The Deer

[Vutall]

Shika Daimyo: Shika Renji (m)
-No Picture

Mon: A deer’s head with a black antler and a white antler.

The Deer
Treading softly, without grand accolades or the pride that accompanies them, the Deer Clan serves the Empire as a guardian of balance. Through divine vision, the members of the Deer Clan uncover threads of futures yet to come, and through artful stealth, they weave or sever these threads to make sure the delicate tapestry of the Empire is maintained. The clan’s Matchmakers are shugenja blessed with unique insights into relationships. These help them to tie alliances between the Great Clans and Imperial families—or to unwind them, should any faction grow too powerful and risk upsetting the balance. The clan’s speardancers are fleeting protectors, sent to guard individuals whose fates the clan deems important, yet they are rarely noticed by their charges. To an outsider, it might appear that they move at random, arriving to safeguard one life or end another before bounding silently into the shadows—but they move according to a grand pattern traced across all human hearts.

However, the Deer do not pursue balance in any sense of the word that implies passivity. To them, peace is not harmony, pacifism, or even unity. In a flawed world, the closest state to peace is a stalemate between opposing forces: balance. Duality governs the stability of the Empire and stability in every individual. Accepting the flawed world within themselves, the Deer believe that even violence has a role to play in maintaining balance. Their roles as mediators and guardians allow them to acquire the knowledge they then wield. For the sake of balance, the weak must rise, and the strong must fall. Society is a scale that the Deer constantly seek to bring into equilibrium. The weight of each person is magnified upon the societal scale by their connections. Discovering said links and then calculating the consequences of their preservation or removal is the primary mission of the Deer.

Rokugani Proverb:
“A deer bows lowest before it charges."

Rumors:
The daimyō of the Deer Clan is an elegant man named Shika Renji, also known as the White Deer. Skilled in the art of Musubu, Renji already knows of the person he is destined to fall in love with. Whoever this person is, Renji will recognize them when he first sees them. If they are not from the Deer Clan, that will make the young daimyō’s job all the more complicated.

Beneath Kyūden Shika are caves containing a vast library of coded information about nearly every major noble in Rokugan dating back to the sixth century.

The Speardancers are not just yōjimbō and woodland guides, but also elite assassins, trained in the shinobi arts



Unity and Division
While commoners and samurai of lesser station more often marry for love, sentiment rarely plays a part in the selection of a match for the samurai of the Great Clans, for marriages are political opportunities far too valuable to pass up. The clans view such unions as contracts between allies, rather than as bonds between lovers. A samurai is expected to put their own desires after their responsibilities to family, clan, and Empire.

Even so, sometimes the human heart proves heavier than a samurai’s duty. The Deer Clan draws its origin to one such rare marriage. In the fifth century, in defiance of the paths set before them by their families and clans, the healer Asahina Takuya and the warrior Daidoji Kokoro married beneath an autumn cherry tree—an auspicious symbol of their unlikely bond, its petals blooming even as the skies brimmed with an early snow. As the ceremony concluded, a vision appeared to the pair: an unwinding cord, held together by the last thread. Kokoro and Takuya came to interpret it as a sign that they were bound by destiny, but they did not know the weight that would someday rest upon the strength of their bond. Knowing they could not return to their old lives, the couple became rōnin, journeying from town to town and plying their skills to get by and evading those sent by their families to return them to their duty.

But the vision did not fade for Takuya and Kokoro, and they began to see the cord as it wove through the hearts of all people they passed. Some bonds brought joy, others brought misery, and still others brought calamity. The pair found that a village’s fortunes might be preserved through their intervention—or collapse through their inability to prevent certain matches and the alliances that resulted. And inexorably, the threads of the vision they had seen pulled the pair toward the Aokami forest.

Trials of Love
Even as they sought to understand this strange gift they now held, Kokoro and Takuya struggled. Life was hard for rōnin seeking work in small towns far from civilization, and they were hounded by pursuers seeking the reward placed upon them by their families. Kokoro’s skills as a warrior were pushed to their limit, and she grew skilled in the arts of stealth to avoid notice and win against overwhelming odds. And as he saw her shed her blood for their love time and again, Takuya refined his methods of healing, learning to use the thread binding them to align his ki to her own and bear some portion of her suffering.

