On ‎2017‎-‎12‎-‎14 at 8:59 PM, Manchu said:

Kachiko has motive, means, and opportunity. The only reason I don't suspect her is because she's such an obvious suspect!

I feel like it should have come up in Kachiko's internal monologue if she knew anything about Satsume's death. I'd actually put more stock in Toshimoko being behind it... and I don't believe that either, mostly because I suspect he would have challenged Satsume to a duel and killed him that way.

I think looking at political motives is pointless; like you said, there isn't any other Clan which wouldn't benefit from Satsume's death, since it gives the other Clans a shot at the Emerald Championship. We need to look at personalities here, rather than Clans, and that leaves very few people - none of the people we've seen in the story thus far has given any hints they know how Satsume died.

I still think it's possible that Satsume is actually alive and his death was staged........if he is really dead, I'm going with Daisetsu as the one who orchestrated it. His father is declining in health, his brother is a twit, and little D is ambitious. He's likely got some inspiration and help from Uncle 9th Kami. I wouldn't be surprised if he had a hand in getting Meshido accepted so he could bring Shahai to him to further his own dark abilities that he is hiding from everyone.

As far as personality goes: who is sufficiently dishonorable to conceive of and commit this crime?

And again, the answer is Kachiko. Scheming to cheat in the Emerald Tournament is pretty thoroughly unwholesome. But a Scorpion's gonna Scorpion. Where Kachiko steps beyond the pale is treating the Emperor himself as a political enemy - and possibly an enemy she intends to dispose of. Willing to do something that evil, she would naturally be willing to murder Doji Satsume.

But @Mangod isn’t wrong in that were she responsible, we should have gotten some sense of it from her thoughts in Blind Ambition.

Though, by the same token, she clearly went into the meeting with the Emperor looking to get the position filled by quickly, and is wrong-footed by Shoju having discussed it with him first and with the Emperor disagreeing with her about just appointing someone. Her ‘optimum placement of stones’ implies a logical next move in a game. Why doesn’t she think that Doji Satsume’s death wasn’t optimal? Maybe to her it was...

Sotorii. Satsume called him on his crap. Agasha sumiki feels cautious around him. If found out causes major drama throughout empire. Duty vs justice vs loyalty vs all that jazz. Decline of virtue.

Could be an aight story

Just because we're made privy to a character's thoughts doesn't mean the writer reveals all the characters thoughts. Satsume's death is clearly intended to remain a mystery for now, as indicated by the fact that all we really know at this point is that he died. It's not like our main cast doesn't have plenty of other issues and thoughts to keep them busy.

1 minute ago, Zesu Shadaban said:

Just because we're made privy to a character's thoughts doesn't mean the writer reveals all the characters thoughts. Satsume's death is clearly intended to remain a mystery for now, as indicated by the fact that all we really know at this point is that he died. It's not like our main cast doesn't have plenty of other issues and thoughts to keep them busy.

To be fair, it's generally considered bad form for a writer to put you in the pov of a character who knows a thing, give them reason to think about that thing, and then hide what they know from the reader. If the character is either focused enough on other things that the issue really wouldn't come to mind, or established as a sufficiently unreliable narrator that the reader shouldn't be taking anything they think as gospel truth, you can get away with it -- but those are more special cases. Even characters who lie to those around them don't default to lying in their own heads.

We have one Kachiko POV piece IIRC, which is Blind Ambition. In her audience with the Emperor, Kachiko's mind is preoccupied by who should become the new Emerald Magistrate rather than anything about the former officeholder. Indeed, her internal monologue is intently focused on the next move rather than previous ones (to use the idiom of the piece).

Kachiko is the most logical suspect at this time. If she isn't responsible then I would guess (a) we haven't been introduced to the murderer yet or (b) the murderer has not been sufficiently characterized ... which TBH both also feel like "bad form" (considering a lot of what's going on is related to Satsume's death) but of course that would be, I'm sure, a studio decision.

24 minutes ago, Manchu said:

We have one Kachiko POV piece IIRC, which is Blind Ambition. In her audience with the Emperor, Kachiko's mind is preoccupied by who should become the new Emerald Magistrate rather than anything about the former officeholder. Indeed, her internal monologue is intently focused on the next move rather than previous ones (to use the idiom of the piece).

Yyyyeah . . . I'd say that is borderline at best for not thinking about Satsume, if she had him killed. She's directly focused on the office of the Emerald Champion and how to turn that to her advantage; if step one was "remove the previous guy," that ought to be reflected in her thinking, even if her focus is on steps 2-10.

That's what FFG want's you to think............but really.................Satsume is either alive or Daisetsu did it! Or maybe even both! Everyone thinks Satsume is dead but he's really alive and staged his death when he found out about the plot against him. We'll get a hooded-ronin figure (Satsume in disguise) trying to unravel clues and helping point the finger back at Daisetsu.

