My initial reaction is that this removes a lot of the identity of the five rings from Legend of the Five Rings. Now I'm rolling Fire because I'm mechanically forced to by my opponent, not because it reflects my role-playing choice of being flashy, emotional, or aggressive. And with opportunity being spent the same way, each of the rings might start to feel sort of the same.
That said, I'm pro adapting the rules however you need to for your table. I agree that it takes a while to figure out how you can spend opportunity, so I understand the appeal of simplifying things. My sense is that L5R leads to more house ruling than most other RPGs.

Yes and no.
The RPG contains rules for a generic 'peasant family' for 'rise from the dust' campaigns for Jisamurai and elevated ashigaru, which lets you pick your own rings and skills (though the latter have to be Trade skills)
Path of Waves also contains more generic rules - ostensibly for ronin - where your rings and skills are generated from 'regions of origin' (mountain, forest, etc), but since it still uses schools, you could create a minor Kakita vassal family from region XYZ and then stick them through the Kakita duellist school or whatever rather than a ronin school.
I did try to do a house-rules 20 Questions template for a minor clan - you could easily do that for a vassal family.
 
Agreed. The card game needs simplicity and doesn't really need flesh out details as long as the world 'feels' right, where the RPG can have you dealing with precisely the sort of issues the card game doesn't. I love games featuring minor clans and vassal families because you can afford to create and destroy them without shaking up the 'official' narrative too much, whilst full clan families are virtually never touched within a story (although I do like that FFG have at least shown a vassal family - the Kaito - being promoted to full clan family status)
I think it's fair enough to have the tradition - that is, to have official legal names denote which 'clan family' vassal families are specifically vassals of. But I rarely ever use the 'shorthand' in any game I run - people dealing with vassal families will generally use their 'proper' names.

Agreed, the distinction between Doji and Tsume no Doji (for example) normally gets ignored outside the Crane.
(I mean, if you're actually talking to the Tsume Daimyo, then obviously not. But for generic Tsume Jim-bob).
Equally you have the jisamurai class who are definitely Crane clan, definitely sworn to the Doji family's service, but not entitled to be called Doji-san (though you probably would until someone specifically confirmed that was the case).
So you could have 5 'Doji Jim-Bobs' - only one of whom is legally Doji Jim-Bob; the others being strictly Katogama no Doji Jim-Bob, Morehei no Doji Jim-Bob, and Tsume no Doji Jim-Bob, and just plain Jim-Bob.
Even so, repeated names seems like it's going to be a thing fairly often. Obviously it'd be unlikely - verging on disrespectful - to name your child the same as someone you know is likely to become your daimyo or champion, but it's generally implied the number of vassal families of a given clan family is at most only single digit figures and more likely 2-3 in most cases.
True. Rokugan definitely has women integrated into 'active' society far more than any historical culture I can think of - they're ambassadors, soldiers, generals, clan champions and high officials, and that has to have an impact on family size and birth rate; civil war aside Doji Hotaru would be pressured even if not legally required to secure an heir, and the 'adoption' argument still requires a samurai somewhere in your clan to be having babies - it moves the problem, it doesn't solve it.
I'd agree with @TheHobgoblyn - whilst I can't talk for earlier editions the fictions and sourcebooks feel like we're talking of the clans as nations of thousands or tens of thousands of samurai, not millions.
Also agreed. Probably the biggest difference - at least for samurai, not peasants, is that the rate of surviving labour and infant mortality is probably a lot closer to modern-day numbers; not only is there 'in case of emergency, break laws of physics' magic, but also (apologies if I offend anyone) in the setting 'traditional oriental medicine' actually works, and not just the bits which have been studied by modern scholars and since become traditional oriental actual medicine

My demographics page, if you will recheck, uses the measured area of rokugan X  (population of Japan during the Edo/area of Japan), to draw the total population number, and then divides the total by 5%, which is the sustainable amount of a non-producing elite in the period.  Further down you have a population distribution and explanations as to why fighting forces are half that, etc. All of which clearly available.
Something that might help with the Unicorn is that they are not living nomadically in the burning sands right now.  They are living within their territories, and they have farmers cultivating grain, etc, that are not nomadic.  With that, their herds can certainly grow to a very great size. 