After a particularly harrowing battle that erupted with their pursuers and endangered the lives of everyone in the inn where they had stayed, the pair made a hard choice: they would leave civilization entirely, following the threads into the depths of the Aokami forest.

The Fortune of Woven Fate
In the lore of the Deer Clan, it is said that amid the dappled light and shadow of the Aokami forest, Kokoro and Takuya discovered another autumn cherry tree. There Musubi, the Fortune of bonds whose countless spinning cords weave fate itself, revealed themself to them in full. Kokoro planted her spear, signifying that this would be their new home, and Takuya knelt, pledging his service to the spirit that had guided their love throughout many trials. As the Fortune had preserved the couple, they would preserve the people of the Empire—subtly, and ever in the name of balance. Whether the original pair had the unshakable faith of their mythic echoes or not, an ancient spear does still stand at the sacred tree of the Fortune Musubi in Kyūden Shika, where the clan’s shugenja undergo their training to this day.

According to the traditions of the Deer Clan, all things are connected. Gods unite to weave creation. Love, obsession, fear, and all strong relationships extend like a net from all but the most enlightened people. These connections, both the immediate and the cosmic, form a tapestry that is spiritual, material, and political all at once. Musubi is a Fortune most theologians associate with marriage, contracts, and collaboration, but the shugenja of the Deer Clan see the far greater depth of their influence. In the Deer understanding of the cosmos, Musubi does not direct fate—they serve as the material from which fate is woven. When bonds are particularly strong, like the love between Takuya and Kokoro, the Fortune Musubi has been said to intervene, preventing the bond from severing during a crisis. By studying the art, Takuya and Kokoro’s descendants developed ways to observe, understand, and even use the bonds between people to protect balance within the heart, and thus within the Empire.

Complementary Duality: The Deer Philosophy
The Mortal Realm is a place of contrasts: there are countless things weak and powerful, good and evil, beautiful and terrible. The Celestial Order rests on the existence of contrast: the poor and rich, the blissfully ignorant and the intellectually invested, the spiritual and the physical, the commoner and the noble, and of course, the sun and the moon—Amaterasu and Onnotangu, whose eternal dance set in motion the Rokugan that exists today. To reject one aspect of the world is to reject its opposite force, or so the Deer believe. All is bound together. Thus, true believers among the Deer Clan do not dream of a world without evil, for that would be to dream also of a world without good. To give up suffering would be to give up joy, to banish shadows would be to snuff out all light.

The Deer Clan find little appeal in what they see as the stagnant harmony of the quest for Enlightenment that absorbs many mystics. Bonds are not something to be shed, in their eyes, but embraced and understood. Rivals inspire each other through their antagonism, and individuals are motivated to better themselves. However, if a rivalry becomes one-sided—if one rival overpowers the other, or an individual is stricken with despair, the beneficial relationship ceases to function. Balance is the key. In society and within themselves, the Deer’s purpose is to maintain balance. The Great Clans and Minor Clans of Rokugan complement each other in their expressions of Bushidō. When equal in power, they bicker, but rarely go to war. The clans may prepare for the possibility of conflict, but in doing so, they create new weapons and techniques that benefit the Empire as a whole. Through subtle manipulation, the Deer seek to preserve power balances within the clans.

When the Deer empower the weak, they do so in part to promote an image of themselves as charitable forces for good. By fostering trust, the Deer collect information to aid their less scrupulous machinations. When they interject themselves into disputes between the Great Clans, the Deer commonly find themselves foiling skulduggery and assassination attempts by covert agents or deniable mercenaries. The challenges they face often put the considerable skills of their warriors to the test.

Weakening the strong is an even riskier enterprise. The Deer prefer not to incriminate themselves; thus, they rarely use blackmail or assassins, both of which are traceable. Their preferred method of removing threats is by pitting them against each other. Only when it is absolutely necessary to remove a particular individual from the tapestry of fate, do the Deer strike directly. In this way, the hands of the Deer remain clean in their own eyes and in those of the world, despite the multitude of deaths they have caused.

Growth
Takuya and Kokoro made their home in the wilds of Aokami Forest, an unspoiled habitat set aside for wild game and sport hunting. In gypsum caves, behind curtains of emerald ferns, the couple planned their future.

