The Shadowlands Taint.

(A note on meta knowledge - at this point, Naoto has never heard of the Lying Darkness/The Nothing. Very few people have. Keep that in mind when voting for future actions).
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Um, wait, we haven't? Didn't we see a play all about it?

Edit: Ninja'd. But yes, in retrospect that was clearly a setup for the story.
 
Am I the only one who started to suspect the Nothing faked the orders when we saw the play, and the moon-god actor nodded to the nothing without naming it? To the point that people not familiar with the Nothing picked up that something was going on?
 
Hydroplatypus said:
Am I the only one who started to suspect the Nothing faked the orders when we saw the play, and the moon-god actor nodded to the nothing without naming it? To the point that people not familiar with the Nothing picked up that something was going on?
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I'll be honest. I was kind of worried the foreshadowing in the play was a bit too blatant. I mean there's already been a few other hints and clues around the place, but that was comparatively blatant and I was sure someone was going to put things together.
 
The Laurent said:
This looks like a job for Sam Vimes.
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I have to admit I find the idea of Vimes storming into Shiro Matsu, shouting "WHERE'S MY COW!?" at the top of his lungs, and people's reaction to him, rather amusing. :p

Maugan Ra said:
I'll be honest. I was kind of worried the foreshadowing in the play was a bit too blatant. I mean there's already been a few other hints and clues around the place, but that was comparatively blatant and I was sure someone was going to put things together.
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Now I wonder if perhaps we could've avoided this whole thing if we paid more attention to that. I mean, a lot of us seemed to catch this and thought it weird, but it then fell kinda by the wayside.
On the other hand it might not have changed anything since Mariko had already received her forged orders by then and carried them out.
 
Maugan Ra said:
I'll be honest. I was kind of worried the foreshadowing in the play was a bit too blatant. I mean there's already been a few other hints and clues around the place, but that was comparatively blatant and I was sure someone was going to put things together.
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You had the Lord Moon nod to the Nothing, I assume that you were just including information that the actors wouldn't know IC to make for a better play.
 
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