A few months ago, an excellent fiction writer, Akodo Hikaze, wrote to me with a request. He told me that he wanted to write a fan fiction story about the Crane, but he was having a very difficult time identifying with them. He didn't really understand what they were, and he couldn't empathize with them, which made it difficult to write about them. It was easy, for him, to identify with the Lion, their military culture and unwavering honor and tradition. He could identify with the Crab, because of their eternal, terrifying struggle. He could identify with the Unicorn...gaijin in a strange land. The Scorpion, they walked the path of night, turning up secrets for themselves and for the Empire. He could even identify with the enigmatic Phoenix and Dragon, the sense of mystery, the overwhelming power tempered with responsibility. But he couldn't figure out the Crane.

I told him I didn't have all the answers for him, that I couldn't make him like the Crane if he didn't. But I said I would try to explain how I see the Crane, and why I liked them as much as I do, and to see if maybe, through my eyes, he could find something to identify with to use in his writing.

Now that we've reached a time of questioning about what we were, what we are, and what we are going to be, I thought it might be helpful to all of you if I wrote out for you what I wrote out for him. Maybe it will help the Crane players realize where we've come from, and why there is no simple going back for us. I doubt it will change anyone else's minds, but you can take from it what you will.

In every community, there are those who rebel against the status quo. These are the people who make the headlines, who draw the attention and make the noise in the world. These are the people who take things to extremes, live on the edge.

These people are not the Crane. The Crane, you could say, are the innocent bystanders of the world. And as such, they make the world go round. In this, they are much like everyday people in the modern world. They are mostly honorable. They want to do the right thing. They want to be comfortable. They are mostly decent and kind. They are mostly, actually, courageous. A Crane is happiest when they get up in the morning, have breakfast, have a normal day of work, and return home to their family and a cup of sake in the evening. They are normal people.

If they took any virtue to the extreme, it would be Excellence. They are driven to be the very best that they can be at what they do. But that is each individual's passion, their own speciality. But what do Crane do in general?

Well, they do pretty much the same thing we (in the modern, real world) do. They make money. The Crane are focused on keeping Rokugan's economy running, and by making money, to make a comfortable, happy life for themselves and their families. If you look at the schools, it seems apparent to me that their functions duplicate, in a Rokugani setting, what businesses do in the modern setting. Don't believe me? The Kakita Artisan School: Dedicated to creating crafted goods and services (such as performing) that generate revenue. The Asahina Shugenja School: Dedicated to creating magical items that generate revenue. The Doji Courtier School: Dedicated to moving around the wealth that has been created by the Crane in exchange for goods and services from other clans (See: The Perfect Gift, the key technique of the school). In this way, the Doji Courtiers are the equivalent of stock brokers or high level businessmen in this world. The Kakita Iaijutsu School: Dedicated to mastering the legal system of Rokugan. In a world where conflict in law is determined by the iaijutsu duel, the duellists are the masters. In our world, their equivilent would be the Lawyers. The Daidoji Yojimbo School: Note...the school describes /Yojimbo/...guards to provide security. Same as our security guards today. The Daidoji are also known for having merchants of lower level than the Doji Courtiers, but there is no school for that. All of these schools are about the creation and movement of wealth, just like our world today. It is through their money that the Crane have power, and their money they earned by dedicating their samurai as well as their heimen to it. Other clans may have one family like the Yasuki (fundamental to the formation of the Crane) or the Ide who generate wealth, but nothing like the Crane.

Unfortunately, the other clans are not built on the premise that you can gain power and land by buying it and that if you have worked for the wealth you have, you've actually earned it. Most of the other clans are working on a completely different model: that you earn your land through strength, and strength alone. The strongest deserves the most, and the weakest deserves nothing. This is the fundamental principle of the Crab and the Lion, and really even the Scorpion, and has been the cause for tension between the clans for generations. The Crane have great lands and great wealth, and considerable influence, but they are weak because that wealth and land can be ripped away from them by force. If they are not strong enough to stand up, one on one, to the armies of the Crab or the Lion, then they do not deserve the wealth that they have accumulated in land. The Scorpion philosophy is slightly different: to them, the weak should die, and only the strongest should survive, and the absolute strongest are those who can murder or manipulate the others. Since the Scorpion are very, very good at what they do, they can manipulate the Crane. In any case, Crane are weak and also do not deserve all the wealth that they have gotten.

