Kitsune Takeo wrote:Is there a legitimate cause of action to be advanced that the Unicorn have failed to protect their guests during the miai, as evidenced by some parties lack of eyes due to weasel mauling?
This comes up quite a bit. I'm going to go into a bit more detail than usual, since we have some new players with us. Please don't read my tone as harsh!
So...
How exactly are the Unicorn supposed to protect people from weasels?
It's a natural hazard. If a courtier goes to Dragon lands and gets knocked off a cliff by a goat, the Clans generally look at that as a case of "courtier shouldn't have been standing on that cliff next to that jackass goat."
Basically, you've got a warrior culture that knows - for a fact - that when they die their spirits just get reincarnated.
People settle disputes by swinging three-foot-long swords at each other really, really fast. Like, that's the legal code. Someone accuses you of something? Swing swords at each other.
You have a problem with something your lord did? Either commit suicide to show you're serious or shut up and stop complaining.
Spilled tea on the wrong person at winter court? Suicide is the only way to cleanse your shame.
Didn't refuse a gift twice at court? Now you're at war and thousands of people are dying because you only refused once before accepting it.
Retreat from combat, even for noble reasons? You are a dishonorable cur.
Stay in a losing battle even though you know you're going to die? Such honor.
The take-away here is that samurai are simply not all that shy about death.
Furthermore, it is not the responsibility of a samurai's hosts to keep them from harm. Sincerity is a virtue of Bushido, and it means that the samurai owns her every word and deed. If that happened to be a very stupid word or a very stupid deed, that doesn't actually change anything.
If a samurai runs off into a field filled with weasels and loses an eye, it's either because her ancestors were not with her (nothing a samurai would admit), because her training was inadequate (again, nothing a samurai would admit), or because it was just the will of the Fortunes (the catch-all for most bad things).
At best, a Clan might offer some appeasement to a wounded samurai's family or Clan, but Rokugan isn't the United Nations. The only person who can impose sanctions on the Clans is the Emperor, and taking the matter to him is just saying "Hey, we can't deal with this, can you help out?"
Which is, generally speaking, not something any of the Clans really want to admit to, because the moment they do, the vultures (i.e., courtiers) will descend and start picking at the speaker's carcass for whatever nourishment they can find.
