Deer Lands - Kyūden Shika
Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2020 1:34 pm
Kyūden Shika
Deep in the heart of spirit-haunted Aokami Forest, roofs of brown tile rise from the canopy, their alabaster fixtures catching the light of morning and evening, making dawn and dusk seem to last just a little longer. The points of spears glitter in the watchtowers and along the parapets. Within the grounds, three Rokugani cedars, each one several millennia old and the shintai—or home—of a forest kami, stand amid manicured gardens and ornamental pools. The lyrics to a popular song say that one’s first glimpse of Kyūden Shika is the same feeling as falling in love
Kyūden Shika’s name features prominently in Rokugani literature, from romantic poems to scandalous novels. It is known primarily by two of its various reputations. “Kyūden Shika is a palace from a fairy tale, the ideal site to court one’s soulmate,” say the poems. “Kyūden Shika is a den of hedonism and iniquity, where the pleasures of the present eclipse any notion of the future,” say the novels. Virtue and vice. Rosy light and seductive darkness. Just the way the Deer Clan likes it.
The truth about this palace lies in the dialectic between these forces, just as the Deer Clan’s heart lies between its speardancers’ bold acrobatics and its matchmakers’ subtle machinations. Kyūden Shika is this little clan’s most efficient tool for affecting the balance of power in Rokugan, for drawing friends into unbreakable alliances and ensnaring their enemies in webs of intrigue. All the stories about Kyūden Shika are true, and all the stories are false. How can the curious help but visit, to find out for themselves?
Strengths and Weaknesses
Kyūden Shika does not appear extremely defensible at first glance. The outer wall is fairly small with very small ishigaki and occasional guard towers. Some of the gates are not even protected by proper gatehouses, and many of the interior buildings are also built with style and aesthetics in mind, rather than defense. Only the central keep is particularly fortified.
However, Kyūden Shika’s main defenses exist beyond the castle grounds. The forest that surrounds it provides a better defense than any wall ever could. Outside the wall, hunting parties and speardancers sweep the forest for foes. Deer Clan military doctrine directs the speardancers to counterattack aggressively through the woods in case of attack, using their superior mobility and command of the overgrown terrain to outmaneuver offenders. In addition, the Deer Clan shugenja maintain close alliances with several kami who make the forest their home. Ideally, unless a Great Clan dispatched one of their armies, any invaders would be dealt with long before they caught a glimpse of Kyūden Shika’s walls.
The castle grounds and the buildings’ and keep’s interiors are all uncommonly roomy and spacious; even the corridors are broad and high ceilinged. These curiosities of design, which were the bane of the architects and construction workers who built the structures, allow the Shika Speardancers to command space easily. Knives and short swords usually have an advantage over weapons with greater reach indoors, but Kyūden Shika’s open spaces allow one or two speardancers to control an entire hallway with sweeping and spinning motions.
Castle Culture
Many of the passionate young samurai who visit Kyūden Shika hope to indulge in the pleasures promised by the castle’s reputation (which is fostered by the cunning Shika Matchmakers). What they find is more complex. It is true that stimulating entertainment and raucous parties occur, along with ill-considered affairs, jealous quarrels, and the embarrassing consequences of overindulgence. The senior Shika Matchmakers keep a sly eye on such proceedings, using them as the foundations of their own intrigues. In moments of excess and emotion, the castle’s visitors reveal their true natures, their vulnerabilities, and their appetites
Even more importantly, this culture allows match-makers in training to hone their skills. These Shika insinuate themselves into the parties and dramatic interactions, training their own social skills and strengthening their ability to remain balanced and clearheaded when surrounded by chaos and temptation. A guest with patience, wisdom, and above all balance can begin to grasp the Shika’s science, learning to listen, to de-escalate conflict, and to gently guide others towards a desired action or train of thought. These skills can serve a person well in maintaining healthy, mature relationships—or in manipulating those around them into irreconcilable conflict
Fun and Entertainment
Kyūden Asako has no equal in attracting the best entertainers Rokugan has to offer. Kyūden Shika stopped trying to compete with it long ago. Instead, it focuses on up-and-coming artists who do not yet have fame or a following, giving many rising stars their big break. It also has a lower threshold for propriety than many other castles: plays that are just a little too lascivious, politically charged, passionate, or high concept for the audiences at Kyūden Doji or Kyūden Asako find a happy home here. It is to Kyūden Shika’s benefit to be talked about, even in negative terms. After all, the kind of impulsive, rebellious youths who have a taste for such tawdry entertainments are the easiest for the Shika family to mold into something more mature—or manipulate into something usefully negative.
Notable Features
Just outside of the walls stand the three great cedars and their shrines. Per the dictates of the spirits who inhabit each cedar, the shrines have no walls or enclosed structures. Gardens teeming with life surround each one, animals coming and going as they please.
