I think the eeriness of her use of the Void to warp and change destiny, by pulling Toturi back from death, is the price she knows she's going to have pay for it. She understands that she has used the Void to affect the balance of things, and that balance will have to be restored--that's the price. Is it going to be her own life? The life of their unborn child? Did she just consign her father to being lost forever to...wherever he is? Is Ishikawa going to be the price, because of his bond of unrequited love for Kaede? Or is it something or someone else entirely? She agreed to pay a price, without knowing what that price is, to save her beloved. It's epic, but will probably ultimately entail tragedy. The fact she doesn't know form that will take is, to me, deeply unsettling...like choosing to sit under the Sword of Damocles.

On 7/26/2019 at 4:03 PM, RafaelNN said:

Also, based entirely on my hollywood movie watching experience, you have to be a pro AND carefully plan, rehearse, prepare etc a plan for it to succeed. 

Not true. In Hollywood movies, you only need to have the boss explain the plan once while showing the exact same steps of that plan in action.

2 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:

I think the eeriness of her use of the Void to warp and change destiny

That's not very eerie to be honest. Especially in the world of Rokugan where their biggest heroes were mortals specifically because mortals have the power to change destiny. It comes at a price, actions and consequences, business as usual. Well, yes, the Rokugani themselves are not giving a whole lot of thought to this, but that's another matter.

I would mostly expect crazy reality warping action and gestalt consciousness shenangians from someone who can harness the Void. It is the force that makes up and holds together everything at the same time, after all, so one with the affinity to sense and use it should mean a kind of business that is not for the understanding of your average fantasy samurai. But I digress, it would be also one **** to write .

I wonder if the levels of ridiculous from old5r are tempering expectations for the new canon. I mean, for the new story so far, diving into the void and dragging someone's soul back from the gates of meido is pretty insane. Last time we had a big interaction with the void, we had Ujina completely disappear bodily into the void.

Wait a second...

Quote

Her foot suddenly slipped. She gasped, clutching at the wall to regain her balance. Below her in the dark pooled a slippery, warm puddle. She shuddered.

“No!” she gasped, her breath catching in her throat.

Ishikawa dashed forward with his lantern, the light swinging wildly.

There, before her, lay Toturi, framed in his own blood.

What are the odds she accidently went Maho here? Kansen are drawn to blood, aren't they?

1 hour ago, Mangod said:

Wait a second...

What are the odds she accidently went Maho here? Kansen are drawn to blood, aren't they?

I thought it had to be the shugenja's blood or an offering of blood (sacrifice, murder, etc.) from an act committed by the shugenja. But I could be wrong.

4 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

That's not very eerie to be honest. Especially in the world of Rokugan where their biggest heroes were mortals specifically because mortals have the power to change destiny. It comes at a price, actions and consequences, business as usual. Well, yes, the Rokugani themselves are not giving a whole lot of thought to this, but that's another matter.

I would mostly expect crazy reality warping action and gestalt consciousness shenangians from someone who can harness the Void. It is the force that makes up and holds together everything at the same time, after all, so one with the affinity to sense and use it should mean a kind of business that is not for the understanding of your average fantasy samurai. But I digress, it would be also one **** to write .

There's a difference, though, between changing destiny through one's heroic deeds and personal sacrifice, and changing destiny by manipulating the Void. Moreover, those who become heroes who change destiny often know the cost more or less up-front; often, it's their own lives. Kaede's manipulation of destiny was different. She literally used the Void--the force that binds, and gives shape and identity to all things--to do it. She pretty much hacked the Void to get it do what she wanted. This doesn't itself have to involve a lot of weirdness (although the description of what Kaede actually did to save Toturi is suitably bizarre and mystical). What it DID do, though, was leave the impact of her mucking about with Toturi's (and, by extension, her own, as well as many other's, and perhaps the whole Empire's) destiny as a profound and, yes, unsettling question now hanging there--just what WILL the price be? What does Kaeda now owe, and to who or what does she owe it?

