So I have an female PC that is about to get married into another clan. So I have some questions about the game mechanics involved.

1. Does the PC keep learning at her old school or does she have to change over to a school with her new family.

2. Is this set in stone or is it part of the marriage negotiations.

3. If she was a scorpion that is married before the coup, is she considers a member of her new family or a scorpion after the coup.

I may have other ? but can't think of any right now.

My answer to this sort of thing is always "whatever works best for your game." Does the player want to have their PC switch schools? If not, let her continue on with her old school. Will it make for interesting story if she's treated as a Scorpion after the coup? If so, go for it; if that would just create headaches, then say she's exempt from the fallout there (though she would probably still face a lot of suspicion regardless).

I was thinking along the same lines. I was just wondering if there where any hard and fast rules in canon that I was missing.

The story I was going to go with was one night she is approached by her daimyo and told to marry into another clan. this is first to gain Intel, but later frees her from the fallout of the coup. In her new position she is protected due to her status as a member of (inert clan here). While on the surface she seems to embrace her new clan she secretly passes info to the hidden scorpions to first help lady kachiko in her plans for revenge. Then as the clan wars heat-up to bring about the fall of fu-lang.

of course she will know none of this till it happens lol.

also there is an added strangeness as she has green eyes.

Now to my understanding there is a superstition among the scorpions that a girl with green eyes can't tell a lie.

What I want to know is how much credence most scorpions put on this or has that been dropped, and would this effect the was she is treated by other scorpions since lies are the main weapon of the clan.

Well, if she is an active member of the bushi class that is actually doing things...

Then it is far more likely that whomever she marries will marry into her clan instead. And it will probably be the younger son of some family with multiple sons who never attended any particularly noteworthy or prestigious school and is rank 1. And that man will basically take charge of her household running it. He'll basically be a "wife".

However, given we are talking about a Scorpion here, maybe the character is not openly a member of the bushi class. If we are talking a ninja or something here... In that case, she might marry into the other clan and secretly continue her training. Problem is, she would still be expected to run a household and well... that's not exactly the most interesting of gameplay options. I suppose if she has a clever and skillful servant, the general duties of a wife can be put onto that servant while she goes about her regular missions and business without her husband's knowledge. At that point she might even run with a double identity-- claiming to be part of one clan or the other depending on the situation.

Just be aware that there are people who check into inter-clan marriages and if she isn't really good at hiding her deceit and double-agent identity, she is likely to be executed and the Scorpion would have no public recourse. She'd basically be labeled a traitor and disavowed.

But, if she isn't a ninja or a spy and she is marrying as the "wife" in the relationship, then what this would mean is that she entirely switches clans, she would stop advancing in her school as she would no longer be able to train and as a wife she would not be training in any replacement school-- her character progression would basically stop dead (or, rather, she simply wouldn't gain any more special abilities as she ranks up). She would also spend basically the rest of her life at and about the household dealing with household things. Her training and old life would be forgotten, though I imagine she would still retain some of her skills so-- if anyone were ever to try to mess with her household or kids, they would suffer the consequences.

As for the green eyes... those are generally prevalent among the Dragon and almost certainly the Imperials too (too much mixing with those blue-eyed Doji). It would seem weird for the Scorpion to believe such a thing given that the Dragon and Imperials are the ones who regularly lie to them all the time and they are well aware of it and take it as a game to try to see through the deception. I mean, technically no one honorable is really considered to be lying no matter how blatantly they do so.

But, I guess if some writer wrote it somewhere or you want to make it true in your game... that's fine. If she has Doji, Imperial or Dragon blood in the last couple generations, it would easily explain the feature.

If the Scorpion clan coup is supposed to be a big part of this and you want her connected to Kachiko and maybe even hype the drama quite a bit.... maybe have her marry a Seppun? I mean, presuming you can make the husband likable, her husband could be killed in the coup protecting his family if the player seems to REALLY like the character... or survived and be hunting down the Scorpion out of vengeance. It would also easily explain her having a household in Otosan Uchi, which would put her precisely in a good position to help Kachiko by carrying messages from the outer districts to the inner districts. She could play the part of spy without even traveling outside of the city, thus arousing suspicion.

Though... how does your character not know about the Scorpion clan coup, but know enough to play a Scorpion?

On 2/27/2017 at 1:35 PM, tenchi2a said:

So I have an female PC that is about to get married into another clan. So I have some questions about the game mechanics involved.

1. Does the PC keep learning at her old school or does she have to change over to a school with her new family.

2. Is this set in stone or is it part of the marriage negotiations.

3. If she was a scorpion that is married before the coup, is she considers a member of her new family or a scorpion after the coup.

I may have other ? but can't think of any right now.

In my campaign, the default options work like this:

1) It varies, but usually she'd keep learning her old school. Her new daimyo would give her time off every once in a while to go back to her old clan to train. Though if the two clans ever go to war all bets are off.

2) Definitely not set in stone. Since we're talking about a PC, it should be up to the player. For NPC's it would usually be agreed upon by her new daimyo plus her old daimyo and/or sensei.

3) She'd be a member of the new family, and be supposedly loyal to them even over her old family. Of course, she wouldn't be the first spouse secretly loyal to her old family. But as a former Scorpion she'll probably be under quite a bit of suspicion, especially in that time period, so learning her new clan's secrets may not be easy.

But for a PC, definitely go with what the player wants to do and what makes for an interesting story. There's a lot of negotiation involved in Rokugani marriage, so you can use that to justify whatever you need to happen.