Crab Lands - Kyuden Hida, Hida Palace

[Vutall]

Hida Palace
Just north of the Kaiu Wall, in the mountains by the eastern shore, at the mouth of the River of the Last Stand, the immutable Kyūden Hida rises from the rocks. It is a fortress of unadorned granite, purely functional, with no intentions of subtlety or balance. While many castles are built to confuse invaders, to trap them and route them away from the tenshukaku and other vital castle buildings, Kyūden Hida is instead built in the Crab style—with layers of walls, forcing an enemy simply to breach one gate after another. It is an art-less, dour, and brutal convocation of stone and steel; of towers, turrets, and gates; and of thousands of soldiers ready to die defending it.

While official histories record that Kaiu designed Hida Palace, legend holds that the Fortune Osano-wo tore thunder from the Heavens and carved the palace into the stone of the mountain. These claims are not contradictory, nor does anything about Kyūden Hida’s construction necessarily disprove the legend. Kyūden Hida is built from the same granite as the mountain, and in many places its walls are indeed carved from the living stone. The biggest blocks in Kyūden Hida’s walls weigh more than three hundred soldiers

Much of Kyūden Hida’s construction defies Rokugani castle convention. The palace compound is built mostly of stone. Wood, steel, and plaster are used only sparingly. The grounds are built in the curved-triangle shape of a quarter-circle or, more aptly, a folding fan. The curved southern edge, which faces the Kaiu Wall, zigzags like a multi-paneled folding screen, affording the archers within the kyūden a wider field of view and range of crossfire through the south wall’s arrow slits.

Near the center of the fan lies a valley lake, from which the denizens of Kyūden Hida acquire potable water. Elsewhere within the palace grounds, Kyūden Hida houses a handful of heavily guarded wells dug deep into the earth. Still more water is stored within the palace’s ample storehouses alongside many months’ worth of food and other supplies. This kyūden has few secrets for escaping a siege, its people preferring to attempt to outlast one instead. In desperate straits, palace residents could even eat the floor coverings: the tatami mats are made of straw.

At the north end of the complex looms the tenshukaku, which serves as the main administrative building and the daimyō’s residence. Kyūden Hida is the seat of power of the “Great Bear,” Crab Clan champion Hida Kisada, whose interests lie mostly outside the castle walls. He delegates many decisions about the daily administration of the palace to his children and karō.

Strengths and Weaknesses
The ideal form of a defensive castle is demonstrated in Kyūden Hida, easily the most powerful fortress in Rokugan. It sits above a mountain pass that connects the southern and central Crab lands, giving it control over the most strategically vital communication routes for Crab armies and their supply lines. From here, Crab soldiers can move quickly to reinforce the Kaiu Wall during a crisis

Like all traditional Crab castles, Kyūden Hida is a brutally practical structure, built primarily of stone, with no sheathing plaster to smooth the harsh, irregular lines of its walls. Those walls stand over 180 feet high, rivaling the sacred walls of Otosan Uchi’s Forbidden City (the Crab officially declare they are just slightly shorter), but with none of the latter’s elegance and beauty. The main gate is built of solid steel.

The castle complex is not designed around switch-backs and dead ends, and would not confuse an invader. The path from the gate to the tenshukaku is uncomplicated, but it is no less harrowing for being simple. Invaders would have to somehow breach the first gate, hike up the rocky hill to the second gate, breach it in turn, and so on, all the while fending off the Crab garrison at bridges and choke points and avoiding a long fall into the dry moats below.

After bypassing the seven walls of the outer baileys, the hypothetical attacker would reach the first interior gate and its soaring walls, beyond which lies the kyūden proper. Above the steel gate hangs the skull of the Maw, a gigantic oni that nearly destroyed the Crab more than three centuries ago. The teeth of the skull often turn jade green after a rainfall, likely an alchemical reaction with the steel of the gate they rest upon, though this phenomenon remains the subject of careful observation. Many at Kyūden Hida believe the Maw still has some connection to the Shadowlands, and that something can be learned about the threats developing beyond the Wall by studying the minor changes in the great oni’s skull.

The Kaiu have lined the walls of Kyūden Hida with immensely powerful siege engines and warded every entrance with traps of fiendish design and lethal effect. Even the castle’s central parade ground is fitted with hidden devices to turn it into a gigantic death trap if the outer walls should ever be breached, though that has never happened in Rokugan’s thousand-year history.

Castle Culture
The skull of the Maw and its gatehouse are arguably the only symbolic or decorative features in the entire complex of Kyūden Hida. This installation perfectly demonstrates unwritten Crab Clan design principles: find the message and display it for all to see; nothing more is necessary

Kyūden Hida’s castle town rests mostly within the walls of the palace, another exceptional feature of this old stone giant. The layout of the palace grounds originally featured wide courtyards to serve as battle-grounds in which to trap an enemy army, forcing them to fight while surrounded. However, these courtyards have since been filled with buildings that serve as cramped residences for soldiers and staff, their families, and porters; as trade buildings for merchants and smiths; and as storehouses for food and for the Hida’s many siege engines. The Crab Clan’s standing armies there number three thousand strong

In a sense, Kyūden Hida is beautiful. In spite of its slab-like architecture, there is simple elegance in the purity of its purpose, of its unbreakable focus. No one questions the palace’s intent. Should all Rokugan fall, Kyūden Hida would be the site of the final battle, the last bastion.

