#L5R unicorn clan

[confused-in-rokugan]

SHINJO Eiko/Hotaru -UNICORN CLAN/RONIN (♀)

Arrogant princess turned ronin

Daughter of the head of her clan, blessed by the kami and promised to a great destiny, she was held sort-of captive in the capital, a token of loyalty from her father to the Emperor. It was immensely boring... so she escaped, and found herself in the same place as the others, by chance. Her immense status meant no one could really say no to her, and she abused that power greatly. The rest of the group were the first to offer some resistance to her tantrums, and that interested as much as it annoyed her. Because of this, she somehow ended up in a middle of a terrible battle with them by her side, where she barely survived.

After this incident, she promised herself to never, ever feel as powerless as she did in this forest. So... she temporarily gave up her title and her name (she now calls herself Hotaru, in the hope of evading the Imperials searching for her) to learn the sword with Shimon as her teacher. The duelist wasn't too keen on the idea, but it's not like Eiko would take no as an answer, so... she's now stuck with this brash, smart but unruly teenager as her student.

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Shiksha Scout by Isuardi Therianto

[by-thechesapeake]

STEAMY L5R UPDATE:

We successfully wing-womaned our Asako girl into flirting with the cute rebellious unicorn guy as they off loaded rice into the Unicorn district.

Our Doji convinced the Matsu she’s after to lose status with his clan by what they believe is bending the knee to an invading force (he’s doing it so that Lions have some sort of representation at this time).

And my Kaito girl told the Ronin who’s forces are currently occupying the city that she thought it was tactically brilliant (in so many less treasonous words) and she’s glad he kept his promise to bring the rice back, and also there’s a blood speaker in the city, so like, you should help with that babe 💜

Maybe next time one of the girlies will get a kiss :3

[lenuer]

L5R character commission. A Crane who married into the Unicorn.

[littleeyesofpallas]

Uuugh... I absolutely HATE how the Unicorn and Dragon and Scorpion clans are all counted among the noble families in L5R. I'm actually fine with the game largely being a mismatched appropriation of goofy genre tropes rather than strictly historically mirrored. Literally, not all appropriation is implicitly bad, it just has a real nasty habit of jumping the line from functionally dumbed down, to tacky and tasteless, to actually offensive in as little as a sneeze if you're not paying attention...

But my beef with these clans is that the ENTIRE appeal of ninja, mogolian horde, and warrior monks (be they misappropriate chinese martialartists or sohei) is that they're all entities that existed OUTSIDE the social strictures of courtly samurai honor and the associated drama. And again I don't even mean that in a historical sense, although there was that too, I just mean that if you're trying to play up samurai movie tropes, then these factions fundamentally miss the point of the tropes they're trying to embody/facilitate.

Iga and Koga ninja villages being autonomous peasant settlements that just happened to dedicate themselves to military and political espionage and mercenary work, and how that was leveraged by samurai families to sidestep overt political snafus is FASCINATING. Giving them their own equal footing in imperial court robs them of their entire unique angle in these kinds of stories.

The military autonomy and diplomatic immunity of buddhist temples during the various periods of civilwar in Japan are similarly genius. Committing political figures to vows of monkhood as kind of political asylum. The reverence of sacred grounds taking priority over military pragmatism, even and especially at times only superficially: maybe you don't actually believe ransacking a temple will incur divine retribution, but you DO care about being "the guy who ransacked a temple" so you step off all the same. The fact that they didn't hold unified or contiguous territory that could be conquered or boxed in. Just leaving ominous threatening strongholds of potential enemies inside your own territory. Making them landholding nobles RUINS that.

im not really as broken up about the mongols as the other two, but again if they've got political weight and graft as a noble family then you've robbed them of half their dynamic as outsiders from the get go. in terms of genre savvy it's just a counterintuitive waste.

Hell, even the Phoenix feel like they shouldn't be a real clan all to themselves. The court dynamic of onmyoji in the Heian period, and prior, and the chinese influenced bureaucracy is super fascinating specifically because they WEREN'T samurai, and they weren't noble born, and they weren't honor bound, and yet they wielded this incredible influence over the imperial court as advisors that often easily outstripped the rank and social leverage of samurai. The idea of these random civilians, explicitly non-samurai, being these keepers of all manor of esoteric protosciences suddenly being put under the lock and key of imperial order and patronage is so laden with DRAMA all on its own. Making them an autonomous noble house with self imposed duty and honor is just so BORING by comparison.

