Latest revision as of 12:14, 18 August 2021

General History

For reasons known only to her, Empress Iwane III gave oversight of the aftermath of the war to her heir, Iwane Yuuki, later Iwane IV. The close relationship between the Lion and the Iwane dynasty was sorely tested when Iwane Yuuki began issuing severe reprimands, and later demanding seppuku, of a number of Lion who considered their new subjects no more than animals, in spite of his decree that their upper castes were now samurai, and their peasants proper peasants, to be treated as such. The other clans, made more cautious by his obvious willingness to come down hard on his traditional allies, largely avoided such censure, though a number of Scorpion border territories were granted to the Lion, and the governors executed as criminals, after it was discovered the appointed governors were selling new citizens, as they’ve come to be called, as slaves to the Yodotai and Senpet.

The Crystal Championships

Imperially, it was considered a poor idea to send the Jinn back to the burning sands for the war, and so they were barred from service and the great tournament that would later become the Crystal Championships formally, or the “Rainbow Games” informally, went ahead as expected. The first tournament, to allocate the Jinn among the clans, resulted a relatively even spread among the nine great clans, with the Owl receiving the least, as expected, while the newly-formed Orochi clan tied with the Crane for most, fueled in part by the propensity for the jinn of water for various forms of sailing and watersport.

These initial tournaments were both more and less diverse than the later games, consisting as they did of a wide selection of events, not one of which was anything but quite traditionally Rokugani. Some of the less popular events, like the formal tea ceremony, have been eliminated from the competition, and competitor numbers lowered overall, while more non-traditional events have been added, including the wrestling of Ujik and Moto, the always exciting flaming horseback riding, games of cards from the burning sands, and tiles from the Crab, as well as some fairly exciting and dangerous variations on boating imported from the Orochi. At the tenth games, to honor the death of legendary Jade Champion Isawa Koiyokan, a divination event was added, involving predicting things that would happen during the games. The effect this had on betting, including meta-betting on the divination event itself, proved so popular that the event was made a permanent fixture.

These initial games also marked the start of another tradition, with both Moto Yasemin and Agasha Yuugure choosing magistrates and yoriki for their respective investigations from among the participants. Ultimately, of over a thousand competitors, only eight magistrates and thirty two yoriki for them were chosen, but the pattern was ultimately set. Today, the rainbow games are the source of many of the new yoriki inducted into the Emerald and Jade Magistracies, as well as a valuable source of new recruits for the imperial legions, with competitors assigned to temporary housing that is separated from their entire support network, housed only with fellow competitors of other clans, generally in different events. The competitors are watched for the qualities that make a good yoriki or magistrate, and the award ceremony afterwards invariably includes the appointment of a number of new magistrates and yoriki.

The End of the Minor Clans

Back in Rokugan proper, Agasha Yuugure’s years-long investigation, based out of the City of the Rich Frog, finally bore fruit, and shortly thereafter, the Kaeru began showing the first students of their blood offering research program, as well as actively training more. It wasn’t much longer before the Kaeru officially joined the Dragon, solidifying the city’s role as a buffer between the Lion and Unicorn. With the new imperial road running from the City of the Rich Frog to Bugaisha pulling most trade away from the Badger clan at Sorrow’s Pass, the Badger clan ultimately joined with the Dragon, securing the Dragon as the guardians of most of the northern border of Rokugan.

This seemed to cause an avalanche, as the remaining minor clans, shut out of the bounty of both the sea and the conquest of the Caliphate, joined nearby great clans simply as a matter of survival. The Centipede joined the Phoenix, the Sparrow joined the Crane, the Dragonfly joined the Dragon from which they sprung. The Fox were in talks with the Crane and Crab when the Lion and Scorpion, a hundred and twenty years after the formation of the Wasp, decided to finally annihilate the stain on their honor. Ultimately, the Crab withdrew from negotiation with the Fox after it was determined the Fox could provide nothing of particular value to the clan, leaving them to join the Crane. Of all the minor clans that once existed, only the Tortoise still exist, Iwane IV having declined to absorb them officially into the imperial family.

External Threats

On opposite sides of the empire, external threats became more evident, with the Scorpion, Lion, and Unicorn on the western border facing the Yodotai and Senpet, with the Unicorn and Dragon facing Yobanjin and Usurrans to the north, and the Orochi, Crane, and Phoenix facing Thrane, Merenae, and the tribes of the great southern island, which we call Uluru, after the great mountain in its center. For the first time since the dawn of the empire, it is surrounded on all sides by able nations entirely willing and able to fight, instead of the only external threat being the Shadowlands, barely held back by the Crab.

