A while back, while we were debating the celestial order on the Scorpion
Clan list-server, the topic came to someone asking us all why we picked the
Scorpion Clan as our clan loyalty. Almost immediatly a majority of the Scorpions
responded with moving stories of loyalty. I have collected these E-Mail's and
posted them in a two part collection. Follow the link at the bottom of the page
to see the rest of these moving tales.
FROM: John Wick (orkboss@earthlink.net)
Ethics class.
I met Machiavelli there, and he kicked my ass. Questioned -everything- I
believed in. Let me give you an example.
He wrote a play called "Mandrogala" ("Mandrake"). In it, a married man wants
to have a son, but his wife is frigid (sorry ladies, but it's true). She
just won't give it up.
The play opens with a Greek chorus telling the audience that the past is
dead and gone and that this is the "New Way". In essence, Machiavelli is
attacking Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. Specifically, Socrates' statement
that: "If your means are just, your ends cannot be otherwise." Then, they
say the play is based on the rape of Lucretia (the mother of Remus and
Romulus, the boys who founded Rome), so this is a New Story, a New
Beginning, a tale for the New Rome.
The main character is not the husband, but his advisor. The husband's
advisor tells his boss he has a plan. "We'll get her a lover," he says. "A
real hot hunky fellow. She'll get pregnant and in order to protect her
shame, you'll claim the boy is yours."
"We'll never convince her of that," the husband says.
"We'll just convince her father confessor of our noble ends. After all,
every husband deserves a son, doesn't he? We're just making it easier for
your wife to do her wifely duties and protecting her from shame. After all,
you can always divorce her, an act that would shame her family and cause
great troubles."
"You're right," says the husband. "Our ends are noble."
They convince the father confessor. He convinces the wife. The husband and
the advisor get a pretty boy to be her lover, and in the end, everybody's
happy.
And the Chorus comes on the stage and says, "See? This is a comedy. We're
all laughing at the end. Much better than the tragedy of before (that's the
rape of Lucretia). Lucretia's been tricked (in Italian, "tricked" means both
"fooled" and "f&*%ed")."
The Chorus pauses and says, "She's been tricked, and so have you."
I've been a Scorpion ever since.
I love comedies.
FROM: Bayushi Ojioro (madrigal@larp.com)
I chose Scorpion originally because I was told it was the underdog clan. It
was hard to play, and less popular. Underdogs appealed to me, both in the
storyline sense (destroyed clan works for revenge and perhaps redemption)
and in the game sense (2 gp stronghold with expensive personalities).
Playing a more difficult, complicated clan appealed to me. I played
gamemaster a lot, so I usually strayed towards good guys as a PC, and
figured a change would do me good.
I was hooked on evil early on. I tended to play brutal lockdown ninja or
dishonor decks, and I earned a somewhat nasty reputation. Even when I lost,
which was frequently, my friends hated (in a good way) the manipulations
and bowing and sinister underhanded tactics I used. I must admit that the
dark reputation of the decks appealed to me - the perpetual good guy. The
11 province strength gave me time to develop complicated strategies. Honor
runners were scarce in that friendly environment.
The story served to add to that stigma. The scorpion were nasty back then,
and Kachiko was ruthless. I had always played the good guy before, and
playing evil appealed to me. Not senseless, brutal evil like Junzo's Army.
A calculated, ends-justifies-the-means evil.
When SCC came out and we finally got a decent money stronghold, Shoju
hooked me even more. The SCC story, with the Scorpion clan martyred just
added even more atmosphere. I loved Tomaro for some reason, even though his
card sucks, and Dozan's art was just awesome. Shoju is still my favorite
character, and everything I read about him made it more so. When WoS came
out, and Shoju sends Kachiko into the arms of his hated enemy because he
knows that's how it is - I knew then that he was a Daimyo I would have died
for.
After SCC, the Scorpion were very versatile. My decks could go into the
realm of the ninja, into dishonor, and into military. Shidachi and Marumo
won me a lot of games. I liked the game even better because the clan I
chose was so versatile it made for interesting design decisions.
Once the RPG game came out (my primary gaming passion is roleplaying) the
Scorpion appealed to me even more. As a gamemaster they made the perfect
villian - evil and sinister without giving the PCs immediate reason to
attack. Roleplaying was required, and the evil Scorpion NPCs really got
fleshed out and made the game much more fun because they fit into society.
You couldn't just attack them. You almost *had* to roleplay with them,
which made them all the more hated and respected in their evil.
