Rural Life
Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2020 3:35 pm
The Foundation of a Civilization
No matter how powerful a civilization is politically or militarily, or how sophisticated it is culturally, socially, or economically, without a solid foundation based on a reliable supply of food, clean water, and basic goods, it is doomed to fail. The Emerald Empire is no exception. The Kami knew this, and although each imparted different lessons to their new followers after their fall from the Heavens, all of them emphasized the importance of agriculture and the essential crafts. With advances in agriculture came the fuel needed to build an empire. The population grew explosively, and the Kami lead their followers into large towns, then eventually massive cities supported by the infrastructure surrounding them. It is from this simple and straightforward beginning that the modern Empire was born
The Land
Shortly after the Kami Hantei won the tournament to select the first Emperor, the Kami established the basic laws governing the new Empire. One of the first, and most important, stated that all lands and resources in the Empire belong to the Emperor, who acts as their custodian on behalf of the Celestial Heavens. This has remained a bedrock principle ever since, giving rise to the fundamental structure of governance in Rokugan.
It is obviously unworkable for a single person, even if they are the Emperor, to directly administer all of the lands in the Empire. Accordingly, a system of tenancy was developed by which the Emperor delegates to the clans portions of the Empire, which are administered by the clan champions. The champions, in turn, further subdivide the lands granted to their clan and have each such piece overseen by one of their clan’s family daimyō. These daimyō further divide and delegate lands to samurai lords who are their vassals, and so on. At the very bottom of this cascade of land allocation are the commoners: the farmers who actually turn the soil and plant and harvest the crops. It is important to emphasize that despite this progressive allocation of land to vassals, none of them actually own the land they’ve been granted: ownership of the land belongs exclusively to the Emperor
Obviously, not all lands are of equal value for all types of use. Fertile, arable lands suited for farming are not rare, but they tend to be concentrated in particular parts of the Empire: notably, along large rivers and in coastal areas. Other parts of the Empire are either too mountainous, too wet, too dry, too heavily forested, or too barren to support meaningful agriculture. This doesn’t mean these lands are entirely unproductive, however. For instance, forests provide lumber, and a wide range of plants are used for medicinal, decorative, and other purposes; mountainous and rocky areas often contain valuable mineral deposits and are quarried for stone. Even in these cases, it is the commoners who generally act as the woodcutters, miners, and other workers exploiting these resources
Farms and Villages
At the bottom of the system of land tenancy in Rokugan is the farm, the basic building block of the Empire’s economy. Farms are the most common institution in the Empire, simply because they are necessary for growing the food consumed by all of its citizens, samurai and commoners alike. The food that farms produce is collected and transported to villages, then from villages to towns and from towns to cities. In return, the villages, towns, and cities provide other types of goods and services, such as finished products and even military forces deployed to defend smaller population centers and outlying rural areas from attack. This continuous cycle of activity from farm to village, village to town, town to city, and then back again is the foundation of the Empire’s economy.
Wherever possible, farms cluster closely together within fertile areas to provide for mutual security and defense and to allow farmers and their families to achieve efficiencies by pooling their labor and resources. Long ago in many of these clusters of farms, people began to create items and facilities that helped them increase their farms’ production and more effectively process, store, and transport their yield. These included everything from ropes and rice-drying racks to baskets and barrels to mills and granaries. These groups of farmers and the craftspeople who made the items and buildings they needed for their farms formed the first villages in the Empire.
Some villages continued to grow, becoming towns and cities, but most remained as they were: small, relatively isolated communities consisting almost entirely of commoners. Of course, some farms were located far from these new and growing villages and remained dotted throughout the landscape. This is still the typical character of a rural, agricultural area in the modern Empire: isolated, individual farms scattered through the lands and farms surrounding the villages that are the focus of everyday life for most of the common people of the Empire
Other Resources
Much of Rokugan is not particularly suited to agriculture, and farms are rarely found in such areas. However, these rocky, forested, or otherwise infertile regions still provide valuable resources to the Empire, and as such have villages to support their extraction.
Fishing Villages: The sea provides many staple foodstuffs for the Empire, including fish, shellfish, and seaweed. Those who extract these things from the sea live in villages that are located on rivers or coasts and are other-wise similar to farming villages. These villages’ locations are dictated by proximity to favor-able fishing grounds and the availability of sheltered harbors.