I get that you don't find it especially "eerie". That's cool. But eeriness is a pretty subjective thing, and I certainly found myself a little unnerved by her not knowing what price she committed to pay for this (and I genuinely don't! I don't even know if it has been decided yet, in fact.)

I wonder if they are going to have Toturi go ronin in a way similar to how Tosjimoko went ronin as The Grey Crane in the original story, going incognito to find out the truth of what's happening. As for Kaede's price, she's given herself to the Void and linked her soul to the Void (dragon?), so maybe Oracle time? In the Clan Novels, she was approached by both the Oracle and her father before choosing to become the new oracle, so maybe this is the setup for that. She also was deliberately trying to avoid becoming Master of Void and the responsibilities of that position, wanting to just be Toturi's wife, so her price could be simply fulfilling her potential. Or she has just unlocked the Nothing and allowed it to start it's entrance to the world... Maybe that's how Toturi gets corrupted by the Nothing later on. I just hope that they don't give up the opportunity to bring in Tsudao and give her a better future.

7 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:

There's a difference, though, between changing destiny through one's heroic deeds and personal sacrifice, and changing destiny by manipulating the Void.

Appearently, changing the Void does require a personal sacrifice at the very least, so there is that. If Kaede could bring back the dead with just a flick of her wirst then maybe I would consider the act unsettling.

8 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:

I certainly found myself a little unnerved by her not knowing what price she committed to pay for this

You must be easy to spook !

I think the resurrection sequence was fairly trite, the whole "go to a very mystical place to recover a soul" thing is pretty much every resurrection in fantasy literature ever, and the "unknown cost" deal was granted both from the narrative and how Kaede was portrayed in regards of her Void powers. It was a huge jump from her usual episodes of prescience, and thus I found it a bit confusing because Kaede having literal plot powers is something I will not accept, but the most unnerving thing in it was Toturi's soul being a complete jerk IMO.

5 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

Appearently, changing the Void does require a personal sacrifice at the very least, so there is that. If Kaede could bring back the dead with just a flick of her wirst then maybe I would consider the act unsettling.

You must be easy to spook !

I think the resurrection sequence was fairly trite, the whole "go to a very mystical place to recover a soul" thing is pretty much every resurrection in fantasy literature ever, and the "unknown cost" deal was granted both from the narrative and how Kaede was portrayed in regards of her Void powers. It was a huge jump from her usual episodes of prescience, and thus I found it a bit confusing because Kaede having literal plot powers is something I will not accept, but the most unnerving thing in it was Toturi's soul being a complete jerk IMO.

Hey, every story is a collaboration between writer and reader. Both bring things to the tale that give them their particular reaction to it. So far be it from me to say you're "wrong"...only that, for everyone who makes a flat and pretty "objective" observation about a story, there are inevitably others with the opposite view that they consider to be just as correct (because none of its really objective anyway). For example, LOTS of people love GRRM; personally, I think he's an amazing world-builder and is brilliant at developing characters (and boy, does he love to develop characters), but not that great a storyteller. He should pair up with someone else--say, like Brandon Sanderson--and I think the result would be mind-blowing stories. But that's me...others obviously like his storytelling just the way it is! I think the vast majority of romance novels are formulaic junk, but MAN do we sell a lot of them in our used book store. On and on it goes.

For that matter, I'm honestly amazed at some of the things people take from, or see, or read into, the stuff I write. It's common for me to read in this forum, or on Discord, or Reddit or somewhere that someone thinks this or believes that and I'm going...really? That never even occurred to me while I was writing this! So this sort of I like this/you didn't is pretty much the way of storytelling.

On 7/25/2019 at 4:54 AM, Doji Hyōkin said:

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'm likely to think that they have tied fates now - both die when one falls... 🤔 Also, I don't think this was maho but some Void-soul juju thing - with that faint pulse, technically, Tuturi wasn't all dead yet.

21 hours ago, Mangod said:

Wait a second...

