Player Notes — The Fragile Peace

What Setsuna knows

Standing facts worth having in front of you. The full session-by-session record is in the Chronicle and on each person's page; this holds only what keeps mattering. Started at session 39 — earlier sessions are in the chronicle, not here.

TABLE The escort rides west with the envoy. Miya Misato carries the Emperor's writ ordering the Lion to stand down, and the road runs toward the front where Shinjo Harunobu is held. Duty and want run through the same gate.
TABLE Karahaya is the governor's officer and is now the envoy's yojimbo. She beat Bayushi Monban in a Warrior's Duel without taking a hit. Competent, gave him two chances to withdraw, and reports to Governor Miya Tetsuya.
TABLE Ikoma Tadayoshi has a standing instruction to watch the magistrates — given by the governor, in case their methods endanger the envoy more than the assassins do.
HEARD A fresh containment for the Ifrit needs new Meishōdō boxes and a Crane shugenja. The old vessels are spent. From Shiba Midori.
TABLE The war is about honour, not the marriage. Matsu Maro said it outright: not the match, not Ikoma Anakazu's feelings. The refusal was a direct insult, and in Rokugan a direct insult is answered by a duel — which, between clans, is this war. Restore the honour another way and the Lion can stand down.
TABLE The Lion have garrisoned nothing. Monban established it on the march: no outposts behind them, no ground held — only burning and desecration of Unicorn land and Unicorn dead. A punitive expedition, not a conquest. SUPERSEDED this closes the open thread from session 42; she has it now, and from her own yojimbo.
TABLE Akodo Akihito is Akodo Toturi's nephew. Close enough to the Lion succession that a marriage into him answers the insult. His castle is the column's destination and he outranks Setsuna — there is no leverage, only the pitch.
TABLE No clan-level match existed above what Altansarnai was offered. Every other Champion married, the wrong sex, or unknown. The only step up is an Imperial marriage — which is why the question of a hidden suitor is live.
NOTE Three separate crews have now checked a face in the dark and let the wrong person go — the road ambush, the men at the docks, and the night raid on Midori's room. Not the same people; the same method.
TABLE Matsu Maro was sent to die by her own side. Read off her by Midori at the tea: die on the field or die holding a castle that cannot be held, either suits her superiors. She has her peace now, and she still cannot say why she needed it.
TABLE Moto Gaheris's real war is with the Shinjo, not the Lion. Primacy inside the Unicorn, frozen while the whole clan musters against an outside enemy. Peace here gives him back the war he wants — which is why he took it.
TABLE Her office does not win rooms; it builds the moment when the Emperor's voice can. Gaheris could take terms from neither a magistrate nor a Lion general. Two hours of groundwork bought Misato one sentence. Deploy Imperial authority last, when it lands, not first, when it gets tested.
NOTE She has been on the Snow Plain twice. Once as Matsu Morozane's memory three centuries back, once in her own body. Both times Lion against Unicorn on that ground, both decided by single combat between commanders, both leaving a field of Lion dead. She is the only person in the column who knows how the first one ended.
NOTE Session 40 is a hole, and so is the road north. No record survives of the night Monban was ejected and challenged, and none at all of the sessions between 2 March and 6 April. Both are flagged where they sit in the chronicle.

Open threads

Questions the player is carrying, and who is expected to answer them.

