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 Post subject: The Sparrow Clan
PostPosted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 3:25 pm 
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For the first three decades since its foundation in 400 the Sparrow Clan had been developing largely how it had been envisioned by its instigators - barely breaking even in sustainability while cultivating honourable poverty. The leadership - Suzume Onegano, the unwitting founder, Suzume Masako, his aunt and Suzume Edakumi, his best friend - strove to establish its political, economic and cultural basis despite often insurmountable odds. During the Gozoku era, the Sparrow were seen as an invention of the Triumvirate, an aspect of proxy competition between them and Hantei Kusada. When the Emperor attempted to shame the Sparrow by entrusting the care of the Golden Sun Plain to them in 410, the Gozoku responded with increased economic aid that let the Clan develop a small military capacity to fulfil their new mandate and survive. While the Suzume practiced no power games of their own and remained largely isolated from the dynamics of Imperial push-and-pull, for enemies of the Gozoku they were guilty by association and could well be undone. Their ideals were often perceived externally as nothing more than a sham meant to cover up their Gozoku advocacy.

So when Hantei Yugozohime toppled Gozoku, the benefactors of the Sparrow were lost, and their economic lifelines severed. Famine, diseases, banditry reigned in the time of vengeance adopted by the Matsu Emerald Champion. For all purposes the Sparrow were becoming a failed Clan, an embarrassment and a trans-border problem for its neighbours. The impoverishment was so extreme that the Sparrow samurai could not stay honourable much more. Onegano outlived most of his immediate family and advisers, but in the end he himself got enfeebled by malnutrition and disease, the work of his life unravelling before his oozing eyes. He had no effective authority left, and infringements of the Golden Sun Plain occurred, providing Matsu Mochihime with a growing reason to intervene and wipe out the sore spot on the face of the renewed Empire. It was a popular bad joke in the courts, perhaps with a grain of truth, that she didn't do that for they would die out on their own soon enough, self-correcting one more aberration of the Gozoku era. It was a beginning to an ugly strain of 'Sparrow jokes' mocking the hardships of the Suzume, especially after the Winter Court in Kyuden Bayushi in 438. Sparrow ascetic ideals were openly discussed as ultimately inoperable and ridiculed with impunity.

Beyond uncompassionate snubs, a solution to the Sparrow problem was debated, though at low priority as the Crab-Dragon war and the arrival of the gaijin in 440 was capturing political focus of the whole Empire. The highest it got on an Imperial agenda was during the Winter Court in Kyuden Seppun that year when the Miya tried to advance a couple of initiatives to help the Sparrow, all shot down by the Crane and never capturing the attention of the Empress. Ideas of annexation or a 'Snake solution' were quietly floated, but didn't get momentum. The consensus was to close the border crossings and leave the Sparrow to their own miserable fate.

There was also another narrative about the Sparrow that discouraged getting involved in their affairs - that of a curse. Back when the Clan had been founded there had been whispers that Doji Masako had followed her nephew into the fledgeling entity not out of familial solidarity but out of forbidden incestuous intent. Indeed, Onegano's marriage to an Asako was known to be loveless and bitter, himself less caring about his legitimate wife and progeny than about his aunt and her red-eyed albino bastard, a good indicator of being cursed by spirits... or of inbreeding. The Champion's wife and both children perished within a year after the fall of Gozoku, reportedly because of an infectious disease, but the speed with which Onegano adopted Masako's son to be his heir right after astonished many, and even some of his loyal followers saw more in it than sensible expediency.

