Approved Submission Ketsurui Samurai update

[raz]

Submission RP Example

https://stararmy.com/roleplay-forum/threads/mission-26-pt-iii-haru-kaze.70343/page-2#post-438372

Submission URL

https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=faction:yamatai:ketsurui_samurai

Submission Faction(s)

1. Yamatai (except Elysia)

Submission Terms

1. I agree

Hello. I've written this update summarizing the changes Ketsurui Samurai have underwent in the past few years.

Primarily:

• I took away "classes" as a thing because I know @Wes didn't want them at all. They were replaced with "assignments," which are generally limited to Sentinels (palace guards) and Yojimbo (bodyguards).
  • I still incorporated some of the old classes as "temporary assignments." But severely limited these to:
    • Sensei: the samurai still need instructors to pass down information.
    • Ronin: just another word for a samurai on sabbatical.
    • Teitantei: a Japanese language portmanteau that means "Imperial Detective." It combines several of the old weird classes like Demon Hunter, Policewoman, and Space Monk. Essentially, if the Empress or Yui asks a samurai to do anything except guard a building or a person, they become a Teitantei for the limited duration of that mission.
    • NO SAMURAI IS TRAINED TO SPECIFICALLY SERVE AS THESE "temporary assignments" going forward (technically since YE 41) nor do they become a career/occupation path like they used to be as classes. Except maybe Sensei. It's all explained in the article.
  • This is basically the way I've played my Fukei/Policewoman samurai since the samurai dismantling of YE 39. Her permanent job is to stand guard at the palace, but she might get a weird short assignment doing something special on request. I feel this makes most sense; samurai should always be able to be sent on special missions by the Empress or Yui.
• I edited some of their traditions to make more sense while keeping the spirit of them intact. Mostly word choice.
• I removed the skill section because it seemed like a waste of space.

Some of the text is carried over from the current version. This is an iterative project, after all!

I partly wanted to get rid of the "Journeywoman" rank because I've never liked it with how they wear blue hakama, and it makes less sense with the classes eliminated, but I've left it on the article for now. Let me know if you want it removed @Wes. Same thing with the prayer. It seemed kind of silly to have a "prayer" in a generally agnostic space empire, but I do not like wiping out what was built before me.

Might tweak the pictures and add some more history/RP links. But I think it does the job. I used the SAoY occupation template but butchered it up a bit because it's not actually a SAoY occupation. (Wasn't that the point?)

ADDITIONALLY: I will keep the old samurai article as "faction:yamatai:ketsurui_samurai_old." The red backlinks present point to that already.

Happy to have this done. I've been working on restoring the honor of the samurai IC and this explains some of that RP.

 

[raz]

I partly wanted to get rid of the "Journeywoman" rank because I've never liked it with how they wear blue hakama, and it makes less sense with the classes eliminated, but I've left it on the article for now. Let me know if you want it removed, Wes.

Made a call on this. Kept the Journeywoman rank (first year after trainee) but removed that they wore blue hakama.

This has always bugged me and been confusing as a samurai player, especially since the blue hakama uniform hasn't really appeared in much samurai RP (if at all, couldn't find any and I checked most of it out for this article). Everyone wears red and white now, except trainees (who aren't samurai yet anyway, unlike Journeywomen samurai) because that's the Ketsurui Samurai uniform.

 

[Wes]

I've checked over this article and it looks great. Approved with gratefulness. Thanks, Raz.

 

[raz]

Cool, thanks for taking the moment to check it out. Although the old classes captured my imagination years ago, they haven't really been a thing for a long time and always felt at odds with what you wanted. Glad to have things updated.

I've moved everything over.

 

[Fred]

I've read over this and I think this is very good as well.

As the architect of the Shadow Viper betrayal, the event was contentious, but the reform and what was finalized here was essentially the point of the endeavor.

I meant to achieve a few things:
- Give a narrative opening for the Ketsurui Samurai to be reset from what they had become due to too-many-fingers-going-in-the-same-pie.
- I meant to substanciate something Pumpkin said about the Ketsurui Samurai not being trustworthy during the Sakura plotship. She blamed Ayame's death on them. Even though Wes stopped GMing that storyline, it had left a lasting impression on me.
- I didn't dislike the opportunity of demystifying Ayame's death and forming an antagonist from the event.
- Jo Midori's background included a very brutal instructor her appearance was based on that she nicknamed "The Snake". That's the seed I used to flesh out the founder of the Kusariebi-no-kage budo.

Not defending the choices taken. Just glad the endgoal was ultimately achieved.

The article also alludes to the fate of the YSS Oniyuri. That last time I saw it, it was in the hands of rogue samurai that attacked Nicholas Saiga's crew, until the Yatch Saiga commanded managed to cripple the Oniyuri's FTL drives so Yui could 'deal with the traitors'. Glad to see the ship was recovered - it's a nice ship name.

 

[raz]

I kind of left things fuzzy with citations in the article on purpose. That's why it only really cites the specific post about them trying to assassinate Himiko rather than including mentions of Ayame, and why there is no citation for the Shadow Vipers getting hunted down. The certainty of the Ayame event is still kind of mythologized and unclear IC, and hunting the SVs down never actually happened on-screen (Byakuren kind of alluded to doing it in the future, my samurai was assigned to do some, but it was never a big plot event played out). And I couldn't even really touch that the main SV baddie in your plot called herself "Kitsurugi" because the Kitsurugi Samurai are controlled by Uesu and are friendly to the Ketsurui.

That said, the point of the updated history section was to include the main thrust of what happened: that the Ketsurui Samurai needed to be overhauled because some of them tried to assassinate Himiko. More of a textbook/RPG sourcebook take on the events rather than a single-subject history book exploration.

The article also alludes to the fate of the YSS Oniyuri. That last time I saw it, it was in the hands of rogue samurai. Glad to see the ship was recovered - it's a nice ship name.

The Oniyuri, as an example of fuzzy citations, is only really there because it was the one Star Army ship Wes said they should keep. I assume this is because it was Tsuya's ship in his mind, so that's why it's there more than anything that may have happened off-screen.

Glad you like it in any case.