Appointing the Lion to face the Yodotai was ultimately an objectively correct decision on the part of Iwane III and her heir. Practically the first thing the Yodotai did upon making contact with the Lion armies was to offer to support them in their conquering of the entire empire as part of the Lion joining the Yodotai, a proposal to which the Lion responded with a great deal of bloody violence. Later research revealed that this was a standard practice for the Yodotai when meeting a new neighbor. Eighty years later, the two stand at an uneasy stalemate, with the Yodotai advance in the north stopped dead by lack of easy access to the Unicorn, in the mid-reaches, and the Usurrans in the far north.

The Senpet maintain relations as cordial with the empire as they did with the Caliphate, and remain a major trade partner. They were quite put out when Iwane Yuuki cut off the slave trade entirely and began executing participants, and tensions with them largely center on the imperial decree that any slave that makes it to Rokugan is then a new citizen and absolutely free. Some trade has begun with places south of the Senpet, which apparently is less hostile than the lands immediately south of their river-bound empire.

Usurra and the Yodotai cover the entire northern border of Rokugan. The Yodotai are a fractured people, much like the varied tribes of Uluru, but their tribes have significant power, and they engage in regular raids on the Dragon and Phoenix, using immense birds and flying lizards as mounts. The Phoenix maintain that some of the friendlier tribes, who are willing to trade with them, could be brought into the empire, but internal resistance even within the Phoenix says otherwise. The Phoenix also do not have to deal with Usurrans, who come south occasionally for trade or raids. They do not ride beasts like the Yodotai, but according to lore passed down by the Unicorn and Ujik, they can transform themselves wholly into beasts, but with the intelligence of people. Regardless, their ruler, who reputedly is an immortal sorcerer who has ruled for centuries, under the name Koshay the Deathless, seems largely uninterested in the empire.

The Thrane and Merenae, eight hundred years after the epidemic that largely destroyed them as a concern to Rokugan, have mostly recovered. What they haven’t recovered is all of the land they once controlled, as the natives of the lands they once occupied surged and were obviously both reluctant to part with it again and also much more experienced in fighting the Thrane and Merenae, and more willing to adopt the technology necessary to make them regret their heavy handed tactics. These native tribes are many, but also more united in the face of the invaders than they once were, but Rokugan has little contact with them, as the ocean is wide, and they are not as skilled at seafaring as the Maui and Maori of the Orochi clan. Trade has been reestablished officially with the Thrane and Merenae, but this remains largely the province of the Tortoise and the Orochi, who then make the goods available to the rest of the empire. Especially popular have been new foods that preserve well, some of which grow well in Rokugan proper, and a great many varieties of alcohol that were previously available only sparingly from the Mantis.

Uluru, so called because while none of the myriad tribes can agree on a name for the entire great island, most of them at least agree that the mountain in the center is called Uluru, is a harsh, inhospitable place almost everywhere that isn’t near the coast. The entire place is riddled with venomous creatures, many of which bear no resemblance to anything found in either Rokugan or the burning sands, some of which strike so subtly that a man is dead without even knowing he’s been stung. Between the harsh environment and the stiff resistance of the natives, the Maori, and then the Orochi, have been in the process of claiming ever wider swaths of the place for almost two hundred years. Most of Rokugan cares little for the matter, and the natives seem uninterested in trade, but the deposits of gems and iron make it a valuable place for the Orochi.

The Ivindi were eyed with some desire after the war of two suns, but in spite of being greener, the area has an even more absurdly punishing climate than the burning sands. The place is hot and humid to degrees rarely found in Rokugan for most of the year, and has an entire season of being lashed by deadly powerful storms that are considered major disasters for the Rokugani coast. On top of that, their warrior caste is strong and well favored by their gods, capable in times of need of calling down from the heavens the weapons of the gods themselves, able to wipe out an entire company of troops in a single engagement. The Ivindi are, however, extremely open to trade, and once Iwane IV acknowledged that their warrior and religious castes were equivalent in power and prestige to samurai, relations eased. That’s when Rokugan learned that the area south of the Kaiu Wall does, in fact, have a backside, and also when the Crab took an interest. Aided by ship designs from the Orochi, the Crab now frequently trade resources and knowledge around the sea of shadows to the Invindi order responsible for slaying the beasts that wander out of the blighted lands.

