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 Post subject: The Centipede Clan
PostPosted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 3:27 pm 
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Officially created in mid-4th Century from a Phoenix splinter group, it is in the 5th century that the Centipede started to make their own mark on the Empire. And as could be expected from the Moshi, it were remarkable women who made them emerge from obscurity to occupy a unique place in the contemporary Empire, with all mixed blessings it carries. Curiously, all the changes and exposure happened on the fringes, with the life in Tani Senshio deep in the Mountains of Regret remaining remarkably unchanged since the Clan's foundation.

The first of those women was Moshi Himiko, who at an early age succeeded in developing unique ways to counter illusions, workings and creatures of Sakkaku, but refused to share her discoveries with the Phoenix who she had been schooled by. She was considered ungrateful by her Phoenix benefactors and was challenged by Master of Fire Isawa Akio, though surprisingly won the taryu-jiai. As it happened before the eyes of the Hantei Kusada in the middle of his quiet spy war with the Gozoku. In her defiance of the Phoenix Himiko was a godsend to him, and he seized the opportunity by elevating her as the senior mother of her own semi-monastic order, tied to both the Centipede and the Brotherhood. The fief of the Centipede was expanded to cover the mountainous region squeezed between the Treacherous Pass and the sea. At its southern tip, hugging the mountain overlooking the Dragon's Guard City, the Temple of Sacred Light was erected, quickly becoming a centre for piety and arcane learning presided over by the Centipede, but conditionally open to shugenja maidens from other Clans as well as those from the Wave. Kusada made sure to insert some of those fiercely loyal to him among the ranks of the Sisters to the effect that all movement through the Pass were kept monitored, a constant irritant for Gozoku. When the Brotherhood purge started, the Phoenix blockaded the monastery but dared not attack it, allegedly because of opposition from Akio who, having survived the duel, developed begrudging respect for Himiko's followers, if not even something more. While semi-starving during the blockade, the Sisters nevertheless managed to persevere thanks to their devotion to Amaterasu, and were rewarded for it upon Hantei Yugozohime's restoration of Imperial Rule with extension of their province southward, to the very outskirts of the Dragon's Guard, and an adjacent exclusive wharf to ever keep them supplied no matter what force occupies the Treacherous Pass. The wharf was significant in that it opened the Moshi toward the maritime domain and let them be better prepared for the arrival of the gaijin fleets.

The second, Moshi Hotaru, known to historians as 'the Firefly', was the daimyo's daughter who took particular liking in sea voyages, the passion she shared with her close childhood friend Moshi Setsuko, 'the Snowflake'. Both women were like fire and ice to one another, but maintained their close friendship up until the Battle of White Stag, where the matter of how to deal with the gaijin divided them. While Hotaru saw enough of Hawthorne's treachery in the capital to fiercely oppose the gaijin, Setsuko had spent much time with the Merenaese docking in the Dragon's Guard to develop keen interest in lands and culture afar. When push came to shove in 442, Hotaru was fiercely burning gaijin vessels at the White Stag, while Setsuko took part in helping Teodoro Cornejo to get back to his ships. Ever agreeing to disagree, both women retained respect for one another and were largely responsible for establishing coexistence of two seemingly irreconcilable paths among the Centipede: of tradition and progress.

Soon after the battle Hotaru accepted an offer of marriage from Isawa Akio and joined the Phoenix. The marriage, in addition to starting the prodigal bloodline of Fire shugenja in both the Isawa where their two sons remained and the Moshi where their seven daughters went, also mended the relations of kinship between the Centipede and the Phoenix wounded in the Gozoku era. It paved the way for a strong alliance that showed its true colours in the era of ostracism of shugenja in 490s, in the era of Masters in Hiding. Hotaru's eldest daughter ultimately became the Centipede Champion, and her daughter after her, while her grandson, Isawa Takao, became the greatest and the most feral Master of Fire since the immemorial, his depredations contributing to the Phoenix conflict with the Throne that has led to questioning the place of the Isawa in the Empire after nearly five centuries of their reluctant integration.