Quietly, they took others into their fold—rōnin, friends they had made in their travels, and refugees fleeing chaos in the wider world. Takuya taught the Musubu technique, while Kokoro trained warriors to protect the fledgling group. Kokoro was already a master of sōjutsu, but beyond her skill with traditional spear-forms, years on the run taught her to be cunning and cautious. Training in the wilds taught her to mirror the balance of the natural world around her. As she observed the deer, she created an acrobatic new style of combat with a unique weapon. The tsuno-yari is a crescent-bladed spear with two hooks upon its outer curve, resembling antlers. Its design makes it ideal for controlling the flow of battle, allowing its wielder to easily pin opponents and ensnare swords. It also serves as a tool for vaulting, climbing, and spinning kicks. The grace of Kokoro’s students eventually earned them the name Speardancers.

Protected by the Speardancers, the mystics trained by Takuya in the art of Musubu ventured out into the Empire. Whispers grew of a mysterious band of mediators and their protectors selflessly aiding those in need. They felled assassins, extinguished disputes, and possessed the uncanny ability to know a person’s soul. These shugenja found their niche in the role of traveling Matchmakers, facilitating not just marriages, but adoptions, business partnerships, and minor political alliances. Interest rapidly grew in these representatives of the mysterious kami of union, and soon they caught the eye of the Emperor.

Becoming a Minor Clan
In the year 618, as the Imperial heir prepared to ascend the Throne, court astrologers foresaw a catastrophe but could not pinpoint its source. Fearing the worst for the new Emperor’s coming reign, they sought auguries across the Empire, from pronouncements by the Dragon Clan’s mountaintop mystics, to the auspices of the Isawa. The sitting Emperor was forced to consider what should be unthinkable: abandoning the heir and choosing a different successor.

When a matchmaker claiming to be skilled in an unknown art arrived at the Imperial Court, they were met with much consternation. But this mystic offered an interpretation none had considered: perhaps the coming disaster lay within some matter of the heart. So the story goes that the Emperor was intrigued, and summoned the matchmaker. The matchmaker asked to speak with the heir directly, and to the surprise of the court, was granted an audience. The two conversed for several hours, and as they left, the matchmaker implored the heir to make a pilgrimage to see the sunrise at the Castle of the Centipede. Intrigued by this odd suggestion, the heir undertook the journey—though it was an uneventful one, aside from a few new friends made along the road. Yet the malign portents lifted. Three years later, the new Emperor took the Throne and the newly formed Deer Clan was granted formal ownership of the Aokami Forest under the leadership of the matchmaker, the first to carry the family name Shika. No great calamity unfolded in the following years. Some claim the Deer Clan did nothing—perhaps, they say, there was never any disaster looming over the Empire in the first place. But the Deer know better. That the friends the heir made along the road became pillars who supported them through the hardest days on the Chrysanthemum Throne is a fact that is easily overlooked. If the Deer Clan’s influence is invisible to all others, the clan’s elders say, it is merely a testament to their success.

The Life of the Deer
Aokami Forest is a place of contrasts. At first glance, it seems a wild place, barely touched by human influence. However, on its perimeter in the four cardinal directions, massive gates decorated with carved gypsum admit visitors to white-tiled paths that lead into the heart of Deer territory. As visitors travel these roads, the clan’s namesake animals fearlessly bound through the trees in large herds, unafraid of predators that would usually haunt such a wood. And upon close inspection, many trees in Aokami Forest are modified to serve a purpose. Ropes, balancing pegs, and climbing walls make the wood an immense training ground. Speardancers, who train and live in the forest, surveil their lands from elevated platforms that criss-cross the trees. Their laughter often peals down from the treetops, for it is only in Aokami Forest, among their kin, that Speardancers are allowed relax and indulge their curiosity.

A small number of access roads merge onto the four white paths, leading from open glades populated by farmers or from the Deer’s lucrative gypsum mines outside the forest. While gypsum is hardly as valuable as many of the more famous precious stones, the Shika family embraces it for its unique and somewhat ostentatious appearance.

