Just now, KerenRhys said:

Uh, why would you expect any preview? It has been 5 clans already that had their preview article one week after their fiction. Why would they suddently change it for the Unicorn?

They're doing Unicorn and Phoenix for L5RLive this week in addition to having three articles and only two weeks until GenCon. They say they have a plan, however...

5 minutes ago, twinstarbmc said:

...and I walked right into it!

7 minutes ago, twinstarbmc said:

Man, look how straight that katana is!

1 hour ago, Eisenmerc said:

It makes sense but according to the old lore it was the woman always taking the man's name except in matriarchal families like the Matsu and Otaku. Hope they can spell this out a little more to help lore nerds like me sleep at night

No, that wasn't the case in the old lore either, eg: Hida O-Ushi and Shinjo Yasamura, Doji Domotai and Ikoma Kusari, or Tamori Shaitung and Isawa Nakamuro.

AFAIK, it haw always been the lower status that marry in the higher status family.

Edit: Thinking about it, the O-Ushi/Yasamura example is probably not a good one since they had similar status and Yasamura's marrying into the Hida family was caused by other things. It doesn't invalidate the 2 other examples though and I could probably find more.

39 minutes ago, Devin-the-Poet said:

You forget that Crab have a tendency of insulting anyone they are around, and then using their outrage as an excuse to murder them with a tetsubo.

I don't know if I would ever call the Crab 'good guys'.

I covered that, its called throwing a tantrum. Until Kisada decided to drink Yori's coolaid the crab pretty much just did their thing. Only the Yatsuki war was their real breach of duty, which they went right back to.

They don't have an ideologically evil flaw like the other clans, they are just brutes who don't understand anything but standing on a wall fighting Kaiju.

The most "evil" of their families are the Yatsuki with their "we totally aren't doing blackmarket stuff" and their role as literal slave masters over their peasants.

46 minutes ago, Devin-the-Poet said:

You forget that Crab have a tendency of insulting anyone they are around, and then using their outrage as an excuse to murder them with a tetsubo.

I don't know if I would ever call the Crab 'good guys'.

You son of a gun! How dare you insinuate anything other than that! I should get my tetaubo and ...... lol

19 minutes ago, Mirumoto Saito said:

No. A sword is a sword. A katana is a sword, like a Nodachi, a subset of "sword" in the universe of all swords that exists (in Rokugan or not). A scimitar is also a sword. Both are curved swords , compared to straight swords like jian, arming sword, long sword and rapiers. A thing is a thing, not another, different thing . This is something that I would never ever imagined myself discussing in a L5R forum in my entire life. Seriously.

To be clear here, I'm not arguing that katana don't literally have a curvature to them; I'm merely defending the usage of "curved sword" and "straight sword" in the story. If you were a rokugani and katana were the straightest swords that existed and you wanted to differentiate between them from scimitars, calling scimitars "curved" works pretty well.

Quote

No. The words "straight" and "curved" are absolutes, defined by observation of nature, not by their exclusive relation to swords specifically. Two straight things in parallel might extend into infinity and never cross each other. The same can not be said about curved objects.

Sure, but again language isn't enslaved to definitions. If you put a rokugani in a room with a katana and a scimitar and told them to bring you the curved one they would know which one you meant 100% of the time.

2 hours ago, DrDevidents said:

Probably the strongest fiction yet.

Well, it's written by Ree Soesbee. She was the lead L5R writer for several years, and was the replacement for the original head writer, John Wick.

She's quite talented, and a lovely person (or at least she was the couple f time I met her, and the handful of times I interacted with her via e-mail and message boards).

I think the straight sword thing is more Unicorn parlance than literal description. The old swords, as mentioned in the Phoenix fiction, were straighter, so I assume straight vs curved was how the Unicorn described them through their journeys, and never really dropped it.

I didn't like the lecturing of the Crane on how the Unicorn are enlightened awesome, but there were a couple of expressions that were cool and described the Unicorn fine: "Old steel, newly forged" and "The Unicorn don't leave anything beyond." (or something like that)

The situation with the Lion is... well just straight up Rokugani stubborness. The Champion marrying the Ikoma is interesting.... we usually play it in RPG as lower status marries higher status. Wouldn't be surprised if the Ikoma daimyo suggested this himself? He's willing to sacrifice his wife's honor and his own happiness for the clan. Bushido and honor are layered... you can focus on one tenet (Duty) while neglecting others.

