Legend of Five Zahagan

A tempestuous blast from the East,
Has bowed the forest of nations,
Dashed blighted boughs aground,
Scattered every hoofed and winged beast.

Brothers and sisters don White Turbans.
You would have said, "Were every lily,
To ever grow be arrayed together in ranks,
Still it would not match this ivory host!"

Where are the neglected people of talent?
Just as the nocked arrow must take flight,
They must pick up the pen and grasp the sword.
On the field of merit the khwarrah will alight.

A game of high operatic political drama and sick swordfights using the Legend of Five Rings 5E ruleset.

Setting

The Yuhwans

On bleeding feet the Yuhwa fled over the Heavenly Mountain's treacherous passes to the land of the Simurgh.

The White Turbans

The Celestial Sejm began as a small a Yuhwan sect, one of many, which grew to be especially popular in the free towns and cities of Lehastan.

Members of the White Turbans swear to uphold the Eoraha, return the errant Princes to the Way, and expel the Lie. Devotees then bind their heads with the signature White Turban; an ubiquitous form of headdress throughout most of the Yuhwan nations and much of the continent besides. The chameleon virtue of this plain garment is distinguished to the knowing eye only by the use of cheaply made - and easily discarded - pins with the shape of the starburst or the lily.

United across many leagues by the pamphlet, the brave crier, and secret signs the

Aihrenfazarkh

UNFINISHED NOTES: The Aihren Empire at the start of the game is an unbelievably large and populous empire, likely in many ways "more populous" than the later Aihrenfazark of the 20th century. Obviously not more populated, but the rivers are less silted and the salinity is lower, so they feed more compared to what they will later feed even though the absolute numbers are lower. It is an empire that is undoubtedly a gunpowder empire in the most real sense of that term- in the sense that its power is fundamentally built on a gunpowder élite, the "shooters" ala neftenya-gabbar so to speak. These are the Janissaries of the Empire, the imperial diaspora, to which the King of Kings sells lands in all parts of his empire to establish little enclaves in order to control his vast dominion. They are of lesser aristocratic birth themselves, entering into the service of the cult of the millenial sovereign, acting as a kind of democratic 'check' on the power of electors as soldiers of the dynasty first and foremost. However, about a decade before the game start, a group of these diasporic soldiers take part in an imperial regicide as the King of Kings begins consolidating his vast empire and reducing the power of the electors in favour of the throne, seeking a revival of great Aihren conquests and wishing to undo the bipolar system with the collegium. The soldiers essentially act as the 'democratic check' again, intervening in the conflicts of the dynasty for the stability of the imperial bureaucracy as they have done through less violent means before, but this time the result is chaos; the dynastic structure topples, a hastened election is called, several Kings are elected at once and instead of going through the elaborate process of dynastic compromise, they simply set up new Kingdoms each. The entire dynastic structure shakes and yawns with terror as the systems that make it up come undone and the sacred personage of the millenial sovereign has been wounded.

Thus, Aihrenfazark enters into a period of internal feuding - the Sovereignty is one but no one holds it - where the dynasty has split into a kind of "royal hydra", each elected King biting at each other and the elaborate mechanisms of the Empire's labour mobilization capabilities not coming undone, but rather being pressed to a point where they can do nothing but break as the countryside and cities are emptied of men for soldiers. People become partisans and take to fighting the imperial diaspora over the regicide as the old consolidations are undone - which to many populations opened up opportunities that had been locked to the diaspora and aristocracy - and the very notion of what being 'Aihren' means is broken up in an orgy of blood. And in all this, through the mountain passes of the Collegium comes a clarion call that shatters nations in its path; a voice telling men and women of brave demeanour to don the white turban. In the inner lands of the Aihren peoples, this movement is nothing short of revolutionary, seeking to redefine the very notion of being Aihren to an existence without the dynasty itself, seeing rather a borderless world of commen Imperial subjecthood with nothing in-between ruler and ruled.

System and Character Development

General notes

The game will be using L5R 5E, with some minor houserules to reflect different narrative priorities from L5R's replication of Shakespearean Tragedy.