[bayushiosamu]

on Curved Blades

A few things bothered me about this fiction as it reflects the lore decisions being made by FFG.  I could write a lot on this but I’ll keep it short as I can.

The war with the Lion over Unicorn lands and the conflict about Meishodo should have been going on for about 200 years now.  Two hundred years.  That’s an extremely long time.  Generously assuming that Rokugani tend to have their first child at about 20 (this setting IS based off the Sengoku Jidai, after all, where one was a full adult at 15), that’s 7 to 8 generations of war.  These are OLD blood feuds by this point.  However, the fiction talks about them as if they’re new, no mention of grudges or even any events that have happened in the past.  A few lines could have fixed this; some mention of ancient battles with the Lion and how those bloody conflicts and the two hundred years of war spurred the Unicorn to seek peace with them.  Some mention of an old decision by the Imperial Court about Meishodo deeming it safe, or not the Phoenix’s business.  Instead, the Crane courtier talks to the Unicorn Champion about things they do “in Rokugan” as if she doesn’t know what life in Rokugan is like (she’s almost certainly never been outside it), and stumbling over her name as if the Empire hasn’t been dealing with the Unicorn’s names for 200 years.  It’s a tool used to explain the Unicorn’s outsider nature to the audience that backfires in making the fiction seem nonsensical given the timeline of the Unicorn’s return.

This kind of “they just came back” feeling is further emphasized by the Unicorn calling non-Unicorn “Rokugani” and not referring to themselves as such.  That would make sense if these people had been born outside Rokugan.  But they weren’t.  Neither were their parents.  Or their grandparents, or their great grandparents, or their great great grandparents, or their great great great grandparents, or their great great great great grandparents... not until about their great great great great great great great grandparents were the Unicorn not Rokugani.  It’s been said that it’s reflective of their non-assimilationist attitude, and that’d be fine if we had other indications of changes from the old lore.  The Unicorn have in the past been depicted as proudly Rokugani as well as proudly non-, and I feel this fiction continues this; while more open to new ideas than the rest of Rokugan, they are at heart a deeply traditional people who simply hold to more traditions than most Rokugani do.  The fiction needed a different word, some Unicorn equivalent of “landlubber” for people who didn’t travel with them (similar, but different in context, to how the Scorpion label Bushido-following Scorpion “junshin.”)  If, in the future, the Unicorn are revealed to be a much less honorable and well-looked upon Clan than they were in the previous version of the game, going so far as to reject their Rokugani heritage, the use of this word as a pejorative as seen in the fiction will make a lot more sense (if, say, they’re seen about as honorably as the Mantis were, basically no honor at all save a single Virtue).  But as of the time of writing, we have no idea if that will be the case or not.

Overall, I think the setting would have been served a lot better by having the “outsider” faction have returned much more recently to the Empire.  As is is, the Unicorn have been back for a fifth of the entirety of recorded history.  The Unicorn’s ways and ideas are damn old news by this point, and having the rest of the Empire act like they’re new breaks suspension of disbelief.

[dragons-bones]

As a former L5R player (both RPG and TCG, a little at least) I need to know about "l5r au except make it crab"

this is gonna be a long one so buckle up, kiddos! (gonna tag @scholarlostintime as they asked for this one, too!)

so for everyone else: Legends of the Five Rings started as a TCG, got turned into an RPG with four editions, then the game ended, then the IP got sold and the game rebooted as an LCG (which is ending again) and a new RPG. I don’t play the card games, and my interest in the RPG currently is mostly “okay how I do turn FFG’s fucking stupid hard-on for custom dice into a system I want to actually play.” BUT I fucking love the setting. like, A WHOLE DAMN LOT, and have seen I was like...thirteen or fourteen.

tl;dr L5R is a Fantasy Japan setting (like, Heian Era-style court politics, Tokugawa Era-style military/samurai culture, a bunch of other things) with some various other Far Eastern elements thrown in. this setting was originally developed by predominately white men in the nineties, and the early setting fluff definitely hasn’t aged well; my issues with FFG’s dice systems aside, they’ve done a great job making the setting both more egalitarian, friendly to players of all kinds, and respecting the culture the setting draws from. (with the caveat they still do some things I sigh very heavily about but that’s a discussion for another day.)

