Besides the son/daughter of heavens, who else’s can add a New Imperial Family?

The Hantei have been narrowly defined since the beginning of the empire compared to any other Kami's followers, otherwise the more militant of the Otomo and especially Seppun would be "Hantei".

The Seppun family was formed from Lady Seppun who was not just a shugenja, but an oracle who foresaw the fall of the Kami before it happened. The Seppun ought to be a primarily shugnja family focusing on astrology.

The Otomo started with a guy who was both described as serpentine, conniving and opportinistic and also kind, peaceful and ingraniating. Figureout how these concepts intercect because I feel both AEG and FFG failed them.

The Miya spun off from the Otomo as scouts and messangers. Of the main imperial families, they are the most down-to-earth and are even headquartered far from imperial lands.

I would put the next most important "imperial family" as the Kasuga who are considered a minor clan unto themselves, but one that lives entirely in imperial lands and handles officially sanctioned trade with foreigners. There is a distant kept between the official imperial families and the Tortoise Clan politically so that none of the Kasuga activity gets to reflect badly on the other families. But the Tortoise clan also includes the Someisa family which belies that Imperial and Tortoise are inseperably. There is also the Hyobe family as part of the Tortoise.

As for officially Imperial families, the first is the Anou who are little but the Kaiu who were recruited to create buildings for the imperials and never stopped.

The next to be formed was Reju family. They cooperated with the Gozoku in exchange for spreading the Shinsei brotherhood religion, whlch it is worth noting the imperials favor way more than the 7 clans. While Otomo Reju was roughly exiled, the Reju family keeps pushing for adherence to the Hantei interpretation of Shinseism.

The Nasu family of the Phoenix was also formed and was initially considered imperials.

The next imperial family to be formed was the Hanako family, named for Seppun Hanako who was the leader in creating a constitution of sorts that restricted what even the emperor could do without justifying rebellion.

Then there is the Tsi family, formed entively because one of the Hantei was impressed by foreign sword design. There are the official swordsmiths and why certain imperials might be armed with chinese style jin longswords rather than kakita style katanas.

Beyond that, there is the questionable Yotsu famlly who were stealthy, low profile keepers of law. The FFG fiction, by using Yotsu himself suggested the family doesn't exist, but also by stating Yotsu was a veteran of the emperor's wars and served under a family mon that Sotorii couldn't identify might mean they exist as imperial shinobi. They were formed by a Hantei due to the sacrifice of a son to protect the imperial line.

I will also make note of the Yoshun family, a family whose founder was born a Seppun who had none of the shugenja talent of his siblings and learned tengu techniques that were passed on. But maybe this remains totally AU.

Given what I described with all official, unofficial, and vassal imperial families it does seem as though they were named by a Hantei or during a period that Hantei weren't calling the shots.

I suspect that the family daimyos of the Imperial families could add vassal families, but otherwise, no-one but the Emperor themselves.

Cool, thank you guys.

Let me present my idea based on this fact:

“ The Shosuro-Ikoma Alliance was a covert alliance formed between the leaders of the Otomo, the Shosuro, and Ikoma families following the Battle of Stolen Graves. They had decided that some facts could damage the reputation of the Emperor, and it was the duty of samurai to protect the Emperor from such facts. Both families started to re-write history, in a more honorable way.

The Ikoma and Shosuro jointly maintained a secret library where all the suppressed truths of Rokugan's history were kept. “

So I was thinking of creating either an Otomo Vassal Family (most likely) or a separate Imperial Family to oversee this. They will assist both the Shosuro and Ikoma in their duties providing them all facilities (temporary safe houses while traveling), logistics, food) and information handling and storage. And sometimes train some of their family members as field operatives.

What do you think?

I think a vassal family that ostensibly is in charge of various somewhat remote Imperial holdings and is definitely not doing anything important, nope, why would you think that, is totally fair game.

It's a somewhat odd combination to have it be Ikoma and Shosuro, though. Ikoma, yes, I understand. Shosuro? What do they have with History?

Wouldn't an Ikoma-Asako or Kuni alliance or an alliance with at least the Black Hand (Kuroiban) make more sense?

Indeed it is Myrion. Maybe the chose the Shosuro because they could be everywhere. They are good at undercover and infiltration and they could extract/replace the information needed and in the case it’s needed they will not hesitate to get their hands dirty.

Or maybe this was the prize of a tournament...

Here is the link for the wiki:

https://l5r.fandom.com/wiki/Shosuro-Ikoma_Alliance

Ohh, so you're basing this on something that happened in AEG lore xD No further questions, your honour 😉

Hehehehe 😋

I am always looking for opportunities like that to add more spice our games.