OPEN The Lion escort turned out to be the relief force. The Matsu contingent crossing at the Rich Frog became the column Setsuna now rides with, under Matsu Maro — who was sent by her own side to lose it. The price the governor warned about was never named and still has not been paid.
OPEN Did the ronin take the last shinobi alive? Two were dead or dying; one reached the water under fire. Unanswered, and the column has since left the island.
OPEN Battlemaiden Castle is the next stop, and it is the two Champions themselves. Shinjo Altansarnai — Unicorn Champion, and the woman whose broken betrothal is the whole war — is investing it against the Lion Champion Akodo Toturi. The party rides there under a Moto Khan whose ambition is to displace the Shinjo. Decide before arrival whether that is a problem or the opportunity.
PLAN Keep working the Shinjo lever. Gaheris's real war is inside his own clan. Everything offered to him should be priced against what it does to that, not against the Lion.
SUPERSEDED Misato is dead. She lost too much blood in the night, hours after the surgery, in her sleep. No one's hand in it. The agreement was written before anyone knew, and it does not require her to be alive to be delivered to the front. Previously: Midori cleared the dying two rounds from the end, with Ayoko's hands making the difference; Setsuna stopped the bleeding through Earth. Both eyes bandaged, prognosis blindness, only time will tell. SUPERSEDED the dying countdown from session 45.
PLAN Rebuild what she taught her. Every bit of the coaching — reading a room, seeing who is about to speak, conceding without losing — assumed eyes. It has to be rebuilt or replaced, by the person who taught it.
OPEN No witnesses, and it was not for want of trying. Kazumi tied off a severed arm specifically to keep one alive to question, and the man died before anyone got back to him. The other two bled out; the third took poison. Everything now rests on physical evidence.
TABLE The Imperial Seal survived the fire. Half melted, still recognisable, the rest of the writ destroyed. It is the whole evidentiary basis of the investigation, and it is the second crew to come precisely for that seal — the first was at the Rich Frog.
NOTE The session-45 read was wrong and the session-36 read was right. Not an extraction of the envoy — a theft of the writ she carries against her skin. The hand inside the kimono was reaching for it and the third man went out the back with it. Worth remembering that the correct answer was already written down three weeks earlier.
TABLE The ultimatum was delivered, and it worked. Do your jobs or kill yourselves. Each commander privately believed the other had done it; she put it to them that neither would, and that they were looking at a third party who wanted exactly this. It stopped them circling each other. SUPERSEDED the plan from session 45.
OPEN Affect of Harmlessness is gone. Off the sheet. It is what made the disarm in the tent work — three armed men filed a woman in nightclothes as no threat. She then stood in front of two armies and told a Moto Khan to open his own belly. That reading of her is spent, by her own doing, and every plan that assumed it needs rebuilding.
OPEN It was an extraction, not an assassination. Nobody in that tent was killed who could have been. That means whoever ordered it wanted Misato in their hands, not in the ground — a different order, from different people, for different reasons.
OPEN Whose armour, whose perimeter, whose watch? Brown armour on the man holding Tadayoshi. At least one attacker away into the dark. Bodies in the tent to identify.
OPEN The Onahime witness problem. Midori and Kazumi saw it; possibly Tadayoshi; possibly Misato if she lives. Setsuna does not know yet — she was on the floor before it showed. She will have to address it once she does.
PLAN Use the Altansarnai back channel, and quickly. A Champion may be able to nullify the betrothal on her own authority, which would end the war without anyone conceding anything. The channel is open and unused, and she is two tents away.
OPEN What changed between the agreement and the refusal? Altansarnai kept her own marriage undone for years so the clan always had that piece to play, then agreed to spend it on a fifty-year-old Ikoma Anakazu — office, name and place in the succession — and then would not go through with it. That is not temperament. Something happened in between.
NOTE Misato has brothers, aged twelve. A live Imperial match that buys time rather than solving anything — and she is the one who allowed an Imperial suitor for Altansarnai "could be supposed" to exist.
OPEN Nobody has asked Shinjo Altansarnai anything — and Setsuna knows her. Altansarnai was a guest at her wedding, and her husband's family are Shinjo. A letter from a Doji married into the clan is a different object from a magistrate's summons. Every plan turns on the Champion or her daughter and all of it is second-hand from a Lion general who says she never understood the woman.
OPEN Why did the Unicorn cede the river bank at all? The concession was extraordinary and Ikoma Anakazu was not the one who negotiated it. Rich, river-watered breadbasket the Lion administered for the eight centuries the Unicorn were away.
OPEN The Scorpion architect. Bayushi Kachiko opposed the betrothal, per Soshi Aisha; the Scorpion gain from both clans bleeding; Monban agreed with the reading. Deliberately shelved until the fighting stops — shelved, not dismissed.
PLAN Pitch the double marriage to Akodo Akihito. Headline: Altansarnai's daughter to Akihito — Shinjo blood into the Lion succession, the insult discharged, and the Champion not forced into a match she has already refused. Bonus: the Unicorn prisoner Akihito holds, married to him as well, folding a hostage release into the treaty.
PLAN Fallbacks, in order. The poison-pill reparations (betrothal upheld, reparations payable only if the marriage completes, priced past what the Lion can bear, so both sides waive); then Misato as substitute bride. The second is a bargaining position, not a preference.
NOTE The Imperial-suitor claim is a lie with the Emperor's name on it. Nobody could easily disprove it, which is exactly what makes using it dangerous in a document Setsuna signs. She noticed the undisprovability before she noticed anything else about it.
NOTE No wear-down strategy will work. The Lion will not tire before the Unicorn do. Anything that waits for exhaustion is off the table.
NOTE The spirit is tabled, not spent. Still inside Monban, and Setsuna has explicitly reserved it as leverage against a recalcitrant party. Let's not do it now.
OPEN Has anyone interviewed Midori's attendant? She saw someone going through Shiba Midori's belongings and is the only eyewitness in the case. Raised at session 38, not yet acted on.
OPEN The Firebiter bag above the Crane quarters. Doji Masato and Doji Miho deny it and say a shinobi planted it. The evidence does not distinguish between that and guilt.
OPEN No answer on Shinjo Harunobu's custody. Unanswered since session 27. The badge has not moved it; obligation once did.
OPEN How far has the song travelled? Daidoji Shin is composing on the duel and the governor's ronin are already saying the unmasked Scorpion.