Finally, the white paths converge onto Kyūden Shika, a palace of immeasurable beauty covered in delicate gypsum carvings. The sunlight illuminates the pale stone as the palace towers above the dark trees in a cascade of ornamental tiers. The palace and the surrounding estates are striking human-made marvels, starkly contrasting with the much subtler human alterations made to the surrounding forest. Hospitality is the residents’ primary focus. Shugenja practicing Musubu sit beside tranquil pools and master controlling their breathing and heart rates. Songs ring out through the latticed rice-paper windows as twinkling chimes dance along the cornices. The entire place feels happy and safe—a carefully crafted illusion, balanced atop a knife’s edge.

Balance within Oneself
Traditional virtues are admired by nearly everyone in Rokugan, and things seen as flaws are rarely appreciated. The Deer, however, not only seek to accept imperfections, but believe that weaknesses are a vital part of human nature. Vulnerabilities balanced by strengths create a healthy person with realistic expectations, so only that which is less perfect can be more than perfect.

Whenever the Deer demand extreme behavior from their kin, they provide an opportunity to restore balance within. Speardancers, who are expected to betray as little information as possible to the outsiders they are assigned to protect, are given the freedom to speak their minds openly within Deer lands. Likewise, Deer shugenja, who keep an emotional distance from the people they manipulate, are encouraged to form close bonds with their clanmates. Samurai of the Deer Clan almost never marry for political gain. Just like their founders, they are united by the bonds of love.

Their attitude toward imperfection has gained the Deer a reputation for being quaint and even lax. They are elusive if a person attempts to get to know them, and they often display quirks that would be unacceptable within more rigid clans. However, the wise know not to dismiss them for their oddness, as it does not undermine the insight they bring. Other clans have learned that patience is required to reap the Deer’s advice. A Shika Matchmaker may be obnoxiously verbose, timid, dismissive, or otherwise harmlessly difficult, but receiving their counsel is commonly considered worth it—and often, these flaws are affectations anyway, false vulnerabilities shown to diffuse suspicion. The deer walks gently in the forest, but its antlers are always much sharper than expected.

Balance within the Herd
The Deer Clan is made of two distinct but equal parts: the Shika Speardancers, who walk in the light as yōjimbō and in shadow as shinobi, and the Shika Matchmakers, specialized priests who also act as the clan’s courtiers. Both groups share a constant flow of information, and they leverage the politically neutral stance of the Deer to gain as much information about other clans as possible.

The Antlers
The Speardancers began as the clan’s protectors, but as the Deer’s mission grew in scope, so did the Speardancers’ responsibilities. They became guardians of people beneficial for society, and ushers of death for those too powerful. In the pursuit of gathering information, the Speardancers offer their services as swift, discreet messengers. Love letters, confessions of guilt, and the like are handed off to the Deer for delivery, and through these missives, they acquire a great deal of information for the clan. Many Speardancers are trained in coded languages and keep thorough journals of what appears to outsiders to be obtuse poetry or mere observations on local wildlife, but can be read by other members of the clan. Additionally, because other clans often request them as messengers thanks to their clan’s famous neutrality, their presence can be explained in almost any location. Whatever their real mission, a Speardancer can claim to be delivering a letter, the details of which obviously cannot be discussed for the sake of the recipient’s honor.

To Speardancers, the woods are like a second home. They are most comfortable amid their own forest or their kin, where they can be their fully authentic selves. As Speardancers’ training requires them to master survivalist skills in the Aokami Forest, these warriors do not struggle to find paths or scavenge food when away from civilization. Rather, it is unfamiliar social environments with other clans that most Speardancers find least comfortable. While they are trained enough in social niceties to function as yōjimbō, most Speardancers prefer the whisper of leaves and the chirping of birds to the breezy words of courtiers.

The Head
The words of a Shika Matchmaker are invaluable. These shugenja train not just in the mystical arts, but also in eloquence, and are always fashionably dressed. While the Speardancers dash through the shadows, the clan’s shugenja publicly patronize the arts. Matchmakers are meant to be both heard and seen. The more events they attend, the more people they meet, gossip they hear, and Musubu readings they perform. This increases their stockpile of information. Yet they must tread carefully, for one misplaced word could cost their life or, even worse, jeopardize the Deer Clan’s trusted reputation. Manipulations are therefore executed with precision. Matchmakers constantly plan ahead, calculating the effect of their words. Members of the Deer Clan aspiring to become shugenja are not just taught the Musubu technique, but also rigorously trained and tested with logic puzzles and memorization tests. Only the most skilled are allowed to venture into the Empire.

