Good point on Ujimitsu being a blind spot. Would make for interesting work...

Just now, Tonbo Karasu said:

I'll just remind people of the Gozoku. Maybe that is what Satsume was thinking about. It was run by the Crane, Phoenix and Scorpion, IIRC.

So long as Atsuki is more than Snidely Whiplash...

1 hour ago, SirEuain said:

Ujimitsu's about as far away from being Kolat material as possible, pretty much inherently. While the whole kneeling to Isawa thing might make the Kolat like Shiba Kami more than the rest of his kin, at the end of the day Ujimitsu's still got a god in his noggin. I don't know the Kolat would trust him with something this big.

Yoshi'd from OldL5R would need a big personality transplant for this. He may be a jerk now, but I'd be more inclined to think he's Hantei's jerk.

I think we may be overlooking another, more obvious candidate who had some ties to the Kolat in Old L5R, and tried to form an alliance with them around this time in the story: Bayushi Kachiko.

I've been trying to avoid Kachiko. She makes excellent sense. We see that she's casually manipulative of the Otomo daimyo and in Blind Ambition, she completed the thought she was expressing to Shoju in The World, A Stage: "But many Hantei emperors have come and gone in the meantime. None have enjoyed the favor of Heaven as clearly as the first. And this one, the thirty-eighth, might have lost the favor of Heaven entirely." That's almost pure confession, right there. That's someone deeply rationalizing their desire to pull it all down.

1 minute ago, Doji Hyōkin said:

I've been trying to avoid Kachiko. She makes excellent sense. We see that she's casually manipulative of the Otomo daimyo and in Blind Ambition, she completed the thought she was expressing to Shoju in The World, A Stage: "But many Hantei emperors have come and gone in the meantime. None have enjoyed the favor of Heaven as clearly as the first. And this one, the thirty-eighth, might have lost the favor of Heaven entirely." That's almost pure confession, right there. That's someone deeply rationalizing their desire to pull it all down.

This would also mesh well with one of the claims the Kolat made but never showed in the original RPG, that the Scorpion had a huge blind spot because the Scorpion Kolat looked just like other Scorpion. If we see one of Kachiko's caliber running round, it makes more sense than a bunch of generic Scorpion undermining the clan and nobody noticing or caring. As a Kachiko fan, I don't like it, but as a fixfic, it'd work.

11 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

I'll just remind people of the Gozoku. Maybe that is what Satsume was thinking about. It was run by the Crane, Phoenix and Scorpion, IIRC.

Something like that is probably what Satsume was planning. We know that he was combing over old Imperial laws, probably looking for precedents. And we know that what he landed on was an alternative to just eliminating the Hantei line. If it's not going to be a coup, then Sotorii needs to be disinherited and some form of Regency takes over until Daisetsu is of age, and presumably is trained to be less weak. I think that the particulars of Gozoku council vs single Regent depend on how much support he'd need to convince the Emperor and how far along he got before being killed.

40 minutes ago, SirEuain said:

This would also mesh well with one of the claims the Kolat made but never showed in the original RPG, that the Scorpion had a huge blind spot because the Scorpion Kolat looked just like other Scorpion. If we see one of Kachiko's caliber running round, it makes more sense than a bunch of generic Scorpion undermining the clan and nobody noticing or caring. As a Kachiko fan, I don't like it, but as a fixfic, it'd work.

Absolutely. We already see that there's a quite a bit of Kachiko doing her own thing, with Aramoro wholly in her camp, and Yojiro understanding that what Kachiko wants isn't necessarily what Shoju wants or what may be good for the Scorpion as a whole. Hametsu is worried that she's been compromised by Hotaru and may be running his own ops against the Crane as a result, while Shoju is trying to rein in her over-reaching with the backing of the Soshi & Yogo. Every single family daimyo of the Scorpion is opposed to Kachiko's machinations, but at the same time she's Imperial Advisor and wife of the Clan Champion which makes her functionally untouchable. That's a prime set up for evil conspiracy head...