All the numbers I am assuming come from a stable pre-Clan wars timeline.  The Wall is often very quiet for generations. The current rates of attrition for clans like Crane (due to tsunami/warfare) and Crab (due to the spike in Shadowlands activity) and Dragon (due to extremely repressed birthrate) would be different from any sort of background norm.

I don't find the Way of the Dragon numbers, at least proportionally, overly realistic.  I personally in my numbers do not attempt to break down by clan, only split evenly between the clans and non-clan samurai.
 
That said, the Way of the Dragon numbers are supposed to encompass only the actual fighting forces of the clans, not the entire population of the clan. The reason the Lion and Crab numbers are so high is that they utilize a greater percentage of their samurai for warfare than other clans.

The other thing you are not considering is the availability of birth control and the treatment of women.  It has been established in the real world that the birthrate goes down as the societal treatment of women goes up, when birth control is available, and there is not a cultural obligation (for example, for farming) that requires a woman to bear multiple children. 

The Crane being wealthy and less war-oriented would not have developed the cultural obligation to have larger families, and their high relative status and the established availability of 'Moon Tea' would dampen the birthrates.  Clans like the Lion and Crab, with a focus on their military culture, have, potentially, developed a culture with more of a societal expectation of larger families.   This aspect of a society far outweighs temporary drops in population due to war or disease...see our modern world for example.

Finally, those Lion and Scorpion aren't throwing their lives away for nothing. They are being killed in battle...against the Crane.  Unless Crane were such superior fighters that every individual Crane samurai can kill multiples of Lion or Scorpion, they are taking each other out at roughly equal numbers.

I understand the concern, and don't necessarily buy Way of the Dragon's numbers.  But, most of all, please remember that women aren't rabbits. Thanks!

A fun-fact that might be relevant to this-- Japanese/Koreans are actually red-heads with such very dark hair that it becomes effectively black. When you use just a bit of bleach, either artificial or from exposure to the sun, it takes on a dark reddish-orange hue. You can also see it if you take a strand of hair and hold it up to the light.
Another fun fact-- pretty much the only whitening agent that would be available to people living in Rokugan's level of technology is made from human urine. So when you see all those Cranes with bleached white hair and white/light colored kimonos... just remember that for a moment. Of course, one has to imagine the actual process of making the bleach is handled by the eta-- so its possible that the Crane don't even know what they are rubbing in their hair to make it white.
You just think about what fuss they make about getting blood on them and it becomes all the more humorous.