(aside: yes I realize how funny it is how much I love L5R while also having zero personal interest in exploring FFXIV’s Far East in my own fic or headcanon. I think it’s because especially Kugane/Hingashi is a bit too much of 1:1 match to real world Japan to ping at my worldbuilding interests, whereas L5R is very much its own beast and fun to chew on.)

so a big thing in the setting is that the county of Rokugan is basically divided up amongst seven Great Clans (and many assorted Minor Clans) under the Imperial Dynasty, and each Clan takes its name and symbol from an animal. the Great Clans are: Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Phoenix, Scorpion, and Unicorn. each clan and the major family lines that compromise them have their own stereotypes about them (Crane are the courtiers, Lion are the military experts, Phoenix are the primary priest-magic users, etc). when FFG launched the LCG and new RPG, I basically ended up shooting the shit with one of my friends about hypotheticals of which clans our characters (FFXIV and original) would fit with each clan, and then NPCs and characters from other media, and it spiraled out of control from there. for non-OCs, we didn’t bother to try to find one-to-one matches for the stories, but instead focused more on which clan/family fit the personality best and then went from there.

so, “l5r au except make it crab” is the variation where we put all of our OCs in the Crab Clan specifically. the Crab Clan is one of the clans we both really love (my other top favorites being Unicorn and Scorpion): their conceit is that they guard the southern border of Rokugan against the demons and undead of the Shadowlands, using sheer brawn, tactical ingenuity, and engineering genius (including an enormous fortification known as the Carpenter Wall that spans the breadth of most of the southern border). they have no time for the pretty niceties of the Crane and are considered very coarse and uncouth.

they look into the literal mouth of hell day after day, month after month, year after year, and have done so for a thousand years, with no expectation or reward. it is their duty, and they will see it fulfilled.

this file really isn’t a fic, just a lot of funny little exchanges and scenes. Synnove is a Kaiu (basically the big engineering arm of the Crab), Heron a Hida (the bulk of the Crab’s soldiers), Alakhai a Hiruma (scouts and skirmishers), and Rere a Yasuki (formerly a Crane family, they’re the courtiers, and basically in charge of the vital job of keeping the Crab war machine fed and clothed). the big fun is leveraging the Crab and family stereotypes to highlight different aspects of their personalities or take them in different development directions. (same with other OCs; my old Fallen London character Ali is a Scorpion in the primary AU and works off more of her politicking side, whereas Crab!Ali is her criminal side changed into an kneebreaker to get what she needs from the Rokugani underworld.) one day I may even try to figure out proper Rokugani names for the lot. (Alakhai is easy as in the main version of the AU, she’s Unicorn, who have a strong Mongol influence and her name would stay the same.)

[coolyo294]

given that in most of the nu-l5r fiction written thus far the lion clan has jobbed to make other clans look cooler it’s nice to get a unicorn perspective going “boly fuck maybe trying to take on the dudes whose whole job is Do War was maybe not a good idea please help me mom”

[mattkenzie]

So yesterday I posted my blog about this book that I bought in my FLGS that I have to reach via the train and I wanted to convert this Dungeons & Dragons: Oriental Adventures sourcebook from 3rd edition to 5th Edition so I thought I’d try out the basics the human variants. So I have stated that the humans in Kara-Tur have 7 clans (Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Phoenix, Scorpion and Unicorn) and each one has their own specialty. Like the humans have a variant in Ebberon: Rising from the Great War with the Dragonmarked Houses... the 7 clans on Kara-Tur have something quite similar.

Crab Clan: Members of the Crab clan tend to be crude and violent, though they are strongly dedicated to their own clan’s sworn duty: protecting the empire from the Shadowlands. They believe in duty over honour and are always ready for a fight. [So reading further the Crab Clan tend to have some Mark of Finding vibes in the Ebberon sourcebook for a human variant and it would seem to favour the barbarian or the fighter class.]

Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 2, and your Constitution score is increases by 1.

Primitive Intuition. When you make a Strength (Athletics) or Wisdom (Survival) check, you can roll a d4 and add the number of your ability check. (Yes, I would even stack it with guidance.)

Relentless Endurance. When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.

Uphold My Duty. You can cast the Hunter’s Mark spell with this trait and you regain the ability to cast it when you finish a short or long rest.