The Crane facilitate the other clans' belief that the Crane are weak. They use it to their advantage. We often read about Daidoji Uji and others talking about how they use their opponents' underestimation to turn overwhelming odds into victory. They also use it to their advantage politically. By letting the Scorpion believe they are very easily controlled, they can sometimes best a situation politically that they wouldn't be able to otherwise. Finally, by holding the appearance of great weakness, they can appeal to the Emperor for aid against their enemies ("See? Those bullies are picking on me!") and so in this way can dedicate more of their population to their peacetime pursuits than would otherwise be possible in such a battle-ridden world.

But it comes at a cost. To the eyes of the other clans, working on the principle of strength, the Crane are weak. They do not deserve what they have, in wealth or land. It does not occur to them to think that making money for creating goods can be an honest source of revenue...they don't have such a thing. Therefore, the only way that the Crane could have generated such wealth, in their eyes, is by 'cheating'. The strong should have it, but the Crane aren't strong, so they must have cheated to get it. They must have lied and stolen and otherwise taken it away from them, no matter what the original truth of the situation was. The original transactions are gone to the distant past, or reinterpreted as tricks.

For example, hundreds of years ago, the Lion, after a series of devastating battles with, say, the Dragon, are starving. The Crane step in and provide rice which the Lion want. The Emperor says that the proper exchange for the rice is this patch of land, which the starving Lion give willingly. Two hundred years later, the Lion claim that the patch of land is theirs, and that the Crane tricked the Emperor into making them give the Crane the piece of land. They go to war to get their land back, with a cry of "It's not fair."

Many members of other clans believe that the Crane are ambitious. They're not. They don't have to be. Of course, individual members could be overly ambitious....the Crane is a very individualistic clan, with good people and bad people in it. But the Crane as a whole aren't particularly ambitious. In their minds, at least before the Scorpion Clan Coup, they had everything that they needed and didn't want any more. They were living comfortably, generating money and living in relative peace. The Crane have generated more minor clans and given up more territory for minor clans than any other, a luxury they would not afford if they were very ambitious. They have, historically, supported the minor clans. They could afford to welcome the Unicorn back to Rokugan. You can't get any closer to the Emperor than the Empress, and the Crane had no designs for becoming Emperor themselves. That would make them the target of too much war from the other clans, and what they wanted was peace so they could persue their interests. The Crane were content and happy, normal businessmen, making a comfortable life for themselves and their families.

If the Crane take anything to the extreme, it is the virtue of excellence. They want to be the very best that they can be. This contributes even more to their wealth, but it also contributes to their desire to keep the peace, so they do not have to split their attention. It also explains why some individual Cranes are ambitious, while most are not. Finally, it contributes to the thing that draws people to play the Crane in the first place: Heroes.

Not everyone identifies with the Crane. What fun is it to identify with these 'business' types? They're just like the normal people you meet every day. Lion, Scorpion, Crab...all of those are larger than life types, very different in their appeal to the papers-and-paychecks Crane. It's exciting and different. As a Scorpion, your personae can lie and be sneaky and get away with lots of things you never would in the real world. As a Crab, you can bully and act crass and pick your nose and lots of other things, as well as bash plenty of heads. As a Lion, you can make doomed stands based on a code of honor very different than the real world. As a Crane, everything is still as grey as it is in the real world, where you're trying to be the best engineer or programmer or secretary you can be, but that's about it. The Crane, very much, are the innocent bystanders of Rokugan.