The New Citizens

The New Citizens was the moniker decided on by polite society in the wake of Iwane Yuuki’s decree that they were samurai and peasants like any others, to be treated as such. The term is just derisive enough to be acceptable to the people using it, and just polite enough to pass muster as a bare minimum of civility. The new citizens aren’t one people, as many samurai thought, but instead a collection of peoples that joined the caliphate long before the rise of the Immortal Caliph. In addition to the Ujik and Ra’shari, both nomadic peoples that roam the burning sands and the northern steppes, the Bandar formed the original population of Medinaat al Salaam, the semi-nomadic Suhili that range the steppes north and west of the Ujik, ranging to the shores of the Cursed Sea, the tower-building, dark-skinned Sogdan that raised small cities near the arable land at the base of the mountains in the west, and the quietly religious, pacifistic Nehiri were all numbered under the caliphate’s population. Under the regime of the Immortal Caliph, the Qamarist religion that had originally brought the caliphate together was largely suppressed, and it has experienced a resurgence since, causing friction with the Phoenix, Fortunist monks, and the brotherhood of Shinsei. The only people to really get along with each other have been the Nehiri and the Asahina, who at least respect each others’ devotion to pacifism.

Under the wise reign of Iwane IV, the Ra’shari were allowed to continue wandering as they will, being recognized as imperial subjects managed, such as they are, directly by the imperial families. They are treated as a vassal of the Miya, and as they do no harm, few care to spend time and energy tracking them or restricting their passage. The Ujik, long associated with the Unicorn, were grouped with them, as were the Suhili, as both groups roam the steppes that sane people do not consider livable territory. The rest of the peoples of the Caliphate were divided by region, with areas assigned to the clans to govern. Medinaat al Salaam, being a city comparable in size to Otosan Uchi, is officially Imperial territory, while each clan with interests in the burning sands governs one or more districts, in the same manner as the district governors of Otosan Uchi. It was the seat of Iwane Yuuki’s power before he took the throne, and he appointed his heir apparent to the governorship for a number of years before his retirement, making it a tradition.

The Clans

The Crab

The Crab have gained the least, ultimately, from the past eighty years. Because they did not take part in the conquest of the caliphate, they are the only clan left with no border territory, aside from their coast, which is ultimately guarded by the Orochi. Still, thanks to the popularization of ship improvements adapted into a more Rokugani style, the Crab have begun trading actively with the Ivindi, sailing around the sea of shadows to reach them. Ultimately, the trade is a secondary motivation, because having discovered that the Ivindi have an order devoted to killing the beasts that sometimes wander out the back side of the shadowlands, the Crab were eager to discuss matters with them. The discovery that they consider ivory holy and not jade was most significant, since ivory is a renewable resource, but thus far the attempts of the Crab to use it themselves have been unsuccessful.

The Crane

The Crane wasted no time in securing a number of the most desirable oases in the burning sands for themselves, and swiftly branched out from there, planting a communications tower at every other oasis they could manage. As the only way to get a message from one side of the empire to the other measured in less than weeks, they’ve been doing exceptionally well economically, and their intelligence advantage is second to none. Politically, they are still at best equal to the Lion and Scorpion, but they continue attempting to claw back what they lost during the early Iwane dynasty. The messenger network has proved a fantastic way to train their samurai, with harriers and duelists alike getting plenty of exercise, and the Crane boast more multi-lingual samurai than any other clan, even the Orochi. Their communication network, likewise, extends well out to sea, with messenger boats and towers on the Islands of Silk and Spice, as well as the islands of the Maori and Maui families. They have yet to plant a tower on the great island of Uluru, but that’s more a matter of time than anything, as the empire considers turning its eye to the Orochi’s slow conquest and dividing up that great land as well.

The Dragon

The Dragon gained almost nothing from the conquest itself, having given their potential gains to the Phoenix in exchange for the Phoenix finally, after centuries, laying off the Dragon Heart Plains. What nobody expected was Agasha Yuugure, fresh from her appointment as one of the most senior Jade Magistrates of the empire, convincing the Kaeru to join the Dragon. The Badger and Dragonfly followed not long after, bringing the Dragon to seven great families and control of both major land routes into the heart of the empire, as well as the vast majority of the northern border. Enriched by the trade flowing off the great road between Bugaisha and the City of the Rich Frog, the Dragon have declined to give up their asceticism in favor of further development of the plains, greatly decreasing their need to import food. The Dragon are largely at peace, aside from dealing with raids from Usurrans and Yodotai, both of which see the outlying villages as a good source of food.

The Lion

The Lion are participants in the vast majority of wars that still happen in the heart of the empire. Most often, they’re both sides of the war, as having nobody else to fight, the Lion will happily fight each other. Technically, these aren’t wars, they’re minor skirmishes involving less than ten thousand people on a side, and the internal ones are, well, internal, but it still ends with dead people. The Lion as a clan much prefer to send people who are getting twitchy out to the burning sands to work that aggression off in endless skirmishes with the Yodotai, who are still sore that the Lion rejected their offer to switch sides and conquer the empire for themselves. Alone of the ‘civilized’ clans, the Lion have declined to spend money remodeling the buildings and towns of the conquered lands to suit their own tastes, instead spending their money to expand their ability to house troops using the craftsmen already present. Not a result most expected, especially given the way the Lion initially treated their new citizens, but perhaps predictable in retrospect, given the clan’s general disdain for splendor. In spite of all this, the Lion ultimately have relatively few samurai who speak any of the local languages, instead preferring to patronize places that have adapted to learning the Rokugani tongue. Only those placed in their holdings on a long term basis bother learning the language, rather than the many, many troops that they rotate in and out as training and exercise.