Crane Clan: The Crane clan is made up of diplomats and courtiers. Graceful, elegant and noble, they are masters of iaijitsu (the speed draw) and duels of honour. [Quite the challenge because this clan was screaming bard and got the idea from Eberron: Rising from the Great War with the Mark of Scribing]

Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 2, and your Dexterity score is increases by 1.

Diplomatic Intuition. When you make a Charisma (Persuasion) check or an ability check using calligrapher’s supplies, you can roll a d4 and add the number of your ability check.

Diplomatic Insight. You know the message cantrip. You can also cast comprehend languages once with this trait, and you regain the ability to cast it when you finish a short or long rest. Starting at 3rd level, you can cast magic mouth spell with this trait, and you can regain the ability to cast it when you finish a long rest. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

Extra Language. You can speak, read and write one additional language of your choice.

Dragon Clan: Mysterious and reclusive, the scholars and warriors of the Dragon Clan are devoted to exploring the secrets of the universe. All tend to speak in enigmatic riddles, though members of the mysterious order of tattooed monks are especially known for this. [I was quite tempted to give this human variant a find familiar spell in a form of a pseudodragon because of the magical tattoos they bear so because humans aren’t exactly dragonborn... no breath weapons, no AC and no resistances.]

Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 2, and your Wisdom score is increases by 1.

Scholarly Intuition. When you make an Intelligence (History) or Wisdom (Insight) check, you can roll a d4 and add the number of your ability check.

Tattoo Summoning. When you reach 3rd level you can cast the find familiar spell (Pseudodragon) once with this trait without the use of any material components and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. (You can find the Find Familiar spell in the PHB at page 240 and stats for the Pseudodragon in the PHB at page 308).

Extra Language. You can speak, read and write Draconic.

Lion Clan: Lions are noble warriors of Rokugan (L5R universe) They are warlike and aggressive but devoted to the honour of the samurai. [Another clan that is combat oriented but this time it’s more military focused so it focuses on your party members surviability more instead of yourself.]

Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score is increased by 2, and your Strength score is increased by 1.

Military Intuition. When you make a Charisma (Intimadation) check or an ability check using a Dragonchess set, you can roll a d4 and add the number of your ability check.

Tactical Deploy. You can cast the Compelled Duel spell once with this trait, and you regain the ability to cast it when you finish a short or long rest. Starting at 3rd level, you can cast Aid spell with this trait, and you can regain the ability to cast it when you finish a long rest. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

Vigilant Guardian. When a creature you can see within 5 feet of you is hit by an attack roll, you can use your reaction to swap places with that creature, and you are hit instead. Once you use this trait, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.

Phoenix Clan: The greatest shugenjas of Rokugan belong to the Phoenix clan. They have a deep love of magic and knowledge. [The Phoenix clan is certainly have a Wizard or a Sorcerer style of the human variant; but Oriental Adventures has a spell caster class called a Shugenja. It’s difficult to describe them as they seem to be clerics, divine wizards and elemental casters... I might give it a go when I write up my own unofficial Unearthed Arcana.]

Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 2, and your choice of Wisdom or Charisma score is increases by 1.

Occult Intuition. When you make an Intelligence (Arcana) or Intelligence (Religion) check, you can roll a d4 and add the number of your ability check.

Cantrip. You know one cantrip of your choice from the sorcerer spell list. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for it.

Extra Language. You can speak, read and write one additional language of your choice of Celestrial or Primordial.

Scorpion Clan: The members of the Scorpion clan are the manipulators of Rokugan, masters of secrets and lies. Never seen without their masks, they resemble their namesakes—unassuming but armed with a deadly sting. [The Scorpion Clan are simply put the rogue like in my opinion. So with all that political intrigue it does have a Mark of Shadows flair about it, it was kind of controversial to give this human variant a poisoner’s kit but then it hit me what if I gave them the elemental weapon at level 5 but read that you can’t choose poison... so I’ll give them poison as their only choice.]

Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 2, and your choice of Dexterity, Intelligence or Wisdom score is increases by 1.

Poison Resilience. You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and you have resistance against poison damage

Intrigue Intuition. When you make a Charisma (Deception) check or an ability check using a Disguise kit, you can roll a d4 and add the number of your ability check.

