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 Post subject: Game Premise
PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 6:01 pm 
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It is early autumn of the year 500. It has been an eventful year since the Imperial scion, Hantei Jama, re-established the Imperial Explorers and launched preparations for a maritime expedition across Umi Amaterasu. So eventful that many question the rationale of the so-called First Voyage. Rokugan is being increasingly fractured by domestic turmoils and costly wars of the Clans, even as the threats from the north and the south loom large. The leadership in many Clans is failing as the old ways are challenged by progressive notions, letting the ambitious to look up the Celestial Order and consider their opportunities. The Emerald Throne is no exception, as both sons of the ailing Veiled Emperor vie for power and influence.

Your fate becomes aligned with the younger of them as the Explorers hailing from all Clans gather in Dragon's Guard to finally set sail with the departing monsoon. Many of your shipmates come from the Imperial Colleges Jama has been overseeing, now hardened into seamen by a year of training and trial. You will cross the high seas with the proudest flotilla Rokugan has seen since the Battle of White Stag, only this time it is the samurai of the Empire who have harnessed the technologies to sail far toward the lands unknown where the gaijin dwell. And while there is no knowing what is in Jama's mind to leave on the expedition when the Empire is in crisis, many are excited about what the endeavour will bring - new discoveries, new wonders, new wave of progress, new opportunities to advance and carve a place for oneself in the wider world.

Only a few know how big the ocean really is, and that before the lands of Merenae, Thrane or the Tarkhanate would loom on the horizon, there is an island midway through the ocean the Tortoise have occupied undisturbed for decades, ushering robust if tacit exchanges between the West and the East, remaking the emerald dot on the big blue into a cosmopolitan hub. However, once the Explorers arrive at Kameyama Jima, few things are likely to remain as they have been. Will the Explorers wrest the island and its secrets from the hands of the Tortoise? Will they learn to live side by side with the gaijin? Will they accept the vanguard of the long-lost followers of Shinjo back among them? Will they discover what lies beyond the milky mists shrouding waters north of Kameyama, where mirages of other lands loom? Finally, will they learn why the ambitious heir to the Throne has called their corps into being in the first place?

The truth is within reach, for the bold to claim.



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 Post subject: Re: Game Premise
PostPosted: Wed Dec 13, 2017 10:59 am 
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The Secret Premise

There was once a lush volcanic archipelago in the middle of Umi Amaterasu uninhabited by humans. The Chameleons, a Naga bloodline originating from intermixing with the ningyo, were its primary denizens, and the place was prized for its pearl beds as well as the thinness of the veil between it and the Akasha in the Realm of Dreams. Other realms like Chikushudo, Sakkaku, or Gaki-do had also its direct or indirect (through Yume-do) gateways across the archipelago, and the Naga guarded those passages both in and out of Yume-do so as not to allow the occurrence of another blighted in-between Spiritual Realms like the Black Earth. Yume-do was a very fractured realm and it was unclear even to the Akasha how its various vestiges were ultimately connected. The attack came from most unexpected quarters, however.

The king of kumo, later to be known as the Great Sea Spider, chose to leave Inari's sovereignty over Chikushudo and waded into that particular part of Yume-do in pursuit of finding a way to the Realm of Mortals, a path he had chosen because of Fu Leng's whispers. It got there, but not without being further befouled by contact with Gaki-do, and when it did, him and his minions destroyed the Naga settlements across the archipelago in a wild rampage. The fight with the Hungry Spirits had come at a cost though. Originally just parasitic, him and his kumo minions were now permeated by the vampiric essence of the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts - and no one near to prey on. Weakening, the king of kumo connected with the angst that broke out between the Daidoji and the Yasuki during the First Yasuki War. Binding his essence to the Daidoji hatred he crossed the sea expanse to rampage the Crane lands at the turn of 4th and 5th centuries, only to be ultimately banished to the bottom of the sea by Asahina Miroken, son of Isawa Asahina.