When the boy came of age as Suzume Mitsuru, for a time he removed himself from Clan affairs and entered musha shugyo for reasons unknown, which he only ended several years after when his adoptive father's health collapsed. There had been reports of a notorious ronin juzimai called Sons of Winter with an albino leader from the time of his pilgrimage, though nothing was ever proven. Still, quite unlike Onegano, Mitsuru was known for his wit, cunning and the talent to persevere. It was him who took up the role of his father's ambassador and travelled the courts persistently pleading the Sparrow case. He had to bear multiple humiliations liberally served to him from almost every Rokugani stakeholder he tried to parley with. The most he got before the White Stag was the Miya support for the ultimately unsuccessful diplomatic motion during the winter of 440 in Kyuden Seppun. Apart from the Miya, finding no goodwill for the Sparrow among the dominant Lion and the Emerald Office they controlled, he could hope for few allies, and nigh none overt. Even after that failure he didn't relent, though he supposedly got embittered and resentful.

Onegano died in 443 and Mitsuru became the nominal Champion of realistically defunct Sparrow Clan. By then both the gaijin issue and the Crab-Dragon war were largely resolved, so he made one last diplomatic attempt to obtain help for his Clan's revival pushing for a petition for the Sparrow to receive the Emperor's Blessing. The motion had been several years of careful diplomacy in the making, and Mitsuru had managed to secure support of other Minor Clans and kind neutrality of the Great Clans except for the Lion and the Crane. But the Crane Champion Doji Kakumei gave him a lesson of realpolitik. Having snatched the Blessing for his Clan under the pretense of the need to rebuild after losses suffered in repelling the barbarians, he actually entertained a meeting with Mitsuru during which he principally explained the difference between the weak and the strong to him, and displayed Crane 'magnanimity' by dumping rotten grain as aid for the Sparrow. There are stories both men actually duelled for it whether the Sparrow would get substantial Crane aid, and Mitsuru lost.

Still, there are even more varied accounts what came after. The most popular is that Mitsuru was invited by Gusai Mori to pay him a visit in the Isles. There, he Mantis Champion received him with full honours and discussed solidarity between their Clans while showcasing how affluence gives power. In the end, he offered Mitsuru foreign seeds and heimin to plant them in the lands of the Sparrow, with a promise to pay well for every harvest if they happened to grow. Mori offered his niece in marriage to Mitsuru under the condition that he would give her good life. One of Mitsuru's responses during a sake night with Mori apocryphally was:

"Fuck poverty."

It is said this is how the Sparrow Champion decided to make his Clan start cultivating poppies. Even with the help of strange heimin it took what remained of the Sparrow by then to start even meagre cultivation. Fortunately, those were the years when the weather was a bit less harsh in the Suzume Hills and in the end in the summer of 447 the red flowers started growing in earnest. Mori kept his word and through a Mantis facility in nearby Sunda Mizu Mura Rokugan-made opium started to be processed, then merchandised. Since the Mantis were the only ones to know how to process it, they enjoyed a monopoly. Starting as a popular painkiller among the Crab, the recreational properties of opiates were soon discovered by their Shosuro allies. The demand soon rose exponentially and the Suzume could not meet it with enough supply.

The brewing opium crisis never came, as all parties involved saw greater gains through cooperation than through conflict. Both the Crab and the Scorpion found wisdom in what Gusai Mori had come up with, that the Sparrow could be very useful proxies in their questionable role of opium producers as long as they can be controlled and profited from. They had little to lose in the first place, while commercially both Great Clans had much to gain. The Mantis brief monopoly would end, but the cartel system that would emerge in its place gave them enough of a share in distribution to offset initial losses.

Mitsuru adeptly adjusted to new political realities of joint Crab-Scorpion interest in his special crops, and eagerly accepted their protection and aid. He may have been betraying much of what the Sparrow Clan was supposed to stand for but it was his father that had failed and him who was succeeding. The Kaiu helped the Sparrow drain and irrigate the hills and introduced terraced farming, making them one of the testing grounds of new agricultural technologies, while the Shosuro were well-predisposed to develop indigenous processing techniques that allowed opium to be served in many different ways. The Scorpion were also instrumental in fostering the new smoking culture which was allowed in their courts. Kiseru became a fashionable accessory. With the steadily increasing output the local phenomenon turned into a Rokugan-wide one by the 460s. With it, the Sparrow were gradually becoming a well-off Clan even though the huge share of profit was reaped by the Clan's more powerful business partners.