The Shika Matchmakers are generally vague about what information their meditations reveal. Maintaining this mystery gives them flexibility with their honesty. Most of the threads they can observe lead to concrete, present-day items and emotions. This allows a Deer shugenja to find the commonalities and differences that mold relationships, then select which facts will best help two people come together.

Balance within Society
Balance benefits everyone, except the individuals who must be destroyed to maintain it. Each person is a weight upon the societal scale. Therefore, removing a life can have dire implications. The Deer are never careless, especially with regard to killing. They prefer to lead people into destroying themselves or to incite their target’s enemies to take deadly action.

Still, even though countering assassins is one of the Deer’s primary areas of expertise, and the overt role of many Speardancers, assassination is also a tool in their arsenal. The Speardancers employ shinobi tactics while playing the role of guardians. However, Speardancers are taught that they should protect as many lives as they end. Taking life with purpose can preserve balance, but to kill without meaning is to descend into indiscriminate slaughter. When possible, the elders of the clan rotate Speardancers between tasks, to prevent any one warrior from having to bear too many unsavory missions—or from forgetting how to accomplish one. Many targets of assassins have found comfort in the presence of the stoic Speardancers sent to protect them, unaware of the lives the same Speardancers have taken in the shadows.

As for the shugenja, the methods of the Deer require them to become intimately familiar with other people’s lives, but if that knowledge led to feelings of attachment—love in particular—it would compromise their purpose. Matchmakers must therefore balance extreme closeness with emotional distance. Seduction is a potent weapon of the Scorpion Clan, but the agents of the Deer Clan rarely use it. Even false romantic attachments can become real if one is not vigilant. The Shika Matchmakers accept that the human heart is unpredictable. If love blossoms between a Shika Matchmaker and someone outside of the clan, the Matchmaker is often reassigned to another location.

Tipping the Scales
Ominous clouds are gathering over Rokugan. War, tsunami, and increased activity within the Shadowlands have plunged the Empire into imbalance. The Crane Clan in particular has suffered greatly in recent years. Historically, the Deer Clan usually intervenes on a smaller political scale. They commonly undertake actions such as aiding one potential heir ascendant over another to shift a clan’s future leaders toward peacemakers, or undermining a particular daimyō whose tyrannical tax policies will eventually lead to an uprising. However, they do intervene in wider-scale conflicts from time to time, and in this age of mounting tension, they find aiding—and subverting—the Great Clans more necessary than ever.

The Crane:
By and large, samurai of the Crane Clan are too wise in the ways of court to be fooled by the Deer Clan’s placid façade, and they accept their help only out of necessity. The recent tsunami devastated Crane farmlands, so they require the Deer’s support in their weakened state. However, the Crane are not content to sit back and trust a clan they suspect may one day betray them in the name of a nebulous concept like “balance.” They want the Deer to take their orders. In the eyes of the Crane, the Deer are a valuable asset against the Lion Clan’s overt aggression. Further, some Crane still see the Deer as a rebellious offshoot that should return to the clan from which it sprung, or at least offer it a certain degree of deference. Of course, this would destroy the Deer’s neutral standing. The young daimyō of the Deer, Shika Renji, must now decide what is more important: preserving the neutrality of the Deer, or stabilizing the power balance of the Great Clans.

The Scorpion
As the Scorpion Clan’s strength has grown in recent years, it has become the Deer Clan’s primary target. Unfortunately, the Scorpion Clan is perhaps the most challenging foe for the Deer Clan. With the resources of an ascendant Great Clan, and no concern about being seen as underhanded, the Scorpion seem to have nearly every advantage over the Deer. However, Shika Renji believes that the Scorpion Clan may intentionally withdraw its expanding influence if the Deer Clan can simply keep things from tipping over the precipice, for strength has always been the weakness of Bayushi’s descendants, just as weakness has been their strength.

