The Yogo Curse, Part 2

By Doji Hyōkin, in L5R LCG: Lore Discussion

That went poorly. But at least they got

the black scroll out

I mean, Yogo Junzo sacrificed himself for naught which is sad but also expected. I just feel it was too soon for him to meet his end. I mean this is the second story where he actually shows up for him to die like this.

7 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

That went poorly. But at least they got

the black scroll out

They did. They did not, however

get Kunshu out. And it appears the curse on Kunshu is a lot stronger than even the Empire's premier expert on nasty curses realised.

Also, Atsuko's been working out since the events of The Highwayman. She was nasty but not " slaughter an entire room of bushi and shujenga simultaneously " nasty.

Also, also, we now know where the forces which slipped across the Kaiu wall at the captured watchtower went.

15 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

That went poorly. But at least they got

the black scroll out

Well maybe they did, its also quite possible they mixed up Jiro for the person who was supposed to be evacuating it and got the wrong "package" with his forgeries.

I mean, you see someone running with a bunch of scrolls from the castle you would rightly assume they are escaping with important documents, right?

5 hours ago, Schmoozies said:

Well maybe they did, its also quite possible they mixed up Jiro for the person who was supposed to be evacuating it and got the wrong "package" with his forgeries.

Well, the story does state that Soshi-san took his papers and "stuffed them in the saddlebags beside ancient scrolls wrapped in black cloth ." Now that sounds to me like we've got the most important scrolls in the Empire riding along to the capital.

6 minutes ago, Mangod said:

Well, the story does state that Soshi-san took his papers and "stuffed them in the saddlebags beside ancient scrolls wrapped in black cloth ." Now that sounds to me like we've got the most important scrolls in the Empire riding along to the capital.

Possibly, however the Castle of Secrets has a lot of bad stuff locked up there and one of the things about cursed objects is they tend to corrupt things that are meant to contain them, and an outward expression of that is often those items turning black as they are overpowered by the cursed energy.

Admittedly it is very likely that the Black Scroll should be among those that got rushed out of the castle, but my nature of always thinking well what could make this situation even worse does veer towards they thought they were getting the right scroll out and instead all they got was Jiro forgery practice, so now an Oni has a Black Scroll, and the body of Yogo Junzo just waiting to be resurrected. What could possibly go wrong with that

I think the following two lines are important for the story:

  1. Jiro bowed to her and hoped she would let go, but she didn’t. The woman’s fingernails felt sharp enough to draw blood.
  2. Tainted creature in melee, lest they risk contracting the Shadowlands corruption from one of its blows.
9 hours ago, MaxYankov said:

I think the following two lines are important for the story:

  1. Jiro bowed to her and hoped she would let go, but she didn’t. The woman’s fingernails felt sharp enough to draw blood.
  2. Tainted creature in melee, lest they risk contracting the Shadowlands corruption from one of its blows.

Yes-- I am sure she was infecting him with something. People of the samurai caste tend not to touch hands much in Rokugan, certainly there is no reason for a creature that has shown such utter disdain and disgust at the kid's very existence to suddenly show any sort of affection or emotional support or whatever else it could have meant.

22 hours ago, Schmoozies said:

Possibly, however the Castle of Secrets has a lot of bad stuff locked up there and one of the things about cursed objects is they tend to corrupt things that are meant to contain them, and an outward expression of that is often those items turning black as they are overpowered by the cursed energy.

Admittedly it is very likely that the Black Scroll should be among those that got rushed out of the castle, but my nature of always thinking well what could make this situation even worse does veer towards they thought they were getting the right scroll out and instead all they got was Jiro forgery practice, so now an Oni has a Black Scroll, and the body of Yogo Junzo just waiting to be resurrected. What could possibly go wrong with that

One thing that stood out to me while I was reading was the request to evacuate the important artifacts, and Junzo's refusal. This means that the evacuation that we see is very hasty at best, so there's no telling what those Soshi might have with them. They might even just have enough to prove that the castle fell, and be merely going to make sure that the event is known.

The other element that stands out about the request is that Yogo Junzo brings up the Black Scroll itself, and specifically thinks about how nobody knows it's there except for him and Shoju. This means that the Shoshi likely don't even know about it, or that they need to grab it. It's unlikely that it would have been kept with any of the other artifacts, likely having a specifically secured location, like Kunshu seems to have. This is further proven by the description of how Junzo's Father's research was being stored.

Finally, the Black Scroll we see in the card game specifically let's you take control of character cards that are out of Fate. I play the RPG, not the cars game, so I'm not 100% on this, but doesn't that translate very closely to this particular scroll, the Skin of Fu Leng, allowing the user to raise and take control of the dead?

Edited by Pompz1
Spelling. It's "I," not "AI"
6 minutes ago, Pompz1 said:

One thing that stood out to me while I was reading was the request to evacuate the important artifacts, and Junzo's refusal. This means that the evacuation that we see is very hasty at best, so there's no telling what those Soshi might have with them. They might even just have enough to prove that the castle fell, and be merely going to make sure that the event is known.

The other element that stands out about the request is that Yogo Junzo brings up the Black Scroll itself, and specifically thinks about how nobody knows it's there except for him and Shoju. This means that the Shoshi likely don't even know about it, or that they need to grab it.