Obligations and debts

Favours owed and owing, in both directions, with what was given for them.

TABLE Setsuna → Miya Misato. Protector/Ward Bond. Two nights of teaching: rhetoric, then how a government moves and how to fight with her hands. She has since walked her to a gate in the dark and out between two armies.
TABLE Monban → Karahaya, paid. Apology to her and her men, and a public withdrawal of what he said about their lord. Given on the dock in front of the town.
TABLE Midori → the Ifrit. Undertook to carry it west and release it in the Burning Sands. It is riding inside Monban until then.
HEARD The Lion escort comes with a price. The governor warned Tadayoshi about it privately rather than in company — which reads as political rather than material.
TABLE Moto Gaheris holds Monban, and Setsuna has claimed him aloud. Ransom floated, not settled. His Scorpion lord will owe for the recovery — and she has publicly reattached herself to a yojimbo she dismissed at session 34.
TABLE Maro → Setsuna. She opened a castle gate at night on nothing but a courteous letter, a well-chosen gift, and a recognisable horse. That is a debt in the other direction and it has not been called.
NOTE What actually moved Harunobu before was Kitsu Takeko yielding on the strength of Akodo Akihito's service. Obligation, not authority. Keep working that channel.

Standing at session 52

What changed on the sheet, and what changed about her.

OPEN Ikoma Ujiaki used Ebb & Flow on her Legal Scholarship and inverted it. It is a disadvantage against him now: he can force her to reroll two successes. Her strongest lane is the one he will steer every argument into — precedents she does not know, weaknesses found in her own reasoning. Assume he opens with it.
OPEN Ujiaki knows what she wants. Not what the magistrate wants — the private Asahina poetry gathering on the Crane coast in spring, which she has never asked for and does not believe she would be offered. The only thing anyone has learned about her that could be offered rather than threatened. Decide the answer before it is ever put to her.
TABLE His ninjō: to go down in history as one of the Lion's most competent negotiators. He does not want to be a champion of anything. He wants the name, and he believes he is well on his way to it.
PLAN That is the handle to move him by. A man who wants to be remembered as a great negotiator does not want a war settled over his head by an arbiter, and badly does not want his name on the losing side of an Imperial ruling. A settlement he can be said to have authored is worth more to him than a Lion victory he merely attended. If the goal is the Lion settling rather than being ruled against, let Ujiaki take the credit.
TABLE Setsuna clocked the alignment at the table. His ninjō and her objective are the same shape — she has wanted the Lion to settle rather than be ruled against since the first day, and he needs that outcome for reasons entirely his own. She does not have to persuade him. She has to let him have the credit, and be seen not to mind.
NOTE She knows he read her, accurately and further than she would like. She was there for it — she felt him take her measure, knows the decoy held and the true objective stayed buried, and knows he came away from the small talk holding the private thing she wants. Uncomfortable, and survivable: she can see the shape of it and plan around it.
OPEN The Ebb & Flow is the exception — she does not know about it. Everything else on this page she has too. She has no idea her Legal Scholarship has been inverted, and will walk into her strongest lane not knowing it has been mined. She finds out in front of the whole tent, the first time she reasons from precedent with Ujiaki opposite.
NOTE The tell was already visible. Raising the objection to Midori representing two clans was Akihito's to raise. Ujiaki did not wait for him. He keeps stepping in front of the man his own clan seated in that chair — and Akihito is the one who takes the fall if it goes wrong.
NOTE What he read off her: composure, the Scorn of the Kakita, and a social objective — which was the decoy, not the real one. Hidden in Smoke held.
TABLE The Unicorn's Iuchi advisor is a person of consequence and has no name yet. Middle-aged, shugenja's robes and talismans, gave the morning blessing herself because Midori is a party. Kage's opposite number. She supplied the Unicorn's real order of priority and the warning about the trapped lion. Get her name.
PLAN The provisional agreement to land. Lion retreat; hostages, horses and land returned; no ransoms and no reparations yet; everything unsettled goes to Winter Court. Sealed with a treaty signing. Momentum is enough for the Unicorn and not yet enough for the Lion.
PLAN The duel-metaphor gambit, pending Kazumi's presence. Have Kazumi unilaterally declare a duel on Akihito by striking him with a sheathed katana, to show what "a duel writ large" actually licenses. Expect Ujiaki to intercede — the metaphor is carried too far, the arbiter has called the duel ended, and when that happens you yield and the witnesses decide how it stood. Do not run this without checking with Anthony first.