14 hours ago, Doji Hyōkin said:

I've been trying to avoid Kachiko. She makes excellent sense. We see that she's casually manipulative of the Otomo daimyo and in Blind Ambition, she completed the thought she was expressing to Shoju in The World, A Stage: "But many Hantei emperors have come and gone in the meantime. None have enjoyed the favor of Heaven as clearly as the first. And this one, the thirty-eighth, might have lost the favor of Heaven entirely." That's almost pure confession, right there. That's someone deeply rationalizing their desire to pull it all down.

As imperial advisor, she meets the 'my peer' honorific, and she'd be receiving letters at the correct address.

As an interesting side-thought: do we know how Hotaru and Kachiko became close? Because obviously any correspondence about the regency occurred before Satsume dies, meaning before the start of the current background. But Bayushi Kachiko exchanging semi-conspiratorial-and-certainly-compromising letters with Doji Satsume puts her close relationship with Doji Hotaru in (another) interesting light, especially given the bad blood between father and daughter.

I mean, let's be fair; given their 'public' reputation as generic treacherous sneaks and their actual function within the empire as ferreting out secret enemies and acting as a lightning rod for conspiracies and plots, you've got to feel you pretty sure of yourself you're going to write a letter in your own hand saying " Dear Scorpion Clan Samurai, I have the following borderline treasonous opinions.. ."

14 hours ago, Doji Hyōkin said:

but at the same time she's Imperial Advisor and wife of the Clan Champion which makes her functionally untouchable

The regency will obviate her role as advisor. Optically, Shoju would be well advised to send her away from the capital. Assuming this regency thing ever gets off the ground at all.

I just finished reading the beginner box adventure and then rereading this adventure. I think I really liked the beginner box as an intro fiction, and then In The Palace Of The Emerald Champion is not only a nice follow up, but also a pretty nice open ended conclusion for a GM to take in a lot of different directions. Also it's nice to hear that the GM kit will have an adventure that can easily slot in after this one. They have a nice loosely strung together campaign emerging in these products. I always liked that approach.

I wasn't surprised that regardless what the PCs report to Sumiko she ends up confirming the death as natural causes. The game really sets up the idea that doing what's best for the empire should be foremost in the magistrate's minds. Releasing this information could destabilize an already weakening government. Also if the whole mission was merely information-gathering for Sumiko to better understand the threat she is facing then keeping this information secret will better serve her ongoing investigation.

The one thing that I found extremely interesting and it's left a bit vague is Kagi and Sumiko's relationship with the Kolat. There's a point on page 37 that I think can be read in one obvious way and other maybe more tinfoil hat-y ways. Under the heading The Official Finding we get a scene that the PC's are meant to notice where Sumiko looks down on Kagi. Kagi looks up nervously and Sumiko watches him like a "cat who has caught a mouse". I believe we are lead to believe Sumiko knows one of Kagi's assistants was the assassin and possibly Kagi was in on it. This could be taken into a real wilderness of mirrors type direction if the GM wanted because it doesn't confirm that Kagi was in on it. In fact Kagi is the one who is rumored to "see Kolat everywhere" if the PC's overhear that rumor. Certainly Sumiko seems to suspect him of something though. So what does everyone think about that passage? Is Kagi a Kolat operative? Is Sumiko following a false lead? Is something more complicated going at the end there? Even though it doesn't come at the exact end of the scenario it feels like the "stinger" for the adventure.

One thing is for certain though, the Palace Of The Emerald Champion may be one of the most physically defended castles. Historically it may never have been attacked, but between Kolat infiltration, Scorpion infiltration, Perfect Land Sect sympathizers and many other individual secret agendas the Palace is perhaps one of the most compromised places in all of Rokugan Good luck Toturi.

Sumiko has a personal mad-on for the Kolat. When one of Kaagi’s assistants turns up as a Kolat assassin, I think it’s easy for her to come to the conclusion that he’s involved and that his “Kolat everywhere!” behaviour is a smokescreen.

At the same time, it’s very possible that the only thing Kaagi knows is that one of his assistants disappeared, and now the Ruby Champion is giving him the stink-eye, possibly because he’s become a target of the Kolat himself.