Ikoma Omoidasu

The Omoidasu, or Ikoma Bard, serves an important role in the Lion Clan - he is the historian, law keeper, and the Clans heart, being the only emotion they are allowed to display.

The Rememberer
The Omoidasu serve to remember the past, to honor the ancestors, and to keep their memories keen and awake - to record any event they may stumble across, for, as Ikoma himself once said "Mankind has only one failing, and it's that we forget".

The Law-Keeper
As the living memory of the Lion Clan, the Omoidasu are also its law-keepers. They are typically found beside the Akodo or Matsu reminding them of the laws in relation to their actions, and the consequences. They are regarded as the keepers of bushido and the consceince of the clan. Nearly every Lion daimyo has an Ikoma advisor, even the Matsu.

The Mourner
As bushido forbids a samurai from expressing any emotion, the last role an Omoidasu plays is that of the Mourner. Whenever a Lion samurai is overcome by a tragedy, the Omoidasu is there to express the emotion the samurai cannot. He cries, screams and curses those he will wreak vengance upon, in the name of the Lion who must keep his face.

A Bard's Training
Beginning at a young age, generally around 6 or 7, the apprentice bard begins learning the history of Rokugan and his Clan. By the age of 12, he is expected to be able to recite the lineage of at least three families. If he fails this test, he is shunted into the vast libraries, no longer a historian. Those who fail become librarians, a vastly different role to that of the historian. Those that pass the test are allowed to progress in their training.

One of Ikoma's most important lession is "Man forgets, but history remembers", and most of his lessons to Akodo revolved around this principle. Therefore, in addition to learning the history and laws of the Empire, the bard must learn several epics - dramas depicting the Lion's most famous deeds, and their lessons.

Many Ikoma bards server the Lion daimyos, but some take to wandering Rokugan. These bards return to the school once a year to tell the stories they've gathered and add them to the histories. Each bard has his own set of scrolls within the library, and all of the stories he gethers are recorded upon them. This practice makes searching the librarys a time consuming process, as to find any story, a searcher must first discover the name of the bard who first told it, then he much scour the shelves in search of that particular bard's scrolls.