Musha shugyō
A Feudal Japanese RP
In the year seventeen eighty-six the tenth shōgun of Japan, Tokugawa Ieharu, died and was replaced by his adopted heir Tokugawa Ienari. This shōgun was to become the longest 'serving' of the Tokugawa regents, and in his fifty years of ruling the people of Japan in the Emperor's stead would eventually become one of the most hated. His was a period of exceeding indulgence, a time when the merchant class began to gain prominence and exceed their samurai betters in terms of wealth and luxury, the han fiefs suffering and corruption becoming rife throughout the land.
This is the Bunka era of his reign (1804 to 1818) and, although peace generally reigns supreme, the plight of the samurai class and their daimyo overlords is a precarious one to say the least; no longer do these members of the warrior-caste hold sway as they once did, even the peasants feeling the dispersal of prodigious wealth radiating from the urbanite elite of places such as Edo, Kyoto and Osaka, undoing all that the austere reforms of Matsudaira Sadanobu had once made possible in a flood of degeneracy and famine.
Nevertheless there was something about this period that endeared the warrior class to test themselves as they had in years past, many schools of martial arts (or bugei ryuha) had been founded in years past for this very purpose – to be there in times of peace and lack of warfare to keep the warrior caste sharp, so to speak.
It had been one-hundred and eighty-nine years approximately since the last opposition to the Tokugawa shogunate had been stamped out at Osaka, but the samurai had never stopped testing themselves, even as the merchants – who had once been at the bottom of the social pyramid – began their ascent toward the upper strata.
The idea of musha shugyō was not only to allow a samurai to travel from one fief to another in this time of clan exclusivity, without the need to adopt the lifestyle of a wandering ronin, but also to find employment and – if there was time or opportunity available – to test oneself in the curriculum of another school of fighting; many samurai became mercenaries, highwayman and bandits, as well as bodyguards, while some even became feared swordsmen in their own right.
Our own tale begins in the north-eastern fief of one Iruhada Derogi, the daimyo of a small han and head of the Derogi clan. It had occurred, perhaps by no fault of his own, or just perhaps through his overuse of his fiefs stipend for his own gain as opposed to those of his people, that the various heads of a number of villages were disgruntled to the point of outright revolt; already they had sent delegations to Iruhada and been turned away, now they were preparing something a little more permanent to end his reign of depredation and oppression upon them.
This is where you come in. Yes, you. It is time to make a choice!
With what wealth they have gathered, the village heads have sent out word that they are willing to offer payment to ronin who are willing to fight for them against what they see as a pure injustice. Iruhada on the other hand has issued the exact same statement, wanting these out-of-control peasants put in their place for good; it is known however that the Derogi clan is short on both coin and rice, Iruhada being a man of extravagant tastes, and his clan containing no more than a few dozen fighting men – not enough to contain a full revolt in his domain, not without help anyway.
The question is, will you side with the peasantry for reasons of your own, or will you side with the daimyo of the fief against this obviously upstart rabble?
So there you have it, once things are dealt with in this initial scenario then we'll see where we go from there.
I won't bother outlining rules and such, as to anyone who role-plays in the Advanced section (or not for that matter) they should be pretty obvious. If you have any questions at all, I am always willing to answer them so ask away.
I'll be putting the character sheet and so on up in the character tab, so head on over there if you're feeling this RP.
That being said, I'll be choosing people on the quality and not the quantity of their writing, and no on a first-come basis.
That's about all I've got to say for now, so welcome to the RP and let's have fun.
@AmongHeroes@BingTheWing@Sigurd@AmongHeroes@Riddle Me This@Demous@71452K@Vonghese@sassy1085@CaptainBritton@PrincePierce@Deadlyrose9641@comanche
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