Hearing of her friend Kasuga's execution in the aftermath of the White Stag, Setsuko went into hiding to escape Yugozohime's ire, what proved to be an effective if a cowardly move. The winds changed with the creation of the Tortoise Clan, and the Centipede could capitalise on it thanks to Setsuko's earlier endeavours. With the key Phoenix commercial port - City of Remembrance - razed in 441, there was a vacuum in northern trade Setsuko partially filled by cooperating closely with the Tortoise, and she was doing quite a bit of seafaring in times before she married and settled in the Dragon's Guard to oversee Centipede business. In her life she had two husbands, a Crab and then a Crane, both of them political matches but also sumai wrestlers, as she was known for her love of the sport, though there were also some discrediting rumours about some gaijin lovers of hers. Many Moshi men, unable to follow shugenja traditions, flocked to her to make themselves useful as guards, mariners and administrators. To her many children and grandchildren she left a prosperous port, sea salt reclamation enterprise and sea cucumber plantations, small merchant and fishing fleets, and a local sumai tradition - a stable of some renown named House of Salt, more famous for its flawless adjudicators than actual wrestlers, though one of her sons training there did rise to the rank of yokozuna. And tales of the wonders of the lands far far away she may or may not have visited with her Tortoise friend Muhaki Todoro.

The time of the fourth woman, Moshi Aizu, is now. As Hotaru's granddaughter she has maintained deep ties with the Phoenix, and in fact was a childhood friend of her cousin, Isawa Takao. Perhaps the only one to understand him, sharing the same fiery blood of their grandparents. His death in 489 hurt her deeply, but the amount of salt the Emperor's edicts against the shugenja rubbed into the injury was almost unbearable. Still, of all the priests of the Empire the Centipede were the hardest to dismiss for the Throne and thus were ultimately given greater leeway in representing shugenja interests. So when the Elemental Council dissolved and new Masters went into hiding, she accepted the role of their representative, their Voice in the Empire, even to the displeasure of the Shiba (muted) and the Asako (more vocal) as it was bringing the deep divisions within the Phoenix to full light. The amount of politicking involved, between circumventing Imperial restrictions, appeasing the Asako, letting the Isawa interests be protected and not putting Centipede commercial ties in jeopardy was originally too much for her, and the Clan suffered setbacks and got increasingly isolated.

But then, her prayers to the Sun Goddess brought her a solution - she took a politically capable husband. A Scorpion, as the Scorpion were mostly impartial in the commercial rivalries in the seas. What was initially a purely political arrangement, burst into a full-fledged love story worthy of pillow books. Which have been written. One of them, 'Sun and Moon meet at dusk', is actually a steamy novel written in ways giving credit to gaijin literary traditions. There is no agreement whether the contents have tarnished or have bolstered Aizu's position in the Empire. The agreement, however, is that her nakodo had a very good hand in selecting exactly the kind of husband she needed to deliver on her unique duty. Thanks to his counselling the Centipede diversified and started using their shugenja, wrestlers and traders alike to diffuse threats to the Isawa. The Centipede seem to be handling their multiple conflicting tasks well, and try to maintain healthy relations with everyone, though it is not certain how long it can last as there are just too many ways for them to be struck. Particularly the Lion are getting increasingly irritated by what they perceive as meddling of nobodies into their just cause of punishing the Isawa for all their transgressions against the Throne, real or imagined. The Gusai, on the other hand, have never been too happy with close ties between the Tortoise and the Centipede, and have been looking at the markets of the Dragon's Guard as the key to circumvent Tortoise hold over the capitol area. And on top of that, Gusai Ryoshida had been making plans to take Aizu as his bride before her marriage, and his pride has never quite recovered. Most of the Phoenix accept Aizu's special position only begrudgingly.



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