2 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

I feel like the new setting is heading away from this in a very-very rapid pace.

I'd suggest the fate of Ujina argues against that sentiment.

3 hours ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

Now, now, I know your Kolat-loving self knows that's a bit of a stretch.

The term priest inherently implies some form of spirituality. And shugenja have to sacrifice to the kami in order to call upon their power. It's not exactly slaughtering goats in a temple, but still... it's worship-like.

17 hours ago, Kaito Kikaze said:

Is that a tanto in your pocket or do you just hate Phoenix that much? 😏

I don't abide pacifism in general. And while certain individual Phoenixes can be decent, as a group they tend to be more trouble than they're worth.

Still, it's not as if I'm calling for them to be wiped out and their lands salted like some people do whenever the Crane are brought up.

But the Phoenix do have an annoying habit of their screw ups having negative ramifications for the rest of the Empire. *cough*Tsunami.*cough*

Well, new evidence suggests that uh...Phoenix might not have been responsible for that tsunami after all. *cough* Mantis *cough*

1 hour ago, shineyorkboy said:

I'd suggest the fate of Ujina argues against that sentiment.

I dunno but I feel like the new Phoenix gig is being high-strung and taking big risks. All the Phoenix characters so far made sensible conclusions and had reasonable expectations, only to get screwed over when the game turned against them. This is what happened with Isawa Kayiko, Rujo (the character who sucked this one up the worst), Ujina, and even Kaede. They seem to be veering to the direction of "Let's do this! What can possibly go wrong?" instead of "I'm the hottest **** ever! Let's do this!"

Tho, I admit, Tadaka is kind of a borderline case.

1 hour ago, AtoMaki said:

I dunno but I feel like the new Phoenix gig is being high-strung and taking big risks. All the Phoenix characters so far made sensible conclusions and had reasonable expectations, only to get screwed over when the game turned against them. This is what happened with Isawa Kayiko, Rujo (the character who sucked this one up the worst), Ujina, and even Kaede. They seem to be veering to the direction of "Let's do this! What can possibly go wrong?" instead of "I'm the hottest **** ever! Let's do this!"

Tho, I admit, Tadaka is kind of a borderline case.

Currently, he's gone right over the border into the Shadowlands.

11 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

Currently, he's gone right over the border into the Shadowlands.

Yeah... what can possibly go wrong?

11 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Yeah... what can possibly go wrong?

He has an Asako to keep watch on him this time, I'm sure it will go much better.

7 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

I feel like the new setting is heading away from this in a very-very rapid pace.

I would say that where ol' Crabby the Kolat seems to think the old-lore Phoenix hubris is very much in play, that what we're getting here is the erosion of that hubris as more and more of the Phoenix leadership realize that they haven't got a clue what to do, because the tsunami and the imbalance have collapsed their old certainties.

Even Tadaka's resolute "I got this, I can handle it" approach is presented as something the rest of the Phoenix leadership are very uncomfortable with.

Meanwhile, you have Kosori catapulted from minor member of a minor vassal family to daimyo of a full Phoenix family trying to find her feet, Tsukune's uncertainties being eroded only because she really is getting better at her job, the Council sort of imploding...

(Also, how is Ujina's fate indicative of hubris? He ran afoul of a piece of Nothing grafted to a Scorpion shinobi- nothing he did directly contributed to his getting actively slurped up, it was Sadako's presence with a Shadow Brand that brought that on)

1 hour ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

He has an Asako to keep watch on him this time, I'm sure it will go much better.

And Kuni Yori right friggin' there.

Let's just all hope for the best, hmmm?

At least the Asako has Spike as a buddy

4 hours ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

(Also, how is Ujina's fate indicative of hubris? He ran afoul of a piece of Nothing grafted to a Scorpion shinobi- nothing he did directly contributed to his getting actively slurped up, it was Sadako's presence with a Shadow Brand that brought that on)

Ujina's fate is indicative of the Phoenix being manipulated by the Nothing. Despite him being de jure the strongest Void shugenja in the Phoenix all it had to do was bait a trap and he walked right into it.