To raise next session

Kept short and cleared each session. Current to session 52.

TABLE A ghost that cannot lie named the Lord Bayushi. She commands there be no peace between them and the Unicorn. His previous servant has failed — though his previous servant yet lives, and may redeem himself with success. The Scorpion call from session 44 is now testimony. It is also unusable in any court — a beheaded assassin told a Phoenix shugenja.
TABLE Harunobu is free and safe at the Castle of the Swift Sword. Toturi had him conveyed there under safe conduct two weeks ago, unasked, on Kitsu Takeko's plea. He fought well and did not fall. Obligation moved him, not the badge — the same lesson as session 27. SUPERSEDED the custody thread open since session 27.
NOTE The debt to Toturi is owed by the wife, not the magistrate — keep it there. Declared aloud in front of Kage. A wife's giri toward the man who spared her husband touches nothing on the bench, and the pre-built answer to "the arbiter is in the Lion's debt" is that the arbiter owes nothing. Repay it personally or not at all.
PLAN The compensation chain: Unicorn → Lion → Phoenix. Setsuna's own construction, and already sold to both Akihito and Toturi before the Unicorn arrive. Get the Phoenix recompense principle into the preamble so it survives the delegations, and keep authorship of it.
OPEN Asako Ikari is the stone in this shoe. Divorced by Ikoma Anakazu to clear the way for a match that then collapsed. Social death, no recompense offered by anyone. Midori is the only Phoenix on the field — the natural channel, and therefore partial. Name that before someone else does.
SUPERSEDED Answered: why Altansarnai refused. Akodo Arasou ordered one of his own daimyō to disgrace his wife to clear the way for the match. Asako Ikari came to the Unicorn court to kill herself and was intercepted, and the Champion heard it from her. She refused on principle. Had the Lion admitted the groom was not free to wed, she could have declined politely and none of this need have happened.
TABLE The Unicorn's real order of priority: land, horses, hostages. From their Iuchi advisor, Kage's opposite number. Give those three and she can likely bring Altansarnai to the rest, with the territorial argument had properly at Winter Court.
NOTE A lion in a trap is more dangerous than a lion loose, because it believes it has nothing left to lose. The art is letting them lose without letting them feel it — whatever she rules, Kage has to be able to carry it back to Toturi as a thing the Lion chose.
OPEN Akihito's new frame: a duel writ large between clans. Someone gave him that between the recess and the tent. It is elegant and it is a defence — duels are lawful, duels end in yielding rather than reckoning, and if this was a duel then nobody committed a crime. He praised the Unicorn's courage in the same breath, which is how you make a defeat survivable. It is also the only shape in which the Lion leave here without ruin.
PLAN Press the counter: a duel one side never accepted is not a duel. The Unicorn say it belonged before the Emperor or in a tent like this one. If that stands, the Lion did not fight a lawful duel — they made an unlawful war over a betrothal that may never have been lawfully available to break.
NOTE The Unicorn's own advisor would rather Ikari were found and not heard. Notice how much easier this becomes for everyone if the woman actually wronged stays missing, and how many people at that table would find it convenient.
TABLE The Onahime bargain, in plain terms. When they died they had to be masked to enter Jigoku, and Monban agreed with her that they would stay joined. She kept him alive down there and brought him out; what she asked was to take a piece of him with her. She is not an evil thing, and she has kept her side.
TABLE It does not appear that Ikoma Anakazu is divorced. His marriage to Asako Ikari was between two clans — the father of Arasou and Toturi, and a Phoenix lord, with a dowry. Only one clan commanded the divorce, no Imperial petition appears to have been made, and nobody can name the Phoenix lord who authorised it. If it was never lawfully dissolved, the betrothal was void from the start, the Unicorn broke nothing, and the justification for the whole war evaporates.
OPEN Two questions the Lion must answer by Winter Court. Who was the Phoenix lord who authorised the divorce — and was the dowry returned, as it should have been, to Ikari herself. Failing to return it would be invalidating on its own.
NOTE Kage saw it all and moved the question to Winter Court himself. Quite clever, Crane — I hope you appreciate that there are limits to everything. He conceded the ground she wanted in a way that makes it his concession rather than her victory, and had Ujiaki withdraw so the retreat read as good faith. Assume one clever move per session against him at most.
OPEN The Unicorn said out loud that Setsuna will rule their way because Midori is her friend. In her hearing. Very probably in Kage's too. The most dangerous sentence spoken in that tent.
