The New Winds

Coming from the inn, Yotso visits the temple of Amaterasu once more, greeting Lady Sun with her appearance in the sky. He offers prayers and a few coins for the temple before seeking out a priest for his purification ceremony this day.

It goes much the same as it did the day before, and after the ceremony he finds a quiet place to sit within the temple as the light of day further brightens with each passing moment. It was a pleasant way to spend one's morning.

As the morning light grew brighter, a young Lion samurai approached one of the monks and exchanged a few small coins to get the monk to hang a prayer streamer from a branch of an elderly white oak tree in the temple courtyard. The many other fluttering prayer streamers already dangling from the old oak tree showed that it had often been used for exactly this purpose.

During his stroll, he came across the Matsu and greeted him. "It's been some time Matsu-san. I hope that you are well," he says.

They hadn't really interacted much outside of attending some of the lessons together in Hirosaka, but Yotsuo's memory was pretty keen. And it wasn't difficult to recognize a Kuni you've seen before with their distinctive face paint.

Matsu Qiang bowed in response to Yotsou's greeting. The young Lion had grown quite a bit since the time they had studied at Hirosaka, becoming both taller and broader in frame.

"Kuni-san," he acknowledged. "It has been awhile. I'm glad to see that the Crab have seen fit to send you here. It should be an interesting tournament."

"I see it more as another learning opportunity. Regardless of how things turn out, I will at least be able to observe the skills of talented students becoming samurai," he says with a nod. "It is also nice to have the opportunity to see other places in the empire."

"Tsuma is not so far from home for me," Qiang admitted. "My home is only two provinces over to the west, in fact. But I agree, this should be an excellent opportunity to test our skills against the students from other clans."

"I know the first few events are to test us all, but I think the later ones are divided based on our training?" he asked. "Are the shugenja tests very different than the ones for fighters? I don't know very much about them."

"I wouldn't specifically know. I'm actually trained as a Warden. We follow monk traditions and don't speak with the kami. At Hirosaka, they provided special tools and prayers to allow for some of us monks to train in a way to allow us to become more in touch with the elements, which happened alongside the shugenja. I have no idea, as of yet, what they will be doing here as far as splitting the monks up for final events. We definitely cannot perform taryu-jiai though so we won't be competing against them."

"Ahh, my apologies, I misunderstood," Qiang said, looking abashed. "I must admit I am not too familiar with monastic orders. In Lion lands, wardens have the duty to patrol the roads and keep them safe. I gather Crab wardens must be something else entirely...?"

"Indeed. We look after the spiritual health of those that have faced off against evil, and we hunt down those that perpetrate it by their actions. Not unlike the Phoenix Inquisitors, though they are not strictly a monastic traditions. Their members are mostly bushi and shugenja trained to hunt evil," he explains. "But for us Crab, because of our duty, almost the entirety of the the Kuni family fulfills that role to a certain extent. Our Purifiers are shugenja that are trained to deal with such and us Wardens are the monks. When we need bushi to support us, we simply call on any of them that are at hand. All receive at least some basic education on how to deal with evil and the Kuni can inform them of specifics for the mission at hand. It is simply what the Crab do."