Mines: Iron, copper, tin, silver, and gold are all essential to the Empire, and other mined commodities can be vital for specific purposes, such as the jade used to combat the creatures and effects of the Shadowlands. Deposits of these materials tend to be relatively small and discrete, and mines have limited lifespans before they are exhausted. As a result, mining villages are often small and isolated and have a temporary character to them.
Lumber: Most Rokugani structures are made of wood, with paper interior walls. Lumber is, therefore, an important commodity in the Empire. Like mining villages, communities of lumberjacks tend to be small and relatively isolated. However, the resource they exploit is renewable, so many of these woodcutting villages are old and well established
Communication
The clans and Imperial families use a number of methods (of varying effectiveness) to attempt to maintain at least sporadic communication with the more far-flung parts of the Empire.
Clans dispatch their own couriers, or obtain information from samurai traveling on other business.
The Imperial Heralds of the Miya family travel throughout the Empire to promulgate new Imperial edicts and laws.
The Barefoot Brethren, a sect of the Brotherhood of Shinsei devoted to Koshin, the Fortune of Roads, travel throughout Rokugan at the behest of samurai and commoners alike to gather and deliver news.
Carrier pigeons, originally used by the Crane and subsequently reintroduced by the Unicorn, are a rare communications method used by more pragmatic members of some clans
Grass and Snow
The lands of the Emerald Empire cover a great span, encompassing deep forests, wide plains, and high mountains, and the climate of Rokugan varies just as greatly. Some people even say that each clan is deeply shaped by its surroundings, although many Great Clan samurai resent such claims
Much of Rokugan is temperate. The lands of the Lion and Scorpion enjoy the full range of the sea-sons, from sweltering summers to snowy winters. Scorpion lands on the windward side of the Spine of the World Mountains receive more rain during the warm months and more snow in the winter, while Lion territory enjoys clearer skies overall, with sufficient rainfall to nourish its fertile plains.
The cool northern lands of the Dragon and Phoenix experience mild summers and biting winters. While the coastal lands of the Phoenix are more temperate, the high elevations the Dragons favor are even colder; some Togashi monasteries remain snow covered throughout the year. Despite their northern position, the lands of the Unicorn remain much warmer than those of their neighbors, thanks to the warm winds that blow down from both the western end of the Great Wall of the North mountains and the Spine of the World Mountains
The southern lands of the Crane and those of the Crab are generally the warmest in Rokugan, with climates reaching the subtropical. The coastal region and the Crab lands at the foot of the Twilight Mountains are particularly humid and rainy, which some outsiders blame for the Crab’s dour attitudes and architecture
Challenges Facing Rural Communities
The Empire’s farms and villages face many of the same challenges as its towns and cities. However, thanks to their remoteness, isolation, and limited resources and expertise, rural communities are less able to withstand and recover from damaging events.
Weather
Weather is, by far, one of the most important factors in the life and health of farms and villages. While winters are somewhat more moderate in coastal areas of Rokugan, inland regions tend to have winters that are long, cold, and windy, with heavy accumulations of snow. Farmers and villagers begin preparing for the upcoming winter as soon as the previous one has ended. As winter nears, food must be stockpiled and stored in such a way that it won’t spoil during the long, cold winter months. The difficulty of living through this period in inland regions must be factored into tax col-lectors’ calculations, to ensure that the Empire derives maximum value from its farms while leaving farmers with sufficient food to survive. Samurai lords must like-wise be careful regarding how much of their farming vassals’ crops they put up for sale or trade.
Even the most careful and conservative reckonings cannot account for all of the vagaries of the weather, though. During the growing season, periods of heavy rainfall can flood and damage fields, while too little can result in drought and crop failure. Storms can batter crops with hail. The elemental imbalance afflicting the Empire has only accentuated these effects, threatening to turn local weather problems into regional or even Empire-wide disasters.
Natural Disasters
Many parts of the Empire are prone to natural disasters, and with the ongoing elemental imbalance, these catastrophic events appear to have become worse and more frequent. Coastal regions are vulnerable to tsunami, massive waves triggered by underwater earth-quakes. The coastal plains of the Crane Clan, some of the most fertile lands in the Empire, were flooded three years ago by a series of tsunami that contaminated vast tracts of soil with mud, silt, and salt water, necessitating that they be left untilled. Earthquakes also occur in inland areas, damaging buildings and roads as well as the dikes and irrigation systems essential for rice production. Volcanoes occasionally erupt in the Spine of the World Mountains or the Great Wall of the North mountains, spewing ash over huge areas, while wild-fires can ravage forests and grasslands, particularly during the dry, hot months of late summer
The people hit hardest by such catastrophes are the commoners in the rural and remote parts of the Empire. Those who survive must cope and then rebuild almost entirely on their own, at least initially. Aid may eventually arrive, but it may take many days or even weeks. Even then, the provision of aid depends on its availability and on the importance the samurai lord attaches to the area and population in question.
