So - after a somewhat boring morning of control-x and control-v, salient bits of this thread are now here:
https://rpggeek.com/thread/2564161/5th-edition-campaign-notes
updates will be on rpggeek from now on, in advance of the forum shutdown. I'll probably ping the discord when it gets updated so people know - we usually manage one session a week, but sometimes I don't finish getting it typed up till the following week.
Thanks to everyone for the interest, advice and commentary! It's been very, very welcome and please continue.

Well what an announcement. 😩
This hit me twice as hard because I always spend my time between here and the SW forums.
I will really miss the camaraderie in the forums, it was really a hub for creative minds to share their rpg creations, read good fiction and learn from other products and personal projects.
If you excuse me now I’ll light some incense and shred my biwa to remove my strife...

That s*cks and it is a big mistake, usually this kind of forum is the first entry point when you want to get info on any products.
I miss the AEG time with almost regular news on what the next book will looks like. There is no longer com on what's next and it feels like it is just about "wow new book! much amazing! such content buy it ! Wow!"

That at least is now the case over on the Discord, too... The community is a bit more lively, with both good and bad - but generally pretty good.
And we got more answers from the game devs there than I ever saw here.

I know, it pisses me off how unprofessional the whole thing has been, even joined Twitter to ask them and they just ignore me.

That's kind of you. Thanks
I'll have to think what I'm going to save off here.
The unofficial minor clan 20 questions is pretty much a complete thing I don't plan on touching again, so if you want to host it go right ahead The roster of NPCs needs editing so I'll copy it over to discord if I get an account there PBP games I guess the same. I'm kind of processing a loss of motivation right now. The idea that all the archived stories here from the game - and the beta too - are going in a trash fire hurts a lot, and as noted the fact that EDGE hasn't become more than a placeholder doesn't feel encouraging.  I really like this forum. Especially the L5R community, where were lucky enough to have several lore writers turn up regularly on an unofficial basis.

Well that's a kick in the teeth for....well....everything.
Need to store our campaign log somewhere locally, and not sure what'll happen with the PBP games.
Kind of wierd given the 40k RPG boards were supported for what feels like half a decade after the company lost the GW license.

This is a BS move.  I'd be a bit more understanding if the Edge Studios website was anything more than the placeholder that it's been for, what, 6 months? "We love roleplaying games!" "We don't know the title of our own game!" (There's no "the" at the beginning of Legend of the Five Rings, guys). 

Well, I honestly wasn’t surprised by that announcement. I am surprised though that it is for the entire forum and not just for L5R RPG. Makes me wonder, really, how financially bad Asmodée is to decide that removing an official forum is a good way of cutting corners.
I guess I will be moving to courtgames then.

@Magnus Grendel : If you have a Google doc or site of your preference, I'd be glad to host a link to your work at Winter Garden of the Kakita.  You probably don't want to keep it on my site itself because then you couldn't update it.
To anyone else....Any links to RPG materials I'd be happy to host.
I'll talk to CBass about how to ramp up the forums for courtgamespod.com if you'd like general discussion to go there.
 
Kaori

Please let us know where your campaign log goes, because it was very entertaining to read!

Otherwise, yeah, it stinks to see the content lost again. But at least the L5R discord https://discord.gg/mSYN2jPZkb is pretty active and has space for both games and places to store content that is likely to stick around for a while longer...

Core, page 251
Last I checked, Duels and Mass Combats are conflicts, so you have your answer there. And again, this book is horribly organized with related information being spread all over the place.
But sure, okay, we could do that and consider stances affecting your cohort as well, but that would still leave Earth and Water providing no stance benefits because there are no Conditions applied to cohorts and there’s no mass combat action where you don’t roll dice (yet?)
And that was one of the things I liked about stances because some time you will want to choose a particular stance because of its bonus instead of necessarily being your best Ring, in Mass Combats, unless your Void and Fire really suck, they are still the best choices.

No doubt the scorpion was wearing a wolf mask at the time to further enforce the legend.