The Orochi

The Orochi gained surprisingly little over the past eighty years, aside from the ability to be more open with their considerable capabilities. They used their ties to Iwane IV to gain what political influence they could, naturally, but from the rest of the empire’s perspective, the greatest change is that they retired the ancient boat designs that they had been visibly using in favor of their much more capable designs based on Thrane and Merenae ships. This forced the Crane and Phoenix to adapt, improving their own naval capabilities, and the Crane especially invested time and effort to improve the speed of their messenger ships, posting shugenja to them where necessary. The Crab, naturally, didn’t have to be forced to adapt; presented with the new designs and their proven capabilities, they immediately commissioned several ships and spent years replacing their own fleets with the new designs. Most of the Orochi’s attention remains on the conquest of Uluru, while the Maui family, in particular, keeps watchful eyes on the Thrane and Merenae. It has become quite easy to tell Orochi sailors from others, as freed from the constraints of secrecy, they have almost entirely abandoned the traditional form of tattooing in favor of the Maui and Maori styles, making them just as distinctive as the Dragon, in their own way.

The Owl

The Owl unsurprisingly had little to contribute to the war effort, and received little territory from it, though there have been consistent rumors that they have found and claimed jurisdiction over at least two intelligent nonhuman societies within the burning sands itself. They remain in dispute with the Phoenix, mostly on the losing end, over the Jinn still imprisoned in objects, which they insist are rightfully under their jurisdiction so that they might rehabilitate and release them to join the empire. They do still search actively for these artifacts, however, and consider every one they can find before the Phoenix do a small victory. They have yet to successfully rehabilitate a jinn to the point where they feel they can release it into the empire.

The Phoenix

The Phoenix have been hip deep in captured artifacts and lore for seventy years and couldn’t possibly be happier. Except for their frictions with the Qamarists, and the Yodotai, and the occasional naval skirmish with the Orochi or Thrane, and not having possession of the Dragon Heart Plains. The Phoenix have continued all their lines of research, naturally, but their largest changes, ultimately, have been theological. Over the past seventy five years, ever since Ofushikai reappeared in the hands of Shiba Otori, the clan has shifted ever more strongly towards the Tao of Shinsei, and away from the Fortunes. The great shrines to the fortunes are staffed, but have many fewer visitors, save only the ever more frequent shrines to Nozomi, the guardian of the mortal realm. Ancestor worship has also increased greatly, with shrines to Isawa, in particular, becoming more frequent.

The Scorpion

The Scorpion have had the hardest time of the three clans on the border in the former caliphate, in spite of facing the least combat. They were much more cautious after losing several new provinces to the Lion and having the governors executed as criminals, but ultimately, many of their strengths don’t apply to their duties there. Their samurai do not blend in, their fashion is poorly suited for the environment, and their disdain for the populace is poorly disguised, at best. In spite of this, the Scorpion have made gains worth keeping, mostly in the form of trade with the Senpet empire to the southeast, as well as the tentative contact with Mweneta empire even further south. Rumors that the Scorpion, in spite of their apparent disdain for new citizens, have an extensive training program to turn them into proper infiltrators, are obviously false.

The Unicorn

The Unicorn have gained surprisingly little from the conquest, in spite of gaining two new great families and huge tracts of land. The simple fact is, the two new families show little interest in participating in the empire’s politics, and their huge tracts of land are mostly worthless. The cursed sea, in the northwest, reminds everyone far too much of the Crab, with its monthly infestation of undead, and crossing it for trade is out of the question, even if it weren’t the Yodotai on the other side. For the first time in history, tensions are actually high between the Unicorn and Crane, because the Ujik and Suhili periodically conduct totally deniable raids on the Crane shipping network, often keeping watch for valuable-looking shipments. They raid other clans, as well, but the consistency and speed of the Crane network means that they simply get targeted more often. Politically, the Unicorn maintain their position as one of the weakest clans, even as imports of culture and people from the burning sands become ever more commonplace. Ultimately, outright war with either Usurra or the Yodotai is inevitable, with the Yodotai being most likely, if only because even when you have the greatest cavalry in the world, people who can turn into bears and other terrifying animals are a formidable foe.