Castles and Palaces

[Vutall]

Castles and Palaces
Castles and their associated fortifications are among the few structures in Rokugan that make extensive use of stone in their construction, particularly in the foundations and the outer walls. Wood is often used for the upper levels and interior structure, but the exact ratio of stone to wood in different castles depends on the traditions and resources of the clans who built them. The Crab have made by far the most use of stone, relying on it overwhelmingly to construct their massive castles and the monstrous edifice of the Kaiu Wall. The martial Lion also make use of stone whenever possible; more surprisingly, so do the Dragon, though this is mainly because their mountainous lands have far more boulders than trees. The Unicorn, despite being a highly militaristic clan, make relatively little use of stone due to their nomadic traditions and the abundance of forests in their lands. The other clans also use relatively little stone, preferring wood for its greater ease of construction; clans like the Crane and Phoenix, in particular, view castles more as works of art than martial strongholds, favoring wooden designs that emphasize beauty and elegance over martial practicality.

Location And Construction of Castles
Rokugani castles are usually placed to guard important travel and communication routes, such as major roads, mountain passes, and navigable rivers. The ideal location is an elevated position within the mountains or, in the absence of a mountain, atop a hill. If no hill is available, the castle will at least be placed in a wide-open area where attackers cannot use the local terrain for shelter. The Rokugani have specific terms for castles depending on their location: castles built in the mountains are called yamajiro, those atop hills are hirayam-ajiro, and those on open ground (the most common type) are called hirajiro.

Castles are designed individually by clan artisans, who incorporate their own unique style while operating within the strict confines of Rokugani tradition and clan aesthetics. Often, a lord selects an architect by holding a competition. In such contests, each architect is backed by a different patron who seeks advancement and power within the clan by sponsoring the winning design. Merely deciding which architect may present their plans first may take weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations involving all the intricate maneuverings and influence games seen in any other courtly intrigue. The architects and their sponsors also present gifts to the lords, ostensibly as a way of demonstrating their seriousness and dedication to the project, though in practice, these are often bribes

Such practices are not universal, of course: the Crab and the Lion, for example, seldom, if ever, allow such courtly games to intrude on a matter as important as building a new castle. The manner in which architects present their designs to the deciding lord (and whether that presentation is public or private) also varies between clans. Crab architects build accurate scale models of their proposals, Crane offer beautiful drawings of the castle’s exterior, and Scorpion discuss the more delicate aspects of the designs with the lord in a private meeting

The actual work of constructing the castle is per-formed mainly by peasant laborers conscripted from the local population. The architect and other samurai artisans oversee the work and select skilled trades-people—carpenters, stonecutters, and so forth—to assist them. The Crab Clan is known to sometimes put heimin craftspeople directly in charge of some parts of the work, a pragmatic approach that the other clans regard with distaste. At the other extreme, the Scorpion tend to use condemned criminals as laborers on their castles, and rumor claims many of these laborers leave their bones in the castle foundations.

Shiro And Kyūden
Strongholds in Rokugan are designated by the Imperial Cartographers as either shiro—castles—or kyūden—palaces. The distinction is supposedly that a kyūden is capable of hosting the Imperial Winter Court. By a tradition going back to the Empire’s first century, the Emperors never hold Winter Court in Otosan Uchi, but choose one of the Great Clans to host them for the winter. It is a tremendous honor to be the Emperor’s host for the season, but it requires tremendous effort and expense, and it is a “gift” that cannot be refused without a fatal loss of face. (More than one Emperor has used the expense of hosting Winter Court to punish a troublesome lord.) During the Empire’s first two centuries, the Seppun family established the traditional requirement that a kyūden be able to accommodate at least two hundred and fifty guests: thirty for each Great Clan, plus the Emperor’s own considerable entourage

Like many things in Rokugan, however, the distinction between shiro and kyūden is far more theoretical and symbolic than it is real or practical, driven by considerations of face, honor, symbol-ism, and political influence. Whether to assign the title “kyūden” to a castle is a decision of the Emperor, subject to all manner of courtly maneuvering and subtle influences. As a result, in modern Rokugan, many castles that should be considered kyūden—including more than a few that have hosted the Emperor’s Winter Court—are designated merely “shiro” on the Empire’s maps, while other castles that have never seen the Emperor’s face, and indeed are wholly incapable of hosting an Imperial Court, are nonetheless honored with the title of “kyūden.”