My game breathed life into Tomaro, Dozan, and Shidachi as I roleplayed them
causing all kinds of trouble for the PCs. The pinacle came in a small game
when the PCs tracked Dozan and found him waiting along a lonely stretch of
road late at night. The PCs were looking for a kidnapped Crane courtier who
Tomaro had an eye on as a wife. Tomaro had been rejected, and then the
courtier disappeared. They knew Dozan was waiting to rendevous with the
kidnappers. Dozan knew they knew. When they heard someone approaching,
however, Dozan looked surprised and simply said "Ronin" in the direction of
the movement. When he drew his sword, the PCs couldn't believe he would
sell out his own men. (They hadn't read his card.) When Dozan came forth,
katana in hand, with the Crane and the Crab to meet the "Ronin" the men
knew what had happened. The fight was short and brutal, and left a lasting
impression as to the nature of the Scorpion.
They hate Dozan to this day.
The Yogo Towers just reinforces my love of the Scorpion. Yes, it's a
military stronghold. But it is a friggin' manipulative military stronghold.
There are long pauses before people assign to defend. They are desparate to
end battles before I manipulate them into a loss. I have taken out armies
when outnumbered and badly outgunned. If the Scorpion are military, then
the Yogo Towers is a excellent way to do it. Manipulative and evil to the
core. None of this Sneak/Deadly crap. You have to think to get the win.
I love being a ruthless Scorpion on this list. I get this evil and warm
tingle every time Bayushi Murai posts about the nature of the Scorpion, and
his inspiring dissertation about how we *are* the corrupting influence. I
get this fuzzy feeling everytime someone mentions Yojiro as the "honest"
Scorpion and think on all the times John Wick pontificates about ancient
Italian philosphy. Calling him "honest" is the biggest mask, the biggest
lie of all. Seeing him at work in the GenCon larp just made me smile in
that sardonic, Scorpion kind of way. I love shaking my head and smiling
everytime someone whines about keeping this clan or that clan honorable.
(Better not use our personalities, people. We'll corrupt you.) And I love
every minute of it.
I am a Scorpion. I only play Scorpion in sanctioned tournaments. I travel
to GenCon or Origins or both to play my clan. Sure, I try to minimize the
corrupting influences in my decks. But if I need to manipulate the
Shadowlands or Kolat to achieve my goals, so be it. That's why I am a
Scorpion. I must be willing to screw myself to accomplish my goals. Loyalty
demands it.
PS: My favorite character after Shoju is actually Shosuro Yoduka. I love
that personality. He just totally captured my imagination. The art, the
traits, the quote. Scorpion loyalty, yet as a ninja one who dances on that
razor edge of dark power, risking his very identity to serve the Scorpion
effectively. I love the Scorpion ninja. We *must* destroy the Shadow and
bring them all back into the fold.
FROM: Bayushi Tasogare (scott_hebert@hotmail.com)
I started buying L5R cards when Emerald was around... I liked Samurai and
Japanese culture, I was like, "Cool!" My _first_ Rare was Kakita Yoshi.
Yeah, the pansy-ass. NO, I didn't think he was a girl. His quote said,
"He's so devious that sometimes I wonder if he doesn't have Scorpion blood
in him." I was like, "Who are the Scorpion? I didn't see _their_ starter
around!?!" Find out they were in SL. Read their text, I was hooked.
A whole _Clan_ that wantd revenge? This I had to see.
So I had a few cards, never got to play (common problem with me), and then I
noticed this 'L5R RPG' in our local game store. I picked it up. I learned
the whole history of everything. I got hooked on the world.
And then came the day I bought WotS. I bought it, read the history, nothing
_spectacular_ there, and then went to Subway to read the Appendixes.
I absolutely died. I was reading to my friend and brother and I couldn't
read it without going off to gales of laughter. It was _that_ good.
ANYWAY, why am I a Scorpion? I like devious, complicated plots. I like
scheming. I like intrigue. I also (personally) value Loyalty over every
other character trait. For me, there was no real choice.
Who is my favorite Scorpion?
Yojiro.
Go get 'em, Wick.
Right after Yojiro is Shosuro Taberu, the Poison Crane, (outfit and other
nifty stuff), and Aramoro.
Cardwise, my favorite Scorps are 1) Shidachi (YEAH!), and 2) Bayushi Hisa.
FROM: Bayushi Tashiro (scorpion@comnet.ca)
The stories I'm hearing are all pretty amazing, I don't know how I'll rate
among them.
My first exposure to the Legend of the Five Rings game was through a
roomie. He played the CCG, and was a member of the Imperial Assembly. We
didn't get along too well (a fight months before had us part ways and live
barely tolerating each other in the same house), but I was able to sit down
once and look over the Herald with the first appearance of the Naga and
Scorpion. I read the story of Bayushi Kachiko, and thought 'she's cool'!