But the Asahina took too much pity in the wretched creature, and it was through the portal to Gaki-do near Shiro Ukara in Crane lands that Miroken sent him off as far away as he could rather then killing him. While bound not to return to Ningen-do, the Great Sea Spider used his knowledge of the rifts between realms to crawl back to the archipelago he knew, into the underwater Chameleon metropolis spanning the worlds he once had destroyed, where he fell into deep slumber. But not for long. The Daidoji ill flared up again at the last days of Gozoku when internecine violence erupted among the Crane over loyalty to the ascendant Yugozohime purging the Clan's power base. The beast stirred, and kept stirring, until a vortex formed, pulling the inner parts of the archipelago toward the Veil separating Ningen-do from Yume-do.

Several years later Garen Hawthorne heading a Thranish fleet outbound to discover Rokugan made a landing on the archipelago. As it had supplies of food and sweet water, he established a small base there, leaving some of his mariners behind with ships that needed repairs, alongside with supplies he would need to invade the Emerald Empire - large stockpiles of firearms and guns with munitions. Later, when he met Teodoro Cornejo in the high seas and both men concluded an impromptu alliance he made the Merenaese noble privy to the existence of his base. But in Rokugan the paths of two men parted. While Cornejo grew to respect and support Hantei Yugozohime, Hawthorne, true to his privateering identity, ever saw this as a prelude to subjugation and plunder. When his plans to kill Teodoro and commandeer his troops and vessels failed, he lost the Battle of White Stag and had to flee to his secret base to plot for a second confrontation. But as he reached the location, the spider's vortex finally pulled it beyond the Veil, and the infamous Thranish pirate was forever trapped into no-realm, where he and his crews may have eventually fallen into Jigoku's alluring embrace.

When Hateru Kasuga, a member of clandestine Ide bloodline hidden among the Dragon since First Century, learnt the Merenaese stories of his kin visiting and allying with King Felipe, he went out of his way to discover a maritime route and to reconnect with his Ki-Rin brethren. While his aid in ferrying some gaijin back to the West met with Yugozohime's ire and his execution, his heritage was far from dead. His son Buntaro found the way to Mereneae and later to Aqahba to witness the nascent years of the Moto Tarkhanate, back at home Hantei Muhaki picked up his dream of returning the Ki-Rin to Rokugan who eventually convinced the Empress herself to support it. While Kasuga found and settled Kameyama Jima, the outlying southern island of the archipelago, for the future Tortoise Clan, he never found out was what happened to Garen and where his secret base could be, though he put the account of his search and all related facts into his journals. Those journals that by Yugozohime's order were hidden well inside the Imperial Libraries of Otosan Uchi save for a copy held by Muhaki himself, later passed to Genjiko and now in the hands of Saionji.

The journals that disillusioned Jama found with Yajinden's help in the depths of those libraries. And Yajinden possessed unique background, knowledge and skills to both decipher what could have happened to Garen's hideout and find a solution to get past the barrier into the no-realm created by the Great Sea Spider. Jama decided to retrieve gaijin weaponry to prepare for his showdown with his brother Hohiro. He almost tasted what it could mean for him to become the Emperor when his elder brother was ill, and had it taken from him when Hohiro recovered. With their father on his deathbed, the time for Jama to act was now. He used his new-found position as superintendent on education to pick the best and the brightest from among the progressively minded graduates of the Four Colleges to reinstate the institution of Imperial Explorers, keeping the Tortoise in the blank about his intentions. The ships built and fitted for him in Imperial shipyards were not the most advanced, but unlike Saionji's fleet, Yajinden the artificer made sure they would be able to pierce the Veil.

And hence our journey of discovery to Kameyama Jima, where no other Rokugani save the Tortoise should theoretically set foot on. But Jama was about to challenge that with a force to back his intrusion. What even Yajinden didn't know was that the growing spat between Daidoji Kamei the daimyo and Daidoji Hira the commander of Harriers was feeding the Great Sea Spider to stir stronger than before and make a challenge to his entrapment, the one Yajinden's counter-wards were just about to weaken...



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