Examples of the first sort of castle are numerous. Shiro Mirumoto in the Dragon lands, for example, has hosted the Emperor on at least two occasions, and Pale Oak Castle in the Phoe-nix lands has been favored by the Hantei line for many generations. In the lands of the Unicorn, one may consider the plight of Shiro Ide, a vast and beautiful castle built for the specific purpose of hosting an Imperial Winter Court, yet not honored with the title of kyūden

Examples of the second sort of castle are also plentiful. Kyūden Togashi, also known as the High House of Light, is probably not physically capable of hosting an Imperial Winter Court, being little more than a vast complex of religious shrines, tem-ples, and monastic chambers, not to mention its remote location and the mysterious spiritual forces that ward its approaches. In fact, as far as anyone knows, it has never even been seen by any members of the Hantei line. Kyūden Hida in the Crab lands is theoretically large enough to handle the event, but it would be truly bizarre for the Emperor to inflict the bleak harshness and deadly danger of the Hida lands on an Imperial Winter Court. (The novel Meifumado claims Hantei XXXI did indeed choose to spend his winter with the Hida, but this is not confirmed by any official history.)

Keep (Tenshukaku)
The heart of any castle is the keep, built atop a strong stone foundation. A typical keep is three to six floors in height, not counting the foundation and sublevels within it, although the castles of high-ranking lords can have up to nine floors (only the Imperial Palace in Otosan Uchi has ten floors). The keep is the home of the castle’s daimyō, whose personal residence is always on the highest floor. This has both a practical role and a symbolic one: it makes the lord’s residence the hard-est area for an attacker to reach and demonstrates the lord’s higher station to those below. (Shugenja like to say it also symbolizes the relationship between Tengoku and Ningen-dō—the Celestial Heavens and the realm of mortals.) Lords who fear spies or assassins often install special “nightingale floors” on the upper levels of their castles; these appear to be the normal polished wooden floors used throughout Rokugan, but they are designed in such a way that they “sing”—creak and groan—when someone walks on them.

The lower floors contain guest quarters, audience halls and court chambers, shrines to Fortunes and ancestors, offices for the lord’s officials, libraries, and artist studios. Most castles include at least one shrine dedicated to the land’s spirits. By venerating and placating the kami of the lands on which the castle has been built, its occupants ensure the castle does not fall victim to natural disaster. The sublevel floors, secure within the massive stone foundation, contain storage, archival records, supplies, an armory, and sometimes barracks. Where possible, a keep will have a well in its basement, or a cistern if no well is available, to help occupants withstand a siege. Most castles also have one or more hidden escape tunnels.

Outer Walls (Maru)
Any substantial Rokugani castle comprises not merely a keep but a large complex of different structures. The entire complex is surrounded and defended by the outer walls. A smaller castle, or one oriented more toward politics than war, may have only a single set of these walls. Larger castles and those with a more martial purpose have multiple layers of walls, with narrow passages, isolated courtyards, and periodic gatehouses to make any assault nightmarishly difficult.

he outer walls are usually made entirely of stone unless the surrounding lands are extremely peaceful or the clan is extremely poor. The size and thickness of the walls, and the balance between artistic elements and practical defenses, likewise vary depending on the clan. Walls are traditionally covered with an outer layer of plaster—usually painted white or a near-white and then decorated with the clan colors—in order to present a beautifully smooth and bright surface to the out-side world. The Crab Clan generally forgoes this practice, leaving their walls undecorated. Walls always have at least a few arrow slits (called yasama) for defense, although these may never see use in the castles of peaceful clans

Unlike those found in gaijin castles, Rokugani walls are built with sloped sides. The steepness of the slope varies among castles and clans, but purely vertical walls are unknown. The slope could conceivably make the walls easier for attackers to scale, but if the tight- fitting stones of Rokugani masons offer few handholds, the smooth plaster that covers many walls provides even fewer. Like many aspects of Rokugani design, sloped walls originated in Otosan Uchi and were prob-ably originally intended to make buildings resistant to earthquakes (to which the Imperial City is prone).

Most Rokugani castle walls do not have walkways built into them. Heavy timbers are incorporated into the walls, sticking several feet out on the defensive side, and wooden planks are placed across these timbers as needed to create positions where bushi can stand. These movable and replaceable parapets are known as ishi uchi tana, or “stone-throwing shelves.” Although most castle walls incorporate them, there are two notable exceptions: Crab walls, and the outer walls of the Forbidden City in Otosan Uchi, both of which incorporate broad parapets with walkways.