I put down the magazine, and more or less forgot all about L5R, much to my
shame.
Later, while looking in the local game store, I took a look at the
roleplaying game when it first came out. Originally, I flipped through it
for information on kitsune, then for information on oriental culture, then
decided to buy it as a reference book. Then I decided to run the game.
Originally I wasn't interested in the Scorpion Clan. For me, it was the
Fox Clan which I wanted to see, but when it came time for me to play, and
not run the game, I chose Scorpion.
The reason is Machiavelli's 'The Prince'. The Scorpion clan fit the
ideals of The Prince in so many ways, and thus fits with my view of the
'villianous hero' that I had to play one, without question.
As I got into the world of Rokugan more, I become rapidly more comfortable
with the Scorpion mindset, and found them to be easily my favourite of the
Great Clans. Crane, perhaps, make a distant second.
FROM: Bayushi Murai (smuray@nac.net)
I started playing the game around Anvil of Despair. I first picked up a
Naga starter, liked it, but they weren't "evil" enough for my tastes,
and I kept looking longingly at the Scorpion starter (I got the Naga
starter first because I was told "Oh, you probably don't want to play
Scorpion, it's a tough clan to play") and ended up buying the Scorp
starter the next week. One week later, the Junzo starter. A week after
that, Crane.
Hmm. Lots of evil going on there. :)
My three favorite personalities that came from the Scorpion Clan must
have been Soshi Bantaro, The False Hoturi, and... Yogo Junzo. Kachiko's
up there as well, but at 10 gold, she rarely made it into play, so
didn't really "strike" me all that much (despite having striking
artwork).
Soshi Bantaro was in ALL of my decks. "Twitchy" was the nickname that I
gave him, and it stuck, even on the web. People heard me refer to him
as Twitchy, and it spread. This past GenCon, it warmed my heart to walk
past someone playing a game, saying "...and I bow the box to bring out
Twitchy..."
Ah...
The False Hoturi, I love the guy. I was trying to bring him back from
the dead at the Return of a Lost Hero tournament (at least, for the
first half of the tournament... A story I'll tell in a bit...) He
represents everything that it meant to me, to be a Scorpion.
(Overcosted, underpowered, and... umm... no, wait, that's not what I
mean! UNDERHANDED AND SNEAKY, DAMMIT!) Plus, I just love the glowy bits
coming out of his eyes. When I found out that his picture was a dyptych
of The Farther You Fall and his, I was ecstatic.
It's around that time I started liking Hoturi, probably, since I liked
his evil twin so much.
Lastly, Yogo Junzo. Ah, evil incarnate. Sure, he's a traitor, but he's
a mighty powerful traitor. When I started playing the game, we weren't
out to "save Rokugan even if it destroys it"... All I knew was "Your
clan's been destroyed. Screw everyone else as hard as you can, and make
them feel pain. You are evil incarnate. You are more evil than Yogo
Junzo's Army. Yogo Junzo will kill them, and make them rise from the
dead as undead to serve him. But the Scorpion will make them kill
themselves, their family, and crush their morale as yet another hero is
proven false."
Now that's power.
I was rooting for a thousand years of darkness at the Day of Thunder.
Don't tell anyone though. I would have been ecstatic to find out that
the False Hoturi had actually won that duel on the fields of the Asahina
Temples, and replaced the real Hoturi... And since there were only six
thunders...
I'm not a nice guy, I guess. I play Scorpion because we're evil.
Anything anyone says otherwise, including me, is just propaganda. We're
ruthless, we're evil, and if you get in our way, you're going down.
Now, I promised to tell people about the Return of a Lost Hero
tournament. I was all set to try to bring back the False Hoturi,
primarily because it would have been pretty funny, and I'd love to see
an experienced version of a promo card. First round, I go up against a
Ruined Fortress Scorpion deck. Feh. I'm playing dishonor/military (The
Fair Voice of Lies, go look it up on Andy's page) and I knock him down
below -20 honor with Soshi Bantaro *SINGLEHANDEDLY*. Bantaro then goes
province crushing by himself, as Asami distracts my opponent. Bantaro
gets all four provinces. Second game... Another Scorpion player, IIRC.
At this point, I ask Jeff Kyer if this is a setup. :) Once again,
Bantaro wins the day for me. I realize at this point that everything I
do rests on Twitchy's shoulders, and how wrong it was for me not to
realize that HE was the one that needed to be saved! I continued the
day undefeated until I faced an amazingly brutal no-moving-part Unicorn
deck, and took a loss, and then met the eventual victor of the
tournament in the semifinals. I lost that game because he's a better
player - he made one less mistake than I did. That's still the best
game of L5R I've ever played in my life. (To those who haven't heard
the story, I got him to -15, then bowed my stronghold to pay for Walking
the Way on... you guessed it... Twitchy! I grabbed a Breach of
Etiquette... and realized my stronghold was bowed. Doh!)
