FFG posted a new Lion Clan fiction.

Please see the below link:

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2019/7/24/falling-stars/

All I can say about it is dam.

The fallout from this fiction will be enormous.

16 minutes ago, Vulcan646 said:

FFG posted a new Lion Clan fiction.

Please see the below link:

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2019/7/24/falling-stars/

All I can say about it is dam.

The fallout from this fiction will be enormous.

That final line seems to be a recurring theme at the moment.

I can't help but have sympathy for Ishikawa.

Kaeda either shortened her own life to save Toturi or traded her unborn child for her husband.

9 minutes ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

Kaeda either shortened her own life to save Toturi or traded her unborn child for her husband.

My bet is the latter. Also love the evidence of use of Gates of Meido visualization of why its a Void province instead of Air like Forebearer's Echoes.

I always like Ishikawa however little sotrytime they gave him in Old5R.

Kinda disappointed Aramoro did not kick the bucket.

7 minutes ago, Suzume Chikahisa said:

Kinda disappointed Aramoro did not kick the bucket.

He needed to survive so he could report his "success" to clear the way for the Scorpion ascension/ankles getting kicked out from under them

😮

Okay.

This was great, but you get Toturi out of there then what?

Also so I heard we were/are supposed to get all the fictions out at once. Is this still the case?

15 minutes ago, Spawnod said:

This was great, but you get Toturi out of there then what?

Also so I heard we were/are supposed to get all the fictions out at once. Is this still the case?

We'll see soon, I suppose.

I suspect the FFG will release the fictions piecemeal over the next month, not in a massive information dump.

For timeline reasons (and per suggestion from Katrina) the Kachiko that is at the Harvest Moon festival is actually Yogo Asami.
Also, this puts the events of Tiger stalks/Children of the Empire/Last Stone Played/Falling Stars, as occurring on Sept 12th (a Few Days before the Harvest Moon Festival) which is Sept 15 (again, thanks to Katrina Ostrander).

Timeline updated, with a hour breakdown for Sept 12/13th

Also, look for new stories weekly....

This story really sells Ishikawa. I love how greasy Aramoro feels when they write him. I'm dying for the story to circle back to Shoju.

1 hour ago, Spawnod said:

This was great, but you get Toturi out of there then what?

You have removed the only other person besides Shoju that knows of the emperor's edict. Kachiko likely expects her husband to go along with her plan, or she can have him dealt with too.

Aramoro will not want to admit failure to Kachiko and pass off the removal of Toturi's body as his doing but he will have to go in some sort of secret mission to go ish the job.

Poor Ishikawa is likely going to tell the wrong person that Toturi is actually alive and/or shinobi are responsible for Toturi vanishing.......which will lead to Ishikawa getting killed.

As pissed off a Shoju will be with Kachiko, he'll go along with her plan, but, I have a feeling that he will admonish her in a fashion that she does not agree with and she will kill him off.....maybe turning his own son against him since he'll not be happy that his friend gets hurt, because something will likely be done to Daisetsu.

I don't know. I think it's a real interesting question what Shoju does here. Does he consider Kachiko's actions disloyalty? Does he value his wife's reputation and his clan's status over his duty to his friend and emperor?

I'd argue so far we are shown he doesn't have a loving relationship with Kachiko and in fact disagrees with her philosophically. At the same time he wants his clan to fall from grace since taking them out of the spotlight and back into the shadows helps them do their job better. On top of that Jodan and Shoju appear to have a legitimate friendship, and one could argue Shoju owes Jodan his loyalty not only as an emperor but also as a friend.

I suspect Shoju won't brazenly go about righting things per the dead emperor's wishes, but I'd certainly expect some sort of reaction in that regards covertly. The question is just how much does he know right now about what is happening and how much will Kachiko tell him versus Shoju finding it out through his own means. Toturi on the other hand is just the kind of person to proclaim injustice though one would hope he would be more calculating about it considering his character. Though now he is going into hiding, which kinda puts the ball in Ishikawa's hands. Hope he doesn't get Aramoro'ed.

Oh, Kaede. Lesson number one: Find out what the price is before you agree to pay it. I'm divided 50/50 on whether that bit of work cost the life of their unborn child, or has forged a kharmic link such that if anything happens now, they die together.

