Scorpion Lands - Ryokō Owari Toshi: “The City of Lies”

[Vutall]

Ryokō Owari Toshi—“The City of Lies”
The City of Ryokō Owari Toshi has many names: Journey’s End, for its ambition to check an expansionist Crab presence in the fifth century; the City of Green Walls, for the color of the quarried limestone used to build the city’s defenses; and the City of Stories, for the cosmopolitan population, to name a few. But the “second-largest” city in Rokugan is most often referred to as the City of Lies. The city’s character is dominated by an empowered burakumin caste whose people tend the massive fields of bright red poppies outside the city walls, and by an overly strong and corrupt firefighter presence within. Both are tolerated by the ruling Scorpion Clan. The city’s presence as the major source of opium—a vital medicinal drug and a dangerous narcotic—for Rokugan has required the Scorpion to organize the drug trade into three vast cartels controlled by the Bayushi, Shosuro, and Soshi families and stretching across the Empire

Ryokō Owari is divided into six quarters: the Fishers’ Quarter, the heimin-dominated main population center on the western side of the Bay of Drowned Honor; the Merchant Quarter, heavily populated and receiving shipments of goods from three great wharves; the Temple Quarter, home to the massive Temple of Dai-koku and equally resplendent Temple of Amaterasu; the Noble Quarter, where the city’s court and Scorpion nobles reside; and the Licensed Quarter of Teardrop Island, the pleasure section of the city. The final quarter, the Leatherworkers’ Quarter, sprawls outside the city’s southwestern walls and provides leather goods as well as waste collection and crematorium services for the city. The three Scorpion cartels control the entire city in one way or another, and by extension the great majority of the opium trade throughout the Empire (certain Mantis and Tortoise holdings make up the remainder).

Celestial Disorder
Class structures blur within Ryokō Owari. Merchants and craftspeople hold power above their station com-pared to the rest of Rokugan due to the power of wealth in the city. The firefighter gangs, made up of heimin tasked with fighting fires within their neighbor-hoods, are efficient protection rackets that fight fires only when it doesn’t interfere with their criminal activities. In addition to the protection rackets, they run opium dens, prostitution rings, and numerous gambling activities, all often under the guise of an ordinary sake house. The merchants quietly complain about the extortion, but they dare not complain about the kick-backs the gangs pay to the governor’s personal troops, the elite Thunder Guard. The Thunder Guard maintains peace within the city, but not justice: its purpose is to avoid and avert violence, rioting, and other such disruptive events. Governor Shosuro Hyobu is perfectly happy to ignore the endemic corruption of the city, especially since virtually every guard and noble has some source of illegal money. Even the hinin of Ryokō Owari are altogether too familiar and too powerful. Their role of transporting the dung and trash out of the city to fuel the expansive poppy fields means they are wealthier and wield more influence than virtually any village of burakumin in Rokugan. They stalk the areas outside the city, and some even presume to sneer in the general direction of samurai

The Licensed Quarter
Teardrop Island, a densely populated island in the center of a smaller bay, contains the pleasure district of an indulgent city. The quarter is open to any people of quality who wish to wander the streets, their anonymity protected by basket hats, as long as they leave their weapons at the docks—allegedly for polishing. Countless geisha houses, opium dens, sake houses, and other such establishments—including a residence illegally run by gaijin—are all available for paying and discerning samurai who wish to escape their duties for a time. This is but the merest example of Ryokō Owari’s offerings, for outside Teardrop Island, vice and opium flow without respite. Red lanterns illuminate the island, washing the bay in red and cloaking the area with a tinge of unreality that eases a samurai’s mind and lets their façade drop without shame.