War
Rokugan is a militant place, its culture and society steeped in battle and war. Invasions from outside the Empire are extremely rare, the exception being attacks from the evil hordes of the Shadowlands. These are doggedly held back by the heroism and sacrifice of the Crab Clan. A successful incursion by the Shadowlands would result in destruction far beyond that of any mortal conflict. Strife between and sometimes even with-in the clans is common, however. The inevitably grim result is land trodden and churned up by marching armies and their battles, destruction of property (both accidental and deliberate), and mass displacement of refugees. Commoners forced to flee their farms and villages cease to be productive servants of the Empire—in the eyes of its rulers—and their continued need for food and other resources further strains the available supply.
The Code of Bushidō and simple practicality mean that samurai usually try to avoid inflicting excessive harm on the peasantry. Not only does doing so violate the Bushidō tenet of Compassion, but it effectively means damaging the means of producing food and other resources upon which those same samurai rely.
Unfortunately, in the face of war, harm can only be minimized, not eliminated altogether. Moreover, particularly aggressive or thoughtless samurai may some-times specifically target an opponent’s commoners, seeking to undermine the opponent’s ability to wage war by striking at them logistically and economically. Such shortsightedness is rare—after all, the rule of the peasantry changes with that of their land—but it does occur. Not surprisingly, samurai place great emphasis on restoring the peasantry to their productive labors as quickly as possible after hostilities cease
Isolation
While some remote villages only see a samurai when the time comes to collect taxes, even those in better-traveled parts of the Empire may only rarely be visited by the nobility. Even then, most samurai simply pass through on their way to business elsewhere. Accordingly, the arrival of samurai in a village of heimin and burakumin is almost always an important event; in the most remote places, it may be a profoundly significant happening indeed
Most villages do not allow themselves to be surprised by the unexpected arrival of samurai. Unless it is the depths of winter, when few Rokugani travel any great distances, heimin are generally at work in the fields and forests around their village. Using a discreet system of signaling particular to each community, those who first spy approaching samurai pass news back to the village center. This typically prompts many heimin, and virtually all burakumin, to quickly find a reason to be else-where in order to avoid unwanted attention from these imposing visitors. Similarly, if some villagers happen to be up to nefarious business—anything from trying to cheat on taxes to participating in heretical cults—then the culprits take this opportunity to attempt to hide the evidence. This is not always successful, of course. Having samurai PCs discern incriminating evidence of such an activity can be an interesting story hook.
The remaining commoners, normally including the village leadership, place themselves in a position to respectfully greet the traveling samurai, offering hospitality that is unlikely to be accept-ed. If the samurai are magistrates and it is time for tax collection, then goods representing the taxes owed are generally made readily available. In any case, the objective of the commoners throughout the visit is to avoid offending their samurai guests while giving them every reason to be on their way as quickly as possible, so the commoners’ lives can return to normal.
Samurai and Rural Rokugan
The relationship between samurai and commoners in Rokugan is a complex one, with much more nuance than it may first appear. Some specific aspects of the inter-actions between samurai and commoners are unique to the farms and villages of the rural Empire
Samurai Among The Commoners
In general, samurai prefer not to spend more time than absolutely necessary in the Empire’s rural areas. Not only do these remote places have few of the amenities to which most samurai are accustomed, but even the lowest ranking samurai will find few, if any, social peers there. Bluntly put, there is little to interest most samurai in rural Rokugan.
In a broader sense, most samurai believe that little of importance occurs outside the towns and cities, which reveals a disconnect in their thinking, as it is from these “unimportant” and “uninteresting” places that the food they eat and other resources they consume come. That said, most samurai do recognize that without the labor of the common people, the Empire would quickly collapse into chaos.
The main reason why samurai do leave the relative comfort and engagement of a town or city and travel among the farms and villages is that their duties require them to do so. For example:
Samurai who are acting as couriers or messengers must travel, sometimes for great distances, across the Empire. This naturally takes them through rural areas. Some samurai—particularly Miya Heralds—do this routinely as part of their duties. These samurai can become quite accustomed to the hardships and privation of long periods spent on the road and among farms and villages. Some even come to prefer it to the business and bustle of the urban Empire, although such samurai are generally considered odd by their peers.
