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Phoenix Clan
Current Population: 2,500,000 people, 12% of whom are samurai
The Recent Past
With their distance from the conflicts in the southern half of the Empire, the fifty years prior to Iuchiban's return were relatively peaceful for the Phoenix. The Battle of Kyuden Tonbo ended quickly with a victory for the combined Dragon and Phoenix forces, but more importantly, it opened up an avenue of dialogue with the notoriously withdrawn and isolationist Dragon Clan. This dialogue eventually led to a trade agreement between the two Clans, and soon the coffers of the Phoenix were overflowing with Dragon gold, the Phoenix were studying at the Agasha libraries, and the daughter of the Agasha Daimyo was engaged to the son of an Elemental Master.
The steady influx of Dragon gold and Agasha scrolls proved to be intoxicating for the Phoenix, who eventually began to neglect their other trade partners. While the Elemental Council was not foolish enough to completely sever ties with the other Clans, their focus was clearly upon their new friendship with the Dragon, and their relationship with the Crane and Scorpion began to cool into polite indifference with each passing year.
Thus, it came as something of a shock when, in 738, the Dragon Champion announced that the arrangement between the two Clans had come to an end. The surprised Phoenix scribes and merchants returned home in confusion, and attempts to discuss the situation with Dragon's Tonbo representatives at the next Winter Court were met with polite but firm silence.
Faced with the sudden loss of their primary trade partner, Isawa Tomio, the Elemental Master of Earth, decided that the strange actions of the Dragon Champion would not send his Clan into economic ruin. Taking a small group of his most skilled acolytes, Tomio gathered his acolytes and traveled to the Dragon border, where they called upon the kami of the earth to bring them the raw, unworked gold directly from the Dragon mountains. It did not take long for the Dragon to realize that there might be some connection between the gold that was disappearing from their mountains and the sudden surplus of gold in Phoenix lands. The Dragon brought the matter before the newly ascended Hantei XXII, only to have the young Emperor side with the Phoenix.
The next spring found the armies of the Shiba defending their borders from a Dragon offensive. None of the battles fought between the armies were particularly bloody or noteworthy, for the Dragon were quite willing to fall back into their own lands to regroup and strike at another section of the border. Though their attacks were unsuccessful in capturing any noteworthy Phoenix holdings, it did destabilize the area to such an extent that the Master of Earth was unable to safely perform his gold-seeking ritual.
The true purpose of their attack was only discovered the following spring, however, when Tomio and his acolytes once again attempted to cast their ritual. Instead of bringing the shugenja vast amounts of raw gold, the earth kami gathered only common rocks and stones. After studying the rocks the kami had brought him, Tomio realized why his ritual was failing; during their attack, the Dragon had spread finely ground gold dust across their lands, which was then mashed into the dirt by the hundreds of soldiers fighting up and down the border. The earth kami were still bringing back chunks of earth containing gold, but not in any quantity that the Phoenix could use. With a final glare towards the western mountains, Isawa Tomio returned to Kyuden Isawa to tell the other Masters of his findings.
Eight years later, a Dragon Ise Zume arrived at the gates of Kyuden Isawa with a dire warning for the Elemental Masters. Though none of the Council was particularly welcoming to their tattooed guest, such concerns were set aside when they learned that the infamous Iuchiban had somehow returned to Rokugan. The Council spent months in argument over what should be done, with Isawa Sora and Isawa Arya, the Masters of Air and Fire, believing that the Phoenix should raise arms against Iuchiban, while Isawa Yukiko and Isawa Ryuiso, the Masters of Void and Water, suggested that they should instead negotiate a peace treaty with the sorcerer. The deciding vote rested with Isawa Tomio, who refused to believe that Iuchiban had escaped his tomb, instead thinking it some manner of Dragon trick.
It was only after Iuchiban's army had begun its march through Scorpion lands that Tomio realized the truth of the Ise Zume's words and sided with Yukiko and Ryuiso. Ryuiso left immediately and met up with the Bloodspeaker as his army razed Ryoko Owari to the ground. Despite the Master of Water's attempts to find common ground with the Bloodspeaker, Iuchiban was unwilling to set aside his quest of vengeance against the Hantei family, though he did allow Ryuiso to leave the burning city unmolested as a gesture of goodwill toward the Phoenix. The Master of Water returned to the Council to warn them of the upcoming conflict, allowing the Phoenix to begin preparations for the battle that would eventually take place on the shores of Sleeping River.