Cloak and Dagger. You know the minor illusion cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the charm person spell as a 2nd-level spell once with this trait (or twice as a 1st-level spell) and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, and you can cast the elemental weapon spell (the weapon has the damage type poison) once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

Unicorn Clan: Unicorns are the outsiders of Rokugan. Most of them are barbaric riders with aggressive dispositions. Mounted combat is their specialty, and their riding skills are second to none. [So I found it ironic that the unicorn clan was pretty much misleading with a name like that as I associate unicorns to be kind and gentle, but the unicorn clan in Rokugan ARE a quite barbaric lot. I got my inspiration from Eberron: Rising From the Last War with the Mark of Handling in page 42. This could be suited for the Barbarian or the Ranger.]

Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 2, and your Strength score is increases by 1.

Wild Intuition. When you make an Wisdom (Animal Handling) or an Intelligence (Nature) check, you can roll a d4 and add the number rolled to the ability check.

Equestrian Connection. When you reach 3rd level you can cast the find steed spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. (I would say it’s best used on open fields and plains and NOT to be cast inside caverns, tunnels and buildings).

Horseback Savagery. When you or your mount score a critical hit with a melee or ranged weapon attack, you can roll one of the weapon’s damage one additional time and add it to the extra damage of the critical hit.

Well here is my Oriental Adventures for the human variants based off of the clans in Rokugan. (Legend of the 5 Rings universe) and come to think that in 5th Edition we have Magic: the Gathering’s Ravnica and coming soon in June 2020, Theros (I do love some greek mythology as a kid) and Oriental Adventures have given us some flavour of the Far East.

Tune in next time when I produce the fantasy races in Oriental Adventures and try to convert the rules into 5th edition. Warning: The next race will be converting is the Hengeyokai so please please PLEASE, consult with the DM first and try not to sexualise the furry culture (their is a fine line and some players might find it uncomfortable.)

[kontextmaschine]

me: remember when the regular Sunday CCG group at the local comic book store mostly switched to L5R?

also me: Legend of the Five Rings, the Orientalist CCG!

me: that had to change their card backs and make everyone use deck protectors cause of a super-copyright law specifically for the Olympics

also me: did you notice how we played as the–

me: the Unicorn Clan!

also me: yes, who were–

me: Cavalry!

also me: specifically?

me: Mongol cavalry!

also me: maybe in Legend of the Burning Sands and when the Moto returned, but in the sweet spot after Scorpion Clan Coup when they came together?

me: …?

also me: they were girl cavalry warriors. The Battle Maidens? Shiotome? The Utaku?

me: Otaku

also me: until that got too embarrassing. But still, for all you think about being genderweird in the 90s, you don't think much about how you had a slice of your identity tied up in fierce warrior girls

me: well, Xena, Buffy, that was just in the air back then

also me:

[terratina]

Welcome to Naishou Province

After a tutorial of the Topaz Championship and the Legacy of Disaster one-shot in order to get the players acquainted with the system and setting (complete with custom timeline as who doesn’t do that with L5R these days?), it’s time to dive into a new campaign!

Meet The Party

Because of their aptitude at resolving a murdering during the Topaz Tournament, the party have been hired to investigate suspicious activity in Naishou Province, a province that has recently come to the Great Clans’ attention and now, with an Imperial Governor at the head, they jockey to claim the province for themselves. The party are as follows:

Akodo Miyamoto, an old hand at war and self-admitted substance abuser. Sword and sake are always by his side. Dislikes the new Emperor Toturi I.

Ide Nobune, an emissary not entirely of noble birth. The Unicorn took her in, and she seeks to find her real parents.

Utaku Ayumi, a battle maiden assigned as a bodyguard to Nobune-san. Full of honour and a love for the Emperor. Also has a tentancy to agree to being a Scorpion pawn.

Meet The Ruleset 

Yes, while I know there is a L5R 5e in beta I am using FATE Core and am slowly getting used to it. Why FATE Core? Because it’s a system I’ve really enjoyed playing with and I want to recreate that magic but as a GM.

The L5R 5e ruleset is still in beta, and from the sounds of it there are quite a lot of kinks to sort out. I’d rather wait until it’s finished and it seems that the 5e ruleset is trying to do what FATE Core already achieves rather well as a storygame, but with Fantasy Flight funky dice and oddles of tables.

Now this post has gone on long enough so the write-up of the first session will come later!