The Phoenix are just the Nothing's puppets and they don't even realize there are strings. They don't even question that the eldritch entity that tells them to destabilize the Empire by antagonizing the Unicorn might not have their best interests in mind.

31 minutes ago, shineyorkboy said:

Ujina's fate is indicative of the Phoenix being manipulated by the Nothing. Despite him being de jure the strongest Void shugenja in the Phoenix all it had to do was bait a trap and he walked right into it.

Your bias is showing.

Despite him being Master of Void, a nightmare bound to the greatest trauma of his life left him open to being whammied by someone else bringing a chunk of weaponized Nothing directly into his presence, whereupon it did something so out of the ordinary that the Shinobi who bore it had no memory of what happened.

How is that hubristic on his part, hm?

31 minutes ago, shineyorkboy said:

The Scorpion are just the Nothing's puppets and they don't even realize there are strings.

Fixed that for you. One Clan communes with the Void- all of it.

The other directly injects the worst of it into their agents in the belief that they can use it safely.

31 minutes ago, shineyorkboy said:

They don't even question that the eldritch entity that tells them to destabilize the Empire by antagonizing the Unicorn might not have their best interests in mind.

An "Eldritch entity" that is not anything of the kind, at least as far as it goes in the setting's known history up to this point.

A primal force which has not, in their experience, demonstrated an active will or intelligence is what is in play, not some mustache-twirling dragon.

Besides which, you assume the LD is the source of the vision... A vision which plenty of ominous flavor text actually supports. They may have made a jump from "this talisman is Bad News" to "all Meishodo talismans are Bad News," but that doesn't mean the Lying Darkness puppeteered the decision. It means that humans made some hasty assumptions based on incomplete data- and which subsequent events have done nothing to alter.

22 hours ago, shineyorkboy said:

Still, it's not as if I'm calling for them to be wiped out and their lands salted like some people do whenever the Crane are brought up.

But the Phoenix do have an annoying habit of their screw ups having negative ramifications for the rest of the Empire. *cough*Tsunami.*cough*

See the Phoenix (or possibly the Mantis depending on how serious we take the Yoritomo action movie fic) were just getting started on the Crane hate a little ahead of everyone else. Gotta get some salt water into the crane holdings somehow.

11 hours ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

How is that hubristic on his part, hm?

I never said he was being hubristic.

11 hours ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

An "Eldritch entity" that is not anything of the kind, at least as far as it goes in the setting's known history up to this point.

A primal force which has not, in their experience, demonstrated an active will or intelligence is what is in play, not some mustache-twirling dragon.

That's exactly the point. Just as Magnus the Red thought the Warp was just a force only for there to actually be malicious intelligences behind it, so too will the Phoenix come to regret their confidence that they understand the nature of the world.

12 hours ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

One Clan communes with the Void- all of it.

You say that like being more fully immersed in the influence of the Nothing is a good thing.

12 hours ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

Besides which, you assume the LD is the source of the vision

The vision came to a Void shugenja from the Void/Nothing.

7 minutes ago, shineyorkboy said:

I never said he was being hubristic.

That's exactly the point. Just as Magnus the Red thought the Warp was just a force only for there to actually be malicious intelligences behind it, so too will the Phoenix come to regret their confidence that they understand the nature of the world.

You say that like being more fully immersed in the influence of the Nothing is a good thing.

The vision came to a Void shugenja from the Void/Nothing.

I kind of agree the Void does seem a little like a disaster waiting to happen for the Phoenix. It is another in a long line of we got this moments that escalate into WTF just happened pretty quick.

2 hours ago, Schmoozies said:

I kind of agree the Void does seem a little like a disaster waiting to happen for the Phoenix. It is another in a long line of we got this moments that escalate into WTF just happened pretty quick.

To be honest it looks like the Ishiken is not using the Void in a strict sense, just kind of "happen into it" without much control or understanding. Kaede in particular feels like just a willing conduit rather than a wielder of her powers.