The opening round was 'too quiet', as Goriate put it.  Kazumi's army deployed along most of the southern an eastern sides of the castle, but aside from rallying to support the vanguard, didn't actually launch any assaults. The peasants formed the southwestern end of the line, putting them closest to Suiren's ambush - probably for the best as the heimin would be most likely to break and run. Ume (and Uiri) aimed to rally the troops, providing assistance to Goriate. Goriate - who'd not been given any official authority by the Reju - had nonetheless made himself defacto commander around the main gate as the ronin, at least, were prepared to be pragmatic: when there is a wall needing defending you listen to the Hida. One reinforce action later, and the area around gate was as secure as he could make it. Suiren and Nakama launched a series of hit and run attacks, inflicting a fair amount if panic and fatigue on the desperate villagers. Suiren lacks both command and tactics, but does have air rank 4, and had skilled assistance from Nakama, so was doing pretty well. Horonigai stayed in the court, trying to be ready if things kicked off, and wondering where Nobu was. Out of paranoia, she did augment an arrow with Howl of Isora in case a skirmish kicked off locally. The second round started with one of Kazumi's cohort commanders launching an assault on the castle gates - which swung open as the Otomo approached. "I'm sorry, you said what?!?!" - Goriate's player. Fortunately, with the assisted reinforce action from last round, Goriate has managed to up the TN enough that the assault just failed, and fighting broke out across the line of the gate as both sides tried to pour reinforcements in. An attempted assault by the villagers to drive Suiren and Nakama's forces off also failed thanks to the TN increases from air stance and obscuring terrain. Suiren in turn took the opportunity to slip through the chaos of the fight and kill Natsumi (we used a challenge action modified to use the Skulduggery skill to trigger the clash). Goriate launched a counter-attack with the reserves - less the squad of ronin who should have been in the gatehouse and unsurprisingly had either defected or deserted after their actions. With a solid success, the ronin started to push the Otomo back. The fight tipped even further when Ume and the Reju bushi joined the fight. Uiri took the opportunity to issue a challenge action, and brought down the Loyal Bushi commanding the Otomo vanguard. Battered and leaderless, Kazumi's first assault fell back and the gates were secured. At this point - unaware that the gates had held - Nobu launched his coup attempt, with Nobu, To Toshio and a group of ronin bursting into Reju Jikai's court. Many of the ronin already in the court turned coat and attacked their neighbours, and ultimately Horonigai, Reju Jinzaburo and Seppun Azusa were the Daimyo's only  effective line of defence. Goriate guessed - correctly - that having blown her nasty surprise, Otomo Kazumi would launch a follow up attack elsewhere, hoping to break in before reserves could be shifted - most likely at the ruined tower. Goriate moved over to reinforce the tower, and once again was able to raise the TN such that Kazumi's surviving cohort commander failed to make any impression. Suiren and Nakama launched a final all-out attack on the village peasants, panicking them into flight, and garuanteeing local legends that Closed Shell was guarded by 'daemon wolves' would be springing up within a generation. Ume and Uiri were an route to the ruined tower to assist Goriate when Uiri heard the unmistakable sound of a magically induced temporary indoor hurricane. He and Ume rushed to investigate, and found Horonigai and Jinzaburo holding off several ronin trying to reach Jikai.  Horonigai had put one down with her daikyu but the fight was now up close and personal, and however good a brawler the shrine keeper was she wasn't going to stop an opponent with a sword. Jinzaburo- with Azusa's assistance - was holding off two other ronin, and Ume engaged a third, leaving Uiri to sprint across the court to save the Kaito. He took some fatigue from tremors caused by Toshio, but managed to incapacitate the ronin  attacking Horonigai before the ronin could in turn attack the incapacitated Phoenix. Horonigai followed this up with an impressive daikyu shot - rolling enough opportunities with void 4/ranged 3 to ignore incapacitated herself and land enough fatigue to incapacitate Reju Toshio. One of the loyalist ronin put him down swiftly after. Otomo Nobu, seeing his 'coup' falling apart in front of him - and receiving word that Otomo Kazumi had failed to take the gates - turned tail and fled into the castle keep, with Uiri in hot pursuit.

Okay, so how did the battle go?

This session was the resolution of the main Sins of Regret storyline, and the Battle of Closed Shell Castle. There was, interestingly, no debate between the PCs - compared to what happened at Shiro Kyotei or Shiro Usagi, no-one even suggested attempts to mediate or remain neutral. To be fair, with the Reju being an Otomo vassal family, and Closed Shell officialy one of their holdings, this was effectively an internal Otomo matter. The PCs decided to support the Reju's defence. Suiren decided to go and scout the approaching army - in company of Nakama - and potential set an ambush along with the wolves. It took some negotiation (essentially "didn't you stab him?"). Fortunately, they managed to persuade Nakama to participate - in return for their help cleansing the springs and ensuring Jikai's hunting was controlled. Suiren found a decent ambush site, where the wolf pack could hide and made a close reckon of the enemy army. He was able to confirm it was Otomo Osamu's army, though the daimyo himself wasn't present. Otomo Kazumi, one of his commanders, was leading it in his stead. She was, the PCs recalled, noted as a promising, intellectual commander, but was so far untested in battle. Accompanying them was a large mob of rioting peasants from Twin Blessings Village, lead by Natsumi. Goriate went to coordinate the troops defending the walls, and pick out any obvious weak spots.  The two key weak points were the main gate - it would need extended ramming to breach but was still vulnerable compared to the walls - and the ruined tower, which was intact enough to defend but would be hard to move troops into and through if it came under direct attack. Uiri and Horonigai stayed in Jikai's court to try and talk Jikai into giving them battlefield commands. They didn't trust Nobu, and that means they didn't trust Reju Masaru, the taisa. Unfortunately, they failed - Nobu being a detectably better courtier. They decided Uiri should stick to Reju Ume (Since there was no way she would stay off the front line), whilst Horonigai should stick with the daimyo, his wife and Yojimbo in the court in case something kicked off.

