Game Prep Info

[cassusaevum]

Things will pick up somewhere between six months and a year from the attack on the City of the Peaceful Hills.  Your characters will have been doing stuff in that time.  Realistically, you'd be doing whatever your daimyos ordered you to do, but I want to give you a little more input.  Please let me know which of the options below your character would have preferred to pursue during this time - this will set the stage of where you are when we get back to the game.

Meiko

• Acting as a Diplomat to help keep the alliance against the Dragon and Lion in place and ensure a swift victory while simultaneously working at bringing about peace through diplomatic action.  This role will see Meiko starting play in a Scorpion city (as they are neutral) and will likely have her with an ulterior motive of finding ways to do harm to the Scorpion.
• Serving as a Warrior.  This will see Meiko on the lines of battle, acting as a commander among the Crane forces.  In this case, Meiko will be based in Phoenix lands, serving alongside Shiba Ayaka in the efforts to wrest Ayaka's ancestral lands away from Mirumoto Bokai.

Jin

Jin will have been stripped of his Gunso rank as punishment for allowing Kaito Takeo to escape and will now be serving as a "common" soldier.  Keep in mind, Jin is still a samurai, so "common" is sort of a relative term here.  That said, would Jin rather:

• Defend the lands he originally helped take by acting as part of the garrison of what was once Shiba Ayaka's father's fortress.  In this case, he will be enduring a siege and fighting a desperate and likely losing battle in a mirror of the fight that he helped win.
• Fighting with the Lion.  Having been somewhat disgraced among his own forces, Jin has been offered a position to fight alongside his old friend Akodo Matsuru.  Elements of the Lion are currently fighting a guerrilla war to harass and harry the supply lines of the four Clans that have allied against the Dragon and Lion.  Jin would be serving in one of these harrying forces, fighting in Lion lands.

Kuni Daizu

• Fighting in the war. The Crab have been pulled into this war but they cannot abandon their duties at the wall.  As such, small contingents of Crab are sent to act as scouts (as the Hiruma are incredibly skilled at this) or as heavy shock troopers.  In addition, contingents of Purifiers have been dispersed through the armies as during these kinds of conflicts, taint and darkness have a tendency to find a foothold where they otherwise might not.  Kuni Daizu would be acting as one of these Purifiers, moving among the allied armies (and perhaps even among the Lion and Dragon) to ensure that the Shadowlands and Fu-Leng are not corrupting the soldiers.
• Returning to the Wall. The Wall can never be unmanned.  While the Crab will honor their commitments and fight in the Clan Wars, they will not abandon the wall.  The main strength of the Crab remains where it always has - along the Kaiu Wall.  If you are here, you will be doing your duty and standing against the Shadow.  You may also find answers to some of the dreams that have been troubling you of late.  Of course, you might not be ready to learn those answers...

[gamedave]

Kuni Daizu:

Return to the Wall. He has too many unanswered questions, too much Shadow in his own soul he has ignored for too long. Both his giri and his ninjo, which have in the past pulled him in different directions, now pull him back towards the Shadowlands. Back to the Shadow in his past. Back to the Shadow in his mind. Back to the Shadow in his very soul.

[fenris]

Togashi Jin: Fighting with the Lion

Jin is fatigued and disheartened with the scheming of the Court and Meiko's sudden change of heart. For someone that has spoken often and at great lengths about bringing peace and balance to the Emerald Empire, she has sided with others to bring the lands into full-scale warfare amongst all of the Clans. But what does Togashi Jin know of women? They are an enigma and as ever changing as the wind.

Jin longs for the peaceful tranquility of the nearby temple but duty is his giri and weighs heavily upon his heart. He is tempted by the challenge of holding the captured fortress against all odds but is pulled by his old friendship with Akodo Matsuru to assist the Lion Clan in the guerrilla warfare strikes against a foe twice the size of the Dragon/Lion alliance. Jin started his military career as a foot soldier and he knows all too well that an army is only as strong as its supply chain. Soldiers without food and supplies lose the war. Let's see what the cowardly alliance of the other clans do when their ashigaru footmen don't eat and are unable to resupply.

During these forays into the enemy lines, Jin goes to great lengths when striking at the Phoenix Clan and slays any enemy samurai that he can.  He is tired of assassination attempts from these dishonorable dogs.  Let them know fear when his name is mentioned.

[Derek Raines]

Meiko

Acting as a Diplomat: The alliance must be maintained like a bonsai tree, strong of root and clean of any growth that will weigh it down. Forced to commit to action, and one that will cause such tragic death, she will invest much of her energy trying to ensure victory is swift as an iaijutsu strike. Only then can diplomacy and relief return to the troubled Empire.

As for the Scorpion, she is on an information gathering venture only. Meiko realizes now is not the time to provoke the Scorpion Clan, but there is a seed of fire within her heart when she realizes they remain unscathed in this conflict they had a hand in orchestrating. The Crane will learn all she can now in hopes of being poised to bring about justice when the time is right.

Serving as a Warrior: Meiko hopes to restore some sanity to her childhood friend, and while this is not a mission of vengeance, there is honor to be found in freeing those lands claimed by the warmonger, Mirumoto Bokai. As a frontline commander, Meiko can also help ensure that war is as civil as possible and no enemy is treated without due respect.

Regarding the Party:
Meiko is heartbroken that her friends would not support her plans during that last garden meeting. She knows what she asked was almost unimaginable, but together she feels they may have been able to bring reason to the Clan leaders and avoid this pointless war. Something changed for her then, and the girl that was often torn between compassion and duty has been forced to choose a path.

Daizu: She senses that the unyielding Crab has had his own painful epiphany and she wishes she could bring words of comfort to him. Something has shaken him to the core, and if Daizu is shaken then the end of the world must be close behind. If she survives the war, she hopes to join him on the wall in defense of Rokugan against the true enemies of the land.

Jin: The two have never truly seen eye-to-eye, though she views him as a brother despite never voicing the words. However, she fears Jin is as stubborn as his Daimyo now (and Mirumoto Bokai is a relentless fool more concerned with conflict than the well bring of the Empire). In the garden, she begged Jin to speak to Bokai and reveal that the clans were being manipulated, but her Dragon companion simply stated the truth would not change things before walking away. She hopes he survives the war, and that there is a future where he grows old with his sake cup in hand.

Ayame: No one has wounded her quite like Ayame, though the Scorpion has never lifted a literal blade to harm her. Countless times she feels she has revealed and entrusted Ayame with the path of choice and compassion, but the end result is always the same. The Scorpion eventually reverts to the weapon she believes she is and her clan uses her to great effect.

In truth, she believes that Ayame has been used by her clan to manipulate this war since the two met, and Meiko has allowed her to carry out these grim tasks without reprisal. Friendship and hope have clouded her judgement when it comes to Ayame, and the Scorpion clan has grown stronger while the Crane have suffered.

The next time Meiko meets Ayame she hopes the woman sees herself as a person, and not just an instrument of death. She misses her best friend dearly, and weeps in the quiet of the evening after conducting her duties to the war effort...but the Crane can no longer let her grace open the way for destruction in Rokugan. Never again.