4 hours ago, shineyorkboy said:

I never said he was being hubristic.

Yes you did. You said that what happened to him was an example of old-school Phoenix hubris.

And when initially questioned, you didn't clarify, you doubled down.

Only now that the idea has been beaten with a stick do you walk it back to somehow try to claim that it's more about "how dare the Phoenix have Ishiken."

4 hours ago, shineyorkboy said:

That's exactly the point. Just as Magnus the Red thought the Warp was just a force only for there to actually be malicious intelligences behind it, so too will the Phoenix come to regret their confidence that they understand the nature of the world.

Your fandoms are bleeding together in a way that actually doesn't serve your purpose terribly well- especially since the Phoenix Ishiken aren't Magnus or Ahriman- they're Space Marine Librarians or Imperial Sanctioned Psykers.

The Phoenix plainly do not consider Ishiken something safe. Nor are they a resource to be cultivated in numbers.

If anything, they're leaning into something the old lore brought up but never unpacked sufficiently in stories mostly designed to let people do cool magic stuff- the reason the Phoenix are so hellbent on making sure they train Ishiken, irrespective of their origins, is because holy crow, that stuff is insanely dangerous. You can't leave people with that direct pipeline to the Void to their own devices. Rokugani shugenja might act through ritual and rote, but the ability to actually do what they do is innate. That's true for all shugenja, not just Ishiken, but the Phoenix don't try to train "regular" shugenja from other Clans as a matter of policy. Only Ishiken are treated that way, because only Ishiken are represented as being so inherently dangerous.

From Smokeless Fire:

Quote

They said she had inherited Ujina’s gift, that one day she might prove an even more powerful Ishiken than he. But what good was her gift if it was too powerful to be used?

“The universe seeks equilibrium in all things, Kaede,” her father had assured her. To have been granted such a terrible gift meant that there would be a terrible need in her lifetime, and one day she would succeed him as the Master of Void.

But more to the point, the Void is not just The Nothing. The distinction has always been there, even in the new lore which has done a much better job of baking the Nothing into the setting from the word go- it's in there, it's swimming about, it's a definite risk, but it is not and has never been the entirety of the Void. For proof... look no father than the fact that Ujina was able to name Kaede. You're pouncing on "aha! The Nothing is in the Void, therefore all Void magic is also Nothing magic!" without looking into the fact that it's plainly not quite so clear-cut.

From Dreams of Shadow:

Quote

It was emptiness, containing nothing... but it also united the four stars, defining their shape, the place of each and the arrangement of all...

And later, when the chunk of weaponized Nothing gets close, Ujina, who has been dealing with the Void all of his life, does feel that something is wrong- which indicates that the presence of the Nothing is not part and parcel of the "normal" feeling of the Void. He detects the presence of the concentrated oblivion in Sadako's Shadow Brands, and isn't familiar with it.

Been out for a few days between work, a family death and well just despising the Hidden Emperor so **** much.

The basic problem it has is one of power escalation handled badly. We just had an Empire threatening event, so lets have a world threatening event. Nevermind that the stakes didn't need to be so high to have a satisfying storyline.

To compound this issue it doesn't seem much care was taken into thinking about a cohesive outline for it either. This might have been an issue with the originally stated intention to end the game after the Day of Thunder, interaction with the Burning Sands launch or maybe a consequence of the Honorable Dragon Movement, but the end result is that the story beats either don't make sense or amount to "a ninja did it". This further deflates the emotional weight the arc already lacks.

Crab: Retaking Hiruma lands is interesting, and despite the horrific Crab casualties during the Clan War I can see it happening. Pity that Kuni Yori is shunted of to become part of the Unicorn plot. Still not sure what the point of the Qatol deal was, and Amaterasu's death completely soils the bed in it's complete pointlessness and lack of resonance.

Crane: Civil war. Ninja did it. Yawn.

Dragon: The clan most tied to the storyline, for good and ill.

Lion: Lion maho. IIRC we found out what Tsanuri was doing during this arc a few years laters on the RPG sourcebook. Big yawn.