I love Aramoro's 'He's not the better swordsman' thoughts after he jumps an already wounded and initially disarmed opponent. Rule of threes means they'll need to fight one last time though, so that the Lion can get his due.

And Seppun Ishikawa's the foil to Miya Satoshi. We've only seen Otomo Sorai getting played by Kachiko, so he comes across mainly as an empty kimono. Satoshi's on the Sotorii train for reasons of his own, so I can easily see Ishikawa being our pro-Daigotsu Imperial.

4 hours ago, Schmoozies said:

My bet is the latter.

Either path can lead to good drama.

If she ended up sacrificing her own life to extend his (just like her Akodo Kaede card effect), it sets her up to die (possibly in childbirth) leaving Toturi to raise their child alone.

If she ended up sacrificing their unborn child (and possibly her own fertility), drama will result in a culture focused on leaving descendants.

Mari never disappoints.

Neither does Kaede.

And then Doji Chiyoe, the Crane Clan's beloved princess shows up, wraps an infatuated Sotorii around her little finger and starts some teen angst involving Daisetsu and Shahai and everything gets even more complicated.

Kaede has always been one for the grand dramatic gestures.

1 hour ago, Alisair Longreach said:

And then Doji Chiyoe, the Crane Magami, the Mantis Clan's beloved princess shows up, wraps an infatuated Sotorii around her little finger and starts some teen angst involving Daisetsu and Shahai and everything gets even more complicated.

fixed that for you

3 hours ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

Either path can lead to good drama.

If she ended up sacrificing her own life to extend his (just like her Akodo Kaede card effect), it sets her up to die (possibly in childbirth) leaving Toturi to raise their child alone.

I 100% onboard with Toturi 3 becoming the neutral ronin "lone wolf and cub" character in the new lore.

Given the Void shenanigans involved, and the... situation of Kaede's birth?

I think there might be absolutely Nothing wrong here.

17 hours ago, KakitaKaori said:

For timeline reasons (and per suggestion from Katrina) the Kachiko that is at the Harvest Moon festival is actually Yogo Asami.

Maybe? Asami wouldn't know what's happened, though, so would she have any reason to be looking at Kaede in particular?

14 hours ago, Doji Hyōkin said:

And Seppun Ishikawa's the foil to Miya Satoshi. We've only seen Otomo Sorai getting played by Kachiko, so he comes across mainly as an empty kimono. Satoshi's on the Sotorii train for reasons of his own, so I can easily see Ishikawa being our pro-Daigotsu Imperial.

Indeed. So far I've been pretty impressed with Ishikawa in what we've seen of him - both in this fiction and his relatively open-mined approach to the whole Meishodo debate - "we need to know enough about it to protect the Emperor from it if we had to" is not that unreasonable a position even from the Unicorn's position.

At the same time, he's captain of the Seppun Honour Guard, who are essentially the Emperor's Life Guard, and they just done screwed up at their jobs bad . Even if he survives the current fracas it wouldn't surprise me if he takes his own life afterwards.

To be fair to the poor Seppun, the Emperor chose to meet with his own son and heir in the most inner of the innermost sanctums in the Imperial Palace. It's not unreasonable for them maintain watch nearby, without necessarily having someone right with the Emperor in such a situation. I mean, who could imagine a blasphemy as profound as the Imperial Heir killing his father, and with the Hantei ancestral blade at that? This really was a "corner case" in the Seppun manual-of-how-to-guard-the-Emperor.

That said, Ishikawa, and perhaps others, could still see this as a complete failure of their most sacred duty anyway, honor being an internal thing to the individual and all. So they may offer their seppuku, yes. But I doubt that they'd generally be seen, from the perspective of a outside observer, as having actually failed, as much as taken completely off-guard by a situation so unique and extreme their plans hadn't even considered it...right up with a, what do we do if an Elemental Dragon descends from Tengoku and wants to kill the Emperor ? That goes WAY beyond any reasonable contingency planning.

So, will he offer his seppuku? I suspect he probably will. Will it be accepted and allowed by his daimyo (or the new Emperor...hmm, an interesting, if REALLY specific question about Imperial protocol there)? I wouldn't surprised if it wasn't, and his honor was declared cleansed just by making the offer.

(Adding the standard disclaimer...this is just me musing and not based on anything I know as a writer, because I honestly don't know. Generally, if I muse or speculate on here or otherwise in public, it's about things I genuinely have no knowledge of in the story.)