Satto was a rōnin member of the Perfect Land Sect. [1]
Student[]
Kitsuki Shomon was a samurai who, in defiance of all convention, had established a dōjō in Ryokō Owari that accepted any student, anyone with the right to carry daishō, down to ronin. She even spared instructed peasants in jūjutsu, the unarmed fighting style. [2] Satto became Shomon's favored student. [1]
Perfect Land Sect[]
Satto decided to join the Perfect Land, [1] a sect which was considered heretical by the Brotherhood of Shinsei. One of their core tenets was that Rokugan had entered the Age of Declining Virtue and that samurai were the cause, having strayed from their proper path. The reports spoke of peasant armies assembling in the Dragon mountains to the north. [2] Compassion moved Satto to help a peasant who swore he was in desperate circumstances, and she even convinced Shomon to assist her. They found out later that the peasant they helped was a smuggler, and that the whole thing was a trap to get Shomon in trouble. Her sensei insisted on giving honest testimony, despite knowing it would damn her. Meanwhile, Satto fled, [3] shortly after a fight between sensei and student. Satto quickly became very highly placed in the Perfect Land hierarchy up north, [1] in White Flower Village, [3] a hidden village commanded by the leader of the sect, Hige. [4] Satoo was willing to resort to violence to protect him. He was a bitter and disillusioned woman whose only remaining faith was in Hige. She had secretly taken a number of dishonorable and violent actions for the benefit of Hige and the sect without letting her kindly sensei know. [5]
Meeting Mitsu[]
Satto, Ichirō, and three peasant followers of the sect, Torao, Hoshu, and Yuki, where at an abandoned monastery inside the edge of Dragon lands when they eventually met Togashi Mitsu, the Dragon Clan's heir, under the nickname of Minoru, accompanied by Akio and Kane. The newcomers accepted to pass the winter with them within the monastery. [6]
Conclave of the Brotherhood[]
In 1124 the Brotherhood of Shinsei held their annual conclave at the Mountain Song Temple under the hospitality of Mirumoto Daimyō Mirumoto Masashige, being its main agenda item a vote on whether to formally bestow the label of False Path on the Perfect Land Sect, with the risk to fall into a violent schism. Satto attended the conclave. [7]
Shinsei's Reborn[]
During the conclave some incidents happened, and eventually it was exposed that a peasant woman named Senzai was the reincarnation of Shinsei, the Little Teacher. She told to the conclave the Perfect Land did not exist, and the words of the kie had no power to free souls from the wheel of rebirth. Bur his moral message was correct: the samurai of Rokugan had indeed lost their way, and the Empire as a whole; all of Rokugani society was out of balance. The very concept of the Celestial Order had been warped over time, becoming a too-rigid system used to justify the oppression of those below for the gratification of those above. The effects of her declaration would ripple far beyond the conclave itself over time. Some Perfect Land communities broke up, others vowed to create the Perfect Land in the Mortal Realm, by righting what had gone wrong. [8]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 In the Garden of Lies (Part 2), by Marie Brennan
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 In the Garden of Lies, by Marie Brennan
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Like Seeds on the Wind, by Marie Brennan
- ↑ Snow and Sun, by Marie Brennan
- ↑ Imperfect Land, pp. 3, 14
- ↑ Questionable Shelter, by Marie Brennan
- ↑ Imperfect Land, pp. 2-3, 31
- ↑ Imperfect Land, pp. 23-25
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