ToweRs (YaguRa)
Any significant castle complex reinforces its outer walls with towers. The main gate is nearly always flanked by a pair of towers, and additional towers are placed at corners and other key defensive positions. The more martial the clan and the more practical the castle, the more towers are built. Thus, the vast complexes of Kyūden Doji and Kyūden Kakita each boast only a pair of towers at their entrance, whereas relatively small Lion and Crab castles have five or six towers.

Towers serve a variety of functions. Their height allows the garrison to spot approaching foes at a great-er distance and better outrange them with archery. They are defensive strongholds for repelling attacks, and they are rallying points for defenders in the event the castle is breached. The Crab also mount siege weapons on towers, but this is rare elsewhere.

Physically, a tower is essentially a miniature keep. Its lower floors typically house troops and store food, while the upper floors are fighting platforms with arrow slits. The larger the tower, the more sophisticated its facilities and the more troops it can house. The most formidable examples are the twelve great towers of the Kaiu Wall, each of which is a fortification as powerful as any castle in Rokugan. By contrast, towers in the Crane, Scorpion, and Phoenix lands are fairly small and sometimes more ornamental than practical. The Unicorn rarely build towers for the same reason they seldom build other large-scale military fortifications: they prefer fighting on the open plains to standing behind walls.

Barracks
Any sizable castle includes one or more separate bar-racks to house its defensive garrison. Barracks are typically utilitarian, providing little more than a small living space for samurai who are off duty. Only unmarried samurai live in barracks, which also house rōnin employed in the daimyō’s service. Typically, barracks include small shrines to the ancestors and a secondary armory. Most barracks are separate from the main keep, but smaller castles house the barracks within the bottom two floors of the keep proper, while extremely large castles often have secondary barracks within the keep in addition to the main ones elsewhere.

Barracks (and other such smaller buildings within the walls of a castle) are usually built of solid wood with a layer of plaster on the outside, making them stronger and more fire-resistant than conventional Rokugani wood-and-paper construction.

The style of a barracks varies depending on the clan that built it. Dragon barracks provide small chambers for prayer and meditation, with copies of the Tao of Shinsei easily accessible. Lion barracks are notoriously austere, with little more than bedrolls and a mess hall; the Lion believe a samurai should only be in barracks to sleep and to eat. The Crab share this mind-set, but out of necessity rather than choice. Crane, Phoenix, and Scorpion barracks provide their inhabitants with many more amenities, including artwork and literature, as these clans believe bushi should know more than just the way of the sword.

Housing for Ashigaru
The barracks in a castle is intended for the use of samurai soldiers and, in a pinch, rōnin mercenaries. Requiring samurai to share their sleeping chambers with peasant soldiers is an insult that most bushi simply cannot endure (except, perhaps, those among the pragmatic Crab).

The clans do not maintain their ashigaru under arms during peacetime, in the manner of bushi; instead, they recruit and train ashigaru when war erupts. As a result, castles are not designed with built-in housing for ashigaru soldiers. Typically, ashigaru are not even trained on castle grounds, but instead are assembled and trained in the open fields beyond the walls. Likewise, they are housed not in barracks but in tents or other temporary shelters, maintained only as long as is needed for them to remain under arms

Dōjō
The term “dōjō” can be used for any training facility of any school, but usually it refers specifically to those that train bushi, who make up the vast majority of samurai in Rokugan. All castles have at least one dōjō for the training of their soldiers. In a castle of any significant size, the dōjō is not within the keep but instead is a separate structure located elsewhere in the complex, usually adjacent to the parade grounds. Extremely large castles have multiple dōjō to accommodate their substantial garrisons.

Dōjō vary somewhat in design, the most traditional styles being found in the lands of the Lion, Crane, and Dragon. Still, the broad patterns are the same across all clans. A dōjō normally comprises a central building, a training courtyard (separate from the main parade ground) that surrounds it, and one or more student barracks. The student barracks are connected to the central building and are separate from the castle’s bar-racks for adult soldiers. The main building, considered the dōjō proper, has a single large chamber with a polished wooden floor, worn ever smoother by succeeding generations of trainees. The walls are lined with practice weapons, such as the wooden swords called bokken, and with plaques listing the names of past students. Even in the lands of wealthy clans such as the Crane, the dōjō is traditionally kept spare and simple to prevent any distraction from the study of the martial arts. Most dōjō also have a small ancestral shrine dedicated to the school’s founder and its past sensei; students are expected to bow and show reverence to the shrine each time they enter.

A dōjō’s students traditionally live on-site during their training, residing in the connected barracks. These are stark and simple affairs: large, open rooms filled with tatami mats, with only a few shōji screens for privacy.

