Crane Lands - The Seven Fold Palace
Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2020 1:22 pm
The Seven Fold Palace
The Crane Clan’s approach to mastery of the sword takes the weapon from its genesis in iron ore and sand to its place within a deserving foe’s body. To master mining ore, smithing blades, and fencing is a task too daunting for any single individual, but as a whole, the Crane Clan can do it all. One part of this endeavor begins at the Seven Fold Palace, which is not where Rokugan’s finest blades are forged, but instead the forge in which the finest Rokugani smiths are tested. Many Kakita artisans who study the making of arms and armor find themselves at the Seven Fold Palace for some years as a part of their training
The Seven Fold Palace is an architectural marvel, thanks to the influence of the castle architects who train and practice there. Every detail of the campus, from the joinery used to create the wooden fixtures to the quality of the food served to guests, is an experiment in crafting excellence. However, perfection has a price. Study at the Seven Fold Palace is punishing and nerve-racking, a gauntlet of constant judgment from peers and superiors alike. Apprentices should be prepared to eat bitter as they work toward mastery—and to weather social censure from everyone around them for the slightest missteps
Strengths and Weaknesses
Having grown from a complex of smithing facilities, the Seven Fold Palace is not well fortified. Its primary defense is its location deep within Crane lands. The palace lies low in the foothills beside the Crane’s most productive mines in the mountains. High-quality iron is rare in Rokugan; many of the most advanced metallurgic techniques developed as ways to compensate for the widespread impurities in Rokugani iron. The Crane Clan has access to those techniques as well as some of the best iron in Rokugan—mined under the watch of the Seven Fold Palace
The palace’s smithing facilities are excellent, although they are not the best in all Rokugan. They are meant primarily for teaching and learning, processes that require mistakes. The forges have space for many novice apprentices and journeymen to work side by side and observe each other’s work. A master smith who wants only to craft the finest pieces as efficiently as possible would struggle there, with students bumbling about all over the place, but as the palace’s motto proclaims, “This palace is the forge; the smith is the blade.
The palace’s physical details and accouterments reflect its focus on artistic excellence. Every roof beam, every folding screen, every arrangement of rocks and plants on the grounds represents an attempt at excellence by the craftspeople in residence. From a perspective embracing a classical Rokugani aesthetic, however, the castle comes off as garish: instead of minimalist rooms containing a single beautiful object to give the impression of space, many Seven Fold Palace rooms are crammed wall to wall and floor to ceiling with students’ works of beauty (or attempts thereat).
Seven Fold Palace teachers and staff destroy most of these works of art after a short period of display and critique. No trace or record remains of them. Cruel as it may seem, this policy encourages students not to dwell on their past accomplishments and mistakes, but rather to look to the future. Further, it teaches them the impermanence of all beauty—that beauty’s worth is not in some unachievable ideal of eternity, but in the very inevitability of its passing. Nevertheless, a thriving black market exists for palace artifacts smuggled away from destruction, bound for the hands of collectors of lesser means.
Castle Culture
The Seven Fold Palace’s occupants are divided into apprentices, journeymen, and masters. The masters primarily provide oversight and administration. They guide high-level operations, welcome important visitors, and adjudicate important tests and ceremonies. On the masters’ council sits one master of each craft: a master swordsmith, a master koto maker, a master armorer, a master architect, and several dozen others. The journeymen who work under the masters do the bulk of the teaching and oversee the creation of individual pieces; the apprentices are their tools
Life at the Seven Fold Palace is stressful, busy, and overstimulating. The palace is crowded, and many of the artisans training there come from noble backgrounds and are used to having servants wait on them hand and foot. At the Seven Fold Palace, however, apprentices do everything from cooking to cleaning to guard duty. They are even required to help obtain materials. An apprentice to a koto maker, for example, must plant, irrigate, and care for paulownia trees in the arbor; chop them down; and cart the wood to the carpenter. An apprentice smith must travel to the mines, living and working alongside miners for a portion of the year
Still, as apprentices climb the ranks, they tend to look back with wistful fondness on their days of physical labor in preparation for learning their craft. While the physical stresses of craftwork become less about muscle and more about finesse as time goes on, the mental stresses only increase.