The Lion
Contrary to nature, Lion Clan samurai are often the Deer’s easiest prey. Appearing harmless is one of the main tactics of the Deer, and straightforward Lion Clan samurai tend to believe their act completely. Due to the Lion’s aggression against their neighbors, the Deer plot to weaken the Great Clan’s internal alliances, specifically between the Matsu and Akodo families. However, the Ikoma family has proven troublesome time and again, and some among the Deer Clan’s leadership suspect these bards and scholars are hiding a more sinister nature.

The Crab
The Realm of Mortals is a place of diversity, where the powers of the spiritual realms act against one another to maintain balance. However, the Festering Pit of Fu Leng is a vast imbalance, tipping the scales enormously toward the influence of Jigoku as the power of the fallen Kami corrupts the earth, the sea, and even the sky. The Crab, therefore, are the only clan the Deer consistently support, though they generally do so surreptitiously, to avoid revealing their true military strength. The Deer clear bandit camps ahead of Yasuki supply transports, harry scouting forces that look hungrily at unguarded Crab towns, and sometimes even eliminate horrors that make their way into Rokugan.

The Unicorn
The return of the Unicorn disrupted all of the Deer’s societal calculations at the time. However, this new power has now been part of the equation for long enough that Shika Renji sees the imbalance the Unicorn have brought to Rokugan as an opportunity to even other scales. Matchmakers busily build friendships between the Unicorn and Crane, hoping that the economic power that trade along the Sand Road represents will help to restore dwindling Crane coffers.

The Dragon
Historically, the Deer dealt very little with the Dragon Clan. Isolated and esoteric, the Dragon seemed not to affect the balance of power at all. However, the Dragon Clan’s recent interest in marriages and adoptions has led the Deer to become increasingly curious what about the most reclusive clan of Rokugan. What secret do they hide, and might it be useful in leveraging them against their more active neighbors?

The Phoenix
The Phoenix Clan and the Deer Clan have little love for one another, perhaps because they are too similar in some ways and too divergent in others. Both seek balance, but each defines balance in a very different way. The Deer Clan’s reverence for a somewhat obscure fortune whose signs they follow without overt explanation worries the theologians of the Phoenix enough—but the fact that they refuse to open their archives to examination is more concerning still. The Deer, for their part, believe the Phoenix’s methods of preserving the balance of the world have fallen into decline, as evidenced by the disastrous imbalance of the elements and the rise of religious groups such as the Perfect Land Sect. Some among the Deer Clan have even been so bold as to wonder if now is the time for Rokugan’s spiritual leaders to “step aside” so that the Deer can more openly pursue its goal of returning balance to Rokugan.

[Vutall]

Musubu, the Union
Musubu is an intimate process of shared meditation in which a Deer shugenja attunes themself to their meditation partner to learn about their state of mind and spirit. The shugenja must match the heartbeat and breathing rate of the person they are reading, so both participants must remain calm. When Musubu is achieved, the shugenja observes ethereal threads reaching out from their companion’s body. The anchor points of these threads are the ten ki meridians that flow through the body and correspond to the Five Elements.


Air Meridian Right: Extends from right lung to scholarly/intellectual pursuits.
Air Meridian Left: Extends from left lung to things dumbfounding and frustrating.

Earth Meridian Right: Extends from right foot to practical projects and goals.
Earth Meridian Left: Extends from left foot to frivolous interests and distractions.

Fire Meridian Right: Extends from right kidney to passions and desires.
Fire Meridian Left: Extends from left kidney to fears and doubts.

Void Meridian Right: Extends from head to astrological connections in ascension.
Void Meridian Left: Extends from head to astrological connections in retrograde.

Water Meridian Right: Extends from right hand to friends and loved ones.
Water Meridian Left: Extends from left hand to enemies and rivals.

A Mere Suggestion
Shaping expectations is a powerful tool of manipulation. Suggesting that one has an admirer can put a positive spin on interactions between a couple. Alternatively, to claim someone harbors ill will can taint potential relationships. Heartbreak, overconfidence, insult, and hatred are potential results of simple suggestions. Matchmakers’ insight into the thoughts and desires of others gives them a substantial advantage as shugenja, allowing them to craft invocations that use illusion to play upon their targets’ strengths and weaknesses or that help the shugenja quickly identify items of import to a person that might be used to track them. Additionally, the trust that is often placed in Shika Matchmakers gives them an extra advantage when seeking to drive someone toward a particular outcome or action.