That said, the deal seemed bad. The Unicorn would've given a herd of Unicorn horses so the Lion would give up on the southern Unicorn lands? That seems like the Lion were poising for an attack on the Northern lands. The Unicorn giving up Utaku horses is.... well, they are sacred. Quite a big sacrifice. The Lion were hoping to also get a Champ, I guess?

Oh, and let's not forget that Aramamakakra has 3 boys with no acknowledged father... or at least no husband. I assume that means that the Lion already consider her honorless.

Not sure if I recall if it was Utaku horse, or just the giajin horses?

2 minutes ago, Togashi Gao Shan said:

Well, it's written by Ree Soesbee. She was the lead L5R writer for several years, and was the replacement for the original head writer, John Wick.

She's quite talented, and a lovely person (or at least she was the couple f time I met her, and the handful of times I interacted with her via e-mail and message boards).

She also wrote Way of the Crane and the Crane clan novel, (among many other things)both of which I enjoyed thoroughly and brought about my Secret Shame (I really like the Crane.....tell no one)?

19 minutes ago, Togashi Gao Shan said:

Well, it's written by Ree Soesbee. She was the lead L5R writer for several years, and was the replacement for the original head writer, John Wick.

She's quite talented, and a lovely person (or at least she was the couple f time I met her, and the handful of times I interacted with her via e-mail and message boards).

Well, I wasn't that thrilled to see her name before reading the fiction to be honest. Her story arc for L5R was IMHO the worst one of the old game (among the arcs I followed so up to around the colonies) and I really didn't like Guild Wars 2 story and writing at all and AFAIK, she was its main writer.

However, I enjoyed this story so I'll wait to see what she does with her fictions in the future. Maybe she's better suited to writing short stories than creating overarching storylines.

Edit: After looking for some confirmations on the web, it appears I was wrong. It seems she never was lead writer for GW2, but she was a member of both GW story team from 2006 until the beginning of this year. So, she also worked on some of GW1 campaigns (which were better than GW2, except for Kormir...).

33 minutes ago, Mirumoto Saito said:

Two straight things in parallel might extend into infinity and never cross each other. The same can not be said about curved objects. .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_(geometry)?wprov=sfla1

Circle within a circle. Circle by the side (and not tangential to) another circle. Tell me they aren't curved. Tell me they cross each other.

Just now, GoblinGuide said:

To be clear here, I'm not arguing that katana don't literally have a curvature to them; I'm merely defending the usage of "curved sword" and "straight sword" in the story. If you were a rokugani and katana were the straightest swords that existed and you wanted to differentiate between them from scimitars, calling scimitars "curved" works pretty well.

Ok, then. But I disagree absolutely about that being valid (as became obvious ). Specially considering that the katana is not the straightest swords that the rokugani know of , by a long shot. They did face gaijin, their own swords were straight in the past and all katana are perfectly straight before being tempered. If you want to differentiate katana from scimitar, you can call them by their names or point to the plethora of differences that exists between them. Pointing to the sole similarity between those swords to differentiate them is completely... absurd, in my opinion. I mean, they could call katana two-handed and scimitar one-handed or something, but curved vs straight? This is simple wrong.

Just now, GoblinGuide said:

Sure, but again language isn't enslaved to definitions. If you put a rokugani in a room with a katana and a scimitar and told them to bring you the curved one they would know which one you meant 100% of the time.

Or... Or he would look at you (not YOU GobinGlide, "you" the hypothetical person asking for a curved sword while there is two clearly curved swords present) like you didn't know what you are talking about.

4 minutes ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

She also wrote Way of the Crane and the Crane clan novel, (among many other things)both of which I enjoyed thoroughly and brought about my Secret Shame (I really like the Crane.....tell no one)?

Ree's in-game avatar was Doji Shizue, the Crane Clan storyteller.