The apprentices are ranked in status from highest to lowest by their superiors. These rankings are posted for all to see and are revised weekly. Everything a student says or does can affect the rankings. Compounding the problem, the apprentices live in crowded dormitories with next to no privacy. The dormitories vary in quality, and the highest-ranked students get to live in the best ones. Another effect of the ranking system is that whenever a student is learning something new, they must decide whether to confer with other students to better learn the topic or to keep information secret lest they inadvertently help their peers rise above them
Journeymen live in better facilities with more privacy and leisure time, but socially speaking, their lives are no less stressful or competitive. The masters rank and them just as the journeymen do the apprentices, but the rankings are no longer public. Only the masters know the true estimation of each journeyman’s work. And not only is their work judged, but also their social conduct. Even journeymen’s free time becomes part of their training: parties, plays, and garden or hunting outings are all opportunities for their social adroitness to be displayed and compared. At this stage of training, alliances and rivalries that began to spawn during apprenticeship now blossom into their more solid, adult forms
The Price of Success
Due to the punishing lifestyle at the Seven Fold Palace, about a third of the apprentices do not make it to journeyman level, and about a third of the journeymen do not become masters. It is usually not a single stressor, but a combination of social, mental, and physical hardships, that makes advancement impossible. Realizing that one will not advance is heartbreaking in a culture that values glorious achievement and perseverance beyond reason. Nevertheless, the Crane Clan demands excellence, and those whose “impurities” cannot be removed with heat and pressure are cast aside as surely as scrap iron, or at least turned to more useful ends as tools. While some may make their way into other schools or gain appointments to bureaucratic positions, no few failed students take to monastic life to atone for their failure or even request seppuku. Most merely plod along as journeymen for the rest of their lives, accepting that their lot may not be glorious, but serves a greater purpose
What Attracts Visitors
Apprentices and journeymen are expected to participate in artistic and enrichment activities outside their specific fields. These activities include athletic training and competition, martial arts, theater, dance, study of the classics, and exchanges with other masters’ apprentices. Due to the lack of direct competition between disciplines at the palace, apprentices have an easier time socializing and forming romantic bonds with other masters’ apprentices than with apprentices in their own field. Students in different disciplines do compete socially sometimes, but this competition is less demanding and aggressive—a friendlier rivalry.
On the kemari field, however, bitter rivalries bubble up. Kemari is a Rokugani ball game with both cooperative and team rulesets. Students are responsible for organizing, training, and maintaining their own intramural kemari teams. While kemari takes significant time away from studies and practice, the teamwork and sportsmanship skills it imparts are a much-needed rarity at the Seven Fold Palace, and therefore the sport is highly regarded. The palace’s style of play is quite rough and physical, affording students a socially acceptable way to knock down or publicly overcome their rivals
Supernatural Phenomenon
While the Seven Fold Palace does have an on-site Shinseist temple, the adjoining Fortunist shrine is the major focus of religious life. The shrine is large and handsomely appointed, its every architectural and landscaping detail husbanded with the greatest care thanks to donations of labor and resources from Seven Fold Palace alumni. The shintai that sits in the shrine’s sanctuary is a single coal that glows eternally without need for fire, heat, or tending. It is the earthly form of Kagutsuchi, a kami of fire and patron of ceramics and metallurgy. Particularly ambitious individuals—especially those trained at the Seven Fold Palace—are said to have Kagutsuchi’s fire burning inside them.