So... Unaware of Horonigai's discovery, Uiri and Goriate headed back to their rendezvous- the Hida complaining about the aftertaste of the pickled fish. The two arrived back at the Grinning Mujina to find the front of the building deserted, with no sign of the heimin they'd sent to follow Keinosuke . Worryingly, Uiri smelled blood, and - investigating - they found the bodies of the heimin....here and there. Generally around the place. At this point, the investigation was interrupted by the Pennangalan suddenly appearing from behind a table and launching itself at Uiri, thick ropes of blood-soaked intestine reaching to strangle him. Despite this, Uiri went first  and his katana snapped out in a perfect iai strike, inflicting quite a bit of fatigue. The monster's entrails then rapped around him, snaring him. Goriate initially went to help but instead spent his turn recovering fatigue via warrior's resolve as his guts locked into agonising cramps and he vomited no small amount of stomach acid and blood onto the Grinning Mujina's floor.  "So....poison?" "Looks like."  Uiri managed to inflict more fatigue with a strike action but remained immobilized, with the Pennangalan taking the opportunity to strangle him for a sizeable amount of fatigue.  Goriate managed to hold it together and deliver a strike himself, which was evidently enough for the monster - the following round, as Uiri tried and failed to untangle his arm for another strike, it disentangle and skittered off into the kitchen-slash-storeroom of the sake house. Horonigai and Suiren arrived at this point, and related what she'd discovered and what she'd deduced. The quarter moved cautiously into the back room, the room dimly lit by the embers from an open pit hearth. On one wall were wax-paper bundles of dried cabbage and fish, on the other sake barrels and packets of spices and herbs to try and disguise the awful taste of the cheap food - and on the back wall, next to a ladder up to a living space in the loft, were six large barrels of vinegar. There was no back entrance. Uiri and Goriate went to investigate the room - taking inspiration from the story they'd heard, smashing a nearby table and lighting wooden brands in the hearth. Horonigai prepared a Sacred Arrow whilst Suiren did his best to blend in with the shadows and look unappetizing and unthreatening. One barrel proved to have a loose lid and to contain a headless, disembowelled corpse floating in the vinegar. Uiri's first response was to throw his brand into the barrel until it was pointed out that he'd be trying to set fire to vinegar*. Realising (I.e. being slightly mocked by the other players) he went to get some sake to set the fire. Goriate started setting fires using the wax paper parcels on the left wall, but the poison was really getting to him now, leaving him incapacitated. Despite the Hida's impressive constitution, he had been fed a dose of poison 'Watchful' had intended for both him and Uiri, and it showed. Suiren (still lurking in the shadows) decided to use his medicine skill and check out 'Watchful's 'spice rack' to see if he could find the poison - and, with a lucky roll, found a discarded bottle that smelled of a drug he'd.....read about.....once....and had obviously never actually encountered. Clearly. Relaying this to Horonigai, the two were able to create a makeshift antidote and purgative. Granted, this left him vomiting even more and left him relying on Way of the Crab to mitigate a poison critical strike**. Uiri, meanwhile, had been a busy little arsonist, by the time Suiren and Horonigai helped the staggering Goriate out, the Grinning Mujina was burning merrily. Destroying the Pennangalan's body would kill it at sunrise, wherever it had fled to.... ......Except - luckily! - Suiren noticed in an alley on the other side of the street a spindly figure stand up, in a jerky fashion reminiscent of the Warai's puppets. Shouting a warning to the other PCs, he rushed to investigate, discovering 'Watchful', back in his body. The corpse in the barrel wasn't 'Watchful's own body but a previous victim, decapitated and with its guts pulled out through the neck to create a broadly convincing decoy 'host body', in the hopes that pursuers would believe what the PCs had assumed. Fortunately, Suiren has an extremely high vigilance and a suspicious nature. Horonigai used her enhanced arrow, landing a critical strike, and rendering Watchful incapacitated and prone. Uiri rushed in and dispatched it. At this point, Horonigai - the only PC in her magistrates robes - took on the job of rallying the local fire fighters and containing the blaze whilst the other three blocked the alley containing the monster's remains. Fortunately, Horonigai did so very well (thanks in part to Voice of Authority), and no one thought to  ask how she was on the scene of the fire so fast. Now they just had to figure out what to tell Seppun Ishima....  
 
 
 
* Before anyone says anything: Acetic Acid - the vinegar-ey bit of vinegar - is nicely flammable, but even strong sake vinegar is something like 90% water.
** reducing it by his school rank but obviously not his armour resistance in this case.

It's not an email address but the support form on the website. That then goes to the respective person at FFG, and then they respond via email (at least ime).
Specifically, it's this Rules Questions one:
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/contact/rules/

Oh, I agree with what you are saying but there’s a difference in I guess what I could call possible and achievable. So rolling to see if you achieved something (like getting enough opportunities to hit someone beyond the weapon’s range with Hawk Precision) is kind of covered by the rules, but the way Incapacitated is written gives the idea of you can’t even try to roll in the first place. The language there (and in many other places of the conflict chapter) are extremely ambivalent and too open for interpretation when it should be the one part of the book where that should not be the case...
Here I am still hoping for a revised edition soon.

Of course! And I agree. The more people send them support requests to that effect, the more likely they will. Lightly edited for formatting.
<snip> that is, whether one can attempt an action while Incapacitated, hoping to get to ignore Incapacitated.
RAW yes. I don't think it's unbalanced, but I wouldn't fault a GM for just saying no to keep things simple, though.

Because I've asked support/the devs, since otherwise Void's "Ignore a Condition" seemed useless and Bleeding completely non-threatening. 
I agree that it isn't at all obvious from how it is formulated in the book and I suspect that's why it didn't end up in the FAQ: Not many people even thought to ask, since it's so clear!
Edit: oh, and I think what ultimately made me ask was a Movement type action with an Opportunity spend to remove Immobilised. 