Mantis. Kind of interesting plot. Not much to do with the overall storyline. Really started the rivalry with the Phoenix which would plague the storyline for the remainder of the CCG... sigh .

Phoenix: Involved in the Agasha defection. They could have had a really strong arc. Unfortunately the focus they had was mostly on the war with the Mantis... 🤮

Scorpion: Got shunted off to the Burning Sands. That might have been to their benefit as it means they have little participation in this *********** of a storyline.

Unicorn: Oh boy! Shinjo Kolat. Shinjo Genocide! Stereotypical savage Mongol Moto. Kuni Yori and Lost Moto. Their storyline was all over the place, and caused the most changes to the clan without it ever being truly explored. Part of this has to do with being the connection between L5R and LBS, but I'm really not a fan.

Next up the Spirit Wars.

This story is more or less what I saw going on with Sotorii since he was first introduced. Most of the main characters were introduced as highly sympathetic. Except Sotorii. Like every story was written to make him clash with the sympathetic characters and paint him in a nasty light-- and Daisetsu in a positive one.

And then just as insight on what is going on in his head and heart is revealed and it is unveiled that Daisetsu is far, far from the perfect ideal pacifist prince that previous stories had made him out to be. (I predicted both of these things too), that's when he killed his father in a moment of blinding rage.

Sotorii is not unaware of his own faults, and when he reflects on them he is full of regrets, but he is the only one in the world who seems to realize that Daisetsu is a cruel, sadistic manipulator and everyone being sucked into that vortex. And that's the pain point that relentlessly turns him away from improving himself.

I don't think any sort of mystical outside manipulation need be at play here.

It is sad that there is apparently no Yotsu family... unless... well... there is. That whole "a family mon that Saotorii didn't recognize", the fact that Otomo Sorai gave away the route that the carvan would be following to a Crane who was likely motivated to attack it, the indication in that story that there was another cloaked figure that was riding alongside Sotorii that was never properly identified, and Yotsu saying that he had gotten his scars fighting in the Emperor's many battles.

All of this could well indicate that Yotsu could have been a retired shinobi of sorts working for the Otomo. Arrange for the caravan to be attacked and use that moment to kidnap the prince and bring him somewhere safe and hidden and try to get him accustomed to a peaceful life. The only part that does not fit is a Matsu hiring a bunch of ronin to hunt him down and kill him over some apparently debt.

But it would seem far more likely than Sotorii having successfully run off on his own during a very brief skirmish in a way that Dragon Clan members on horseback could not follow and recapture him and then, even so, having conveniently fallen down and hurt himself in such a way that prevents him from running away and having been found by a ronin with a long record of imperial service who, nonetheless, has no inclination to either turn him in for a reward nor obey his orders.

Being a plot by Otomo Sorai to put Sotorii in a place only he knows where to find him strikes me as more likely than the whole thing being merely coincidence. Also-- since imperial efforts always fail, it is also no surprise that such a perfectly fine plan would just utterly fall apart due to an unforeseen factor.

Anyway-- I am hoping for no Second Day of Thunder, in fact I am hoping that all of the Kami stuff remains primarily unverified myth and legend that Rokugan only treats as historical facts. They do seem to have precious little proof that these Kami were demi-gods born of the Sun and the Moon, there has been no direct interaction with any of them so far. There is no reason to go from this to a state where the main characters are killing and replacing the sun and the moon themselves.

And, moreover, it is sort of cheap to resolve all of the problems that have occurred in the story so far primarily from very human failings with "And here is the demon king! Resolve all our issues immediately, gather the main character from each clan to go kill him and then everyone lives happily ever after!!"

Certainly we know that Toshigoku is a thing-- it has been directly encountered in stories-- and Sotorii's nightmares are an indication that is soul is dead-bound for there at present time. Whether anything can fix that is-- questionable. But at least worth the effort. I think at this point simply killing himself won't prevent that, he needs to make a sacrifice far greater than three cuts to try repaying his ever deepening kharmic debts.