Samurai who are simply traveling from one castle to another likewise must pass through rural areas, but they generally do so as quickly as possible.
Magistrates frequently travel the rural roads and byways of the Empire in performance of their duties to uphold Imperial law and to collect taxes owing to samurai lords and, ultimately, the Emperor.
Some unfortunate samurai are given duties that require them to reside in remote villages and similar places. For example, a samurai may be permanently assigned as magistrate to oversee a string of villages, a duty that forces them to take up residence in the countryside. Generally, such assignments are a form of punishment for incompetence or wrongdoing that doesn’t warrant seppuku or similarly dire consequences. They are also used to neutralize political opponents or deal with embarrassing relatives by placing them in out-of-the-way locations.
During times of war, samurai naturally spend time—sometimes lengthy periods of it—living, marching, and fighting in the fields, forests, farms, and villages of the rural Empire.
Goshi
Most samurai are expected to remain close to their lord, near their castle or court and apart from the vassal commoners. Those who do not are normally exiled to remote, rural places as a form of punishment. A few samurai, however, choose to live in rural areas, among the commoners. They are known as goshi, or countryside warriors.
While goshi retain the status and authority of their position, it is not uncommon for them to tie up their kimono sleeves and work alongside the peasants they oversee. Samurai of the Sparrow Clan take this to an extreme, all samurai of this Minor Clan effectively being goshi. Due to their rustic nature, goshi are derided by more urbane samurai, who use the term as a slur.
In exceptional cases, a peasant may be given specific privileges of the samurai caste and gain the authority of a goshi. They may even be given the right to bear swords, have an audience with their lord, or use a family name. These goshi are found only in the most remote locations, where appointment of a true samurai vassal is impossible.
Goshi tend to have a greater degree of closeness to the heimin they supervise than other samurai do. Because of this, heimin loyalty to goshi runs deep, and these rural samurai enjoy considerable sway over their local area.
Taxation
Generally speaking, samurai do not pay taxes in Rokugan. Taxation is derived from wealth; wealth results from things being created through labor, and samurai do not engage in “labor.” In reality, though, many samurai do engage in commercial enterprises, albeit normally at arm’s length through intermediary retainers, such as heimin merchants. Such enterprises often do get taxed, but this represents only a small part of the revenue realized by the clans and the Imperial authorities. The vast majority of taxes are a proportion of the real goods, including food and other resources, produced by the commoners of the rural Empire
These types of taxes are normally taken as a fixed portion of goods produced. For example, farmers may be required to pay one of every ten koku (one koku is about five bushels) of rice they produce as taxes to their samurai lord. The actual amount varies based on factors such as the quantity of rice and other commodities produced that year, the effects of droughts or blights on crops, and the needs and even whims of the lord in question. Most lords make a good-faith effort to balance the amount of taxes they levy against the needs of the commoners; overtaxing peasants to the point of starvation is counterproductive and may lead to unrest among them.
That said, most samurai lords are uncompromising regarding the taxes they do demand. Any attempts to avoid paying the full taxes owed are considered serious crimes and usually result in severe punishments, including execution of the miscreants, as a deterrent to other would-be tax cheats
Unrest Among The Commoners
The official Imperial histories record only a few instances of revolt among the peasantry, generally describing them as local and quickly put down. In fact, however, there have been more than a few eruptions of riot and revolution among the commoners, some of them quite widespread
The most common reason for unrest is poor treatment of the commoners by their samurai masters. The Celestial Order notwithstanding, commoners are just as given to resentment over things like cruel treatment, poor living conditions, and excessive taxation as samurai would be. Moreover, the tedious, laborious life of commoners in Rokugan makes them fertile ground for incitement by charismatic leaders and populist causes. A current example is the Perfect Land Sect, a heretical movement claiming equality among all castes, samurai and commoner alike, through Shinsei’s salvation. Once the spark of rebellion against injustice or the passion-ate fervor of a dynamic figure ignites the fires of unrest, it can quickly spread, leading to full-on revolution against the authority of the samurai.
The response from those samurai is, of course, generally swift and brutal; this is, after all, a crime against the Celestial Order and, by extension, against the Heavens themselves. Armies are dispatched to put the rebellion down, and those known or believed to be the leaders of the revolt are summarily put to death. Most samurai recognize that potential unrest among the commoners is never far away—and that the price of avoiding it is constant vigilance and merciless punishment for anyone even contemplating turning against their samurai lord.
