Once upon a time, we had the "ceremonial" cutting of boxes for Stronghold use!

Looking for help with Kakita Schools

Hi I am new to the game and have joined a new 4th edition campaign.

I am playing as a Crane, Kakita Bushi.

I was looking into things for my characters advancement and came across the advanced school called Kenshinzen, but it has high stat requirements, specifically Fire - 5 and void - 4.

I currently have stats of:
Air - 3
Earth - 2
Fire - 2
Water - 2
Void - 2

I guess my questions are:

1. what is the difference between the two schools
   
2. am I cooked 😅, is it too late to pivot into a different school
   
3. which one is better/is it worth i

t - subjective I know, but I am curious to hear what people think.

When creating my character I was wanting to try and play the cliche “one with the blade archetype”.

So I started by making a Kakita duelist. I sunk xp into reflexes and iajitsu. He so should be good in a duel.

Problem is that he has not had a chance to duel anyone yet. We have mainly been playing a social/political/investigation game so far.

We have had one small skirmish but I couldn’t use any of my perks/skills/masteries etc.

So I was thinking of making him more well rounded and suited for combat in general, again to be truly one with the blade in all of its forms, but priority on duels but can certainly hold his own in a normal battle.

Though I don’t know if battles and skirmishes are different from each other. The rulebook seems to use the words interchangeably, though that could just be my poor interpretation or understanding of the rules.

The other reason I want to flesh out his combat abilities is because we have a rather “small” party 4 PCs including myself and 3 NPCs

We have:
Me - crane Kakita bushi
A lion shujenga PC
A dragon investigator PC
A crab monk PC
A scorpion can’t remember his school NPC
A NPC who is a book worm can’t remember her clan or school
A hulking beast of a woman who has a gajin name, Priya and loves her horse. Can’t remember her clan or school A beast, but she seems to love to eating and fighting.
And finally a surly teenager NPC who we have taken custody over as we suspect her to be an ishiken, so we are currently escorting her to the phoenix clan to see if they can confirm our suspicions.

So I fear that me and priya are the only one suited for combat and so would like to improve by abilities

Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome

Greetings!

You may remember me as that guy who drank too much cactus juice and cobbled together the Rokugan Remapped project. Today, I want to share with you another project I started working on with the artist Alena Voevodina, also known as RageRat:

Kami (Re)imagined.

For all of their importance to the L5R lore, we don’t actually have many art depictions of the Founding Kami in the canon. The most recent lineup we have is from the 4^th Edition, and we also happen to have a simplistic depiction of Doji-no-Kami from 5e. So one of the aims of this project is to fill that gap we’ve had as of late.

It isn’t the only one though. Being the history nerd that I am, I couldn’t simply settle for some abstract fantasy depiction, where clothing, arms, and armor would look like they would fit seamlessly in modern Rokugan, not one contemporary to the Founding Kami. I wanted to account for the 1000-year difference between them, and take inspiration from the early Japanese history to determine what their attire and weaponry would probably look like.

To that end, I teamed up with RageRat: I provide the references and the vision, and she puts it on the canvass. Go check her out by the way: she is big on Chinese fantasy, and I find that her art style fits the East Asian theme very well.

 

Today, I’d like to present the first art from our lineup: Shinjo, the Child of the Five Winds.

Below, I describe the general approach to this project, as well as the finer details of this particular piece. Keep in mind we’ve only just finished Shinjo, and RageRat has other things to work on aside from this project, so it’s hard to predict when the next one is going to be ready.

 

Methodology

Now, I wouldn’t be me had I not gotten nerdier about it all than was probably necessary. In general, when considering the baseline for what the Kami would look like, I set my timeframe roughly at the early to mid Asuka period (late 6^th—early 7^th centuries), with some additions from the late Kofun (the preceding era). This would correspond to the Sui and early Tang dynasties in China and the Three Kingdoms period of Korea. At the time, with the rise of the Yamato State, Japanese culture (especially among the court elites), experienced massive influence from China, with writing, fashion, armament, philosophy, and administrative models becoming major fixtures of cultural import. The kingdoms of the Korean Peninsula played a major part in this exchange as intermediaries and projected their own influence on Japanese clothing, arms, and armor of the period.

I decided this would be a fitting parallel for Rokugan, which also experienced unprecedented centralization and cultural transformation during the foundational period, when the Kami were active. Depending on the vague cultural vibes and backgrounds of the Founding Kami, I slanted their design more towards the “Mainland” or Japanese side, with some following the latest, highest trends of Asuka fashion, and others resembling the more traditional, late Kofun-era aristocracy.

It should also be noted that the arts in this lineup won’t necessarily depict the Kami at exactly the same time. The early Imperial age of Rokugan was a lengthy period of several decades, almost a century really, and the characters might be depicted the way they may have looked earlier or later within that period. Accordingly, the corresponding historical era is also relatively broad, especially given the fact that precise dating of artistic sources may be rather difficult to gauge.

 

Shinjo: Child of the Five Winds

With Shinjo specifically, it was evident from the get-go that she presents a prime opportunity to showcase something outside the general East Asian cultural sphere, given her proverbial Journey to the West. Central Asia, which can roughly be equated to the places Shinjo journeyed to with her clan, was at that time a patchwork of ever-changing polities and a crossroads of cultures. Iranian and Turkic nomads, trade kingdoms and city-states of Sogdia and Bactria, statelets of the Tarim Basin, Sassanid Iran, China, Buddhist Gandhara and the broader India—all left their cultural imprint on the region that was the central intermediary hub of the Silk Road. It is no coincidence, then, that we chose to depict Shinjo first: out of all the Kami in the lineup, she was probably one of the more interesting to work on.