The players were left with several suspects. The fact that the pennanglan had killed a samurai for the first time after preying on commoners for months suggested Yoshi had seen something and the penanggalan had silenced him.
Suiren was to go and see Chinoka and Bayushi Tsubasa (it was agreed that they ought to question him but that it should be the one person he hadn't met). Tsubasa was his first port of call. The scorpion was fairly welcoming - a newly-arrived, wealthy, influential member of the clan a useful asset. Tsubasa confirmed his master, Touma, was the unofficial Scorpion ambassador to the town, and that the Shosuro's help would be appreciated in furthering the Scorpion Clan's goals, something Suiren was happy to agree to. "Where are you staying if I need to contact you?" "A townhouse in...you know what? The Warai Theatre. Definitely contact me through the Warai Puppet Troupe Theatre." - Suiren remembering their townhouse is leased in Kakita Riku's name... After this, he called on Chinoka, taking tea and talking shop. He told her about the death of Yoshi (it wouldn't be hard for her to find out by other means and if she was the penanggalan, she'd obviously know about it and be suspicious if it wasn't mentioned). Chinoka claimed not to know Yoshi, but admitted he'd been one of three ronin the Okiya had hired two weeks ago: Yoshi hadn't been picked so much as being one of the first three to stick their hands up and say "I need the money" when her servant went to the Grinning Mujina looking for manpower.  Suiren also - since it was the sort of political gossip Chinoka might want as an okasan - let her know what they'd heard about Lion and Crane ambassadors coming to the city to negotiate for the Seven Waves otokodate' s support. Chinoka sounded intrigued, clearly angling ways to spin a profit from such an event. Horonigai, thanks to Kazuda's favour would be doing research ("do you want to defeat undead blood-drinking strangle-monster? Yes? Then I must do reeeeesearch......" - Horonigai's player) Uiri - in plain travelling clothes this time and accompanied by Goriate - returned to the Grinning Mujina to tail Keinosuke and Himari. 'Watchful' recognised the Mirumoto but had enough sense to treat him like any other customer, presenting the two with a huge bowl of pickled fish and cabbage, which Uiri slid across the table to his Hida counterpart. "Go on then. It won't be convincing if we don't eat."  They watched the two ronin for much of the evening, in between 'Watchful' providing more portions of revolting pickled food. "Oh well, at least it's better than rations on the Wall" - Goriate "I've served on the Wall, Samurai-sama, and can assure you it isn't." - 'Watchful'. One main concern was what to do when they left. Assuming they were going to two separate lodgings, the two bushi had no intention of splitting up to follow them. "Are there some people in the the sake house we could pay to follow them - preferably sneaky, poor and desperate?" - Goriate "You basically just described Watchful's entire customer base." - Uiri. They picked a trio of commoners and slipped them a couple of silver, telling them to follow Keinosuke and to meet back near the Grinning Mujina in the early hours of the morning. Meanwhile the two samurai set off two follow Himari.  
Meanwhile, in Seppun Sora's library, Horonigai finally found a useful text. Most of the penanggalan's properties were things they knew from the Sparrows story - it was strong, it flew, it strangled people and drank their blood, and it couldn't survive the death of its body indefinitely. The fact that it was technically undead and tainted was sort-of-welcome news in that the Kaito now knew which 'flavour' of threshold barrier could keep it out (fire, for what it's worth), but far more important was the passage talking about the penanggalan's use of vinegar to soak it's viscera to fit back into its shell. "Ah....bugger, it's 'Watchful', isn't it?" - Horonigai's player. Leaving the library at speed, the Kaito ran toward the magistrates station to acquire a bow and find Suiren  
At the other end of the town, oblivious, Goriate and Uiri left the alley overlooking Himari's rooms and headed back towards the Grinning Mujina.

For that matter, the Hida master ability The Mountain Does Not Fall literally does this, giving you two turns of ignoring Dangerous terrain, Compromised, Incapacitated, Scar disadvantages, Bleeding, and even Dying.
A high-ranking Hida's "famous last stand" can take quite a while....

Looks really good. 
I'm not sure I'd use influence simply because I already tend to use Glory as 'court currency' (albeit staked rather than spent - would you consider that staking influence should be a thing?) But the structure of the court and some of the example intrigue ideas are great.
I'm not too sure about the honour influence loss. Tying influence loss to the clan's perception if bushido makes sense, but at the same time a lord can be very influential and demanding of his or her court and ready to shun perceived infractions without being especially honourable themselves. 

Someone said to me that Canada has had the Sourcebook for ages, but not seen the adventure at all.