I decided to share the one who started it all this shenanigans, Daidoji Takumi, may his skill with the blade be match with his skill with the biwa.
Many thanks to @DSalazar
 

Equally, the PCs get that offer even if none of them become Topaz Champion.

In the adventure, they all are, because of the plot they thwarted. But that's not a thing that always happens, necessarily, and in that case the status boost come from that title, not the Topaz Championship.

Wait, isn’t the Topaz Champion given an invitation to become an Emerald Magistrate?

Personally, I'd give +3 or so status. Enough to be slightly more senior than otherwise equal samurai, but not a full rank above them.

Ultimately, it depends on the samurai- and their Lord. Theoretically, a goshi has absolute authority over the village for anything which doesn't contravene imperial law, clan law, or specific orders or policies set by their Lord.
Whether they think their Lord would rule on the matter of weapons if they were told about it depends on the personalised involved. 
We actually had something similar in a campaign I ran, and in that one the  village leader basically used the weapons to pay for repairing some of the damages, selling them to the Kaiu Wall garrison, who always need more weapons and armour.

I was about to comment that there was one instance of a peasant with a sword, but you did make that one caveat  .
The Seven Samurai is an apt illustration, good call! In that case, though, the peasants took weapons that weren't theirs and disturbed the honorable dead samurai for personal gain. I can definitely see this being an issue for the more idealistic ronin - it just ain't right!
At the same time, though, in a war I find it hard to imagine that the armor and weapons would just be left lying there - if nothing else, samurai don't want thieves and peasants getting their hands on it. Instead, I expect that commoners taken by the winning army as support personnel would be sent to secure the gear of the fallen and round up the bodies for cremation.-The gear of their own samurai would be purified and returned to their families. Presumably that of the enemies will be taken as trophy or returned after the war (possibly "ransomed" or in mutual exchanges). At any rate, they cannot just leave it there.
This is what made me curious what the situation would be in this skirmish. In this case, it is a bandit attack with some ronin who threw in their lot with the bandits - definitely not honorable foes and they have no famiies to return the gear to.  There is also a samurai in charge who represents the clan and can make an official decision. So in that case, what happens to the weapons? The samurai warden will not allow them to just disappear (or at least will try to). I would expect the "rightful owner" is the clan that owns these lands and he will try to make sure they end up there. In a situation with regular samurai, that would be that. However, how much leeway do you think they have in case, say, he decides to gift some of that gear to one of those that helped in the fight? It is the clan's property, but he is the clan representative. 

Thanks for the answer!
I can definitely see any ronin who look like Dragon samurai material and want to join being considered for adoption (or marriage, there was a recent war and quite a few samurai have been ... made eligible). However, I think the Dragon are looking for a certain kind of Samurai for their ranks and not every PC would be a good match. 
Generally, would the village warden immediately claim all of the bandits' gear as property of the clan , and how big of a deal would you see the swords being in this case? Would a jisamurai as the warden have the authority to allow the ronin to take something or even gift them something for their valiant fighting in defense of the clan's holdings and people?
My initial idea is that he won't care too much for any spears, axes, bows etc but will probably make sure that all swords are missing and not give any out, though I'm not sure. The PCs haven't expressed any interest yet, but I suppose that for a ronin a "spare" daisho or just a wakizashi could be a Very Big Deal. 

Getting further through the story, one thing that might be relevant is giving the family a rank of seafaring:
"Are you certain you can catch it?” Kitano looked as if he regretted the question, even as he asked it. Kasami grinned as she lashed the other end of the line to the flatboat’s mooring ring. “Do you know how many boats get lost in the marshes?” She tested the line, and nodded in satisfaction. It would hold. “No?” he said, doubtfully. “None. Because we know how to catch them. Keep us still.” She whirled the rope with a loose, slow spin, not wanting to overshoot the rail. There was an art to boarding a moving boat, and it was one she’d learned as a girl. Ideally, she’d have been attempting it without armor, but one couldn’t have everything.
This is a trained bushi, so not someone who's a professional sailor but merely someone who grew up in the marshes and knows the sort of stuff any Hiramichi can be expected to pick up.