I'm actually surprised Ree didn't write the Crane fiction. especially since Shizue is still around.

Maybe it's kind of a "it's a new Rokugan, so it's time to write about a different clan this time".

3 minutes ago, KerenRhys said:

I really didn't like Guild Wars 2 story and writing at all and AFAIK, she was its main writer.

Seriously? That explain things...

I'm also not a fan.

8 minutes ago, GoblinGuide said:

To be clear here, I'm not arguing that katana don't literally have a curvature to them; I'm merely defending the usage of "curved sword" and "straight sword" in the story. If you were a rokugani and katana were the straightest swords that existed and you wanted to differentiate between them from scimitars, calling scimitars "curved" works pretty well.

Sure, but again language isn't enslaved to definitions. If you put a rokugani in a room with a katana and a scimitar and told them to bring you the curved one they would know which one you meant 100% of the time.

But, there are straight blades in Rokugan. Tanto, Jitte, Ninjato and other bladed tools. They do differentiate between straight blades and curved blades prior to the Unicorn's return. I would also assume the Unicorn encountered many straight swords in their travels and would not consider katana to be the same as those.

6 minutes ago, barrufet said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_(geometry)?wprov=sfla1

Circle within a circle. Circle by the side (and not tangential to) another circle. Tell me they aren't curved. Tell me they cross each other.

1 minute ago, Togashi Gao Shan said:

Ree's in-game avatar was Doji Shizue, the Crane Clan storyteller.

I'm actually surprised Ree didn't write the Crane fiction. especially since Shizue is still around.

Maybe it's kind of a "it's a new Rokugan, so it's time to write about a different clan this time".

Being so many years later, maybe she felt Shinjo AlJolson (or whatever) was a better fit for her this time ?

While it was awesome to see Ree Soesbee back writing L5R fiction again, I think I am among the few for whom this was not my favorite fiction. Honestly, this was probably my least favorite of the fictions so far. Too much exposition conversation for exposition's sake. Why was that Crane diplomat even speaking that clumsily with a Clan Champion? Sure, that curved sword on your hip is important to you, Altansarnai, but... what is its story? Is it your mother's blade? Your grandfather's blade?

Yeah, I know I am in the minority here, but I could have done with a lot less tell, and a lot more show.

Plus sides? I am liking Altansarnai as a character, as well as Kamoko. Hooray for children out of wedlock having the same rights as the children of married parents! And hooray for the existence of divorce in Rokugan! As for the whole "Marrying into the Ikoma" problem... add me to the chorus who believe this to be another piece of Scorpion conflict-mongering, in preparation for the Scorpion Clan Coup.

Deeply disappointed.

Five pages in and not a single Hammerfell reference.

Hate to point out but straight is not an absolute. Zoom in close enough to a curve and it'll appear straight. Relativism is apart of language, and geomatry.

But, considering this is the second fiction in a row that has made allusions of katana being the norm, and anything with a greater curvature being "curved" then it's a losing battle and all that will be accomplished now is yelling into the wind.

4 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

Hate to point out but straight is not an absolute. Zoom in close enough to a curve and it'll appear straight. Relativism is apart of language, and geomatry.

One of our teachers taught us that a straight line is a circumference of infinite radius.

10 minutes ago, Gamedog said:

Deeply disappointed.

Five pages in and not a single Hammerfell reference.

So after Googling that amd skimming the Elder Scrolls Wiki entry on Hammerfell, I don't have a guess as to why such a reference would be necessary. Care to elaborate?

2 minutes ago, Wintersong said:

One of our teachers taught us that a straight line is a circumference of infinite radius.

And to get down in fun mathematical concepts, a line can just be a two dimensional object viewed from only a one dimension, so it can be any shape or curvature. But this is all fringe examples and fun concepts exploring relativism in shapes.

7 minutes ago, Ide Yoshiya said:

So after Googling that amd skimming the Elder Scrolls Wiki entry on Hammerfell, I don't have a guess as to why such a reference would be necessary. Care to elaborate?

Presumably a reference to the Redguard warriors of the Alik'r desert that prefer scimitars to more traditional swords.