The PCs then changed into their formal best and headed to the governor's mansion to be presented to Seppun Sora and his court. The event went well enough thanks to Horonigai's performance skill (I guess after being presented to the Imperial dais at Winter Court, some random provincial Daimyo, however exalted, is a lot less scary). Both she and Uiri could pretty much feel the daggers from Mirumoto Kazuya's glare the whole time. After the formalities, they had a little time to speak to members of Seppun Sora's court, and decided to keep Kazuya at arms length by politely ignoring the great clan ambassadors. Horonigai spoke to Joshu - the speaker-for-ronin and commander of the East Wind otokodate. Joshu came across as an honourable and competent but somewhat forlorn figure, who had the kind of presence Horonigai associated with the various senior clan commanders she'd met. When she spoke to Uiri (who knew the Unicorn pretty well from his childhood), he was able to confirm that - aside from the excised and painted-over clan heraldry - she was wearing the ceremonial armour of an Utaku Shiotome officer, Horonigai decided she could well believe it - though how someone like that ended up ronin was a puzzling question. Uiri spoke to the Fox representative. The Kitsune courtier was a cheerful and friendly young woman who was fully aware the clan's justifications for hiring ronin for the crane were fooling no-one whatsoever. She was determined to stick to the script, even if she was laughing at herself as she did so, and had taken, much to the court's amusement, to devising increasingly ridiculous missions to despatch ronin to the Osari Plains - the latest being hiring six Serpent' s Teeth veterans to guard a single ink block being couriered from Hirosaka to Daidoji Uji, as "it's a very nice shade of blue and Uji-dono takes his calligraphy seriously..." The Hare representative either took himself more seriously or lacked the confidence to make jokes at his own expense. Thanks to Goriate's Hero of Shiro Usagi fame advantage, the Usagi samurai was very open and welcoming, and may prove a useful ally. The main thing Goriate learned was the bad news that the Hare was the representative of "Usagi Takeshi-ue, the acting champion". Usagi Oda had sadly passed away during the winter (so far as anyone knew, from 'being an elderly man in wintertime' rather than anything sinister). With Ozaki on an extended Musha Shugyo and technically not currently an Usagi, and Tomoe married into a different family, Takeshi held the title until Ozaki returned. "Married to who?" The Hare flagged down a passing attendant for some strong Shochu. Apparently, as part of the diplomatic dealings after the siege, the Scorpion Clan (rumour said Shoju himself) had suggested a betrothal to underwrite the treaty: Usagi Tomoe and Bayushi Tomoharu! The courtship had - given Tomoe had both a shujenga's gifts and the Usagi family temper - been extremely cautious, but both parties had, to their surprise, found one another far more tolerable than expected. Both had been quietly impressed when the other risked their lives in a duel rather than sending a subordinate, and Tomoharu had abided by the results of the duels when he could instead have turned Shiro Usagi into a smoking crater. It wasn't exactly a love match, but Usagi Oda had been able to stand by his promise not to marry off Tomoe if she refused a suitor. Suiren spoke to the Sparrow representative- largely because the PCs have never encountered the Sparrow clan before and after not checking....assumptions....about the Deer clan had unintended consequences, they don't intend to repeat their mistakes. Their courtly duties done, the quartet headed to the riverport quarter to investigate the strangling.

Nope, you're not missing anything other than this:
This game emphasizes player choices a lot. It is not easy to die or to suffer a crit from bleeding unless you make choices leading to that. If you are bleeding, then any strife symbol you keep also means using your fatigue resources. Once incapacitated, bleeding makes it so that you really don't want to keep any strife at all anymore.  Note, you can also ignore Bleeding with Void, which can be helpful.
So if you're bleeding and you go "whatever, I must carry on fighting and I'll ignore Incapacitated too", it becomes seriously dangerous. That also fits with high Endurance characters being able to keep going longer while bleeding but when the blood loss catches up with them, it's nasty.
But if you stop, and go "****, I'm bleeding and incapacitated, better stop being a threat and get out of the way" - then it becomes fairly harmless. 

Nope, you're not missing anything other than this:
This game emphasizes player choices a lot. It is not easy to die or to suffer a crit from bleeding unless you make choices leading to that. If you are bleeding, then any strife symbol you keep also means using your fatigue resources. Once incapacitated, bleeding makes it so that you really don't want to keep any strife at all anymore.  Note, you can also ignore Bleeding with Void, which can be helpful.
So if you're bleeding and you go "whatever, I must carry on fighting and I'll ignore Incapacitated too", it becomes seriously dangerous. That also fits with high Endurance characters being able to keep going longer while bleeding but when the blood loss catches up with them, it's nasty.
But if you stop, and go "****, I'm bleeding and incapacitated, better stop being a threat and get out of the way" - then it becomes fairly harmless. 