Oh, that's even worse.

And then the Scorpion show up at the capitol, having run themselves ragged (and possibly killed their horses from overexertion), only to be met by hostile Dragon Samurai and the regent in custody.

When it rains, it pours .

8 minutes ago, Mangod said:

... only to be met by hostile Dragon Samurai and the regent in custody.

...

Oh, I don't think so much of them as of Kakita Yoshi, who passionately hates Scorpion.

Yogo Jiro was sent off with either the Black Scroll or Kunshu-- and either one of them would explain vengeful ghosts coming for him like... immediately. One would usually expect a haunting from that sort of thing for years before they come to enact lethal vengeance.

He was also sent off with evidence of his own worst wrong-doing-- ironically because the Soshi who sent him off with the letters probably presumed that he was escaping with some important messages from the Yogo Daimyo or maybe even important magical scrolls.

Well-- whichever one he didn't escape with are sure to be in the hands of the Shadowlands now... while I guess whichever samurai he was riding with get the other.

To be honest, I don't really disagree with Yogo Junzo's choice not to evacuate things. They were rather confident that the approaching shadowlands entity was of no serious concern-- that they would be able to more than handle it easily. Meanwhile, if they had sent off the most important artifacts in some random direction then they would be far less safe out there in the wild than they would be in the palace. In fact-- given that they were attacked from all directions, there is every reason to think that having evacuated the artifacts like that just would have sent them into the hands of the enemy all that much quicker.

Ahhhhh. The Tragedy of Yogo Junzo.

Did what he could with what he had, and it wasn't enough.

A good man undone, not by some silly bloodline curse triggering entirely insane actions, but by circumstances no one in the Empire could reasonably have prepared for- and whose corpse remains in the corrupting hands of the forces that slew him.

Maybe the Crab could have handled the oni and her reinforcements better, but I doubt they- or the Phoenix- could have prepared for the resonance between Kunshu and Lady Atsuko.

Kobayashi Maru.

19 hours ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

Maybe the Crab could have handled the oni and her reinforcements better

Probably not. Facing the oni Atsuko, maybe, but being surrounded by a Shadowlands army unexpectedly is a different matter when you're not fighting from something like the Kaiu wall. Having faced her in the RPG, Lady Atsuko is dangerous, and I doubt anyone in the audience room was likely to survive, but she's not capable of taking on the entire Yogo family military singlehanded: the castle wouldn't have fallen to just her and a few odd Shinomen gribblies

Part of the reason the Scorpion failed is because of the surprise appearance of the army. Assuming this snuck into Rokugan via the captured watchtower, this is the Crab's fault.

Of course, the Crab had to investigate on a shoestring - bringing in Mantis mercenaries - because they're short of resources and stretched thin. This, to them, is the fault of the Imperial Chancellor - a Crane.

Who was put in that position in no small part by the Imperial Advisor - a Scorpion.

What goes around comes around.

Edited by Magnus Grendel
6 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Assuming this snuck into Rokugan via the captured watchtower, this is the Crab's fault.

While I agree that the Crab clan would have been just as screwed had they come under such a direct assault, this one part I have to disagree with.

I think the story made it quite clear that the story here was that the army arrived via gates created in the Shinomen forest. The captured watchtower was way, way off on the eastern edge of Rokugan, near the sea-- thus why the Mantis were recruited to help deal with it. For the force to have arrived from there would have taken about a month of travel through territory well-occupied by citizens of Rokugan and under control of a few clans before they could reach Scorpion lands.

And the two-part story cited there being "oni gates" on two sides of the Yogo lands as well as suggesting some new portal to Jigoku had been created within the shinomen forest.

While there is a remote possibility that the individual that opened that portal within the forest could have come through the captured watch tower, that possibility seems fairly remote compared to having entered through the ghostlands/plains above evil. And Lady Atsuko ties into a gencon RPG module that involved players playing characters that were outside of the usual "Great Clans" bubble that Rokugan is traditionally viewed from-- kind of blatantly in order to increase the sales of the Path of Waves book by showing there is value in having concepts beyond the Great Clans, but that seems fair enough.

Point is that there really isn't any way to pin this on the Crab Clan in any way-- it was well beyond the scope of their influence.

That being said-- the fact that the shugenja picked up on the approaching Lady Atsuko and yet not the massive army seems a bit odd.

4 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

And the two-part story cited there being "oni gates" on two sides of the Yogo lands as well as suggesting some new portal to Jigoku had been created within the shinomen forest.

As I pointed out to you in the other thread:

On 11/20/2020 at 8:10 AM, Tonbo Karasu said:

It isn't that Scorpion Lands have demon gates. The demon gates are actually reflections of Asian folklore. In China, and to a lesser extent Japan, north-east and south-west were considered unlucky directions. It's possibly luck from the original designers that the Festering Pit is to the south-west of Rokugan, but it actually plays into this bit of belief quite well.

For more info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oni#Demon_gate

While I believe the directions were luck from Wick & co, I believe our current authors were better informed and referring to folklore, not implying a new gaeway to Jigoku.