Despite the fact that the Bloodspeaker War could not have ended without the assistance of the Phoenix, many in the Empire still held a grudge against them. Isawa Ryuiso's attempts to negotiate a peace treaty with Iuchiban was a matter of outrage to the Lion and Scorpion, both of whom considered the attempt to be an act of treason against the throne. That many of the maho-tsukai fighting alongside Iuchiban wore the colors of the Phoenix only seemed to add further legitimacy to their claims.
The Lion spent three years demanding the head of Isawa Ryuiso, only to have their requests denied by the Phoenix. Even the gradual build up of Lion forces along their borders did nothing to intimidate the peaceful Clan, and in the early spring of 754, the Lion finally launched their attack as the Scorpion defended their actions in the courts. The War of Burned Wings, as it would come to be called, would see the deaths of four of the five Elemental Masters, the capture of over half of Phoenix lands by the Lion, the forced marriage of the surviving Master of Fire to a Lion samurai, and the destruction of Kyuden Asako at the hands of a horde of slaughter spirits released by the Kitsu daimyo.
Following the end of the war, Isawa Arya began rebuilding the shattered Elemental Council, a process which took nearly two years to complete. In that time, the Phoenix restored their relationship with the Crane and were gifted a portion of the northern Crane lands to compensate them for those they lost to the Lion, as well as a number of craftsmen and heimin workers to assist them in the reconstruction of their damaged holdings and the fortification of their border with the Lion. The more cynical among the Phoenix claimed that the Crane were merely doing so in order to keep the Lion distracted, but for the most part, the Phoenix were quite grateful for the assistance of their southern allies. A few years later, the Phoenix gave these lands to the Lion, exchanging them for the return of the land the Lion had captured during the war, which only served to annoy the Crane.
In contrast to this, the once solid relationship the Phoenix had held with the Crab - Hida Kame, the Crab Champion, had been trained by the Shiba - began to fall apart during the coalition push to recover the Crab fortress of Shiro Hiruma from the Shadowlands. The new Master of Water, Isawa Daiko, confiscated an entire library's worth of scrolls from the castle, many of them containing maho spells, claiming that she was doing so to keep them safe. The Crab were insulted by the insinuation that they could not protect the scrolls themselves, and the execution of Isawa Genji, of one of the coalition members, at the hands of the late Kuni Tokaji in the final days of the siege only served to further increase tensions between the two Clans.
Despite all this turmoil, the Phoenix seem to have earned the blessings of the Heavens. The recent appearance of Bishamon at one of their temples has inspired the samurai and heimin of the Phoenix, who believe that the Fortune of Strength wishes to affirm that the Clan is walking the correct path. Many samurai from across the Empire have traveled to the temple to offer their prayers and thanks to Bishamon, which has only reaffirmed the piety of the Phoenix in the eyes of the Empire.
The Phoenix Today
The Phoenix stand as one of the few remaining bastions of stability and peace in an Empire that is slowly descending into chaos and warfare. They have managed to earn the friendship and loyalty of nearly the entire Empire, with only the Crane Clan treating their courtiers and emissaries with cool indifference.
With the return of the scrolls the Master of Water stole from Shiro Hiruma - minus a few maho scrolls that were deemed too dangerous to leave the care of the Hiruma - relations with the Crab have returned to a distant friendship. The Phoenix sent a number of shugenja south to the Wall to assist the Crab in their recent war with the Shadowlands, and the Crab were been properly thankful for the support.
The Phoenix have also repaired their relationship with the Lion and Scorpion Clans, and most of the hatred and accusations that were cast at the Phoenix in the wave of the former Master of Water's attempts to negotiate with Iuchiban have been forgotten with his death. The Phoenix managed to convince the Lion that Asako Shiori was a rogue maho-tsukai who had long since severed all ties with the Phoenix when she opened the Black Scroll that corrupted Shiro Akodo, and the gift of Morikage Toshi to the Lion proved the sincerity of the Phoenix and laid the foundation for a new friendship between Phoenix and Lion. When the Lion seemed on the edge of another war with the Crab over the Empire's jade shortage, the Phoenix stepped forward and gifted the Lion their jade supplies, ensuring that the right hand of the Emperor would be strong in the troubling times to come.
The Scorpion set aside their own grievances with the Phoenix out of respect for their alliance with the Lion, but in truth, much of their ire was based upon the Master of Water not attempting to prevent Iuchiban from razing Ryoko Owari to the ground. With the death of Isawa Ryuiso and the reconstruction of Ryoko Owari, many Scorpion found that their hatred of the Phoenix had lessened to the point where it was more prudent to let their grievances be forgotten. The Asako Inquisitors had already been working alongside the newly formed Kuroiban to train Scorpion shugenja in how to find and fight the minions of Jigoku, and the lessening of tensions between their Clans has allowed them to put aside politics and refocus their efforts on the true enemy.