Tha's what we're trying to ascertain, yes. But your situational interpretation ignores the fact that the rules are written for sources of damage. In this case, bleeding is a source of damage, and by the rules it should be defended against as a single source.
 
The scenarios above (resisting effects and mitigating criticals) are the only ones I can think, as stated.

Not attacks: damage
 

As far as I know, when you defend against the damage of an attack you defend against all of it, not just a part. Bleeding would work exactly the same.

Also, Incapacitated characters can still make checks. The wording is unfortunately misleading - they automatically fail rather than being unable to actually roll.
This is important because you can use Void opportunities to ignore a condition, like Incapacitated. So you can make a check in Void stance and if you get two opportunities, you can still act normally.
However, you've still got the condition, so anything that works against Incapacitated targets still applies and another crit still knocks you Unconscious. All it allows you to do is act normally in spite of it.

Also, Incapacitated characters can still make checks. The wording is unfortunately misleading - they automatically fail rather than being unable to actually roll.
This is important because you can use Void opportunities to ignore a condition, like Incapacitated. So you can make a check in Void stance and if you get two opportunities, you can still act normally.
However, you've still got the condition, so anything that works against Incapacitated targets still applies and another crit still knocks you Unconscious. All it allows you to do is act normally in spite of it.

So...faced with the great news that Mirumoto Uiri's aunt is in a position of influence in Seppun Sora's court, the PCs took the obvious course of action: they went to an inn. Obviously this was primarily to arrange rooms for their first night in Hirosaka. The presence of copious amounts of gyoza and sake was merely a happy coincidence. The PCs started listing out their options. Goriate's suggestion of "Uiri, sort your family out" was not well received and Horonigai made it quite clear she was not facing the Dragon in a duel again. Leasing somewhere privately, or just staying indefinitely in an inn, was certainly possible. But Seppun Ishima wouldn't be too impressed if her newest subordinates spent every evening in a drinking house, and, all samurai financial ethics aside, sooner or later someone would want someone else to pay. This was a problem as they were relatively short on funds - the lion's share having been given to Hatsuko by Suiren to purchase Ikue's contract. This was a good idea to defuse Bayushi Mei Lin's attempt at scandal-mongering aimed at Goriate (and hence Riku by proxy), but regardless of this, sending an urgent letter to the Ruby Champion saying "We spent most of the money you gave us on a geisha, please can we have some more" was sensibly dismissed as a non-starter! Seppun Ishima might or might not have enough influence to make the Bureau of Properties pull it's collective finger out, but relying on their boss on day one would give a pretty poor impression when they were supposed to be experienced magistrates who'd survived the political maelstrom of Imperial Winter Court. Anyone else who could overrule the Bureau would likely be one of Sora's court, but a request to Sora's court would inevitably be seen by Kazuya and derailed if possible. Given that she was of higher status and all the court were attending Jikai's celebration, that wouldn't be too hard. Then Uiri realised they did have access to a senior member of the court via an alternate route. Otomo Kazuda was Chancellor - a court official - but also Chamberlain - a household official - meaning a request to speak sent via the household attendants wouldn't be obvious to Mirumoto Kazuya, who despite her seniority wasn't part of Sora's family. Kazuda proved very approachable, and when matters were explained was happy to ensure a decent property in the samurai quarter was assigned to them. Understanding there was some 'family tensions' at play, she even suggested assigning the house in the name of Kakita Riku - the new Kakita sword instructor assigned to Sora's household, expected to arrive within the week - which should serve to avoid the Dragon ambassador figuring out what they'd done for a few days. This was a pretty good outcome, and all it cost them in the end was owing the Otomo Chancellor an ill-defined favour at some future date. (What could possibly go wrong?)