No matter how powerful a civilization is politically or militarily, or how sophisticated it is culturally, socially, or economically, without a solid foundation based on a reliable supply of food, clean water, and basic goods, it is doomed to fail. The Emerald Empire is no exception. The Kami knew this, and although each imparted different lessons to their new followers after their fall from the Heavens, all of them emphasized the importance of agriculture and the essential crafts. With advances in agriculture came the fuel needed to build an empire. The population grew explosively, and the Kami lead their followers into large towns, then eventually massive cities supported by the infrastructure surrounding them. It is from this simple and straightforward beginning that the modern Empire was born
The Land
Shortly after the Kami Hantei won the tournament to select the first Emperor, the Kami established the basic laws governing the new Empire. One of the first, and most important, stated that all lands and resources in the Empire belong to the Emperor, who acts as their custodian on behalf of the Celestial Heavens. This has remained a bedrock principle ever since, giving rise to the fundamental structure of governance in Rokugan.
It is obviously unworkable for a single person, even if they are the Emperor, to directly administer all of the lands in the Empire. Accordingly, a system of tenancy was developed by which the Emperor delegates to the clans portions of the Empire, which are administered by the clan champions. The champions, in turn, further subdivide the lands granted to their clan and have each such piece overseen by one of their clan’s family daimyō. These daimyō further divide and delegate lands to samurai lords who are their vassals, and so on. At the very bottom of this cascade of land allocation are the commoners: the farmers who actually turn the soil and plant and harvest the crops. It is important to emphasize that despite this progressive allocation of land to vassals, none of them actually own the land they’ve been granted: ownership of the land belongs exclusively to the Emperor
Obviously, not all lands are of equal value for all types of use. Fertile, arable lands suited for farming are not rare, but they tend to be concentrated in particular parts of the Empire: notably, along large rivers and in coastal areas. Other parts of the Empire are either too mountainous, too wet, too dry, too heavily forested, or too barren to support meaningful agriculture. This doesn’t mean these lands are entirely unproductive, however. For instance, forests provide lumber, and a wide range of plants are used for medicinal, decorative, and other purposes; mountainous and rocky areas often contain valuable mineral deposits and are quarried for stone. Even in these cases, it is the commoners who generally act as the woodcutters, miners, and other workers exploiting these resources
Farms and Villages
At the bottom of the system of land tenancy in Rokugan is the farm, the basic building block of the Empire’s economy. Farms are the most common institution in the Empire, simply because they are necessary for growing the food consumed by all of its citizens, samurai and commoners alike. The food that farms produce is collected and transported to villages, then from villages to towns and from towns to cities. In return, the villages, towns, and cities provide other types of goods and services, such as finished products and even military forces deployed to defend smaller population centers and outlying rural areas from attack. This continuous cycle of activity from farm to village, village to town, town to city, and then back again is the foundation of the Empire’s economy.
Wherever possible, farms cluster closely together within fertile areas to provide for mutual security and defense and to allow farmers and their families to achieve efficiencies by pooling their labor and resources. Long ago in many of these clusters of farms, people began to create items and facilities that helped them increase their farms’ production and more effectively process, store, and transport their yield. These included everything from ropes and rice-drying racks to baskets and barrels to mills and granaries. These groups of farmers and the craftspeople who made the items and buildings they needed for their farms formed the first villages in the Empire.
Some villages continued to grow, becoming towns and cities, but most remained as they were: small, relatively isolated communities consisting almost entirely of commoners. Of course, some farms were located far from these new and growing villages and remained dotted throughout the landscape. This is still the typical character of a rural, agricultural area in the modern Empire: isolated, individual farms scattered through the lands and farms surrounding the villages that are the focus of everyday life for most of the common people of the Empire
Other Resources
Much of Rokugan is not particularly suited to agriculture, and farms are rarely found in such areas. However, these rocky, forested, or otherwise infertile regions still provide valuable resources to the Empire, and as such have villages to support their extraction.
Fishing Villages: The sea provides many staple foodstuffs for the Empire, including fish, shellfish, and seaweed. Those who extract these things from the sea live in villages that are located on rivers or coasts and are other-wise similar to farming villages. These villages’ locations are dictated by proximity to favor-able fishing grounds and the availability of sheltered harbors.
Mines: Iron, copper, tin, silver, and gold are all essential to the Empire, and other mined commodities can be vital for specific purposes, such as the jade used to combat the creatures and effects of the Shadowlands. Deposits of these materials tend to be relatively small and discrete, and mines have limited lifespans before they are exhausted. As a result, mining villages are often small and isolated and have a temporary character to them.
