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[L5R] Minor Clan Quest

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Wasn't basically the Unicorn's entire ruling family subverted by the Kolat? Wouldn't be a surprise for them to hate us if that was the case.
 
Mina said:
I'm really not. :V

C'mon, she was either going to shake our hand, hug us, or pat us on the head for being a good girl. That's a lady I want to have drinks with and who knows, maybe she's got a nephew or something?
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I'm sold. Never more than three feet from death, if you fear ghosts sleep in a graveyard, so on and so forth.

[X] Mingle with the Unicorn
 
storybookknight said:
That is not the case with the next few gifts. The Dragon, Crane, and Lion all give the Crab finely crafted gifts... that would be most suitable for a child. A prayer mat, so that a youthful student who has not yet learned to ignore pain in his knees can meditate. A child-sized biwa, though far finer than any biwa you have seen for even an adult up until now. And a bokuto, of all things - engraved as though it were a work of art, to be sure, but there is still an incredible insult behind the gift. All three delegations also phrased the reason for their gift as 'a hope that the next generation will grow up well' - something that causes your friend Hida Tanaka's face to darken. Come to think of it, you don't actually know if he is married.... Each delegation receives a gift in turn, ornamental boxes filled with tea, the first flush leaves from the famed tea-fields of the Crab.

The rest of the gift exchange goes much more peacefully, with what appear to be genuine gifts being traded back and forth with the Phoenix, Unicorn, and Scorpion gifting the sworn services of Shiba yojimbo for Kuni shugenja, some Gaijin artifacts, and a puzzle-box respectively, each receiving the same elegant boxes of first-flush tea in return. The Fox's offering is a bit snarky - a small bag of rice, blessed by the Kitsune shugenja so that the Crab's fields may grow well, with a clear accompanying message of 'grow more food so you don't have to steal ours, you assholes'. It gets even snarkier when the Sparrow and Hare give very similar gifts - without the blessings of the kami. The Sparrow pouch is particularly small, as if trying to say that they in particular had very little to spare. Alone among the Minor Clans invited, the Mantis offer a truly extravagant gift, a very large chest of spices that are each probably worth more per ounce than gold. Despite the spices' valuable nature, Hida Tanaka doesn't look particularly happy with them - perhaps they are a reminder of a trade agreement that the Yasuki failed to reach? Again, the Minor Clans receive boxes of tea identical to those received by the Great Clans.
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Wow.

They might as well flip the Crab off. It'd be the lesser insult.
 
Say it with me everyone!

The Crane are Diccccckkkkkkksss

The Lion are also dickish, but more in the "MUH HONOR!" Fashion.

The Dragon are kind of the surprise to me here--they aren't really what come to mind when I think up "Dickish Clan".

Then again, I'm also still figuring out everything about the setting.
 
[X] Mingle with the Unicorn

We just don't want hostile great clan neighbors for any reason. At least a token attempt needs to be spent on them.

I do think they are third tier, though. Crab has defaulted to most important, if only because we seem to be personally friendly with the Champion. Scorpion are more politically useful then the Unicorn. Unicorn are only important due to proximity.
 
Alectai said:
Say it with me everyone!

The Crane are Diccccckkkkkkksss

The Lion are also dickish, but more in the "MUH HONOR!" Fashion.

The Dragon are kind of the surprise to me here--they aren't really what come to mind when I think up "Dickish Clan".

Then again, I'm also still figuring out everything about the setting.
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It was more surprising to me that even the minors joined in flipping off the Crab.

Currently I'm liking that we screwed up their anti Crab formation by accident.
 
Alectai said:
Say it with me everyone!

The Crane are Diccccckkkkkkksss

The Lion are also dickish, but more in the "MUH HONOR!" Fashion.

The Dragon are kind of the surprise to me here--they aren't really what come to mind when I think up "Dickish Clan".

Then again, I'm also still figuring out everything about the setting.
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Traditional Internal Dragon Clan Politics

Togashi: Monk man na na na na na monk man!
Mirumoto: Uh...can you like make a decision on this thing?
Togashi: Can't hear you monking!
Mirumoto: Figures...
Kitsuki: I got something
Mirumoto: ?
Kitsuki: Everyone is corrupt as fuck and doesn't like us. Also this heinous crime was done by these guys
Mirumoto: Literally no one else cares
Tamori/Agasha: I care
Mirumoto: Fine we'll solve the problem with swording and magic after lunch good?
Kitsuki/Tamori/Agasha: Good!
Togashi: Wait what? No hold on, we're doing nothing, we have to solve this completely unrelated problem first.
Everyone: ..............Yes Togashi-dono

So while our Mirumoto is a bit of a douche no doubt he's still recovering from his first Togashi Decision TM
 
Alectai said:
Say it with me everyone!

The Crane are Diccccckkkkkkksss

The Lion are also dickish, but more in the "MUH HONOR!" Fashion.

The Dragon are kind of the surprise to me here--they aren't really what come to mind when I think up "Dickish Clan".

Then again, I'm also still figuring out everything about the setting.
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The Dragon aren't exactly wholly disconnected from the rest of Rokugan. They lean towards being ascetics and the like, but the Mirumoto are the most worldly samurai among the Dragon (meaning they act a lot like Phoenix and Crane samurai do) and even the Togashi can be vindictive if you piss them off.