On arrival at 'Dwindling Fortunes' - a disreputable looking place if ever there was one - it became clear the brawl had already kicked off. A group of six ronin were very drunk, and very angry. A heavily mutilated heimin - presumably 'Three-Scar' - was trying to talk them down, saying that they lost fairly and squarely because they were too drunk to play with any skill....which was likely true, but was making things worse. A single ronin wearing a ribbon around his arm matching the gambling house's colours was pinned to a pillar being pummelled by two of the ronin, whilst the remaining drunkards yelled at the heimin staff to return their money, smashing furniture aside. Hatsue yelled at the drunkards to stand down, to no appreciable effect other than alerting them to her presence. Sighing, she drew her sword - still inside an iron sheath, making it a satisfyingly effective nightstick - and waded into the crowd, easily dominating two of the six ronin. Uiri grabbed two pieces of broken chair and followed her, facing off against two more of the novice ronin by virtue of Way of the Dragon and Chaotic Scattering - kicking over a table and sending a spray of dice and gambling chips into the faces of his assailants. Goriate, never one to be outdone in the application of brute force, eyed up the table as Uiri moved on, and squared up to the last two. Thanks to the Improvised Assault kata, he was able to use it as an impromptu tetsubo, and rolled enough opportunities to strike with it immediately - one novice ronin exiting the premises immediately without making use of the doorway, or indeed the floor. Uiri struck out again, knocking down the first of his two opponents, but taking a little fatigue defending against a wildly swinging broken sake bottle. Goriate flattened his second opponent with a sweep of the table. Uiri knocked his second foe back, dropping one chair leg. Goriate failed his strike action to finish him off, but assisted the Dragon, knocking the ronin straight into the path of Uiri's double-handed sweep of his remaining chair leg. The ronin hit the floor unconscious with a satisfying thud. If 'Three-Scar' was annoyed at the damage Uiri and Goriate had inflicted on his establishment, he was smart enough to keep it to himself; they had, after all, stopped him being robbed and potentially his staff killed. Hatsue berated him for having only one of his three guards on duty - "It should have been sufficient in the middle of the day, but those idiots came in off the road with a fresh bag of gold, a thirst for sake to wash off the dust, and very little idea how to win at fortune and winds." Apparently a merchant had hired the lot of them for double fees to escort a small caravan to the town in time for Reju Jikai's investiture. There were rumours of dangerous highwaymen lurking near the town, so even the less competent ronin could make a killing at the moment. Ultimately, it was a simple, satisfying bar brawl. It also underlined how far the PCs had come in a year since Tsuma, since, back to back with You Taught Me This, they went through two opponents each like they were nothing.  
Back at the magistrate's station, the PCs were waiting for the next problem. It didn't take long to arrive. This time it was a personal one - the Seppun official in charge of the Bureau of Properties, when asked about a town-house that could be leased to the magistrates, responded with the dreaded phrase "Please try tomorrow", suggesting very politely that they were checking the records to see what might be made available, and that the PCs would need to spend at least one more night in an inn. This...wasn't too bad on the face of it. The inns were clean, comfortable, and had a pleasant lack of en-suite maho shikigami or shinobi assassins, but (thanks to a Government check after they left), the PCs were suspicious. Hirosaka was a town of maybe five thousand people. There weren't that many homes suitable for half-a-dozen samurai in the first place, and a competent supervisor should have been able to say which, if any, were vacant more or less of the top of his head. There shouldn't have been a need to check any more detailed records than could be found on the official's own desk. Someone had clearly decided to make trouble for them. It didn't make sense for it to be the Bureau of Properties themselves, who'd just met them for the first time. Sora or Ishikama wouldn't need to stoop to petty annoyances when they could do pretty much anything up to and including ordering the PC's seppuku, and they didn't know anyone else in the town - certainly not anyone with the influence to persuade a Seppun official to risk irritating the new town magistrates. Cue Shosuro Suiren doing what he does best. Talking to some of the Seppun's clerks and attendants, the Scorpion's investigations determined that the PCs had been unofficially 'blacklisted' as a favour to someone in Seppun Sora's court - who were, of course, all closeted in the Governor's mansion for the rest of the day, fussing over the new daimyo of Closed Shell Castle. "But we don't know anyone there either!" "Well...about that." "What?" "Seppun Sora-sama is an important Imperial Daimyo, but you know he wasn't at Winter Court. When you were working for the Miya, you pretty much met the entire Imperial delegation." "...And?" "That's because he holds his own Winter Court. Mostly minor clans and southern clan samurai, but it's pretty significant, even if it's not the same scale as the Winter Court. Quite a few clans sent samurai who didn't get on the list for Kyuden Doji here." "....So why...would...oh...oh no." "Oh yes. The current Dragon Clan Ambassador, and senior great clan representative to the court of Seppun Sora-sama, daimyo of Hirosaka, is Mirumoto Kazuya-sama. Your aunt."