1 hour ago, AK_Aramis said:

Plus, given the setting, some kami will eventually tell some shugenja, who will tell the Daimyō, who will order his capture and/or death. If captured, he'll be compelled to teach it to the samurai, who will then develop counters to it...

Or the void kami might inspire some monk, who them goes and learns it, and then passes it on to the samurai, just to keep the natural order.

Recall that testimony by spirits is inadmissible, though that only implicates the former example. In the latter, if the monk actually learns it himself, then he's good to give testimony about it.

On the other hand, if it's actually a peasant, then there won't necessarily need to be any testimony taken, and they can proceed with however they want.

6 minutes ago, Hida Jitenno said:

Recall that testimony by spirits is inadmissible, though that only implicates the former example. In the latter, if the monk actually learns it himself, then he's good to give testimony about it.

On the other hand, if it's actually a peasant, then there won't necessarily need to be any testimony taken, and they can proceed with however they want.

but then maybe its a Kitsuki Investigator.

8 hours ago, Hida Jitenno said:

Some kami who are properly worshipped and stay in a location for a long time do grow in strength. I think it was addressed by that Tadaka story I can't think of, where he dueled his master.

And then there's the kami of large things, like Seppun Hill or the volcano that Shoju refers to in the Scorpion Letter today. I've seen them called mikokami.

double post

7 hours ago, JBento said:

Yeah, feudal systems have an exactly zero survival rate if the peasantry starts getting into their heads that their betters are not, in fact, their betters (in Rokugan, their betters ARE, in fact, their betters, because they have more kami blood in them).

Except all humans are spawned from the essence of Amatseru and Onnotangu directly, the tears and the blood, so they have divine heritage without the Kami.

25 minutes ago, Waywardpaladin said:

Except all humans are spawned from the essence of Amatseru and Onnotangu directly, the tears and the blood, so they have divine heritage without the Kami.

What they lack is divine word imbued through their name.

11 hours ago, Hida Jitenno said:

Recall that testimony by spirits is inadmissible, though that only implicates the former example. In the latter, if the monk actually learns it himself, then he's good to give testimony about it.

On the other hand, if it's actually a peasant, then there won't necessarily need to be any testimony taken, and they can proceed with however they want.

Which again, makes sense. The celestial order is how the spirits want the world to look (more or less) and part of that seems to be that they don't want a mageocracy like you see in a lot of D&D esque settings. It's much more 'adventurer-centric' for the noble protagonist to get a vision to the effect that 'there is something rotten here' and go out and find and fix the problem/learn the secret/whatever through their own efforts than have the kami hand it on a platter to a suitably gifted shujenga.

13 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

And then there's the kami of large things, like Seppun Hill or the volcano that Shoju refers to in the Scorpion Letter today. I've seen them called mikokami.

Those are what I was getting at, but the page for 'Mikokami' on the wikia kept redirecting to the Order of the Seven Fortunes, so I thought I may have been remembering wrong.