Lumber: Most Rokugani structures are made of wood, with paper interior walls. Lumber is, therefore, an important commodity in the Empire. Like mining villages, communities of lumberjacks tend to be small and relatively isolated. However, the resource they exploit is renewable, so many of these woodcutting villages are old and well established
Communication
The clans and Imperial families use a number of methods (of varying effectiveness) to attempt to maintain at least sporadic communication with the more far-flung parts of the Empire.
Clans dispatch their own couriers, or obtain information from samurai traveling on other business.
The Imperial Heralds of the Miya family travel throughout the Empire to promulgate new Imperial edicts and laws.
The Barefoot Brethren, a sect of the Brotherhood of Shinsei devoted to Koshin, the Fortune of Roads, travel throughout Rokugan at the behest of samurai and commoners alike to gather and deliver news.
Carrier pigeons, originally used by the Crane and subsequently reintroduced by the Unicorn, are a rare communications method used by more pragmatic members of some clans
Grass and Snow
The lands of the Emerald Empire cover a great span, encompassing deep forests, wide plains, and high mountains, and the climate of Rokugan varies just as greatly. Some people even say that each clan is deeply shaped by its surroundings, although many Great Clan samurai resent such claims
Much of Rokugan is temperate. The lands of the Lion and Scorpion enjoy the full range of the sea-sons, from sweltering summers to snowy winters. Scorpion lands on the windward side of the Spine of the World Mountains receive more rain during the warm months and more snow in the winter, while Lion territory enjoys clearer skies overall, with sufficient rainfall to nourish its fertile plains.
The cool northern lands of the Dragon and Phoenix experience mild summers and biting winters. While the coastal lands of the Phoenix are more temperate, the high elevations the Dragons favor are even colder; some Togashi monasteries remain snow covered throughout the year. Despite their northern position, the lands of the Unicorn remain much warmer than those of their neighbors, thanks to the warm winds that blow down from both the western end of the Great Wall of the North mountains and the Spine of the World Mountains
The southern lands of the Crane and those of the Crab are generally the warmest in Rokugan, with climates reaching the subtropical. The coastal region and the Crab lands at the foot of the Twilight Mountains are particularly humid and rainy, which some outsiders blame for the Crab’s dour attitudes and architecture
Challenges Facing Rural Communities
The Empire’s farms and villages face many of the same challenges as its towns and cities. However, thanks to their remoteness, isolation, and limited resources and expertise, rural communities are less able to withstand and recover from damaging events.
Weather
Weather is, by far, one of the most important factors in the life and health of farms and villages. While winters are somewhat more moderate in coastal areas of Rokugan, inland regions tend to have winters that are long, cold, and windy, with heavy accumulations of snow. Farmers and villagers begin preparing for the upcoming winter as soon as the previous one has ended. As winter nears, food must be stockpiled and stored in such a way that it won’t spoil during the long, cold winter months. The difficulty of living through this period in inland regions must be factored into tax col-lectors’ calculations, to ensure that the Empire derives maximum value from its farms while leaving farmers with sufficient food to survive. Samurai lords must like-wise be careful regarding how much of their farming vassals’ crops they put up for sale or trade.
Even the most careful and conservative reckonings cannot account for all of the vagaries of the weather, though. During the growing season, periods of heavy rainfall can flood and damage fields, while too little can result in drought and crop failure. Storms can batter crops with hail. The elemental imbalance afflicting the Empire has only accentuated these effects, threatening to turn local weather problems into regional or even Empire-wide disasters.
Natural Disasters
Many parts of the Empire are prone to natural disasters, and with the ongoing elemental imbalance, these catastrophic events appear to have become worse and more frequent. Coastal regions are vulnerable to tsunami, massive waves triggered by underwater earth-quakes. The coastal plains of the Crane Clan, some of the most fertile lands in the Empire, were flooded three years ago by a series of tsunami that contaminated vast tracts of soil with mud, silt, and salt water, necessitating that they be left untilled. Earthquakes also occur in inland areas, damaging buildings and roads as well as the dikes and irrigation systems essential for rice production. Volcanoes occasionally erupt in the Spine of the World Mountains or the Great Wall of the North mountains, spewing ash over huge areas, while wild-fires can ravage forests and grasslands, particularly during the dry, hot months of late summer
The people hit hardest by such catastrophes are the commoners in the rural and remote parts of the Empire. Those who survive must cope and then rebuild almost entirely on their own, at least initially. Aid may eventually arrive, but it may take many days or even weeks. Even then, the provision of aid depends on its availability and on the importance the samurai lord attaches to the area and population in question.