PLAN The Unicorn floor, and where a settlement starts. No marriage, no territorial concession, no indemnity for the return of their own ground — and every horse back. The first three are principle; the horses are practical, and they are the one thing she can hand over at no cost to anyone's honour.
PLAN Akihito must come out of this with something. His clan put him in the chair because if it goes badly nobody important is ruined, and Setsuna and Midori worked to put him there. He has now been humiliated twice and believes it was arranged — and he is right that it was. Otherwise the party has spent a decent man to win a procedural point.
NOTE Midori found the seam in the Lion's conduct defence. They claim only military objectives — but harm by negligence is still harm, and taking a clan's warriors and horses has consequences that outlive the taking. She has personally witnessed things that do not fit their tidy version.
TABLE The null hypothesis is on the record in Misato's name. Marriage completed, Lion withdrawal, Lion damages, and no return to war without personally petitioning the Emperor. Written to be unacceptable to both, so that whether to bargain becomes how much better than this can we do.
TABLE The Phoenix ruling: facts in, standing reserved. Ujiaki moved to sever the Phoenix question to another venue and was refused — the facts bear on justice between Lion and Unicorn and will be heard. Whether Midori may speak for the Phoenix is reserved, and Setsuna got her claiming both on the record first. Hold that line.
NOTE Nobody on the Lion bench was surprised about Ikari. Not one. Their objection is not that it is untrue but that it is being said. Akihito twitched — the only honest reaction in the room.
NOTE Akihito believes his own case; Kage is the opponent. He is not trying to slip anything past the bench, which makes him the wrong man to break and the right man to persuade — every concession must be one he can defend to Kage as sensible. Kage sits above and behind him saying nothing.
OPEN Two rumours are loose. Kazumi put the true one about — the groom was married when he was offered. The false one, that Midori is in a three-way affair with Akihito and his prisoner Miharu, is circulating about her own negotiator, and Kazumi will not dissuade it. Both reach this table within the week.
OPEN Something is wrong with the water. West of here the river runs low, the trees brown out of season, and the spirits have left it — and by the fox's account it is happening all over Rokugan. Matsu Tomoe already told Midori the Lion believe the Phoenix are turning the elements against them and that their shugenja are working to prove it. Something is wrong, and a clan is already looking for someone to blame.
OPEN The Lion want more than the marriage would have given them. Suitable matches to seal the peace, the original concessions, plus villages across the river in Ide and Iuchi country they already occupy, a formal apology, an indemnity, horses counted toward it, and a litany of generational grievances. Hostages priced separately and not against the indemnity.
OPEN The Unicorn want the status quo back, compensation, every hostage returned without ransom, every horse returned — and the injustice to Ikari corrected.
OPEN The bad-faith lever, and Setsuna handed it over. A groom already married voids the betrothal. Kazumi said it aloud in the Unicorn tent and Altansarnai understood it instantly. The Unicorn can humiliate the Akodo line whenever they choose, and the arbiter is the one who armed them.
PLAN Build the off-ramp before the accusation is made. If it is formally brought and affirmed, Setsuna is duty-bound to demand a life — and the only life owed is Arasou's, already given. No justice available, only humiliation, landing on the one Lion who has dealt straight with her. Recompense to Ikari, a private acknowledgement, a Winter Court fold-in: decide now, because once it is on the record there is no discretion left.
NOTE A Crane killed Arasou at Toshi Ranbo. Doji Hotaru's arrow, at the gates, with Toturi watching. A Crane now arbitrates the war Arasou caused, having just dangled Toshi Ranbo in his brother's war tent. If anyone assembles those three facts in that order her neutrality is finished — and Kage is the man who would.
NOTE Altansarnai is not somebody to be worked. She refused a private word on propriety — the first person in this campaign to decline being handled. The warmth that landed on Miharu and Toturi will read as manipulation to her. Straight dealing, in the open, on the merits.
TABLE The slate. Midori speaks for the Unicorn as the Phoenix — the third wronged party. Akihito is being boxed toward the Lion chair by Kage's own precedent-turning. Kazumi has security. The bench is split across its own table.
PLAN Find Asako Ikari. She tried to die of this. She is the living proof of the case and Midori's clanswoman, last seen at the Eda's castle with her daughter, and nobody has looked. Everything else is argument; she is the fact.