Similarly, relations between the Phoenix and Dragon have improved over the past few years, and Isawa Kibou, the Master of Void, seems to enjoy the frequent company of the Dragon Champion, though none can say just what such strange men might talk about in private. Trade between the two Clans remains as steady as ever, but even the Phoenix have begun to wonder just why the normally isolationist Dragon Clan has begun to take such an active interest in the Empire around them.
The most important development within the Phoenix Clan, however, is one known to only a select few individuals at the highest levels of power. In their attempts to understand the disharmony within the elements, the Elemental Council traced the source of the corruption back to the Black Scrolls, ancient artifacts of incredible power. After months of study, Isawa Arya concluded that the only way to learn the secrets of the Black Scrolls was to open one, and after some heated debate between the other Masters, they eventually gave Arya permission to open one of the three scrolls in her possession.
Isawa Arya was cautious and set up protective wards before continuing forward, and though she supervised the process, it was her acolyte Isawa Meiun who actually opened the Black Scroll known as Dark Divination. The resulting wave of dark energy twisted Meiun's form into a creature of bleeding porcelain skin, infused with the powers of Jigoku, but Arya and her Inquisitors acted quickly, and soon Meiun was restrained in chains of jade. The creature that had once been Isawa Meiun was held in the basement of Kyuden Isawa for a year, where her uncontrollable ramblings of the future were documented by dozens of loyal scribes, but the Elemental Council eventually decided that they could not trust anything the corrupted acolyte said and had her executed.
Opening the Black Scroll further imbalanced the elements, but it gave the Phoenix a glimpse into the power contained within the Black Scrolls. The Elemental Council knows that the Black Scrolls are locks placed upon Fu Leng's prison by Isawa, and that three of those locks have been opened, allowing the dark god's power to slowly bleed back into Ningen-do. After making preparations to safeguard the two unopened Black Scrolls in their possession, the Council approached the Emperor and the other Clan Champions at his wedding, informing them as to the true nature of the Black Scrolls and the threat they posed to the Empire.
The Phoenix have looked to the return of the Unicorn with curiosity. Whether the ancestors of the Ki-Rin will prove to be an instrument of peace or further conflict remains to be seen, though they are hoping for the former.
As they welcomed their long-lost cousins, Isawa Daiko and the rest of the Elemental Council successfully purified the Dark Divination Black Scroll and renamed it "The Light of Tengoku." Upon casting the spell, Daiko saw a future in which Iuchiban was freed from his tomb and brought about a terrible rain of blood that corrupted countless samurai across the Empire. The Elemental Council set about gathering the magical masks they needed to access the Tomb of Iuchiban and descended into its dark depths, where they sacrificed themselves to destroy Iuchiban and ignite every Bloodspeaker across the Empire. A major threat to the Empire's future was eliminated once and for all, but doing so left the Phoenix without the leadership they need in these dark times.
Elemental Council
Master of Air
None
Master of Earth
None
Master of Fire
None
Master of Void
None
Master of Water
None
Shiba Daimyo & Phoenix Champion
Shiba Esai: One of the worst moments of Shiba Esai's life came on the day that he killed his father. Though Shiba Kalani had given up his name and retired years before, Esai still made frequent trips to visit the elderly samurai-turned-monk at the small temple he had chosen as his home. During his last visit, Esai was shocked to discover that not only had his father and the other monks been slain by a foul Bloodspeaker, but that their corpses had been given unholy life by his foul magic. Esai cut through the walking dead and put an end to the maho-tsukai, but the experience had left him shaken and filled with an anger that no amount of meditation could wash away.
When he learned that the Bloodspeakers were once again gathering beneath the banner of their immortal leader, Esai made a desperate plea to the Elemental Council to allow him to lead an army of his best warriors against their ranks before they could desecrate the bodies of more samurai. While he might have accepted a decisive refusal, Esai was instead forced to stand before the Council and listen as they bickered endlessly about what action the Phoenix should take. Eventually they settled upon negotiation with the Bloodspeakers, which only served to stoke Esai's anger once again.