While in centuries past, Kagutsuchi’s high priest was also the Seven Fold Palace’s master swordsmith or potter, nowadays the positions are separate. Priest Ezui and her assistant shrine keepers are among the few trustworthy confidants available to the palace’s apprentices and journeymen amid a sea of judgmental peers and superiors. Students who volunteer to aid in shrine maintenance get a much-needed opportunity to vent their frustrations and take care of their emotional well-being
The Crane Clan’s approach to mastery of the sword takes the weapon from its genesis in iron ore and sand to its place within a deserving foe’s body. To master mining ore, smithing blades, and fencing is a task too daunting for any single individual, but as a whole, the Crane Clan can do it all. One part of this endeavor begins at the Seven Fold Palace, which is not where Rokugan’s finest blades are forged, but instead the forge in which the finest Rokugani smiths are tested. Many Kakita artisans who study the making of arms and armor find themselves at the Seven Fold Palace for some years as a part of their training
The Seven Fold Palace is an architectural marvel, thanks to the influence of the castle architects who train and practice there. Every detail of the campus, from the joinery used to create the wooden fixtures to the quality of the food served to guests, is an experiment in crafting excellence. However, perfection has a price. Study at the Seven Fold Palace is punishing and nerve-racking, a gauntlet of constant judgment from peers and superiors alike. Apprentices should be prepared to eat bitter as they work toward mastery—and to weather social censure from everyone around them for the slightest missteps
Strengths and Weaknesses
Having grown from a complex of smithing facilities, the Seven Fold Palace is not well fortified. Its primary defense is its location deep within Crane lands. The palace lies low in the foothills beside the Crane’s most productive mines in the mountains. High-quality iron is rare in Rokugan; many of the most advanced metallurgic techniques developed as ways to compensate for the widespread impurities in Rokugani iron. The Crane Clan has access to those techniques as well as some of the best iron in Rokugan—mined under the watch of the Seven Fold Palace
The palace’s smithing facilities are excellent, although they are not the best in all Rokugan. They are meant primarily for teaching and learning, processes that require mistakes. The forges have space for many novice apprentices and journeymen to work side by side and observe each other’s work. A master smith who wants only to craft the finest pieces as efficiently as possible would struggle there, with students bumbling about all over the place, but as the palace’s motto proclaims, “This palace is the forge; the smith is the blade.
The palace’s physical details and accouterments reflect its focus on artistic excellence. Every roof beam, every folding screen, every arrangement of rocks and plants on the grounds represents an attempt at excellence by the craftspeople in residence. From a perspective embracing a classical Rokugani aesthetic, however, the castle comes off as garish: instead of minimalist rooms containing a single beautiful object to give the impression of space, many Seven Fold Palace rooms are crammed wall to wall and floor to ceiling with students’ works of beauty (or attempts thereat).
Seven Fold Palace teachers and staff destroy most of these works of art after a short period of display and critique. No trace or record remains of them. Cruel as it may seem, this policy encourages students not to dwell on their past accomplishments and mistakes, but rather to look to the future. Further, it teaches them the impermanence of all beauty—that beauty’s worth is not in some unachievable ideal of eternity, but in the very inevitability of its passing. Nevertheless, a thriving black market exists for palace artifacts smuggled away from destruction, bound for the hands of collectors of lesser means.
Castle Culture
The Seven Fold Palace’s occupants are divided into apprentices, journeymen, and masters. The masters primarily provide oversight and administration. They guide high-level operations, welcome important visitors, and adjudicate important tests and ceremonies. On the masters’ council sits one master of each craft: a master swordsmith, a master koto maker, a master armorer, a master architect, and several dozen others. The journeymen who work under the masters do the bulk of the teaching and oversee the creation of individual pieces; the apprentices are their tools
Life at the Seven Fold Palace is stressful, busy, and overstimulating. The palace is crowded, and many of the artisans training there come from noble backgrounds and are used to having servants wait on them hand and foot. At the Seven Fold Palace, however, apprentices do everything from cooking to cleaning to guard duty. They are even required to help obtain materials. An apprentice to a koto maker, for example, must plant, irrigate, and care for paulownia trees in the arbor; chop them down; and cart the wood to the carpenter. An apprentice smith must travel to the mines, living and working alongside miners for a portion of the year
Still, as apprentices climb the ranks, they tend to look back with wistful fondness on their days of physical labor in preparation for learning their craft. While the physical stresses of craftwork become less about muscle and more about finesse as time goes on, the mental stresses only increase.