[X] Mingle with the Unicorn
 
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[X] Mingle with the Unicorn

The king Chad said:
I do think they are third tier, though. Crab has defaulted to most important, if only because we seem to be personally friendly with the Champion. Scorpion are more politically useful then the Unicorn. Unicorn are only important due to proximity.
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True, but third tier is where the party's at, they're the most upstream of the three, and still relative outsiders to boot. We're allied with the Crab, getting probed by the Scorpion, but the Unicorn wants hugs. I hadn't really thought of them that seriously until this little meeting, but damn if they aren't stealing their way in to my heart with their goofy horse-loving ways.

I'm also thinking marriage, at least for Tsubaki herself, might be safer to arrange with them in the long term. We already have strong political ties with the Crab, unacknowledged blood ties with the Scorpion, and somewhat fraught economic dealings with both. Marriage could be another link in the chain that might sink our little clan should anything iffy happen with our heir. The Unicorn don't have any real claims to make, nor an agenda that would benefit from absorbing Zakyo Toshi.

Plus purple is amaaaaazing!

Alectai said:
The Dragon are kind of the surprise to me here--they aren't really what come to mind when I think up "Dickish Clan".
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Thats because they outsource much of their dickishness to the Dragonfly and just get enough in here and there to stay in form. :cool:
 
The problem then is that whoever the Shinjo send us as a potential husband will undoubtedly be a Kolat agent. Scorpion husband is imo a better choice to secure an alliance with the resident politicians.
 
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The Kolat are descended from a group of tribal people from the Dawn of the Empire who were mad that the Kami upset the status quo. They then created a philosophy based off of the Tao saying that man should be the supreme being in Ningen-do and that they should be masters of their own fate. They infiltrated the Unicorn to the point that most of the Shinjo family consists of Kolat and canonically were stripped from their position as rulers by Lady Shinjo when she returned (not at this point yet). They're also very much a meritocracy, with Kolat Masters having included a gang boss, a Minor Clan Champion, and a geisha at one point.

TL;DR, they're the Illuminati of the setting.
 
A Nation's Virtue said:
The problem then is that whoever the Shinjo send us as a potential husband will undoubtedly be a Kolat agent. Scorpion husband is imo a better choice to secure an alliance with the resident politicians.
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Don't get me wrong, I like the Scorpion too, but I also feel like there's a non-zero chance that they try to play the "annex via marriage" game, and the risks the Unicorn pose are meta-knowledge. With her Inner Gift she can maybe suss out any virulently iconoclastic Kolat types during the meet and looks anyway?
 
A Nation's Virtue said:
The Kolat are descended from a group of tribal people from the Dawn of the Empire who were mad that the Kami upset the status quo. They then created a philosophy based off of the Tao saying that man should be the supreme being in Ningen-do and that they should be masters of their own fate. They infiltrated the Unicorn to the point that most of the Shinjo family consists of Kolat and canonically were stripped from their position as rulers by Lady Shinjo when she returned (not at this point yet). They're also very much a meritocracy, with Kolat Masters having included a gang boss, a Minor Clan Champion, and a geisha at one point.

TL;DR, they're the Illuminati of the setting.
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Sounds like my kind of guys.
 
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A Nation's Virtue said:
TL;DR, they're the Illuminati of the setting.
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With a big dash of Cerberus. Like tendency of ignoring elephants in the room like divine(blooded) bullshit sometimes being only thing that prevents Rokugan from going to shit... not that *looks on Crane* *looks on Crab* *looks on Shadowlands* *looks on rest of the clans* they are alone in that... some *looks on Crane again* made an art out of it.

Looking at how Great Clans act at times all the time they do have a point though. Just... well... Usurpation in Exalted also had point and it's kinda the same one.
 
Half of them are in it just for the money, and the other half consists of deluded people who are mad about the cosmology of the universe. One of the founders iirc wanted to stop the Kharmic wheel.

The original founders were literally just salty that they weren't chieftains anymore, and spun up their philosophy to give themselves legitimacy.
 
A Nation's Virtue said:
Half of them are in it just for the money, and the other half consists of people who are mad about the cosmology of the universe, which is indisputably true.

The original founders were literally just salty that they weren't chieftains anymore, and spun up their philosophy to give themselves legitimacy.
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Thing is - from the time of founding Great Clans managed to kinda ruin they image.

Crane - clan that theoretically should tie Great Clans together by diplomacy in court... and that tries to put them in each other throats, that is when they aren't busy just dicking over everybody because they think they can get away with it
Lion - clan that theoretically should protect Rokugan from the enemy... but it looks like that enemy too often is Lion
Dragon - clan that waits for everything to go to shit before acting... allowing everything to go to shit
Scorpion - clan that theoretically should protect Rokugan from the enemy in the shadows... but it looks like that enemy in the shadows too often is Scorpion

Unicorn and Crab mostly keep they shit under tight lid, but it's just means that blow up would be ten times as stinky and, well, *Moto conspiring with Kolat because THEY DON'T ACKNOWLEDGE US ANYWAY* *Crab conspiring with fucking Shadowlands because MUH HONOR*, yeeeeah.

Not sure about Phoenix.

And half of the reason for that is "OLOLO, I'M DESCENDED FROM KAMI, I KNOW BETTER AND NOBODY CAN TELL ME I DO NOT" (in case of Dragon remove "descended from" part)

PS. Not that Kolat are better, Kolat are much worse. They just do have a point... kinda like broken clock being right twice a day.
 
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