Moats (Mizuki)
A moat is not a universal feature of Rokugani castle design, though it shows up often enough to be worthy of mention. When a moat is used, it is typically placed either outside the main exterior wall or between two layers of walls as part of the complex’s multilayered defense. Putting a moat directly around the keep itself is rare (and often impractical).

Rokugani moats forgo stagnant and dirty water in favor of “dry moats,” mere empty ditches. However, skilled architects have been known to redirect mountain streams in order to provide a clean and constantly renewing moat, where prayers to the water’s kami or wards in the stone foundation prevent the waters from eroding the rock. Bridges across moats are constructed so that defenders can easily collapse them in the event of an attack.

Moats are most commonly found in the castles of the Crane, Scorpion, and Lion and those of the Imperial families. They are rare to nonexistent among the Uni-corn, Dragon, and Crab, although the River of the Last Stand functions rather like a moat for the Kaiu Wall.

Guest Housing
Smaller castles house guests within the keep, but any large complex has one or more additional buildings that serve as dedicated guest quarters. In a major castle that expects to host significant diplomatic gatherings (or the Imperial Winter Court), there are separate buildings to house each Great Clan’s delegation, allowing them to meet, discuss their plans, and hold private events without being overheard by other guests.

Such guest quarters are essentially large samurai houses with all the amenities that might be expected, although the level of luxury varies widely; the guest quarters at the palaces of the Crane and, of course, at the Imperial Palace are the most beautiful and spacious, while those at Lion and Dragon castles are the most austere. The Crab generally do not bother with dedicated guest houses at all, except in the palace of the Yasuki family

Courtyard
All castles have at least a small courtyard area within their main gate, usually in front of the entrance to the keep proper. This open space—typically hard-packed bare earth, closely cropped grass, or, more rarely, fitted stone—is where arriving guests can leave their mounts, the lord’s soldiers conduct drill, and the lord can address their soldiers before they ride forth to war. In a large castle that has many structures, this open space is correspondingly bigger, often going by the title of “parade ground” due to the large number of soldiers who conduct drills and reviews within it. In a castle like Kyūden Hida or Shiro Sano ken Hayai, this parade ground is large enough to marshal a thousand or more soldiers at once.

Gardens
Gardens are an almost obligatory element of a samu-rai’s home, allowing the samurai to seek harmony and calm by gazing on the (carefully curated) beauty of the natural world. Castles are no exception to this, but the size and importance of gardens varies widely. In smaller or simpler castles, there is often only a single modest garden, most likely on the first floor convenient to the court chamber. Larger castles typically have secondary gardens, often including a garden on an upper balcony that is the exclusive purview of the lord and their family. Of course, gardens require considerable maintenance and upkeep by the castle’s servants, perhaps supplemented by a samurai artisan who specializes in the art of arranging and designing them, so lords must weigh the expense of such things along with all other artistic embellishments to their domain

In a truly grand castle, an entire section of the complex is dedicated to an outdoor walking garden complete with ponds, streams, walkways, bridges, and shrines to the Fortunes or the ancestors. Probably the most famous examples of such gardens are Kyūden Bayushi and Kyūden Doji, but many other great castles boast similar facilities.

Castle Towns (Jokamichi)
Although there are some castles that stand alone, far from any other human settlement, it is far more common for a castle to coexist with an adjacent town. This is because most castles are both the safest location in their lands and the local seat of government, inevitably drawing commoners to settle nearby. Some clans encourage this practice, especially the Crane; by contrast, the Lion actively discourage it, believing that such towns weaken their castles’ defenses

Castle towns are magnets for the merchants, artisans, craftspeople, and other skilled heimin in a lord’s territory. They are also home to many of the servants who work in the castle, although some servants dwell within the castle walls.

Farmers tend to be less common, since castles rely on food shipped in from elsewhere rather than living off their immediate surroundings. The presence of samurai in a castle also draws certain classes of hinin—geisha and actors—to supply entertainment.

Some castle towns eventually grow large enough to become outright cities with thousands of inhabitants. When this happens, the local lord usually builds a defensive wall around the city; this is separate from the defenses of the castle itself, so if an enemy captures the city, the castle may still be able to hold out.

Stables
Any castle has at least a small stable for housing the mounts of the lord, their family, and their senior retainers. In a castle that regularly receives visitors or hosts diplomatic gatherings, the stables are much larger and include extra mounts for the use of the guests; these stables have dedicated staff who are skilled in the care and treatment of horses.

In the Unicorn lands, the stables are among the most important facilities in a castle and are far larger, more elaborate, and more generously staffed (including by samurai who are experts in the training of horses)