War
Rokugan is a militant place, its culture and society steeped in battle and war. Invasions from outside the Empire are extremely rare, the exception being attacks from the evil hordes of the Shadowlands. These are doggedly held back by the heroism and sacrifice of the Crab Clan. A successful incursion by the Shadowlands would result in destruction far beyond that of any mortal conflict. Strife between and sometimes even with-in the clans is common, however. The inevitably grim result is land trodden and churned up by marching armies and their battles, destruction of property (both accidental and deliberate), and mass displacement of refugees. Commoners forced to flee their farms and villages cease to be productive servants of the Empire—in the eyes of its rulers—and their continued need for food and other resources further strains the available supply.
The Code of Bushidō and simple practicality mean that samurai usually try to avoid inflicting excessive harm on the peasantry. Not only does doing so violate the Bushidō tenet of Compassion, but it effectively means damaging the means of producing food and other resources upon which those same samurai rely.
Unfortunately, in the face of war, harm can only be minimized, not eliminated altogether. Moreover, particularly aggressive or thoughtless samurai may some-times specifically target an opponent’s commoners, seeking to undermine the opponent’s ability to wage war by striking at them logistically and economically. Such shortsightedness is rare—after all, the rule of the peasantry changes with that of their land—but it does occur. Not surprisingly, samurai place great emphasis on restoring the peasantry to their productive labors as quickly as possible after hostilities cease
Isolation
While some remote villages only see a samurai when the time comes to collect taxes, even those in better-traveled parts of the Empire may only rarely be visited by the nobility. Even then, most samurai simply pass through on their way to business elsewhere. Accordingly, the arrival of samurai in a village of heimin and burakumin is almost always an important event; in the most remote places, it may be a profoundly significant happening indeed
Most villages do not allow themselves to be surprised by the unexpected arrival of samurai. Unless it is the depths of winter, when few Rokugani travel any great distances, heimin are generally at work in the fields and forests around their village. Using a discreet system of signaling particular to each community, those who first spy approaching samurai pass news back to the village center. This typically prompts many heimin, and virtually all burakumin, to quickly find a reason to be else-where in order to avoid unwanted attention from these imposing visitors. Similarly, if some villagers happen to be up to nefarious business—anything from trying to cheat on taxes to participating in heretical cults—then the culprits take this opportunity to attempt to hide the evidence. This is not always successful, of course. Having samurai PCs discern incriminating evidence of such an activity can be an interesting story hook.
The remaining commoners, normally including the village leadership, place themselves in a position to respectfully greet the traveling samurai, offering hospitality that is unlikely to be accept-ed. If the samurai are magistrates and it is time for tax collection, then goods representing the taxes owed are generally made readily available. In any case, the objective of the commoners throughout the visit is to avoid offending their samurai guests while giving them every reason to be on their way as quickly as possible, so the commoners’ lives can return to normal.
Samurai and Rural Rokugan
The relationship between samurai and commoners in Rokugan is a complex one, with much more nuance than it may first appear. Some specific aspects of the inter-actions between samurai and commoners are unique to the farms and villages of the rural Empire
Samurai Among The Commoners
In general, samurai prefer not to spend more time than absolutely necessary in the Empire’s rural areas. Not only do these remote places have few of the amenities to which most samurai are accustomed, but even the lowest ranking samurai will find few, if any, social peers there. Bluntly put, there is little to interest most samurai in rural Rokugan.
In a broader sense, most samurai believe that little of importance occurs outside the towns and cities, which reveals a disconnect in their thinking, as it is from these “unimportant” and “uninteresting” places that the food they eat and other resources they consume come. That said, most samurai do recognize that without the labor of the common people, the Empire would quickly collapse into chaos.
The main reason why samurai do leave the relative comfort and engagement of a town or city and travel among the farms and villages is that their duties require them to do so. For example:
Samurai who are acting as couriers or messengers must travel, sometimes for great distances, across the Empire. This naturally takes them through rural areas. Some samurai—particularly Miya Heralds—do this routinely as part of their duties. These samurai can become quite accustomed to the hardships and privation of long periods spent on the road and among farms and villages. Some even come to prefer it to the business and bustle of the urban Empire, although such samurai are generally considered odd by their peers.