In a sense, Mitsuru re-discovered the Crane way: it was easier to be honourable when you had money. Despite him forsaking poverty, he did not fall for lavish life, but actually used the money to fund the development of the Clan. He strengthened it militarily by absorbing capable ronin into the Sparrow, he financed the careers of the Clan's youth outside the Sparrow lands, most notably in the College of Shining Light in the South Hub, he sponsored development of unorthodox arts and artisanship the initially minuscule Edakumi took it upon themselves to nurture there. He kept greasing his own network of contacts and favours, most notably with other Minor Clans as he did not want to upset his Scorpion and Crab protectors. Himself, he led a modest if healthy life, trying to pass down the same values to his six children. Of them neither shared in his albino visage, but only two did not fall for the allure of affluent life and from those he hand-picked his daughter Masako to lead the Clan before retiring, and has secured her marriage to a prominent Yasuki.

Masako, bearing her grandmother's name, was chosen because she best understood the Sparrow duality - to practice their humble mandate they had to keep the opium business going and the Sparrow neighbours happy as it is ultimately their lifeline. The displeasure of the Crane and the Lion with the Sparrow existence has only increased over the years and the Suzume have no easy life with the Emerald Champion. But Masako also realises that the protection the Sparrow enjoy won't last forever, and she's bracing for grimmer days ahead. She has fostered development of traditional farming and commerce. She has quietly developed an independent processing capacity and a distribution channel, the infamous and elusive Sparrow Trail by which opium reaches Otosan Uchi that Emerald Champion so far has failed to shut off and determine who is complicit in perpetrating it.

In some corners of the Empire, the Sparrow are reviled. There are many metaphors connected to the use of opium that point to them: to catch a sparrow, to fly with sparrows, to chase a sparrow... Opium addiction has been taking a toll on the population, and both the Lion and the Crane have long lobbied for an edict to ban its production and use, while the Crab and the Scorpion have steadily countered those notions. So far, Hantei IX has favoured the latter, but his heir apparent Hohiro is firmly against continued cultivation of opiates in Rokugan, while Jama has not taken a stance on the matter. The Sparrow themselves give no easy reason to move against them by maintaining flawless protection of the Golden Sun Plain, possible thanks to the income reaped from opium trade. They are also paying their taxes on time.

The Edakumi vassals of Suzume, now led by Edakumi Fukuda, a jovial, moustache-twirling man, have been the public face of the Clan. From their near-permanent residence in the South Hub they have been cultivating arts that are not known for their formal purity, but are moving, emotional and inspired by foreign influences. To friends of the Sparrow they act as the Clan's diplomatic liaisons, but they prefer to hide behind Scorpion backs when the enemies of the Sparrow come to sight, pretending to be just artists. They seem to be the part of the Sparrow closest to the original ideals of the Clan, seemingly untainted by the opium business. While their habits and living conditions indeed look spartan to most, they don't seem to be running out of money for their artistic projects, and are willing to at least listen to any avant garde performer or artisan who comes to them. They are known to have helped artistic careers to take off.

Masako took much after her Mantis mother, displaying many features ascribed to the Gusai, perhaps except recklessness and ambition. In her younger days she had sailed a lot on merchant ships across littoral seas, enjoying a seaman's life. With her ascendancy to lead her Clan, that life ended. Since then she's tried to espouse the values of her Clan to the best of her abilities, but her seasickness shows in the stories she tells: of far lands and seas, of a swashbuckling life, of great orochi. She's a good swordsman, but her favourite weapon of choice is not a katana, but a gaijin rapier, and she demonstrates skill in handling it during her vivid storytelling sessions in Kyuden Suzume when she describes boarding enemy vessels.

Her firstborn is an albino, whatever that portends.



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