Inside the outer bailey are a ryokan and its attendant hot-spring baths; yashiki for guests; auxiliary buildings where servants, artisans, and Shinseist priests live and work; and the speardancers’ dōjō. At the center stands the keep. The keep’s first story has a great hall used for receptions and social functions, and the higher floors are reserved for Deer Clan members and invited guests.
What Attracts Visitors
One little-known service the Deer Clan offers other clans is their expertise as arbiters of disputes. For all their meddling, the Shika insight into relationship dynamics makes them excellent at wringing com-promise out of conflict, a service they offer at Kyūden Shika in return for payment in favors, gold, and the security of knowing that a major power whose indiscretions they have fathomed will think twice before moving against them. Two parties with a particularly delicate problem to solve—an embarrassing conflict they would prefer no one hear about, for example, or a struggle that has been dead-locked for so long that the opponents are willing to consider anything to end it—may go to Kyūden Shika to pursue peaceful resolution
Despite widespread clan conflict in Rokugan, the Shika have not been overwhelmed with clients for their conflict resolution service. Several clans glorify stubbornness and conflict. Concessions and compromise are seen as synonymous with defeat, even among experienced negotiators. As such, it takes great courage for a samurai to fight the inertia of societal pres-sure and admit they need a third party’s help.
Conflicts taken to Kyūden Shika for resolution are kept strictly confidential by the clan. All parties are offered temporary housing in second-floor apartments in the keep, where they need not reveal their presence by going outside. They may stay hidden indoors for days, weeks, or months while the negotiations take place. Those involved are sworn to secrecy. The clan keeps meticulous records of what goes on in these sessions, but no records remain in obvious places on-site. The volumes are distributed among the Deer Clan’s other holdings, with instructions that they be burned or otherwise destroyed in the event of an attack
Supernatural Phenomenon
The forests outside the walls of Kyūden Shika are haunted by spirits who hale from Chikushō-dō, the realm of animals, and from Sakkaku, the realm of mischief. The speardancers of the Kyūden know how to placate (or at least avoid antagonizing) both factions, but unwary travelers have often been victims of strange pranks or sometimes even stalked by shadowy creatures.
Like many socially active castles, Kyūden Shika is vulnerable to infiltration. Frequent comings and goings create opportunities for trickster spirits such as kitsune to ingratiate themselves in their human forms with castle staff or visitors. Three foxes with snow-white fur have lived by the three ancient cedars for several centuries. Each of the kitsune has several different identities, mostly as groundskeepers, servants, and other individuals who tend to be invisible to high-ranking samurai. From time to time, they age current identities out and create new ones using their abilities to shape-shift, cast illusions, and influence minds
Deep in the heart of spirit-haunted Aokami Forest, roofs of brown tile rise from the canopy, their alabaster fixtures catching the light of morning and evening, making dawn and dusk seem to last just a little longer. The points of spears glitter in the watchtowers and along the parapets. Within the grounds, three Rokugani cedars, each one several millennia old and the shintai—or home—of a forest kami, stand amid manicured gardens and ornamental pools. The lyrics to a popular song say that one’s first glimpse of Kyūden Shika is the same feeling as falling in love
Kyūden Shika’s name features prominently in Rokugani literature, from romantic poems to scandalous novels. It is known primarily by two of its various reputations. “Kyūden Shika is a palace from a fairy tale, the ideal site to court one’s soulmate,” say the poems. “Kyūden Shika is a den of hedonism and iniquity, where the pleasures of the present eclipse any notion of the future,” say the novels. Virtue and vice. Rosy light and seductive darkness. Just the way the Deer Clan likes it.
The truth about this palace lies in the dialectic between these forces, just as the Deer Clan’s heart lies between its speardancers’ bold acrobatics and its matchmakers’ subtle machinations. Kyūden Shika is this little clan’s most efficient tool for affecting the balance of power in Rokugan, for drawing friends into unbreakable alliances and ensnaring their enemies in webs of intrigue. All the stories about Kyūden Shika are true, and all the stories are false. How can the curious help but visit, to find out for themselves?
Strengths and Weaknesses
Kyūden Shika does not appear extremely defensible at first glance. The outer wall is fairly small with very small ishigaki and occasional guard towers. Some of the gates are not even protected by proper gatehouses, and many of the interior buildings are also built with style and aesthetics in mind, rather than defense. Only the central keep is particularly fortified.
However, Kyūden Shika’s main defenses exist beyond the castle grounds. The forest that surrounds it provides a better defense than any wall ever could. Outside the wall, hunting parties and speardancers sweep the forest for foes. Deer Clan military doctrine directs the speardancers to counterattack aggressively through the woods in case of attack, using their superior mobility and command of the overgrown terrain to outmaneuver offenders. In addition, the Deer Clan shugenja maintain close alliances with several kami who make the forest their home. Ideally, unless a Great Clan dispatched one of their armies, any invaders would be dealt with long before they caught a glimpse of Kyūden Shika’s walls.
