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

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[X] Challenge him. A duel will settle this, once and for all, and it might also enable you to gain a better understanding of your enemy's strengths and alliances.

Also, it will require him to call in a few favors from somewhere to get a decent champion. At this point, the more favors we can make him spend, the better.

I feel like an appropriately stirring response would also help, here, but I'm not in a place to write one right now.
 
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[X] Challenge him. A duel will settle this, once and for all, and it might also enable you to gain a better understanding of your enemy's strengths and alliances.

We're kinda insanely fast and the Tsuruchi probably isn't Iaijutsu focused.
 
[X] Challenge him. A duel will settle this, once and for all, and it might also enable you to gain a better understanding of your enemy's strengths and alliances.

Blood for the blood throne!
 
[X] "Since you are so adamant that i should fight my own battles... Very well. I will oblige and accept your challenge. Who will stand for you, Mantis?"
-[X] Challenge, but also imply that he is -not- going to fight his own battle, but demands it of us.
 
[X] Disengage. The Mantis have made up some ground, but you still have the advantage. Better not to risk compromising your true strength for a momentary edge.

We really have no way of winning this.
 
[X] Challenge him. A duel will settle this, once and for all, and it might also enable you to gain a better understanding of your enemy's strengths and alliances.

It's riskier... but we can't afford to back down in front of the Lion. Having the low Void does suck, but we may be able to beat it out via our very generous Awareness score.
 
[X] Disengage. The Mantis have made up some ground, but you still have the advantage. Better not to risk compromising your true strength for a momentary edge.
 
"Very well, then, Yoritomo-san. If you so crave directness that you cannot listen to sense, I will give you directness. You are correct in one thing. I am bound by Loyalty to my Clan and to the Empire. If the good of the Empire requires it of me, then yes, I will cheat, trick, and deceive, distasteful as I might find it. That is what it means to be the Emperor's Under Hand. For Loyalty and the good of the Empire I would sacrifice everything I am and have, but this was just the results of a friendly wager. My Honor is worth far more than *that*. You insult me, Sir, and I demand satisfaction. I challenge you. Who will you have fight your battle?"

First attempt at a write-in. Feedback sincerely invited. Again considering blowing a void point on the inevitable Sincerity roll.

For that matter, @Maugan Ra, if it's legal I'd like an etiquette check on the rough likely effects of the above.
 
Right so let's see how well we would do in a duel here.

Iaijutsu 3- Decent but its something that we should assume that our opponent will be able to match or exceed. If we were to spend 9 XP we could bring ourselves from Iai 3 to Iai 5 which would take us from "professional duelist" to "could lead a (small) dojo" levels of competence and give us a free raise during the Focus roll.

Reflexes/Awareness 4- Secondary attributes here but they're where we are liable to be able to beat whatever champion is thrown at us. A decent Awarness roll here would give us +1k1 to our Focus roll which is liable to decide the match. Unless we're planning to try and kill our opponent Reflexes probably isn't going to matter that much here, sure we might be able to call a raise or two but the important part here is being able to hit them. Also assuming that the Tsuruchi is going to be our opponent we probably won't be able to hope that our Armor TN of 28 is going to be able to save us here, she's liable to have high enough Reflexes to be able to hit us even with a mediocre roll.

Void- Where we really suck. Void 2 means that we're betting on either winning our Assessment roll well enough to get the +1k1 bonus or we're desperately hoping to roll a 10 on one of our dice. On the bright side if we're going up against the Tsuruchi she probably doesn't have Void 4 or higher, Brokita only had 3 and unless she's been buying up levels in preparation for getting her IR4 technique she's probably not going to have more then him. Add this to the fact that as an archer she doesn't get the same use from Void points that katana users do and she doesn't really need additional help to hit her targets so from a meta perspective there'd be little reason to increase her Void. So she's probably stuck in the scrub boat at Void 2 with us or narrowly edging us out at Void 3.

Of course this is presuming that the Tsuruchi is going to be our opponent and not some random Matsu who has taken umbrage at us. After her embarrassing defeat in the archery contest losing in a duel here might actually be enough pressure to get her to commit seppuku.
 
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Again, we're not going up against the Tsuruchi. My understanding is that she isn't even carrying a katana. We're probably going up against one of the two Crab Bushi - or, at least, he likely expects to have us face off against one of the Crab bushi. We'll see if they follw through. Worst-case scenario, we're going up against Matsu Ketsui, though I find that somewhat unlikely.
 
Sirrocco said:
"Very well, then, Yoritomo-san. If you so crave directness that you cannot listen to sense, I will give you directness. You are correct in one thing. I am bound by Loyalty to my Clan and to the Empire. If the good of the Empire requires it of me, then yes, I will cheat, trick, and deceive, distasteful as I might find it. That is what it means to be the Emperor's Under Hand. For Loyalty and the good of the Empire I would sacrifice everything I am and have, but this was just the results of a friendly wager. My Honor is worth far more than *that*. You insult me, Sir, and I demand satisfaction. I challenge you. Who will you have fight your battle?"

First attempt at a write-in. Feedback sincerely invited. Again considering blowing a void point on the inevitable Sincerity roll.

For that matter, @Maugan Ra, if it's legal I'd like an etiquette check on the rough likely effects of the above.
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I like it. Perhaps a little bit over-combative, but it would be the "you want direct? Here's direct." speech.
 
