Lordship and Governance

[Vutall]

Lordship and Governance
Feudal governance in Rokugan, from the Emperor down to the lowliest regional daimyō, is centered on castles, which serve both as the symbolic seats of power for lords and as the administrative centers for those lords’ rule of their lands. Taxes are brought to castles for collection, soldiers and magistrates patrol from castles to uphold order, and commoners who wish to petition their lord for help must travel to the local castle to do so.

Each Great Clan’s territory is divided into a number of provinces, and each province has a daimyō whose seat of power is usually at the province’s strongest castle. The clan champion and the various family leaders may reside in the most prominent of these castles or they may have separate castles of their own, depending on tradition; these highest-ranking lords officially rule over one province directly, but typically they delegate that task to an underling such as a seneschal or hatamoto.

Major cities in a Great Clan’s lands have governors of their own. These governors also generally reside in castles, although sometimes they may dwell in an unfortified residence within the city proper. Regardless, both city governors and provincial governors have ruling authority over their lands, upholding laws, maintaining order, and collecting taxes.

This system doesn’t end at the level of governors. Below them are lesser lords, known as shugo, who rule over smaller pieces of territory in their lords’ names. These regional lords are the lowest-ranking samurai who can claim the title of daimyō. They tend to be ambitious and fractious, prone to quarreling with their neighbors—especially if those neighbors happen to be across a family or clan territorial border. Naturally, every one of them resides in a castle, since to do otherwise would mean a loss of face. Thus, the nature of Rokugan’s feudal system ensures there are hundreds of castles scattered across the Empire

The feudal system extends to the local manor lords who serve under the regional lords. These samurai rule over very small regions, typically a few villages or perhaps even a single one. This is a lowly responsibility, but it still allows them to consider themselves part of the landed gentry and to collect taxes from their lands. A manor lord ruling a single remote village is higher in the social order than a samurai guarding the border or fighting in the clan’s armies. However, these samurai are far too lowly to have castles, instead residing in manor houses of various levels of fortification.


Castles of Rokugan
The Rokugani have been building castles since the earliest days of the Empire. If certain ancient texts are to be believed, the tribe of Isawa was doing so before the Kami fell from the Heavens. Like most aspects of the Empire’s culture and civilization, Rokugani design and construction of castles is governed by traditions going back to those earliest days. Its methods and styles began when Hantei I founded the Imperial City of Otosan Uchi and thus are still considered the only “correct” way to build. At that time, Hantei and the other Kami brought new understanding of architecture and engineering to the lands that made up Rokugan. They instructed their new people in the construction of castles that resembled those of the Celestial Heavens. These design elements—sloped tiles that top walls and cover roofs; the vertical, pagoda-like structure of towers and keeps; the plaster-smooth, lightly sloped outer walls—are found in nearly all castles of Rokugan. This imitative custom has other aspects as well. For exam-ple, because the main keep of Hantei’s palace was ten stories high, no other Rokugani keep has more than nine stories, lest its daimyō be accused of presuming to place themself on a level with the Emperor.

In a society where appearances matter as much as reality, castles serve a dual role: they are centers of military power, cultural activity, and administrative government, but they are also symbols of each clan's power, wealth, and ideals. While all castles conform to certain basic design principles, each clan modifies those principles to reflect its needs, values, and aesthetics. Crab castles are brutally practical, Lion castles austere and traditional, Crane castles airy and beautiful, Scorpion castles filled with hidden passages, and so forth. More-over, specific families and individual lords construct their castles based on their own duties and values, which may diverge somewhat from the general tone of their clan. The castle of the Kakita family is different from that of the Daidoji family, despite the fact that both are Crane castles

The castles of the Unicorn Clan, in keeping with many of that clan’s undertakings, diverge more significantly from the conventional designs of Rokugan. The Unicorn were absent from the Empire for eight cen-turies, encountering many different foreign influences during their long journey. Consequently, their architecture merges those foreign concepts with Rokugani designs from the very early days of the Empire, and it has only gradually begun to adopt modern Imperial-standard aesthetics. Far Traveler Castle is a single large three-sided keep, while Battle Maiden Castle tops its multiple towers with bell-shaped domes, and the palace of the Moto family in Khanbulak is not a sol-id structure at all, but a series of magnificent tapestries hung between great columns. The one major Unicorn stronghold that conforms to the Empire’s expectations is Great Day Castle, which the clan built with the specific goal of forming good diplomatic relations with the rest of the Empire


Duties of Lords
The chief duties of any lord are to maintain order; protect their lands and assets from external invasion and internal threats such as bandits, pirates, and rebellions; and collect taxes. To this end, each lord maintains a force of jizamurai who garrison their holdings, patrol the roads and borders, and protect the lord’s castle. The richer and more powerful the lord, the more jizamu-rai they can maintain under arms and the more secure their holdings are. Lords also appoint lower-ranking officials such as tax assessors, magistrates, and local landholders to maintain the law and administer their lands. In the event of war, the lord is responsible for raising and training ashigaru, or peasant soldiers, to serve in battle.

If a region is poorly defended or plagued with lawlessness, the lord is considered responsible for this failure and must rectify it promptly. Failure to do so is punished, perhaps only with a shaming public rebuke but possibly with demotion in rank or even the prospect of seppuku

Lords are responsible for the welfare and fortune of their vassals; however, the level of concern and commitment varies among clans and families. Some lords will go out of their way to ensure their vassals have good lives, to the point of personally ensuring they receive good marriages, or bestowing gifts on them at every important event; at the other extreme, there are lords who believe their only responsibility is to pay their vassals’ monthly stipend. Most rulers fall some-where in the middle.

Because a lord’s castle is both the most defensible place in their lands and the central point of their administration, it is the preferred location for their most important governing activities. Taxes are brought to the castle every fall and then counted and held secure until the proper shares can be passed on to higher lords and the Emperor. Captured bandits and criminals are often brought there for execution, and if they are slain else-where, their heads may be displayed outside the castle as a warning to others. Most importantly, castles host both diplomatic engagements and the planning of war.

Lords also have duties of hospitality. A lord is expect-ed to provide safe and civilized housing to any samurai who visit the castle as guests, whether they are low-ranking passersby or senior nobility. The level of hospitality that is considered proper varies among clans: a Crab or Lion lord considers their duty done if their guests have food to eat and a room to sleep in, whereas a Crane lord makes sure the guests have a well-appointed room, fine meals, art and music to entertain them, and pleas-ant conversation to pass the time. Clans also disagree on how important it is for a lord to make their castle a center of art and culture. Here again, the more martial and ascetic clans tend to minimize or outright reject such things, while others regard them as a duty just as crucial as the rest.

Lords in all lands are responsible for coordinating and hosting the various religious festivals and celebrations held throughout the year. This involves working with local temples and their own clan shugenja to ensure that observances are carried out properly and that nothing inauspicious mars these events. The Rokugani are a pious people, and commoners are intensely superstitious. A lord who fails to properly venerate the kami and Fortunes, or whose reign is marked by bad omens, will soon face growing discontent.

The final aspect of a lord’s primary duties is maintaining good order among the heimin and hinin, ensuring those humble peasants carry out the simple but vital tasks that keep the Empire running smoothly. A lord who permits disrespect or outright lawlessness among the lower castes, or who callously fails to protect them during dangerous times, is failing in their duty and may well face the humiliation of a peasant revolt. In that case, the lord’s castle becomes a prison, a place where the ruler and their vassals are trapped by the wrath of the common folk