The apprentices are ranked in status from highest to lowest by their superiors. These rankings are posted for all to see and are revised weekly. Everything a student says or does can affect the rankings. Compounding the problem, the apprentices live in crowded dormitories with next to no privacy. The dormitories vary in quality, and the highest-ranked students get to live in the best ones. Another effect of the ranking system is that whenever a student is learning something new, they must decide whether to confer with other students to better learn the topic or to keep information secret lest they inadvertently help their peers rise above them
Journeymen live in better facilities with more privacy and leisure time, but socially speaking, their lives are no less stressful or competitive. The masters rank and them just as the journeymen do the apprentices, but the rankings are no longer public. Only the masters know the true estimation of each journeyman’s work. And not only is their work judged, but also their social conduct. Even journeymen’s free time becomes part of their training: parties, plays, and garden or hunting outings are all opportunities for their social adroitness to be displayed and compared. At this stage of training, alliances and rivalries that began to spawn during apprenticeship now blossom into their more solid, adult forms
The Price of Success
Due to the punishing lifestyle at the Seven Fold Palace, about a third of the apprentices do not make it to journeyman level, and about a third of the journeymen do not become masters. It is usually not a single stressor, but a combination of social, mental, and physical hardships, that makes advancement impossible. Realizing that one will not advance is heartbreaking in a culture that values glorious achievement and perseverance beyond reason. Nevertheless, the Crane Clan demands excellence, and those whose “impurities” cannot be removed with heat and pressure are cast aside as surely as scrap iron, or at least turned to more useful ends as tools. While some may make their way into other schools or gain appointments to bureaucratic positions, no few failed students take to monastic life to atone for their failure or even request seppuku. Most merely plod along as journeymen for the rest of their lives, accepting that their lot may not be glorious, but serves a greater purpose
What Attracts Visitors
Apprentices and journeymen are expected to participate in artistic and enrichment activities outside their specific fields. These activities include athletic training and competition, martial arts, theater, dance, study of the classics, and exchanges with other masters’ apprentices. Due to the lack of direct competition between disciplines at the palace, apprentices have an easier time socializing and forming romantic bonds with other masters’ apprentices than with apprentices in their own field. Students in different disciplines do compete socially sometimes, but this competition is less demanding and aggressive—a friendlier rivalry.
On the kemari field, however, bitter rivalries bubble up. Kemari is a Rokugani ball game with both cooperative and team rulesets. Students are responsible for organizing, training, and maintaining their own intramural kemari teams. While kemari takes significant time away from studies and practice, the teamwork and sportsmanship skills it imparts are a much-needed rarity at the Seven Fold Palace, and therefore the sport is highly regarded. The palace’s style of play is quite rough and physical, affording students a socially acceptable way to knock down or publicly overcome their rivals
Supernatural Phenomenon
While the Seven Fold Palace does have an on-site Shinseist temple, the adjoining Fortunist shrine is the major focus of religious life. The shrine is large and handsomely appointed, its every architectural and landscaping detail husbanded with the greatest care thanks to donations of labor and resources from Seven Fold Palace alumni. The shintai that sits in the shrine’s sanctuary is a single coal that glows eternally without need for fire, heat, or tending. It is the earthly form of Kagutsuchi, a kami of fire and patron of ceramics and metallurgy. Particularly ambitious individuals—especially those trained at the Seven Fold Palace—are said to have Kagutsuchi’s fire burning inside them.
While in centuries past, Kagutsuchi’s high priest was also the Seven Fold Palace’s master swordsmith or potter, nowadays the positions are separate. Priest Ezui and her assistant shrine keepers are among the few trustworthy confidants available to the palace’s apprentices and journeymen amid a sea of judgmental peers and superiors. Students who volunteer to aid in shrine maintenance get a much-needed opportunity to vent their frustrations and take care of their emotional well-being