No Sleep for the Watchers
There is no true relaxation so near the Shadowlands; peace finds no purchase. Life there is marked by hyper-vigilance. Newcomers to Hida Palace often report difficulty falling asleep; they half expect to awake to the sound of screams, of warning bells and demon howls. Every footfall on stone, every predawn argument, every bump in the night echoes off the unadorned walls. Yet, as the inured citizenry will con-fess, one can learn to live there—to thicken one’s skin, learn to cope, meditate—but can never truly escape the unease. Rather, they say, one should try to trust the instinct. Be thankful to sleep with one eye open. Fearlessness is folly. Rest cannot exist without surrender.

Kyūden Hida stands as the main operating base supporting Rokugan’s campaigns into the Shadowlands. For generations, samurai have planned and staged reconnaissance missions, raids, and other sorties beyond the Kaiu Wall from the Hida Palace grounds. Until recently, the Crab Clan’s attitude of resolute self-sacrifice pervaded the castle, seeming almost like confidence. The soldiers felt that their expeditions were generally well planned and well executed, and that they were prepared to defend themselves against the dangers of the Shadowlands

While the Crab attitude more or less persists, it has soured in recent years. An increasing number of Kyūden Hida’s expeditions have failed to return from the Shadowlands. Patrols have vanished; entire companies have disappeared without a trace. The battles at the Kaiu Wall have been more frequent and less certain than ever. Hida generals must acknowledge the worry that gnaws in the pit of the stomach, the fear that perhaps the truth of the Shadowlands is not represented by the skull of the Maw, is not a danger that they can anticipate and challenge. Perhaps this destructive threat is different, is unknown or unknowable. Perhaps this is far more than the Crab can bear, in their bodies and in their wills. Hida Palace is uncertain of its future; it desperately pursues allies no matter their form

Inhabitants of the Fortress
While the largest group of samurai at Kyūden Hida bear the mon of the Hida family, the palace attracts samurai from all of the Crab’s major families. It also serves as the de facto home for the Hiruma family, whose own lands were lost to the Shadowlands during the Maw’s invasion. As the seat of the Crab Clan Champion and the headquarters of the Crab army, Hida Palace is host to a number of quasi-diplomatic events, including the annual Kuni conference. At each winter solstice, the shugenja of the Kuni family trickle back to Kyūden Hida to privately present their research to one another, sharing their findings. During this time, the clan’s Witch Hunters also return to Hida Palace in order to handpick apprentices from a field of young candidates

Hida Palace also houses the Hida Defender School, famous for its consummate pragmatism and brutality in dealing with the monsters that lurk beyond the Wall. Instructors teach numerous martial arts, philosophy, and the art of war making, while also subjecting students to torturous physical and mental challenges. Students of this harsh curriculum are easy to recognize, training in full armor while carrying a heavy weapon and often attempting assigned tasks that cannot be completed—pushing down a stone wall, balancing on one leg until dawn, memorizing an endless text. These lessons teach the meaning of failure and the value of endurance. No individual can defeat the Shadowlands, but neither can any individual allow themselves to despair. A Hida-trained samurai must know how to soldier on, even knowing success is beyond their grasp

Inhospitable as it is, Hida Palace rumbles with activity. The monolithic kyūden is the seat of the Crab Clan Champion and the heart of the Crab military; it is Rokugan’s war against the Shadowlands written in stone. Steely expeditions into the Shadowlands rally in the castle baileys on their way south, and returning survivors stop here to tend to their bruises. The daily reports from the Kaiu Wall are bleaker every day, and the Crab’s courtiers and agents spend their days scram-bling to forge ambitious and unexpected alliances, hoping they will do more good than harm. Each of Kyūden Hida’s occupants has their own methods, but they all share the same goal: to ensure that Rokugan continues to endure in the face of a ceaseless onslaught by horrors beyond imagining

What Attracts Visitors
Kyūden Hida is not only the last line of defense for Rokugan should the abominations of the Shadowlands ever overrun the Kaiu Wall, but also an enduring symbol of the tenacity of the Crab Clan and their devotion to their duty. To those monstrous war leaders with the cunning and vision to grasp the palace’s importance, it stands as a most tempting target and a goal in itself: should Hida Palace ever fall, surely the Emerald Empire would soon succumb to the vile servitors of Fu Leng

Hida Palace has faced attack only a handful of times in Rokugan’s history, and these incidents all predate the modern Kaiu Wall. Now, for Hida Palace to face an invading force of sufficient size to threaten it would surely mean the Wall had fallen. Such a situation would be grave in the extreme, and a Shadowlands horde of such power would sorely test Kyūden Hida’s defenses. Still, the fortified keep might just hold where even the mighty Kaiu Wall fell.

Supernatural Phenomenon
Above the main gate within Kyūden Hida hangs the massive purified skull of a horned oni. This is the skull of the Maw, an ancient terror, and its message is clear: This is the enemy we face. Visitors, aghast, pass directly under the skull, through ten-ton solid steel gates

Its proximity to the Shadowlands means that Hida Palace is no stranger to supernatural events. For palace residents, nearly all of whom have served on the Wall and the majority of whom have patrolled in the Shadowlands, signs of the Taint of Jigoku are unwelcome, but not unexpected. Vivid nightmares, waking visions of bleeding walls, barely perceptible voices—such signs might indicate the intrusion of malicious spirits into Rokugan or the rise of an evil power within the Shadowlands. Even a lowly bakemono or other horror of lesser stature that manages to sneak past the Wall—for such incidents are not unknown—is a sign of the supernatural, for it carries the Taint. Patrols from Kyūden Hida strive to ensure such interlopers never make it out of Crab lands and into the wider Empire