As the title states, who officially does this? The Office of the Emerald Champion oversees enforcement of Imperial law, but the Office of the Jade Champion oversees enforcement against heresy and sorcery. I would say that the Kolat's religious views definitely count as heresy to the Imperial families, but the Office of the Jade Champion has been vacant for some time, and seems to be highly focused on maho-tsukai, not Kolat, when it is filled.

The Charter of the Emerald Magistrate includes the following:

Section Five: Organised Blasphemy

Any meeting of more than two individuals for the express purpose of participating in blasphemous or obscene rituals is forbidden, and is a matter of concern for the Emerald Magistrates.

Where is this charter? I'd like to make a cool layout for it and bring it to the game.

8 minutes ago, RMDanks said:

Where is this charter? I'd like to make a cool layout for it and bring it to the game.

It's in the 1st Edition City of Lies Box set (pdf available).

Cool. Thx

If you're talking about the canon setting then yes, the Emerald Magistrates (quite likely assisted by Clan Magistrates) would be responsible for investigating something like the Kolat i.e. an Empire-spanning conspiracy that threatens the established order. This would be a "blasphemous cult", membership in which is a grave offense and would typically lead, in the case of samurai, to dishonorable death by execution (and probably quite a nasty execution, too, such as being dismembered or boiled alive)--following an investigation and trial, of course. Any commoners involved would just be summarily executed.

Currently (that is, in the canon year of 1123) the office of Jade Champion technically exists, but it has been vacant for hundreds of years. There are, as a result, no Emerald Magistrates, either. All matters related to illegal magics and the like therefore also, from the perspective of Imperial jurisdiction, fall under the purview of the Emerald Magistrates.

15 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:

If you're talking about the canon setting then yes, the Emerald Magistrates (quite likely assisted by Clan Magistrates) would be responsible for investigating something like the Kolat i.e. an Empire-spanning conspiracy that threatens the established order. This would be a "blasphemous cult", membership in which is a grave offense and would typically lead, in the case of samurai, to dishonorable death by execution (and probably quite a nasty execution, too, such as being dismembered or boiled alive)--following an investigation and trial, of course. Any commoners involved would just be summarily executed.

Currently (that is, in the canon year of 1123) the office of Jade Champion technically exists, but it has been vacant for hundreds of years. There are, as a result, no Emerald Magistrates, either. All matters related to illegal magics and the like therefore also, from the perspective of Imperial jurisdiction, fall under the purview of the Emerald Magistrates.

To clarify, I believe that there's no Jade Magistrates, along with their Champion. There are, of course, Emerald Magistrates.

55 minutes ago, Endwaar said:

To clarify, I believe that there's no Jade Magistrates, along with their Champion. There are, of course, Emerald Magistrates.

Oops. You are quite correct. Off to seppuku I go!

18 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:

Currently (that is, in the canon year of 1123) the office of Jade Champion technically exists, but it has been vacant for hundreds of years.

Correct. More to the point, there's an active political effort by the Phoenix clan to keep it that way.

Theoretically, as noted, any violation of Imperial Law and the Celestial Order (which are in theory one and the same thing) falls within the purview of the Emerald Magistrature. The Jade Champion is theoretically a seperate entity but is at the same time arguably just a 'specialist' dealing with threats of a supernatural nature that the Emerald Champion would not be equipped to handle, in much the same way that the Ruby Champion's job is to be an expert legal counsel (amongst other things) in case the Emerald Champion at any given time isn't of a scholarly legal nature.

1 hour ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Correct. More to the point, there's an active political effort by the Phoenix clan to keep it that way.

Well, yes. We've got the Phoenix Clan and the Inquisitors. What else do we need?

One way to answer the question is that "No agency or office officially hunts and destroys Kolat, because Kolat do not officially exist." Another way to answer it would be "no agency or office officially hunts the Kolat, because hunting and destroying people who think as the Kolat think is the responsibility of every samurai."

Kolat are not like blood-seekers or perfect land cultists, both of those groups could still serve the Kami (they just don't do so in an imperially approved fashion), but Kolat work against the Kami and so they are diametrically opposed to samurai.. this isn't to say of course that "samurai" can't fool themselves into thinking that they can still be samurai while also being Kolat, but they would only be fooling themselves.

Now most samurai aren't going to hear "kolat" and think "I must kill that".. the Hantei doesn't want the existence of the Kolat to be widely known among samurai, the Kolat conspiracy also doesn't wish to be widely known.. so most samurai.. even those samurai who would normally investigate such things, don't associate the term "kolat" with "enemy of the kami", but they would associate the thought process as being against the way of the samurai.

Of course there are many ways the PC's might get privileged information about the Kolat conspiracy. It seems that the emerald magistrate's library does contain information on the Kolat conspiracy for those who know to look. The PC's might stumble upon a kolat plot, which would give them the information they need to spend the rest of their lives hunting and killing kolat whenever possible. The trick with the Kolat is figuring out how your PC's stumble across the conspiracy, but the reward is that, once your characters know of the Kolat, they don't all need to be working for one office or clan or lord in order to be obligated to actively pursue and eliminate the kolat threat.

Most magistrates aren't really going to run into anything labeled Kolat at all really. They'll run into elements of the Kolat disguised as/running various operations, but the Kolat keep things so compartmentalized that even the people the PCs arrest/deal with won't even know they are Kolat, with maybe the exception of one person. They might even find a clue or two that hints at some greater conspiracy, but the thing is so layered they could spend a lifetime trying to work deeper into the whole thing.

And if they do run into a group called the Kolat, they might think they have defeated it like is the case in the Bells of the Dead/Hare Clan Trilogy when the PC's topple Daidoji Dajan's renegade Kolat cell.

As a plot device IMO it's supposed to be this enormous multi-layered conspiracy that you spend forever trying to figure out - but never quite doing so. You can disrupt some of their plans, defeat some of their agents, but there's always another layer. Another cell. More agents. It's why I think they had such super powerful artifacts like the Oni's Eye (which can be thwarted under very specific circumstances). I guess it's a bit X-files-esque in a sort of way, especially if you're going heavily for something focused on investigation.

The Kolat as presented in the new setting are a bit less multi-layered conspiracy than before. If you know what you're looking for, there's a section in the Emerald Champion's library. Agasha Sumiko thinks they're a big threat, but better hidden from the populace, and Kitsuki Kagi has a reputation amongst other magistrates for seeing the Kolat in everything.