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

[X] Make a strike that draws the minimum amount of blood necessary concluding the duel with as much respect (for the court/process not the enemy) as possible.
 
The next intended point at which I will be awarding XP is at the end of the tournament proper, plus some narrative rewards on top of that.

The next update will come tonight after my shift, assuming that I don't completely collapse. 164,000 parcels in eight hours is less fun than you might imagine. It looks like we're leaning towards a consensus in the votes, but I'll leave it open until then in case anyone else has any new alternatives they wish to propose.
 
[X] Make a strike that draws the minimum amount of blood necessary concluding the duel with as much respect (for the court/process not the enemy) as possible.

We have no reason to act otherwise as it currently stands. Acting evil when it's called for is one thing. Doing so just for its own sake is just silly.
 
[X] Make a strike that draws the minimum amount of blood necessary concluding the duel with as much respect (for the court/process not the enemy) as possible.
 
Also, now that I'm thinking about it, will this guy be forced into suicide either way? I mean, he's clearly fucked up big time.

In two ways:

First, he dishonored the Matsu's own tournament by trying to murder the other competitor. Now, if WE can see that this is what he was trying, I'm pretty sure the more experienced Lions, it might as well have been written on him. When combined with knowledge of what happened before, it paints him as a mangy, dishonorable scoundral...

But worse, he failed! Not only did he try to dishonor everything he supposedly stood for, he let his rage and dislike cloud his vision and LOST. To a fucking Scorpion. He's a dishonorable loser. Not only ill of thought, but ill of action.

And now the scorpion will be following the traditions, keeping within the honor of the fight and scoring just enough of a blow as to not kill the enemy, in a way that clearly marks HIM as the more honorable one...and the better fighter (he isn't, but that's what it looks like, at least.)

In short, a fucking Scorpion is a better Bushi than him.

...and now he and everyone else knows it.
 
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[X] Make a strike that draws the minimum amount of blood necessary concluding the duel with as much respect (for the court/process not the enemy) as possible.
-[X] Quietly tell him, "You will always remember today as the day you lost to a Scorpion."
 
[X] Make a strike that draws the minimum amount of blood necessary concluding the duel with as much respect (for the court/process not the enemy) as possible.
-[X] Quietly tell him, "You will always remember today as the day you lost to a Scorpion."
It's not a bad line, but if we're going to twist the knife, there are so many knives that we could twist so much better.

"This Scorpion who thinks himself a Bushi salutes you, honorable Lion." - just off the top of my head.

We could go with something about the honor of the Akodo... some sort of a quote from Leadership about honor showing through action (I guarantee we've read it - probably more than once)... something about how well he is representing his clan in front of all these honored guests... there are so *many* knives.

Still, what is the point of twisting this knife? This man is not our enemy. He thinks himself our enemy - he *wishes* he were our enemy, but we have met him only twice, and both times he has done us great favors, at great cost to himself. Now, he is no friend, either - if there were some way to claim greater advantage out of injuring him more fully, then I'd go for it in a heartbeat, but for right now? No. Being the better bushi is enough. We can treat him with the honor of the Scorpion - that not-so-often seen thing that is often more terrible than their treachery.
 
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It's not a bad line, but if we're going to twist the knife, there are so many knives that we could twist so much better.

"This Scorpion who thinks himself a Bushi salutes you, honorable Lion." - just off the top of my head.

We could go with something about the honor of the Akodo... some sort of a quote from Leadership about honor showing through action (I guarantee we've read it - probably more than once)... something about how well he is representing his clan in front of all these honored guests... there are so *many* knives.

Still, what is the point of twisting this knife? This man is not our enemy. He thinks himself our enemy - he *wishes* he were our enemy, but we have met him only twice, and both times he has done us great favors, at great cost to himself. Now, he is no fried, either - if there were some way to claim greater advantage out of injuring him more fully, then I'd go for it in a heartbeat, but for right now? No. Being the better bushi is enough. We can treat him with the honor of the Scorpion - that not-so-often seen thing that is often more terrible than their treachery.

Eh. There wasn't really any intent to actually win this vote, it's too late for that. I just wanted to reference Jack Sparrow.



Other than that, if we can drive the guy to sudoku, we're down one potential pest in the future. Then again, we can probably milk this guy for all he's worth as a source of honour and respect so I understand your point.
 
While we might not want to do anything here at the tournament, I can't help but think that it would still be a very good idea to try and keep an eye on him. While we might not consider him our enemy, given the favors he's done us (if unwittingly), he himself certainly does count himself as such, and he'll definitely seek ways to both erase the stain on his honor, and get payback at us.
So, it would be a very good idea to get a better idea of who he is, what sort of skills he has outside of fighting, what sort of friends, connections, and family, and what sort of duties and responsibilities.

Depending on what we find out, we might see some opportunities to get rid of him (not necessarily lethally), or possibly use his animosity for us to our own benefit.
Plus, if we make any other enemies at this court (either knowingly or unknowingly), they might seek him out, either for an alliance, or in order to use him as a pawn against us.
 
