I'd like to ask questions about armour and the mechanics surrounding armour tech. Would it be posisble with fully covering armour and helmet it could be sealed to survive vacuum? To have shoes/boots that can turn on magnets tand cling to ship hulls? And to have controls for these on a gauntlet along with a comlink?
I do need to deal with this as I stated the Crab had done this before...however given the nature of space suits, and the difficulties of making such a thing vacume proof, heat proof and the like, EVEN WITH MAGIC, expect that it will only be available in as a heavy armor....
And most likely for only the Lion, Phoenix and Crab.
The Lion aren't foolish enough not to see the potential use of boarding a vessel without the need of a boarding spacecraft to do it.
AKA Tactical reasoning.
The Phoenix have the tech to do it better then anyone else except perhaps the Dragon, so they would have it likely for the Elemental Legion (specifically the Earth Legion)
AKA Technological reasoning.
And the Hida are crazy enough to literally jump at a space ship full of Oni, and either shoot or cut their way in, so the Kaiu would have had little choice but to find a way to keep the Hida alive in such situations.
AKA the "Move closer I want to hit the spaceship with my Tetsubo" reasoning.
Emerald has already mentioned elsewhere that weapons are not automatic because it would give the heimin the power to revolt successfully. I presume therefore that the only sort of rapid fire weaponry is ship-mounted.
Firing is an attack, which is still a complex action unless you have the ability to make attacks as a simple action with samurai or ranged weapons.
Arigato senpie.
Our little Nezumi has it in one. I have made every effort to make Shooting and Sword fighting balanced as the Katana (albeit modified and advanced) is still a VERY common weapon in the Galaxy. The Most common in fact. Weaponary fire rate is tightly regulated by the Imperial Families, after an event I likely should have covered that you could consider a failed reverse Meiji restoration. You may have noticed, (as I did) the Shogan, second most powerful man in the Empire, was not at any point mentioned in the Empire of Emerald Stars. Given the advent of Automatic weapons and what it caused in Japan IRL I knew I needed a way to prevent a Battle of Shiroyama situation.
Motonari did the first bit. He reminded the lower classes all across the Empire that Jigoku was RIGHT THERE.
The age of rebirth also helped... the rebirth of so many Ancestors reminded everyone that they were being watched.
But Danger and guidance are all well and good... but someone would have to make sure the weapons stayed banned. So (and I may write a more official comment at some point) the Shogan is our villain here, and caused the more modern equivalent of the "Battle of White Stag" which led to the banning of automatic weapons. You use type of weapon to almost overthrow the Empire and that weapon is TOTALLY getting made illegal for all time.
With that context out of the way, when I get to the nity gritty of school creation for you our lovely pistoleer, it will be in linked to past schools...thus insight rank three makes the attack simple rather then complex. As for reloading...while the skill specifically mentions reloading for situations that warrent it, L5R combat is fairly short and lethal.
And as such, I suspect reloading will be one of those, "Wait this combat has gone on THIS long...wow." Kinda deals.
If I took the Language advantage, would that possibly include all languages that could be heard in the known universe including those that are part of the Tortoise mandate?
I actually plan to change this a bit as state of the Clans (It will come this weekend at the latest I promise) shifted my perspective on the Tortoises control of the situation. For a minor spoiler on that....the Tortoise have had to fight politically for their mandate for some time. The Unicorn, Mantis, and Crane have all had pasts trading with Gaijin for profit (although the Crane less so then the others) while the Lion and Spider believe their Mandate calls for them to seek out and destroy the threats the Tortoise is trading with.
As of the Winter Court just before game start, the Tortoises house of cards has fallen. To quote the Imperial Petition, "I come before the court having been schooled in history. The War of Dark Fire. The Destroyers. The Yodatai. History remembers the necessity for the Great Clans to interact with these foreigners, no matter how distasteful we may find them, and the need to fight them should they pose a threat to Rokugan. And the Tortoise have always played a role in warning the Empire about these threats.
History remembers how well we were warned about the before mentioned wars, and I thank the Tortoise for their history of serving the Throne in this regard.
The Tortoise came to the stars with noble goals and ambitions, a renewed purpose towards the alien cultures, and a delight for trade. The Minor Clans as a whole have benefited from this. However we cannot ignore the fact that we were not warned of this threat.
In ages past we stood beside the Merenae to protect them against the Yodatai. For our own benefit and traditions, true enough, but we did it anyway. We integrated the Ivindi when they chose to embrace the Celestial Order, to discard what they were and become people, and were rewarded by the Jade Sun with earning souls. Neither of these events would have happened had the Tortoise been the only ones allowed to contact the Gaijin. We would not be standing here today if it wasn't for the wisdom of the Clan Champions of all the Great clans, and the Iweko Dynasty when it comes to handling Gaijin cultures.
Thus I would petition the throne to allow that alien species who could potentially pose a threat to us be handled as gaijin were from the beginning of the Toturi dynasty. A threat yes... but not one any one clan should handle alone. We all bring different tools to the table, from the Tortoises methods, to the Spider's conquest, the Lions tactical analysis, to the Unicorns Diplomacy and the eyes of the Crane, Phoenix and Dragon bring wisdom to this discussion that would allow the Empire to see threats of a more spiritual or cultural nature.
Thus the Mantis petition the Throne to allow us to interact with the aliens once more, to defend the Empire. Let these alien worshipers of the Jealous Realm be the first, last and only time the Empire is surprised by a foreign invader."
The petition succeeds (After all, the Historians in the room and the Chosen got the point and the Tortoise did just fail AGAIN, while those who support the Tortoise, if they even REMEMBER such events, aren't prepared to counter that line of attack... its 1800 years old.) and the Great Clans have started to slowly pry the Tortoises grip off off foreign cultures.
Of interesting note is a very select few already knowing the languages of the closest two neighbors of the Empire of Emerald Stars. Almost as if they were already had some sort of established relationship, if a secretive and highly sensitive one. But such a thing would be dishonorable to the extreme, and certainly not something you would accuse a Samurai of taking part in. Regardless, there is a big difference between any sort of dishonorable activities and proper trade relationships, and the Tortoises slowly forced release of information is revealing several other cultures far more distant. If anything this is making their failure all the more obvious and embarrassing.
With that bit of lore out of the way, since I for some reason thought our Tortoise was a Unicorn when asking that question....
Aliens count as Gaijin...there are also human gaijin but they are essentially under Unicorn control now. Learning Ivindi would make you a scholar of historic past, or honoring your ancestors...learning Senpet or Merenae would make you strange, but their are historic ties to that language as well. Yodatai is essentially a dead language, and learning a language so tied to the Realm of Slaughter and an ancient foe of the Empire would be seen as....in poor taste to say the least. Useful for secret communication though.
Likewise their is still Naga, Nezumi and the like. So your technique is still valid. From the lore above and the back story in recent history their are 3 alien cultures that have any closeness to the Empire of Emerald Stars, both in terms of technology and distance and only one that has shown hostile intent THUS FAR.
There is also numerous primitives....the Dragon are trying to guide some, much to the disgust of the Lion and Spider who tend to approach a slash and burn approach to anything that even looks sentient.