Datei Ma Kuromi
Ally 1: Kagemori’s elder sister and representative (hostage) in the capital. She was named such as the ruling family’s most distinguished child and the one expected to rule in the future and has made the role her life’s work. The declaration that her younger brother would rule the clan instead came as a surprise to many, but apparently not her. Then again, to hide veils behind veils is the Datei way.
Intimacies
- Datei ma Kagemori (Big sister has your back.) Major
- Shadow Edge (Respect) Minor
- ”A little frivolity is essential in life.” Major
- ”Whatever happens, Clan Datei shall survive.” Defining
Notable Actions/Mechanics
(Dice pools for allied, non-combatant NPCs are largely decorative and for intuitive reference, unless a particular scene calls for rolls on their part.)
- Courtly Debate: 7 dice
- Eavesdropping: 8 dice
- Gossip: 6 dice
- Poetry: 7 dice
- Read Intentions: 8 dice
- Lip Reading: Kuromi is capable of eavesdropping on conversations out of earshot if she has a good view of the interlocutors’ mouths.
- Social Spider: When Kuromi learns about a major or defining intimacy of another character second hand, she can attempt to introduce or challenge a fact about that person’s relationships with her Read Intentions pool.
Nazubi Gentle Shroud
Ally 3: the clan deity. Daimyo of summer rains and witness to secret contracts; patron of spies, affairs, and conspiracies. He covers his face with a thin, damp shroud at all times and to swear him to secrecy is to reveal yourself to him—but he is a trustworthy keeper of secrets.
When Clan Datei was great, his domain was the sweet summer rain which cools the air and speeds travel, the sunshower which blesses unions, the light fog which lends privacy to meetings. In their exile, his rains hide the sound of footsteps and the watchful eyes of his kin.
Intimacies
TBA
Notable actions/mechanics
TBA
Lieutenants
Nosy Fao
Datei’s manager of logistics and transportation. He is an inquisitive fellow, but actually nicknamed for an accident in his youth. Quite competent, but prone to incautious assumptions.
Datei ma Kanano, “Smoking Dragon”
Queenpin of Datei’s underworld interests in the outer city of Jibei. A sorceress and alchemist with deep knowledge of incenses and smoke, she is among the voices in the clan that opposed Kagemori’s appointment as family head. She’s allowed the Band of the Canopy lodging in one of her properties in exchange for the occasional request.
Hiruna
Kuromi’s personal aide and taster when she leaves the Datei compound—the quiet, bespectacled woman who was with Kuromi when the Circle first arrived in Jibei. Native of Dead Laris.
Possessions
The Datei Compound
The Datei residence is humble only in comparison to other clans’ mansions. It takes up a block of its own, surrounded by a garden and receiving its own water via aqueduct, as demanded by law. Many clan hostages adorn their gardens in manners reminiscent of their home provinces, and so Kuromi, representing the family without a home, has had strange plants and rocks brought in from Dead Laris. Here is a boulder that has partially turned to glass at the center of an otherwise normal rock garden; there a shrub that’s naturally grown to uncannily resemble a sleeping figure.
The garden’s central pond always reflects a lightly clouded sky, regardless of the actual weather. This is the entrance to Nazubi’s sanctum. Even clan members are rarely invited in, as he prefers to entertain visitors in the garden over tea.
Datei War-Mask
Visual inspiration
http://www.sense-nohgaku.com/noh/articles/syozoku/men_info/ayakashi.php
”Gifted” to Kagemori by Clan Anori as a token of appreciation for the Circle’s discreet rescue of the Anori hostages. It depicts a warrior in their final moments, snarling at death. The mask is old but exquisitely wrought and hardly worn. Its color reminds of yellowed ivory, but it’s cool to the touch, as if it were in fact made of stone. The warrior’s pointed eyebrows and mustache, swept fiercely outward, are made of many individual threads of shiny grey metal inlaid into the mask. They glitter like a prism as they catch the light and resonate with something at the touch.
Though Kagemori doesn’t know it yet, it gives its wearer two abilities:
- When a warrior under their command or otherwise fighting for their sake dies, the wearer can learn the deceased’s most dearly held defining intimacy as if through an automatically successful reflexive read intentions action, if the dead warrior was significant enough in the story to have their intimacies represented individually.
- The wearer can make a special (dicepool to be determined) roll to introduce facts involving the defining or major intimacies of warriors who have died fighting for them or under their command.