Da Boyz said:
Of course this is presuming that the Tsuruchi is going to be our opponent and not some random Matsu who has taken umbrage at us. After her embarrassing defeat in the archery contest losing in a duel here might actually be enough pressure to get her to commit seppuku.
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The Tsuruchi, in general, don't do Iaijutsu. Hell, they don't do swords. IIRC, it was only after they joined the Mantis that they even started carrying swords, and even then it's not widespread.
 
could we name one of the lion bushi (specifically the one who almost killed us in the duel for the crane) if the mantis calls on another clan for his champion?
 
DarknessSmiles said:
could we name one of the lion bushi (specifically the one who almost killed us in the duel for the crane) if the mantis calls on another clan for his champion?
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SMuha said:
We carry sword. So probably not.
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@SMuha has the right of it here- if you carry the full daisho set, you are basically declaring that you can protect yourself and fight your own duels.

Simply carrying a wakizashi would declare you can protect yourself to a basic level and remove Honour hits from attacking you during a skirmish IIRC, but carrying a full daisho and then trying to get a champion is a massive insult to every full bushi in court and will be taken as such. I think there might be exceptions to that, but I forget what they are if any and they certainly don't apply here.
 
horngeek said:
Simply carrying a wakizashi would declare you can protect yourself to a basic level and remove Honour hits from attacking you during a skirmish IIRC, but carrying a full daisho and then trying to get a champion is a massive insult to every full bushi in court and will be taken as such. I think there might be exceptions to that, but I forget what they are if any and they certainly don't apply here.
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kinda what i thought, but i thought i would throw it out there in any case.

[X] Challenge him. A duel will settle this, once and for all, and it might also enable you to gain a better understanding of your enemy's strengths and alliances.
 
I think we can just slip out at this point. I'll write something up later today, but if we can pull this off we should cruch them. How about, instead of challanging him, we go after the Wasp. After all, he is here in their name.

See, the Wasp is a Bushi. We challenge Yoritomo, and he gets to name a champion. We chalange the Wasp and since she is Bushi, there will be none of this champion non-sense. We can crush this entire argument by changing the narative. It would be an apropriately Scorion thing to do.
 
primemountain said:
I think we can just slip out at this point. I'll write something up later today, but if we can pull this off we should cruch them. How about, instead of challanging him, we go after the Wasp. After all, he is here in their name.

See, the Wasp is a Bushi. We challenge Yoritomo, and he gets to name a champion. We chalange the Wasp and since she is Bushi, there will be none of this champion non-sense. We can crush this entire argument by changing the narative. It would be an apropriately Scorion thing to do.
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Challenging the Wasp... gets us basically nothing. It's also socially impossible. The Wasp hasn't done anything to offend us.

We could insult the wasp, I suppose, but that isn't really our style, and I don't believe that it would serve us well.
 
Yeah, that's the problem, we'll be expected to defend our honor, but he can get a champion--and there's a lot of people who dislike us on principle who'd be glad to stick it in.

We're okay in an Iaijutsu match, but hardly a match if he pulls out an IR3-4 champion out of his ass, which is typically what you require if you're going to go to a major Winter Court and get shit done by insulting and pissing off everybody. That being said, we had a good counter and he is being a pissant, and that means that the biggest and scariest defenders from someone like the Lion probably aren't going to get involved. He might get a champion from the Crab--but to be fair, the Crab aren't really very good at first-blood Iaijutsu duels (Though they can become scary in duels to the death if they took Crab Defender, that big pile of reduction they get for duels makes them excellent at simply conceding the first strike, tanking it, and then murdering the shit out of you with their counterattack). They might be able to throw decently big numbers out, but they won't have force multipliers like a Dragon or a Crane duelist would have, so it'd be relatively even as a result.
 
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Well, there's a strong argument that a Family Winter Court- and even moreso for the Matsu- is, by definition, not really a major one per se. The Matsu are thoroughly uninterested in political maneuvers IIRC, after all.

But the point still stands to a certain degree. And the Mantis are fucking rich enough to pull out a pretty talented Minor Clan or Ronin duelist out of their ass if need be.

...on the other hand, this is a @Maugan Ra game, we're at a Matsu Court, and we're a Bayushi Courtier. So... go for it and see if we can channel Matsu Katsu, perhaps? /in-joke
 
horngeek said:
Well, there's a strong argument that a Family Winter Court- and even moreso for the Matsu- is, by definition, not really a major one per se. The Matsu are thoroughly uninterested in political maneuvers IIRC, after all.

But the point still stands to a certain degree. And the Mantis are fucking rich enough to pull out a pretty talented Minor Clan or Ronin duelist out of their ass if need be.

...on the other hand, this is a @Maugan Ra game, we're at a Matsu Court, and we're a Bayushi Courtier. So... go for it and see if we can channel Matsu Katsu, perhaps? /in-joke
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No, we're a Bayushi Bushi.

We just pretend to be a Courtier quite effectively. This is why we'll need to defend ourselves, because a Bushi is always supposed to carry their full daisho.
 
[X] Disengage. The Mantis have made up some ground, but you still have the advantage. Better not to risk compromising your true strength for a momentary edge.
 
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