OPEN Masked Scorpion in the Lion camp at dawn. Kazumi saw them where Scorpion do not belong. Given what the ghost said about who sent the envoy's killers, that is the most actionable thing anyone noticed — and it was noticed by the man nobody in that camp will speak to.
OPEN Altansarnai's terms are modest. Lion withdrawal, borders restored, captives freed — and not the concessions the marriage would have brought, which she is now disinclined to give. The dead littering the field are punishment enough.
OPEN Monban's badge is at a river shrine and his katana is going to Otosan Uchi. The badge is a vessel built to hold a fire spirit, traded by his fox to a water goddess for the healing that saved him. The sword is a leash the Bayushi agent is walking east toward Shosuro Hametsu.
PLAN Protect the Toshi Ranbo ambiguity. The word is living in Lion heads and will shape their arithmetic all season without a thing conceded. Its value is their not knowing whether she can deliver — and she has no Doji sanction, so the honest answer deflates it. Do not clarify, do not repeat, deflect if pressed. Toturi and Kage both remember who raised it.
OPEN Akodo Kage is the unfinished business. He called Kazumi a liar; the duel answered Akihito's part and not his. Both the Champion and Akihito care deeply what he thinks, and Setsuna has not spoken a word to him.
NOTE Kazumi is radioactive to the camp he now has to negotiate with. He won completely and lost the room. Midori takes the Lion side; Setsuna fronts as arbiter. Miharu believes he cheated — a rumour that would become an honour stain with Kage's implicit blessing.
PLAN Truce, not peace. Hold it only until Winter Court — that satisfies the Emperor — and do the substantive settlement there, on likely home ground. Use these talks to find out what each side is actually aggrieved about.
OPEN Monban is gone and nobody knows where. Took Kogarashi and rode west; Midori brought the horse back. He is at Khanbulak with a sword in hock and no magistrate's badge — and the party does not know what he knows about the envoy's death.
PLAN Ask what kind of peace, not who. Someone is spending assassins, a spell laid on a man, and an envoy's life to keep the Lion and Unicorn cutting at each other. That has a shape, and the shape is worth more than the name.
NOTE Kachiko's seam. The Emperor's sight is failing and she reads his correspondence to him. That is the whole of her power and it leaves her no deniability — nothing reaches the throne, or fails to, without her hand on it.
OPEN Shosuro Hametsu is Kachiko's brother — and Monban's lord. The fifty-koku invoice went to that house. The assassins also told Midori, who told Monban privately in Cadence, that he could be turned to their cause. Midori does not believe them. Setsuna has not been told that part.
OPEN One of the assassins had a spell laid on him. Midori's reading of the residue: not magic cast by them, magic worked on them beforehand.
PLAN Run the inventory and the roll call. The Moto clothes were stolen, so someone is missing them; and the attackers knew their way into the Lion camp unchallenged, which suggests they walked in with it. The Lion know exactly who their numbers included.
OPEN Isawa conspiracy to turn the elements against the Lion. Matsu Tomoe asserts it as fact and says the Lion shugenja are working to prove how. Midori is Phoenix and stands beside Setsuna daily. A second war being prepared under this one.
PLAN Take Monban's detour seriously. He is right that nobody has to accept their authority with the envoy dead and the writ burnt. The Rich Frog stop for a real Imperial commission — the governor has the standing to grant one — is the answer to that, not a sop to keep him quiet.
OPEN Tadayoshi believes he owes his life. He was her yojimbo, he slept, and she died beside him.
OPEN What is Gaheris and Monban's private conversation for? Monban asked the Khan for a private word on the march and did not say why. He spent the whole negotiation gagged, watching, and he reads Cadence — so he saw exactly how the envoy was steered. Then he moved a piece on the board and winked.
PLAN What are the Unicorn mustering against? An entire Great Clan has frozen its internal politics for an enemy from outside and nobody has named it. Ask Gaheris directly on the march, while he is pleased with himself.
OPEN What emptied the castle? Full stores, whole defences, nobody home, nothing sabotaged. Misato called it a trap three times and it is being handed back to the Moto unexplained.
OPEN Rules: can a duelist land a second finishing blow? The table read “the first time their opponent becomes compromised or unmasks during a duel” and split on whether unmasking after being compromised opens a second one. The GM deferred to check at session 41. Still unresolved.
TABLE Ward Bond spent at session 41: 3 XP, one-time. Granted Miya Misato one rank each in Government and Martial Arts (Unarmed) — the two skill groups Setsuna holds at three or more.
NOTE The name-order trick is spent. Presupposing the treaty by arguing its billing worked once. Do not expect it to work on either general again.