Little D is flying under the radar because he's so young, but, he's got the cunning and the clout to pull it off without being detected. I think this time we'll get a twist of the old story where we end up with a "False Toturi" instead who ends up being an agent for Daisetsu, kills off Sotorii and fulfills the "When the last Akodo falls so shall the last Hantei" as it will be set up by Daisetsu and complete his fall from grace. Real Toturi goes into hiding. Then all that's left will be for the Empire to figure out that an agent of Fu Leng actually sits on the throne. Scorpion figure it out and try to play the hero by removing Daisetsu to actually save the empire, but, because "they can swim" nobody believes the Scorpion and it looks like a coup which keeps the clans at war while Fu Leng solidifies his power from within, and leaves FFG free to put off the ultimate showdown between the Shadowlands and the Empire until they decide to reveal all this...............

It's fine if the only likely suspect is not actually guilty. Less fine would be busting out some rando face-heel turn, which would be lame. As I explained, my other suspicion is Kage did it but we know basically nothing about him so if he's unmasked as a bad guy let's hope he gets more characterization beforehand so it will matter that he's actually evil. That would also go for Daisetsu ("but Shizue, it appeared like your dad died of natural causes and it's only appearances that matter right?"). The other version of "out of nowhere" villain is the one who hasn't even been introduced at all.

Or, Satsume died of natural causes, but Kuwanan’s investigation turns up that he didn’t in fact drive Doji Teinko to suicide. Hotaru & Toshimoko have to reconcile their resentment.

If someone hadn't manipulated circumstances to allow Kuwanan into Tsuko's hands, I'd be more open to the notion that it's all sound and noise.

It’s that particular sequence of events:

Doji Satsume dies.

Doji Kuwanan is very publicly suspicious, as a result, ends up posted to defending Shirei Mura.

The Ikoma know where he is, even though Kakita Asami, the Crane who loves him, and Matsu Tsuko, one of the Lion generals do not.

Ronin sack Shirei & deliver Kuwanan to Tsuko, with the expectation that Tsuko will kill him. This requires that whoever hired the Ronin knew where Kuwanan was, that Aramoro was dead and Tsuko would still be on the plains.

But would someone know that Kuwanan would go pear-shaped? And be able to set up a 1-2 punch to eliminate them both? Or did whoever took a shot at Kuwanan just take advantage of his reaction to a natural death, admittedly using good intel on the Crane?

We just don’t know enough about the circumstances of his death.

*Kachiko might have intimate knowledge of the Crane. Hatsuko is one of her favourite spies. Ikoma Ujiaki knows Hatsuko by name. And we’re back to Kachiko and running into the same problem.

22 hours ago, Kinzen said:

To be fair, it's generally considered bad form for a writer to put you in the pov of a character who knows a thing, give them reason to think about that thing, and then hide what they know from the reader.

Just thought of something - does this mean it's bad form that Yasuki Taka wasn't thinking about the Kolat conspiracy when he was chatting with Yoritomo?

6 hours ago, Manchu said:

Just thought of something - does this mean it's bad form that Yasuki Taka wasn't thinking about the Kolat conspiracy when he was chatting with Yoritomo?

If it later comes out that 1) the Kolat exists, 2) Taka is a member, and 3) his conversation with Yoritomo had direct bearing on Kolat schemes that Taka knows about, then yes, I will give it the side-eye.

There are ways around this, mind you. A major NPC in my campaign was a Shosuro Actor sleeper agent who had infiltrated the Owl; the way I handled Shosuro techniques, I could have written scenes from his pov that wouldn't have given that fact away, because one of my underlying tenets was that he truly could bifurcate his thinking and sincerely inhabit the role he was playing at any given moment. It's one way to do the "unreliable narrator" approach. So if Taka has something like that going on, I won't consider the earlier fiction a cheat. But absent something like that, yeah, I expect to see relevant information come up when the pov character has good reason to think about it.

How come nobody has thought of Fumio as the killer yet?

That cat is clearly up to something...

@Kinzen

Kachiko seems a more likely candidate for mental bifurcation than Taka.

23 minutes ago, Manchu said:

@Kinzen

Kachiko seems a more likely candidate for mental bifurcation than Taka.

Not if he really is Kolat. Kachiko is a schemer, but she hasn't (so far as we know) been trained as a sleeper agent or something else that involves maintaining a completely different identity.

It was Shoju on the Emperor’s order. But **** it, I don't know why. He's not even letting Kachiko know about it.

On 12/17/2017 at 1:53 AM, Kinzen said:

Kachiko is a schemer, but she hasn't (so far as we know) been trained as a sleeper agent or something else that involves maintaining a completely different identity.

That might be too fine a distinction. Kachiko presents a different persona to each of her targets. She is one thing to Shoju, another thing to Hotaru, another to the Otomo daimyo, something else to the Emperor, and on and on. Her technique involves modulating her behavior to convey a sense of exclusive intimacy with each target. It's easy to imagine this technique requiring some mastery of internal compartmentalization.