Samurai who are simply traveling from one castle to another likewise must pass through rural areas, but they generally do so as quickly as possible.
Magistrates frequently travel the rural roads and byways of the Empire in performance of their duties to uphold Imperial law and to collect taxes owing to samurai lords and, ultimately, the Emperor.
Some unfortunate samurai are given duties that require them to reside in remote villages and similar places. For example, a samurai may be permanently assigned as magistrate to oversee a string of villages, a duty that forces them to take up residence in the countryside. Generally, such assignments are a form of punishment for incompetence or wrongdoing that doesn’t warrant seppuku or similarly dire consequences. They are also used to neutralize political opponents or deal with embarrassing relatives by placing them in out-of-the-way locations.
During times of war, samurai naturally spend time—sometimes lengthy periods of it—living, marching, and fighting in the fields, forests, farms, and villages of the rural Empire.
Goshi
Most samurai are expected to remain close to their lord, near their castle or court and apart from the vassal commoners. Those who do not are normally exiled to remote, rural places as a form of punishment. A few samurai, however, choose to live in rural areas, among the commoners. They are known as goshi, or countryside warriors.
While goshi retain the status and authority of their position, it is not uncommon for them to tie up their kimono sleeves and work alongside the peasants they oversee. Samurai of the Sparrow Clan take this to an extreme, all samurai of this Minor Clan effectively being goshi. Due to their rustic nature, goshi are derided by more urbane samurai, who use the term as a slur.
In exceptional cases, a peasant may be given specific privileges of the samurai caste and gain the authority of a goshi. They may even be given the right to bear swords, have an audience with their lord, or use a family name. These goshi are found only in the most remote locations, where appointment of a true samurai vassal is impossible.
Goshi tend to have a greater degree of closeness to the heimin they supervise than other samurai do. Because of this, heimin loyalty to goshi runs deep, and these rural samurai enjoy considerable sway over their local area.
Taxation
Generally speaking, samurai do not pay taxes in Rokugan. Taxation is derived from wealth; wealth results from things being created through labor, and samurai do not engage in “labor.” In reality, though, many samurai do engage in commercial enterprises, albeit normally at arm’s length through intermediary retainers, such as heimin merchants. Such enterprises often do get taxed, but this represents only a small part of the revenue realized by the clans and the Imperial authorities. The vast majority of taxes are a proportion of the real goods, including food and other resources, produced by the commoners of the rural Empire
These types of taxes are normally taken as a fixed portion of goods produced. For example, farmers may be required to pay one of every ten koku (one koku is about five bushels) of rice they produce as taxes to their samurai lord. The actual amount varies based on factors such as the quantity of rice and other commodities produced that year, the effects of droughts or blights on crops, and the needs and even whims of the lord in question. Most lords make a good-faith effort to balance the amount of taxes they levy against the needs of the commoners; overtaxing peasants to the point of starvation is counterproductive and may lead to unrest among them.
That said, most samurai lords are uncompromising regarding the taxes they do demand. Any attempts to avoid paying the full taxes owed are considered serious crimes and usually result in severe punishments, including execution of the miscreants, as a deterrent to other would-be tax cheats
Unrest Among The Commoners
The official Imperial histories record only a few instances of revolt among the peasantry, generally describing them as local and quickly put down. In fact, however, there have been more than a few eruptions of riot and revolution among the commoners, some of them quite widespread
The most common reason for unrest is poor treatment of the commoners by their samurai masters. The Celestial Order notwithstanding, commoners are just as given to resentment over things like cruel treatment, poor living conditions, and excessive taxation as samurai would be. Moreover, the tedious, laborious life of commoners in Rokugan makes them fertile ground for incitement by charismatic leaders and populist causes. A current example is the Perfect Land Sect, a heretical movement claiming equality among all castes, samurai and commoner alike, through Shinsei’s salvation. Once the spark of rebellion against injustice or the passion-ate fervor of a dynamic figure ignites the fires of unrest, it can quickly spread, leading to full-on revolution against the authority of the samurai.
The response from those samurai is, of course, generally swift and brutal; this is, after all, a crime against the Celestial Order and, by extension, against the Heavens themselves. Armies are dispatched to put the rebellion down, and those known or believed to be the leaders of the revolt are summarily put to death. Most samurai recognize that potential unrest among the commoners is never far away—and that the price of avoiding it is constant vigilance and merciless punishment for anyone even contemplating turning against their samurai lord.