The long game

The document Setsuna has been drafting in her head since the beginning, and what it is really for. Player intent, not established fact — none of this has been proposed to anyone at the table.

PLAN The Toshi Ranbo treaty. Crane formally cede a city they no longer hold in practice — generous-looking, cheap. The Lion take the city, a stipend, and the duty of securing the Drowned Merchant River: honoured in martial terms, employed in a defined role. Crane and Unicorn split the uncapped trade upside on the river the Lion are now obliged to police.
NOTE It gives every clan what they say they value and locks the Lion into a permanent economic ceiling. Territory and martial purpose for the Lion, economic position for the Crane, trade access for the Unicorn. A polite knife. A Crane built it — a Crane trained by a Scorpion.
PLAN Doji Emika closes it. A Doji–Matsu marriage at the end, folding the personal restoration into the political settlement. This is why Setsuna declined Misato's request — Emika is the one chip she will not spend on the immediate crisis.
NOTE The treaty is a peace offering to Matsu Tomoe. Her grandmother: a Matsu who married into the Doji and never stopped being a Lion, furious about Toshi Ranbo lost and furious about the granddaughter she got — one who fears death, refused the sword, and built a life out of courtesy and procedure. The treaty answers both of her needs while refusing her surface demands. I will return your city. I will send Emika back to your family. You will have to accept the granddaughter you got.
NOTE The cabinet, and it is leaking. Monban hosts the spirit and wants to go west to release it. Setsuna will not let him, and has filed — without saying so to anyone, least of all to him — that she holds a catastrophic-violence option she could authorise. She is negotiating in good faith and keeping the weapon at the same time without letting either touch the other. Onahime showing herself this session is the deadline moving.
NOTE Gaheris is closer to it than he knows. He suspects the Crane of engineering this war. He is wrong about this war and right about the shape: a Crane is quietly rearranging the north to Crane–Unicorn benefit at Lion expense, and that Crane was sitting in his tent saying nothing.

Documents

Longer pieces kept whole, close to the words they were given in at the table. They are not chronicle entries and they are not gazetteer — they sit here because they are narration addressed to the player rather than an account of the world.

TABLE Set-down accounts — narration from the table as the Archivist set it down. Currently one piece, from session 35.
NOTE The Archivist called that piece a miscarriage. It was an abortion. Setsuna asked Shiba Midori for the Terminating Tea, had the ingredients gathered, and drank it — and the entry's own first clause is your efforts were successful. Title and wording corrected; the rest of the narration is as it was given.

The player is not the Game Master for this campaign. There is no spoiler gate on this page, and nothing behind it that Setsuna does not have some claim to know.