[X] Make a strike that draws the minimum amount of blood necessary concluding the duel with as much respect (for the court/process not the enemy) as possible.
 
You know, this guy's running the wrong way on the honor track - and the further he goes, the more his honor decays, the worse he's likely to get. It's not entirely outside the realm of possibility that the final gift he gives us is when we are able to let our good friend Yogo-san gain some satisfaction from forcibly purifying his by-then-tainted body from the earth.

Mind you, the fact that this *is* the case, and Matsu Ketsui is pretty genre-savvy, all things considered, means that he'll likely not live out the week, but the possibility is there.
 
Our every interaction with him has been this guy being a piñata that we hit and "Make Naoto look awesome" falls out. Why ever in the world would we want to get rid of him? :p
Hmmm.

Still... we probably want to watch this guy. In particular, if he *does* live out the week, the priority on buying things like reflexes 3 and kenjutsu 3 goes up. He's already straight-up tried to kill us once, and in a time and place where it reflected *really* badly on him. We can be pretty much assured that he'll come after us again at some point, if alive. It would be good to be able to win that fight.
 
Our every interaction with him has been this guy being a piñata that we hit and "Make Naoto look awesome" falls out. Why ever in the world would we want to get rid of him? :p
Oy! Remember Rokugan's version of the Evil Overlord list (written by a Scorpion, no less); "A living enemy is dangerous. A dead enemy is dead."

Some worse handling of the first situation, or some bad luck/strategy in this fight, and we easily could've ended up hurt (socially, and/or physically).
Don't take this lightly just because we came unscathed out of our confrontations with him so far.
 
Ya, we're going to want to buy up our combat stats after the tournament. There's no way this guy's taking this lying down, so we need o be able to win the resulting fight.
 
the rules of the tournament do not allow for strikes to the head (for fear of inadvertent fatalities) and the fearsome anonymity offered by full c
Huh just remembered this, be an interesting way to concede I guess.

[X] Make a strike that draws the minimum amount of blood necessary concluding the duel with as much respect (for the court/process not the enemy) as possible.
 
I would vote for some badass one liner but if we just treat him honorable we A) disrespect the fool that much harder B) Get more Honor and C) don't have as much to deal with from him as we would otherwise; kicking him when he's down won't really do much.

But I kind of want to do it anyway, something to the effect of tenderly whispering the sage words: "git gud."

Or maybe saying that if he fancies himself a Bushi he can challenge us to another duel some time when he's refined his impetuous anger and skills and maybe by then we'll be able to back our big words up who knows :V
 
But if he dies as a result, he'll probably leave behind some rather pissed off friends, who might come after us anyways. Still probably worth putting some points into combat.

If he died of his wounds? Absolutely. If he died because he dishonored himself so badly that his Lord called for his seppuku? Not so much - especially since we *haven't* done any knife-twisting. (Yet again I give thanks that the penalty of my own errors were not visited upon us.) We've merely acted the part of an honorable samurai who had this guy go off on them for no reason.

Now, what we might wind up getting is a series of challenges to spars or light duels. If we wanted to work on our Matsu cred even more, then pushing our combat stats a bit so that we can be more competitive there would be a solid way to do it... but that's not necessarily who we want to be right now. With respect to influencing various groups and pursuing various plots...

- Direct Matsu Influence: Combat skills - so that we can keep winning fights with whichever Matsu decide they want to fight us.
- Crane influence: push awareness and court skills. Don't dip too deep on Matsu influence.
- Pheonix influence: our int is already pretty high, but notching it up another point is sure to help.
- Crab influence: Intelligence and Commerce.
- Mantis Influence: Intelligence, Commerce, Reflexes, and Kyujutsu. Crane influence helps. Difficult, and probably not worth it.
- Solving the Crane Mystery: Crane influence, Perception, and Investigation. Intelligence likely to help as well.
- Dominating at the Go table: Intelligence, Go, and Battle skill
- Otomo Influence: Intelligence helps here - it makes us more useful. Investigation set also likely to help. Other than that, currently unclear. Garnering Phoenix influence and Crane influence probably helps.
- Marry Matsu Ketsui: Combination of Direct Matsu Influence and Solving the Crane Mystery. Continues to be arbitrarily difficult. Probably conflicts horribly with Otomo Influence. Conflicts at least somewhat with Crane Influence. This one is *tricky*.
 
Oy! Remember Rokugan's version of the Evil Overlord list (written by a Scorpion, no less); "A living enemy is dangerous. A dead enemy is dead."

Some worse handling of the first situation, or some bad luck/strategy in this fight, and we easily could've ended up hurt (socially, and/or physically).
Don't take this lightly just because we came unscathed out of our confrontations with him so far.
Ah but does it not then go on to say "A living clown is amusingly sad."?
 
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