[confused-in-rokugan]

SHINJO Eiko, ultimate horsegirl.

[by-thechesapeake]

L5R Update

Or mini campaign is coming to a close soon. This maybe the penultimate session, but we will know for sure next week!

Asako was absent, so no updates on her and the cute unicorn guy, but in her stead, we’ll talk about our Lion guy who made it back into the city and into the arms of his wife, who then immediately may have tried to have him killed. ☺️

Last session wasn’t as lewd as the one before for Doji as my Kaito put her to work to try to route out the Bloodspeaker. She did get to kiss Matsu though in the off screens, so that counts. They got to flirt a little bit while or Lion’s wife took little jabs at the both of them, and the Lion clan in general.

And then my Kaito, realizing that there was no way in jigoku that they were going to be able to fight the Bloodspeaker, so she ended up convincing our Ronin overlord to open the gates, let the clans back into the city, and surrender himself 🥲 but after that, my Kaito took a chance and held his hand, stole a kiss, and then they faded to black.

[ruroken77]

i recently made a character for L5R 5e just for funsies. she’s a member of the Unicorn Clan’s Utaku family (mostly cause their main color is purple). if i were to ever use her for a campaign, and there was a court scene at some point, i could just imagine her leaning against a pillar, arms crossed, asleep, just *snoring noises*, and like drooling and everything. and maybe like a party member nudges her awake, and she’s just like “huhwhat???” as she comes to and realizes she fell asleep, and they’re complaining like “you fell asleep so easily! how can you be bored???” and she rebuts like “why am i even here to begin with? this is what the Ide family’s for! i just wanna kick some Lion Clan butt from atop my special horse...” (now mind you i’m completely new to L5R as a whole, though i did read some of the fiction FFG’s been putting out)

[tickerbee]

joining an l5r group that has existed for years at this point. i told the gm that i didn’t want to make waves with the other players and asked him what i should pick. he told me an ide hostage from the scorpion clan would be interesting, so i’ve gotten really invested in the idea. (especially because it’s a court-oriented character who would be super different from the doji kakita duelist i have in a different game)

his irl wife’s character is a former-scorpion ronin who was tortured by the unicorns. 😬here’s hoping she thinks it’s funny and that i’m not about to be horribly set up, lol

[empusaegirl]

Breaking into the Industry - My L5R Journey

Well, it’s finally here. My first fiction for Fantasy Flight Games went live today. So far, it seems to be pleasing fans, particularly the Lion Clan players. In celebration, I wrote a personal history about my time working with the brand both at AEG and FFG for those of you who are interested in my story about breaking into the industry.

Summer 2014, Alderac Entertainment Group held open auditions for Story Team members for their Legend of the Five Rings brand due to a number of their veteran writers leaving for various reasons. At that point in my life, I hadn’t been seriously involved with writing, as I had graduated from college two years earlier and hadn’t really picked up the pen since my last creative writing class. I also hadn’t dabbled in L5R for over a decade since my path led me away from it though I’d had brief reminders that it was still nestled in the softer spots of my heart.

My first exposure to L5R had been in middle school. My mother bought me several novels with samurai on the covers. The first one had a cover image that simply stuck me through to my soul. The samurai wore blood red armor and a fearsome steel mask that made him look like a demon. However, he was a demon brooding, ready with sword in hand but biding his time. Brom, the artist, had given the portrait enough life to crawl off the cover and nestle into my thoughts for weeks. As I read through the books, I came to later know it was a portrait of Bayushi Shoju, the Clan Champion who would later become one of my favorite characters of all time, the poised underhand of the Hantei emperor that waited to strike at the right time. Shoju, along with the Mother of Scorpions Bayushi Kachiko, later defined the Scorpion clan for me, and I was hooked. I was obsessed with the Scorpion Clan, cheering and mourning with them throughout the entire series as the Clan Wars followed their ups and downs. Stephen D. Sullivan, Ree Soesbee, A.L. Lassieur, and Stan Brown developed the Crab, the Phoenix, the Lion, the Unicorn, and others in my mind, making Rokugan, its conflicts, and its bushido real in my mind.