What are the odds she accidently went Maho here? Kansen are drawn to blood, aren't they?

I don’t think you can use Void Maho. The Void doesn’t have any kami, because it’s... well, the Void; so it shouldn’t have any kansen either.

Wait...what? Maho? There was no maho used in this story. Does somebody think there was?

15 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:

Wait...what? Maho? There was no maho used in this story. Does somebody think there was?

Just someone overthinking the fact that she stepped into the puddle of blood that was leaking from Toturi when she came into the room.

16 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:

Wait...what? Maho? There was no maho used in this story. Does somebody think there was?

To be honest reanimating the dead is a major Maho thing and of the key features of Maho resurrection is the mahotsukai paying a hefty price for it. Or at least the old canon made a pretty big deal out of true resurrection being essentially Maho-exclusive.

24 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

To be honest reanimating the dead is a major Maho thing and of the key features of Maho resurrection is the mahotsukai paying a hefty price for it. Or at least the old canon made a pretty big deal out of true resurrection being essentially Maho-exclusive.

But this isn't reanimating the dead (which normally involves just raising a husk and using the power of the Kansen to give it the semblance of life) its a true resurrection of a person, there is a pretty major difference there.

26 minutes ago, Schmoozies said:

But this isn't reanimating the dead (which normally involves just raising a husk and using the power of the Kansen to give it the semblance of life) its a true resurrection of a person, there is a pretty major difference there.

It's not even a resurrection: it's just saving someone from near-death.

15 minutes ago, 987654321 said:

It's not even a resurrection: it's just saving someone from near-death.

Well he was at the Gates of Meido crossing the threshold when she snatched him back so its kind of questionable whether he was dead or not but yeah could be read as a major heal rather then resurrection.

He was only "Mostly dead."

How has nobody else dropped a Miracle Max quote in this thread yet?

It was not maho. It wasn't even vaguely related to maho. What she did was use the Void to change the flow of destiny from one course to another. The "cost" she faces is what the ramifications of that change are, and will be, as destiny settles itself into its new channel. The uncertainty around that, and the consequences she ends up having to confront, is the price she has paid, and will continue to pay.

The cost of maho is much more literal and direct. You offer some of yourself to the powers of darkness and evil in exchange for some favor or boon. The spilling of blood is symbolic of that offering of part of oneself (which started as relatively pure before and up to the dawn of the Empire, when spilling one's blood was an investment of oneself into the magic being wrought; it became corrupted thanks to Jigoku and Fu Leng). So maho is very, very different than using (or perhaps abusing?) the Void to change destiny.

If we accept that Toturi wasn't dead, seems like she just used the 4th ed l5r void spell rise from the ashes (rk 5 spell iirc) .

1 hour ago, Schmoozies said:

But this isn't reanimating the dead (which normally involves just raising a husk and using the power of the Kansen to give it the semblance of life) its a true resurrection of a person, there is a pretty major difference there.

Yeah, that was a Maho thing too. Shahai used it on Daigotsu, like, a bazillion times, that's how he kept coming back after getting skewered over and over again.

7 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Yeah, that was a Maho thing too. Shahai used it on Daigotsu, like, a bazillion times, that's how he kept coming back after getting skewered over and over again.

There is a maho version I'm sure, but that involves actively seeking the aid of Kansen, not something that Kaede was doing here as she was using her knowledge of Void magic to twist fate Toturi's fate

13 minutes ago, Schmoozies said:

There is a maho version I'm sure, but that involves actively seeking the aid of Kansen, not something that Kaede was doing here as she was using her knowledge of Void magic to twist fate Toturi's fate

You know, speaking of which, we don't know what Toturi's fate was/is. It is possible that with Toturi's death, the thread of prophecy was severed. Kaede had to resurrect him to restore the weave of fate, instead of presisting in the doomed world Sotorii had created.

Also, considering how @ssblasted Toturi's spirit was, the cost can be him returning EVIL! That would be kinda interesting.

Let's go all in. Toturi returns....with AMNESIA!