alexmegami | The Game of Twenty Questions, L5R Edition (Q1-Q10) (Reply)

A brief primer for those of you not familiar with L5R: it's a game that's kind of like, "throw Heian-era Japanese and Mongolian history, religion, and some Creeping Darkness into a blender and make a game out of it". PCs are samurai caste (either bushi, courtiers, or shugenja, with a few other rare options like monks) and are trying to survive in the cutthroat political environment of Rokugan, while the Shadowlands' minions continually batter their southern border and try and kill everything.

You have a Clan, under which you are of a specific family's lineage (your "race"), and then your splat is bushi/courtier/shugenja (physical/social/mental, more or less).

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So!
Kaiu Satoru, bushi

1. What Clan does your character belong to?
Crab, the Clan devoted to protecting the Kaiu Wall (think The Wall from GoT, except in the south). Traditionally known to be the most crass and ill-tempered of the Clans, because when you're constantly fending off shadow creatures, the injunctions against talking about upsetting things at court means YOU PEOPLE CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!!

2. What family does your character belong to?
The Kaiu family (see also the Kaiu Wall). They're well-known for being engineers and architects, and much more soft-spoken (and intelligent) than the average Crab.

3. Is your character a bushi, a shugenja, or a courtier?
He is a bushi, a member of the Himura Bushi school (which focuses on stealth, hunting, and quick strikes when dealing with the Shadowlands).

4. How would others describe your character's appearance?
Satoru is a little older than 30 (about halfway through his active life as a bushi - most are retired by 40-45), but appears older and slightly world-worn. He keeps his hair cropped short and in a very tight topknot to avoid wayward strands catching in branches; he has the refined physique of a hunter, but isn't especially large. Those who don't know he is a Crab are surprised to learn it, as he tends to be quiet and thoughtful with an air of sadness about him.

5. What is your character's primary motivation?
Aside from dutifully serving his lord and the Emperor...
Satoru is haunted by the ghost of his dead wife, Arashi, who is intensely worried about his honor, and also has her own particular demands. He wants to fulfill her wishes, but at the same time is struggling to decide whether to help her on (she is for some reason not in the cycle of rebirth) and his own selfish desire to keep her here with him, even as a ghost.

6. Who is the person your character trusts most in the world?
Aside from his dead wife, probably his uncle, who arranged the marriage in the first place, and his apprentice.

7. What is your character's greatest strength? Greatest weakness?
His greatest strength is his inventive mind; Satoru can spend a lot of time coming up with new and inventive weapons and inventions. His greatest weakness, of course, is his dead wife.

8. What does your character think of Bushido?
He generally tries to uphold it entirely, out of deference to his wife; some tenets he holds more strongly than others (Compassion, Duty, and Honor are more important; Courage and Sincerity less so, and Courtesy, Honesty, and Sincerity are just kind of middle of the road in importance).

9. What is your character's opinion of his Clan?
One catches more flies with honey; on the other hand, they have never been especially honored for the grueling, gruesome work that they do, and the other Clans just ignore it.

10. Is your character married?
He was rather blissfully married to a Crane bushi, but his wife tragically died in the war against the Shadowlands, and he is still in mourning (and, of course, haunted). However, some day his family will move forward on remarrying him... which his wife is vehemently opposed to.

The second set of questions ~~tomorrow~~ later today!