Those novels were the Wizards of the Coast novelizations of the Clan Wars storyline, and after the brand returned to AEG, I lost touch with the world though my love of the Scorpion remained constant. (In tribute, I made my own personal emblem that I marked on all my art pieces and signatures all through high school and college which featured primarily the tail and stinger of a scorpion.) My love of Rokugan reemerged years later when I met my future husband.

While I was living in Japan and getting to know S. better, he was telling me about some of his favorite things in the world. When he mentioned L5R’s Lion Clan, I did a double take (a mental one because we were only communicating through letters back then) since Rokugan had been a seminal part of my young imagination. He had been playing the L5R card game for about 20 years at that point, and needless to say, he was shocked that I knew what he was talking about. I think this solidified in his mind that we were meant to be, even if I was Scorpion Clan.

A few years after that, I was married and living in Hawaii when S.’s brother shot us a text with the news that AEG was doing open writing auditions for a position on their story team. He suggested I apply. The audition called for a story in the style of Rokugan, so I crafted a story called “The Dishonorable Death of Matsu Gohei,” S.’s favorite Lion Clan samurai (besides Toturi). It was an interesting tale describing more in depth Gohei’s end as he had primarily died off-screen in the fictions. After I submitted it, nearly an hour before midnight on the day of the deadline, I heard nothing for about six months. I didn’t actually believe in my ability to join the story team since I didn’t consider my fictional writing all that marketable, so I figured that I just got passed over. My husband read on the L5R blog, however, that there had been hundreds of applications, so the time it took in deciding the new members could just be due AEG being buried alive under all those stories. Well, long story short, I was contacted by the brand manager in January 2015 who offered me the position if I wanted it. I was chosen with two other people (Chris Hand and Maxime Lemaire), and we joined the L5R Story Team giants like Shawn Carman, Robert Denton, Rob Hobart, and Fred Wan as the Three Musketeers. ;)

I worked with AEG on their Twenty Festivals and Onyx projects until the brand was sold to Fantasy Flight Games, so some of my fiction went unpublished due to bad timing. However, I got some pieces published in 2015, such as the “Aftermath’s Misfortune,” “The Ghost of the Grove,” and “Gathering Steel.” I also was involved in their daimyo project, letters to the clans for 20 Festivals, and some Spring Kotei fictions. In 2016, several Story Team members, though we weren’t officially on the Story Team anymore, decided to do a final tribute to AEG’s storyline to complete pieces of the Onyx story line. We self published Onyx Dawn, a fiction series outside of the L5R canon, in which I wrote the final piece for Bayushi Nitoshi, the reincarnation of my favorite Bayushi Shoju, allowing him to redeem his soul from the sins of the Clan War. It was an emotional and terribly poignant piece for me, and I felt like the end of my time at AEG with L5R ended on a beautiful note. Those of us that worked on it proceeded with heavy hearts, knowing that its publication would most likely be the end for us working with L5R.

Last year, I was approached by Katrina Ostrander, lead fiction editor for FFG’s version of the new L5R brand, who asked if I would be interested in working on the brand again, writing fiction. It definitely felt like a reality-warping surprise more than anything, and I was worried that I’d been chosen over people who had given their heart and soul to the brand for decades. I felt inadequate. I felt scared. I wondered if this was really who I was now, a marketable, industry-respected writer, not just a hobbyist… and it felt unreal. However, after hearing what fans had said about my stories on the forums and learning that some of the old AEG people had put in a good word for me, I gained enough confidence to say yes.

It feels like another dream come true to be working with the Clan War storyline, the plot and characters that ignited my passion for Rokugan. Needless to say, S. was ecstatic, and he was more elated when we heard I would be working with the Lion Clan and Akodo Toturi. I am also able to rub shoulders with some of my hero-authors of the older fictions as fellow L5R alumni, like Nancy Sauer and Ree Soesbee, and continue working with friends and acquaintances from my Story Team era. It’s really been an honor, one that I approach with the reticence of one who feels imposter syndrome and the incredulity of the dream becoming reality, and it’s a honor that I now take very seriously.

I’m thankful for the opportunity to continue working with a brand I love with people I respect and care about on projects I believe in. It’s more than I ever could have asked for, and I’m grateful to be breaking into the industry with such good people on such a cool game. It’s opened lots of doors for me. It’s given me experiences I’ll never forget. It’s made me a much much better writer as I hone my craft with each passing draft. It’s a gate I get to walk through, and I’m grateful to everyone who opened it for me.