Guest Article: An Ode to Old5R and Yoritomo Saigo

The concept for Yoritomo Saigo was inspired by my love of the Mantis Clan, and my obsession with the Kolat. Upon being accepted to Winter Court 3 (WC3), the play by post RPG event from Old5R, I knew I wanted to play both of these for the game in question. I also knew that everyone else playing in WC3 would also know these facts. Thus I reached out to my old friend, and a conspiracy was born…

Shawn was the L5R Story Lead, and a long suffering recipient of my crazy story ideas over the years. This time though, the concept was a homerun and he agreed. The basic idea was that Yoritomo Saigo was a Mantis Courtier and a Kolat of the Silk Sect (Information Gathering Specialists), but the Saigo of WC3 would actually be a Kolat Duplicate (or unbeknownst to me, a Pan’ku duplicate, depending on how Shawn wanted the story to go) and wouldn’t need the Dark Secret: Kolat disadvantage when building him for WC3. The duplicate Saigo would be able to further the aims of the Mantis Clan at WC3 without any negative ramifications related to the Kolat, as the real Yoritomo Saigo would be watching from afar and manipulating things with directives to the leaders of the Mantis Clan delegation if needed.

Here is a quote from Shawn Carman about his experience with me and Yoritomo Saigo:

This was a bit of a dream come true RPing wise for me, as not even the other Mantis Clan players were aware of this at the time. In fact, I was approached by multiple players in the game, a Mantis, a Unicorn, and a few others, all trying to engage the “obvious Kolat-ness” of my character for various reasons. Even some Scorpion Players used some of their Dark Secret gathering abilities on Saigo to suss out what absolutely had to be his “Kolat” trait.

With that buffer, I used Saigo to explicitly further the ends of the Mantis in WC3, while some other players continued their attempts to entrap him as a Kolat. Anything Kolaty in nature that Shawn would choose to utilize would be unbeknownst to me as a player, as I was exclusively focused on the Mantis plans for the RPG. This led to some failures and successes, as we were led astray as we put on a theatrical play about Yoritomo Aramasu that wasn’t exactly historically accurate after Scorpion meddling (Shocking, right?), which ended up being slightly embarrassing at the least. Successes were had though, with a specific Phoenix Player shaming themselves publicly for slandering the Mantis and even a political alliance being formed with the Spider and leading to the monk Omigawa becoming Saigo’s yojimbo for the remainder of WC3.

However, the crowning achievement for Saigo was being named Darling of the Court for that Winter Court by Otomo Suikihime, the Governor of the Second City.

This was a fairly lengthy process and required multiple RPing sessions with Otomo Suikihime, played by none other than Dave Laderoute. Nothing was guaranteed by these posts, but the banter and back-and-forth between Saigo trying to further the Mantis goals and Suikihime maintaining control of The Second City, was honestly pretty damn epic. I can still remember writing some of those responses, and spending hours agonizing over specific sentences or wording, trying to prepare for the inevitable counters by Suikihime and the other GMs of the game. It was a grand old time for sure!

Here is a quote from Dave Laderoute about his experience in WC3 with Yoritomo Saigo:

Later on in the L5R Story, the Egged (Pan’ku doppelganger) Yoritomo Saigo, was killed during a storyline event involving Asako Karachu, full story here.

As you can see from the above link, Saigo eventually returned to Rokugan proper, but in the Onyx Storyline, he is now back in the Colonies as his original intended self: Master Silk. His abilities play wonderfully off the Wealth Token mechanic that the Mantis can generate during their Raids, providing card advantage at the expense of resources and also offering a small bonus to lobbying if needed. Either way, it’s extremely awesome to see a character that I brought to life over a decade ago, still have some small imprint on a game that I absolutely love.

Thanks for reading, and for those playing Onyx Edition, I hope you find Saigo useful in your machinations, cheers!