Courts of the Crane Clan

Thing is, there are no front lines that the Asahina can stay away from and provide sanctuary. As I understand it, the best way to describe what will happen is this: take an 8 1/2" by 11" (standard printer paper size) map of Rokugan. Then take an 8 1/2" by 11" color overlay and label it Jigoku and place it over the map so the corners line up. There is no refuge, no sanctuary (at least not initially). This is why our original three options are fight, run or ally with the darkness.

1st Path has exactly one drawback - "You will die! (or at least, you will bleed very much)"
Yes, this path encompasses more than just "hit the darkness with everything you can", but there is a cost. We will loose people, good people (elite guys send to save something), we will loose resources (tons of them), we will be primary target thanks to all the artifacts we will try to hoard. Lion will be pissed that we stick our noses in their war plans, that we will try to step between them and the Crab. That Scorpion won't let us do our politics without throwing sticks to our feet and so on. There is more drawbacks that you would think. Try to think about how many clans we will piss off, how fragile our standings will be.

Another important thing is that we won't have a major share (I hope I use the right word) in possible victory over darkness. At least in the eyes of others.

"Yeah, sure, you sent us food and sheltered our villagers, but WE were in the frontlines, WE bleeded for you, while you were hiding behind your mother's skirts."

I would like to thank every one of you who has made an input in this. It has been an awesome piece of work by Daidoji Tacticus.

I understand the problem about drawbacks and I'd like to detail the ones I can see, family by family:
* Daidoji: most likely will be nearly wiped out in their attempt to maintain the sanctuary of the Asahina peninsula (although the Iron Warriors should survive) and to help the other Clans in the war.
* Doji: Will probably lose the most, since they are the core of our magistrates and courtiers and thus will be the most at risk from the forces of darkness (plus they don't have any protection yet). Since they will be the ones travelling the land, they will be exposed. On top of this, they are the masters of politics and the fuel of Rokugani politics are favors. This fuel will most likely be exhausted at the end of the war, successful or not.
* Kakita: Same as above, except that they have protection for their academy and their style. Even if the few that will remain are a couple of older Kenshinzen and a group of saved but frightened artists.
* Asahina: they should be the safest, at least militarily. Their main risk is that they will be susceptible to infiltration, since they would be the ones welcoming refuges. They are thus the ones who are spiritually expecting losses (corruption by Jigoku and temptations or blackmail from the emissaries of Kanpeki). This should please the likes of Darren and Dario who like to see their Asahina with a "supplement of tentacles" (to paraphrase a Deadlands motto).

Amazing work by Tacticus.

One of the things I took away from the comment from what John Akey said was that priorities would have to be identified among all the things we value, and that the degree to which we would choose to stick to these priorities would be tested.

Given this, I imagine the following choices down the line:

-save our art or save the peasants
-save the Unicorn's art or our own art
-allow our courtiers to die in fulfilling a critical diplomatic mission or keeping them (relatively) safe and allowing dissension and chaos fester among those who would have worked together had we been around to mediate
-bankrupt ourselves, ensuring our poverty in the future, to strengthen the Empire's overall economic foundation or keep our resources to ourselves, assuring our continued material prosperity in the future, but undermining the chance of whether Rokugan survives to have such a future at all
-reenact the desecration of the Asahina temples by that Crab Jade Champion in order to advance our goals or to keep our stuff and let those goals suffer

Now that they have clarified exactly what the paths mean and how they will go about it, I am reaffirming my confidence in option one. Tacticus, I know you put work into your proposal and it makes sense, but I think it is too much too soon and we should not divide our efforts too early. We have to work in steps 1) to prepare for what is coming and be ready for it when it comes and 2) give the story team more options to guide us. The best option for that is simply option one. I know the story team has been reading everything posted and I am sure they have plans that will be interesting and very Crane-like. I have faith in them. Right now, we should consider the first step towards where we want to be at the end of Onyx, and that first step is fighting to protect the clan's honor and way of life, doing what we must to ensure our clan a foothold in this new Rokugan. This should open options for political steps in the next couple votes, which is something I am more comfortable with after we see the initial plans for the other clans begin to unfold. I am planing long term.

Agreed, I think fundamentally we want to stay and fight the darkness. I am certain we will get further votes tailored to what we have discussed here.

Having read that article... I, unfortunately, do not share your confidence that option 1 will naturally lead to options favouring Honour decks in the CCG. If we pick option 1, then we are knowingly voting for the one option that specifically doesn't support them. How can they interpret that, but as a message that what we want is military strategies and not Honour ones?

I mean, if that's what you want, then cool. You should vote for what you want, and I'll vote for what I want, and we will see what the majority wants. That's what voting is all about. But taking a step down a clearly-signposted path in faith that it will soon offer you the opportunity to backtrack seems ill-advised, to me.

I think you are reading too much in the potential ccg implications. I never said favoring honor decks. Even though I am primarily a CCG player, I enjoy options that the Crane have thus I ideally play switch, which wouldn't surprise me if it had more support in this environment for the ccg than the traditional honor rockets do. Once again as long as they haven't announced that they are changing the victory conditions of the game, as long as our honor is intact story-wise, honor will be available to us as a victory condition. I believe option one is the best way to keep our honor intact, pure, is to fight for it and use it to aid us in future path choices. If this is not what the story team (who are more than likely reading this) has in mind for future path votes, then why preserve honor? Why start the Crane path article with those four words "Honor is my strength"?