It was a long banquet. I don't particularly remember Ryoshun's place in the serving order, but Hantei was definitely the youngest, born after Onnotangu had started eating his kids. Amaterasu got to secret Hantei off because Onnotangu was distracted. Additionally, this myth is blatantly copied from Greek mythology, which had Zeus as the youngest and the only child not devoured by Cronos.

With all due respect, by the descriptions of the original Iuchiban attack, his identity had to have been fairly common knowledge among the clans involved. The Shosuro and Ikoma thoroughly altered the imperial histories in the original canon. Certainly, some knew the truth (presumably the Emperor and at least the Dragon and Scorpion daimyo), but by the time of the Scorpion Clan Coup, it was a secret. Now, as far as the original storyline's concerned, we're inundated with a bunch of WTF moments on the part of characters, even outside the storyline tournaments. Just the prophecy of the Last Akodo alone should've been enough that people would be falling all over themselves to keep the Akodo flush with brides. The Thunders' bloodlines, naturally, should've been preserved to **** and back, with detailed genealogies and a family or two tasked with it. Hantei should've told Bayushi to make another family to keep tabs on Shinsei, too. But it didn't happen. Maybe this is how FFG is intending to fix the problem.

Here's hoping FFG puts the Olyah in.

Just a reminder -- Amoro is a Hida berserker. Aramoro is a Scorpion assassin. Also, only one of them has the Yogo Curse.

Afraid it's looking like Nik passed.

For those of you who don't know, Nik Olah is one of Old L5R's eminent Naga players, inspiring much of the Akasha and, of course, the Olyah. Nik's gone into hospice today. I don't know what kind of communication's likely to go to or from him right now. I'm not in touch personally, just on his FB page. Edit: His feed's full of condolences to his family now.

I think they're going off Takuan's regency, which was ridiculously unusual -- Toturi missing and presumed dead, no heir, the EC went AWOL, and none of the other major court positions were filled. And, well, part of the point of Takuan's term was that he wasn't up for it.

This would also mesh well with one of the claims the Kolat made but never showed in the original RPG, that the Scorpion had a huge blind spot because the Scorpion Kolat looked just like other Scorpion. If we see one of Kachiko's caliber running round, it makes more sense than a bunch of generic Scorpion undermining the clan and nobody noticing or caring. As a Kachiko fan, I don't like it, but as a fixfic, it'd work.

Good point on Ujimitsu being a blind spot. Would make for interesting work... So long as Atsuki is more than Snidely Whiplash...

Ujimitsu's about as far away from being Kolat material as possible, pretty much inherently. While the whole kneeling to Isawa thing might make the Kolat like Shiba Kami more than the rest of his kin, at the end of the day Ujimitsu's still got a god in his noggin. I don't know the Kolat would trust him with something this big. Yoshi'd from OldL5R would need a big personality transplant for this. He may be a jerk now, but I'd be more inclined to think he's Hantei's jerk. I think we may be overlooking another, more obvious candidate who had some ties to the Kolat in Old L5R, and tried to form an alliance with them around this time in the story: Bayushi Kachiko.

Kisada didn't countenance a secret one-off alliance from Shoju in old L5R. I don't know he'd have patience for flowery writing and ongoing conspiracy.

Bear in mind this is Hametsu, who historically always hated Kachiko. He's looking for the worst in her. OTOH, that he cares like this implies he's not Ninja-Shadow-touched.

This. As I explained to someone way far ago, we don't mind stories where Crab casually slaughter goblins. The clans responsible for fighting the Kolat -- Scorpion and whomever else fits in the new setting -- should be putting down agents with similar frequency, even if the overall plots move on.

I still fondly remember people pronouncing it "Hentai."

This. Bear in mind, this is a specific villain niche that nobody else can really touch, except as a stepping stone to elsewhere. A Scorpion sneezes near an assassination, everyone assumes. A Yasuki caravan moves through a town and the koku stores are lower, everyone assumes. Yes, individual clans had reasons to be involved in crime, but we had no yakuza analogue except for the Kolat. Even the idea of the yakuza getting bold and deciding they could run the show works. This was how they worked in the RPG. A problem arose, however, when the Kolat became one of the bigger ongoing antagonists in the CCG, but unlike every other faction in the CCG, they weren't held to the same rules. Running Kolat cards counted as Kolat corruption, and the Kolat could and did act in the CCG story arcs... but the story team alone decided when anyone could strike back, and after midway through Hidden Emperor, that might have been once every five years. ****, they even had the Unicorn successfully purge the clan of all Kolat influence, and decided that this major feat wasn't worth so much as a line of flavor text. The Scorpion struck a "major blow" that didn't even slow them down, inexplicably letting a cell structure organization operate just fine without its communication network. Multiple clans had major grudges against the Kolat, and it never mattered in any way. So, yeah, the Kolat were less badasses that were just that cool, and more the GM's favorite evil NPC that kept showing up no matter what the players said or did. The Kolat show up as the yakuza? I'm down with that. The Kolat return as the Illuminati? No thanks.