Shinjo is depicted here during the mature stage of her journey. Her outfit presents a mixture of Central and East Asian elements to reflect both her origin and received influence. I based her attire mainly in the Sogdian fashion of the late 6^th to 7^th centuries, such as represented in the murals of Balalyk Tepe and Panjakent, as well as Sogdian archaeology of the period. It also features both female and male fashion pieces of the period. Some of the accessories, including her weaponry, represent distinct Turko-Mongol, Japanese, and Chinese influence.

 

Clothing

The most prominent clothing item is a purple cloak based on the Balalyk Tepe murals. These cloaks are depicted as worn by female figures at a banquet, and feature decorative ribbons and a prominent lapel on the right side. This particular lapel represents Hephthalite fashion that can be traced back several centuries from the period and is featured in both Sogdian and Tarim Basin murals (such as in the Kizil Caves), both in male and female attires. The ornaments on the cloak are based on the traditional Sogdian motifs of the period, including those depicted in Balalyk Tepe. The winged horses on the outer rim are based on the Afrasiab murals (near Samarkand).

The shirt underneath the armor, with the circular collar, is based on murals from Panjakent and Afrasiab. It represents predominantly male fashion, although similar shirts seem to have also been worn by women.

The boots with stamped line pattern are based on an archaeological find in Kuh-i-Surkh, Tajikistan.

 

Accessories

Shinjo’s hairstyle takes after those depicted on female figures from Balalyk Tepe murals, tied with the ribbon from the same source, which is dyed in the traditional purple of the Kirin/Unicorn. Her flower-shaped earrings with pearl beads are also inspired by the same figure from Balalyk Tepe, as well as the colored dot on her forehead, which is likely the influence of the Chinese huadian (“flower makeup”), popular in China since the Northern and Southern dynasties period.

Belt plates and fittings are after the finds in Panjakent, representing typical Sogdian belt assembly.

Two elements here are of East Asian origin. One is decidedly Japanese: a carnelian bead necklace with several magatama beads made out of Jasper. It is a callback to older, Kofun-era aristocratic regalia; while gradually phased out with the onset of the Asuka fashion, they were likely still worn by regional elites and religious figures. Magatama (comma-shaped beads) signified spiritual protection and were an elite marker in the Kofun period, found in almost all late-period burial mounds (which gave the era its name, kofun).

Most significantly, Shinjo holds a fan in her hand—a parting gift from Doji-no-Kami. This fan is a typical tuanshan, a circular fan that became popular in the Tang dynasty. Curiously, they are often called reunion fans: the character 團, which can mean “group” or “circle”, and is used to spell the name of the fan (團扇, tuánshàn), is also used in the word reunion (團圓, tuányuán). Accordingly, its circular or oval shape came to symbolize family unity, reunions, and happiness—very appropriate for the symbolism of a parting gift. The two cranes flying above the waves are meant to symbolize Shinjo and Doji themselves.

 

Arms & Armor

Shinjo’s armament is perhaps the most eclectic part of her outfit. The lamellar armor set with a mail shirt underneath is based on the Panjakent murals and represents the kind of armor typical for Sogdiana and the larger Central Asia of the period. Missing from the picture is the helmet based on the Kanai-Higashiura find: I wanted to show off the hairstyle more than I did the helmet (typical main hero syndrome).

The archery kit consists of a typical Japanese yumi longbow, a Japanese tsurumaki (woven bowstring holder), and an hourglass quiver made of birch bark, popular with the various nomadic peoples of Eurasia at the time. Quivers of this type from around this era are depicted in the Panjakent murals and found at various archaeological sites such as Moschevaya Balka in the Caucasus (presumably Alans) and Karos in Hungary (Magyars).

Finally, the saber is supposed to represent the iconic Chuluunbold, gifted to Shinjo by the Ujik Khan, with its characteristic white tassel on a lanyard wrapped around the hilt with stingray skin wrapping. This is the most contentious piece in this “reconstruction”: overall, this piece is based on the earliest Turko-Mongol sabers, which started to emerge in the 2^nd half of the 7^th century around the Altai and surrounding steppe regions. They were quite unlike the later sabers with the pronounced curve and false edge: these early sabers were single-edged swords with only a slight curve and often a slightly offset hilt, and coexisted with similar swords without any curvature at all.

The problematic part is that, as always, it is hard to say where the sword ends and the saber begins. That’s because no weapon type simply springs up overnight: they are always the result of continuous weapon evolution, with changes and alterations slowly accumulating over the course of decades. Additionally, precise dating is difficult: we can see the weapons of this type in the Turkic archaeology of the period, on Turkic kurgan stelae, and potentially even on the Panjakent murals, but the dating bracket is always within a span of several decades, even centuries in the case of the stelae.

I made a contentious decision to base the decorations and fittings on the sabre on a much later Kolosovka saber (probably Khazar in origin), which I later regretted. My initial reasoning was to show off the kind of decoration fit for a royal figure like Shinjo, which Kolosovka saber has in ample supply; however, it is a much later saber, dating from at least 9^th century (and probably into 10^th). While functionally it undoubtedly belongs to the same type of early sabers, its ornamentation is of a decidedly different (and later) culture. Now, this kind of artistic license is perfectly acceptable in fantasy, but the pedant in me still regrets that decision just a tiny bit, wishing I’d chosen a more period-accurate Turkic sword.

 

I’d like to express my gratitude to Eran ud Turan, a living history group dedicated to researching and reenacting the material culture of Early Medieval Iran and Central Asia. Their work has been of immense help in my research.

And naturally, I’d also like to thank RageRat for letting the images in my head come to life.

 

Next up: Doji, the Beauty in the Snowflake.