The battle with the Lion outside Shiro Shiba would likely have seen Esai consumed by his anger and lost upon the blade of Akodo Misaki, were it not for the sudden appearance of Togashi Motaro, the Dragon Champion. Motaro told Esai of the future in store for the Phoenix, and how he might ensure that the Phoenix would survive with the strength to endure the coming trials. When the Dragon Champion left, Esai had seen the future his anger might have brought to him and had left it behind him. Motaro had shown him his purpose, and with that knowledge in his heart, Esai knew what he had to do.
Neither Isawa Tomio nor Isawa Ryuiso understood their role in the future Esai wished to bring about, but then, neither of them would survive to see it, so Esai did not waste much time trying to win them over to his opinion. Despite their protests and curses, both Elemental Masters eventually gave their lives for the Phoenix. His murder of the two Elemental Masters brought a swift end to the War of Burned Wings and enabled the Phoenix to recover far more quickly than if they had lost thousands of lives trying to fight an unwinnable battle against the Lion.
Esai spent months within Shiro Shiba, waiting for retribution from the Elemental Council for what he had done. Much to his surprise, it never came, which only left the repentant man more confused than ever. It was only after he learned that a former Phoenix had opened a Black Scroll and corrupted Shiro Akodo in order to deliberately antagonize the Lion Clan that his anger returned to him in full force. Esai gathered an elite team of bushi and inquisitors and set out to hunt down the maho tsukai, Asako Shiori, but the Lion beat him to her, robbing the Phoenix of their chance to deal with the dishonor of Asako Shiori themselves.
Esai's recent marriage to Isawa Kayo, a young bushi recommended to him by the Imperial Matchmaker, has proven to be a quite excellent match. Her presence in Esai's life has calmed much of his anger and helped him put aside his guilt for the murder of Isawa Tomio and Isawa Ryuiso, allowing the Phoenix Champion to finally find some measure of peace. With the deaths of the Elemental Council, Esai has found himself thrust into the leadership of the Phoenix Clan, a position that the Isawa will not stop reminding him is only temporary.
Asako Daimyo
Asako Rokuro: Rokuro assumed control of his Family following the death of his wife, the previous daimyo, during the war against Iuchiban. Though he initially suffered some difficulty in adjusting to the difficult life of a daimyo, he has finally settled into some semblance of a routine. Much of the credit for his newfound ease can no doubt be given to his wife Miki, a young woman who wore the Yasuki mon prior to her marriage. Since their marriage, Miki has gone to great lengths to alleviate as much of Rokuro's paperwork as possible, leaving him free to enjoy the more social aspects of his position.
The ease that Miki has brought to his life has impressed Rokuro, and the Asako daimyo has become a very vocal proponent of further relations between the Crab and Phoenix Clans. It was through his efforts that Isawa Arya found herself betrothed to a Hiruma, and the ending of that engagement continues to be a source of personal shame to Rokuro. This has caused Rokuro to shift his matchmaking to less prominent members of his Clan, for fear of causing another such political disaster.
While his fellow Asako have been accepting of Rokuro's attempts to marry them to Crab samurai, many have also realized that not all Crab woman are willing to remain at home and quietly tend to their households. Similarly, the Asako have found themselves confused with how to handle spouses that discuss maho-tsukai and oni at the dinner table, even while guests are visiting. This shift has upset the traditionalists among Rokuro's Family, though thus far, none of the dissenters have been brave enough to protest the matter to their Crab spouses.
Following the destruction of Kyuden Asako, Rokuro and his wife fled south with other refugees, where they were intercepted by Lion patrols and brought to Pale Oak Castle. The two were prisoners of the Lion for the rest of the war but were released upon Isawa Arya's surrender. With nowhere to go, Rokuro and his wife made their way to the castle of the Emerald Champion, where they reconnected with the displaced Asako. The Asako daimyo worked closely alongside Suzume Wara in an attempt to help the Sparrow with their famine issue and even assisted the Fox in defeating the oni that was stalking the forests of the Kitsune Mori.
Rokuro was one of the few voices that argued distrust of the Toshigoku spirits that returned to the Empire, no matter who they might have been in their former lives. He made it a point to attend Winter Court at Morikage Toshi, where he spent the winter covertly bolstering the spells woven into the walls of the castle when it was still a Phoenix holding. Though his magic could not protect the Emperor from the Steel Chrysanthemum's blade, it did slow down and disorient the slaughter spirits as they rampaged through the castle, allowing a majority of the court to escape the ensuing slaughter.
Rokuro remained behind to save as many people as possible and was gravely injured by a slaughter spirit's blade. Though his retainers were able to evacuate him to safely, his condition remains critical.
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Credulous at best
Your desire to believe in
Angels in the hearts of men
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