The castle grounds and the buildings’ and keep’s interiors are all uncommonly roomy and spacious; even the corridors are broad and high ceilinged. These curiosities of design, which were the bane of the architects and construction workers who built the structures, allow the Shika Speardancers to command space easily. Knives and short swords usually have an advantage over weapons with greater reach indoors, but Kyūden Shika’s open spaces allow one or two speardancers to control an entire hallway with sweeping and spinning motions.
Castle Culture
Many of the passionate young samurai who visit Kyūden Shika hope to indulge in the pleasures promised by the castle’s reputation (which is fostered by the cunning Shika Matchmakers). What they find is more complex. It is true that stimulating entertainment and raucous parties occur, along with ill-considered affairs, jealous quarrels, and the embarrassing consequences of overindulgence. The senior Shika Matchmakers keep a sly eye on such proceedings, using them as the foundations of their own intrigues. In moments of excess and emotion, the castle’s visitors reveal their true natures, their vulnerabilities, and their appetites
Even more importantly, this culture allows match-makers in training to hone their skills. These Shika insinuate themselves into the parties and dramatic interactions, training their own social skills and strengthening their ability to remain balanced and clearheaded when surrounded by chaos and temptation. A guest with patience, wisdom, and above all balance can begin to grasp the Shika’s science, learning to listen, to de-escalate conflict, and to gently guide others towards a desired action or train of thought. These skills can serve a person well in maintaining healthy, mature relationships—or in manipulating those around them into irreconcilable conflict
Fun and Entertainment
Kyūden Asako has no equal in attracting the best entertainers Rokugan has to offer. Kyūden Shika stopped trying to compete with it long ago. Instead, it focuses on up-and-coming artists who do not yet have fame or a following, giving many rising stars their big break. It also has a lower threshold for propriety than many other castles: plays that are just a little too lascivious, politically charged, passionate, or high concept for the audiences at Kyūden Doji or Kyūden Asako find a happy home here. It is to Kyūden Shika’s benefit to be talked about, even in negative terms. After all, the kind of impulsive, rebellious youths who have a taste for such tawdry entertainments are the easiest for the Shika family to mold into something more mature—or manipulate into something usefully negative.
Notable Features
Just outside of the walls stand the three great cedars and their shrines. Per the dictates of the spirits who inhabit each cedar, the shrines have no walls or enclosed structures. Gardens teeming with life surround each one, animals coming and going as they please.
Inside the outer bailey are a ryokan and its attendant hot-spring baths; yashiki for guests; auxiliary buildings where servants, artisans, and Shinseist priests live and work; and the speardancers’ dōjō. At the center stands the keep. The keep’s first story has a great hall used for receptions and social functions, and the higher floors are reserved for Deer Clan members and invited guests.
What Attracts Visitors
One little-known service the Deer Clan offers other clans is their expertise as arbiters of disputes. For all their meddling, the Shika insight into relationship dynamics makes them excellent at wringing com-promise out of conflict, a service they offer at Kyūden Shika in return for payment in favors, gold, and the security of knowing that a major power whose indiscretions they have fathomed will think twice before moving against them. Two parties with a particularly delicate problem to solve—an embarrassing conflict they would prefer no one hear about, for example, or a struggle that has been dead-locked for so long that the opponents are willing to consider anything to end it—may go to Kyūden Shika to pursue peaceful resolution
Despite widespread clan conflict in Rokugan, the Shika have not been overwhelmed with clients for their conflict resolution service. Several clans glorify stubbornness and conflict. Concessions and compromise are seen as synonymous with defeat, even among experienced negotiators. As such, it takes great courage for a samurai to fight the inertia of societal pres-sure and admit they need a third party’s help.
Conflicts taken to Kyūden Shika for resolution are kept strictly confidential by the clan. All parties are offered temporary housing in second-floor apartments in the keep, where they need not reveal their presence by going outside. They may stay hidden indoors for days, weeks, or months while the negotiations take place. Those involved are sworn to secrecy. The clan keeps meticulous records of what goes on in these sessions, but no records remain in obvious places on-site. The volumes are distributed among the Deer Clan’s other holdings, with instructions that they be burned or otherwise destroyed in the event of an attack
Supernatural Phenomenon
The forests outside the walls of Kyūden Shika are haunted by spirits who hale from Chikushō-dō, the realm of animals, and from Sakkaku, the realm of mischief. The speardancers of the Kyūden know how to placate (or at least avoid antagonizing) both factions, but unwary travelers have often been victims of strange pranks or sometimes even stalked by shadowy creatures.
Like many socially active castles, Kyūden Shika is vulnerable to infiltration. Frequent comings and goings create opportunities for trickster spirits such as kitsune to ingratiate themselves in their human forms with castle staff or visitors. Three foxes with snow-white fur have lived by the three ancient cedars for several centuries. Each of the kitsune has several different identities, mostly as groundskeepers, servants, and other individuals who tend to be invisible to high-ranking samurai. From time to time, they age current identities out and create new ones using their abilities to shape-shift, cast illusions, and influence minds