Therefore, of all the Scorpions I've seen before or since, Soshi
"Twitchy" Bantaro has got to be my favorite. I like Jomyako, I like
Aramoro, I like many others. But there's only one man willing to
sacrifice his soul for his Lord.
May you rest in peace, Twitchy Bantaro, one little mistake kept you from
returning to us...
I forgot one other reason I play Scorpion. Probably the main reason.
My first deck was a Naga deck. If you can find one, get a Shadowlands
rulebook. Read that story.
That's why I'm a Scorpion. Thanks, John.
That story inspired me at Shorecon as well this year, and broke me out
of one of my "lulls" in fervor for L5R. I cracked open my "For
Emergency Use Only" Ruined Fortress box (doesn't everyone keep one in
their deck box, in case an EJ or Open tournament pops up and all you
have is an SJ deck?) and read the whole thing. It helped a lot.
FROM: Bayushi Lorenko (BLorenko@aol.com)
Short Story: I got tired of playing the Unicorn all the time. Sounds so
petty next to your statements of faith.
Really Long Story: I got into L5R when my husband and I got tired of waiting
for the next Star Trek expansion to come out. (We were more ST fans than
CCGers) They had two starter decks at the store. Emerald Edition Crab and
Shadowlands Scorpion. My husband got the Crab and I got the Scorpion. I won
the first game, mostly because we were misreading the rules and the cards,
not to mention our hilarious search for the stronghold card. (OH! You use
the back of the box!) Essentially I won because we misread Hametsu and
thought that he had a built-in Wasting Disease. (For five gold? Yeah, sure.)
But we had fun.
Eventually I picked my favorite clan: Phoenix. (Most of you are going
"huh?") It had the most female personalities, you see. I liked to see a
game where women could play and be treated as equals. (I had some bad
roleplaying experiences.) I played my great Phoenix/Naga alliance redemption
deck at the Day of Thunder. (I bring 'em out for cheap with the Shadowlands
taint, Ashlim removes it. To this day people tell me "Boy! What a cool idea
for a deck! How did it do?" I'll answer that one for you right now--two
crushing defeats. But it was also my first tournament anyway.)
But when I taught my sister how to play, she decided she wanted to be Phoenix
too. It didn't seem right that we both went chasing after the same cards (I
wasn't in the "Have to own three of everything mode" yet) so I switched to
Unicorn, which, while it didn't have a lot of female personalities, it did
have Kamoko.
I'll skip my Unicorn career if you don't mind.
Eventually it became time to get into the RPG. I dutifully made up a battle
maiden, who had to be the worst battle maiden in the world. I'm really a
Shinjo, not an Otaku. But to try to make my Unicorn character a little more
interesting, I took the "true friend" advantage. I decided that my true
friend would be in the Scorpion Clan. My GM (who also happens to be my
husband) said "OK--but you'd better come up with a damn good reason why a
Unicorn would have a true friend in the Scorpion."
That true friend, in case you hadn't guessed, was Bayushi Lorenko. We wrote
up her whole background. We tried to figure out what she did and how she
managed to survive as a Unicorn in the Scorpion courts. Eventually my GM
said to me "You know, this Scorpion character is a hell of a lot more
interesting than that battle maiden. Why don't you just play her instead?"
He saw to it that the battle maiden got killed at the first opportunity just
so that I wouldn't have a choice.
We played out the whole original adventure where Lorenko's husband is killed
and she gets framed for the crime. She has to solve the crime before the
Scorpion Magistrates or the real killers catch her. Luckily, we don't train
many samurai with the horsemanship skill. :-)
Through each adventure, I struggled to find my voice as a Scorpion. We are
not an easy clan. I hope that you have found my voice to be acceptable
within the range of true Scorpions.
My husband wrote up my character and her adventures and submitted it to AEG
for "Unexpected Allies." I had pretty much given up hope that I would get
chosen--because I imagined that there were a lot of good entires and it took
eight months for them to pick the winners. When I found out that we had won,
I knew that I couldn't just play Unicorn anymore. I had to start living up
to the ideals of Bayushi Lorenko.
So I apologize to all the good Scorpions on this list. I am dual-aligned and
I continue to play Unicorn decks in tournaments as well as Scorpion ones.
But my favorite deck of all is my Unicorn/Scorpion alliance duel/dishonor
deck. That is the deck that truly captures who I am as a L5R player.
The Continuation here.
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