But what the Crane do have is heroes. A hero to me is not someone who is itching for a fight, who makes trouble to try to solve it. Superman is a pretty poor hero...he has all the equipment to save the world from the get go, and no reason not to use it. Heroes are people who rise up from humble, 'normal' roots, and somehow rise above what they have been given 'To Do What They Must'. Heroes would prefer peace, but don't back down despite not having all the biggest armies and greatest backup. The man who runs into the burning building to save a child is my kind of hero. It is because of the 'normalness' of their background that the Crane make such terrific heroes. And it is those heroes who draw us in.

Crane heroes are weak. They make mistakes. They screw up. They fall down. They have faults. Toshimoko likes his sake, and would prefer to solve problems on his own, even if doing so endangers the Empire. Hoturi's love makes him unable to see past Kachiko's lies. Kuwanan can't find a way to save his clan without falling back on the military. Yoshi can't pick up a sword. Uji is so fiercely independant that he has a hard time compromising with Kuwanan. But Crane Heroes also get back up again. It is because of their weaknesses that we love them. Toshimoko's most heroic moment, to me, was when he rallied the Crane at Volturnum. Hoturi had two...defeating the False Hoturi rather than fully succumbing to the weakness Kachiko caused, and when he forgave Kachiko despite everything in Otosan Uchi at the end. Kuwanan's most heroic moment, for me, was when he gave the Tea Ceremony to Hitomi, acknowledging what he had been sacrificing. Yoshi died without picking up a blade to defend himself. Uji offered himself to Kuwanan. These are heroes because of what they had overcome, both in themselves and in the world around them. That impresses me. The Crane make great heroes. Every artisan or courtier that became an 'Iron Crane' sacrificed everything to save the Empire. There's no lack of heroes in this clan when the time gets tough.

Where are the Crane going? That is a very difficult question for us as we look towards Gold and Alpha.

I'm sure the Scorpion players would say that the Scorpion have suffered more even though they, like the Unicorn, returned from the Burning Sands with a Gaijin army and a Kami at their side. But the Crane suffered horribly. In the Scorpion Clan Coup, they lost the Empress, a sane Hantei and the source of their major power in the Courts (I like to think of it as the equivalent of spray-painting all Scorpion fluorescent orange). Through the Clan Wars, where their fields were salted and Shadowlands-tainted, they were dishonored by the False Hoturi. While Hoturi was tortured, they lost 2/3 of all their lands to invading armies and Kyuden Doji and Kyuden Kakita (not to mention most of the armies contained within). On the Day of Thunder, despite having very few forces left, they fought and only they and the Phoenix lost their Thunder that day, and at least the Phoenix still had Shiba Tsukune. The Crane lost their Thunder and their Champion at once. Then comes the Hidden Emperor saga where they lose (through his own fault) the Emerald Championship and another of their great heroes. The Emperor Returns, and with him, he slaughters the Imperial Court, the only remaining source of Crane power. The Crane suffer a civil war set up by the Ninja which leads to their fields being salted /again/ and many people killed. They get in a two-front war with the Mantis and the Lion, and somehow manage to come through. Their villages disappear wholesale to the Ninja, a threat that no one else has bothered to tell them about. Even not knowing, they march with their army to Volturnum to rescue the ancestors. Kuwanan gets Shadowlands tainted and dies, as does Toshimoko and almost all of the Crane armies that went. Then in Spirit Wars, the Scorpion sacrifices the Crane army to Hida Tsuneo and the Great Kumo floods the plains with sea water (more thoroughly salting them than any human with a bag of salt can do.) And of course, all through this time tsunamis, famine, and plague are described as ripping through Crane territories more than any other. The Crane don't have mysterious (or secretive) sources of unusual knowledge to guide them through the dark times, unlike the Scorpion, Dragon, or Phoenix. They don't have victory through superior armies like the Unicorn, Crab, and Lion. Almost all of the major wars in Clan Wars have been fought on Crane territory. Others can argue that the Crane haven't suffered, but when they say that they are referring to the card set. If one thing is apparent from the Phoenix/Mantis war, the power of the card set does not in any way actually say anything about the status of the clan in the storyline. It may have, but never since the Jade attrition, something AEG swore not to do again.

So you have these 'innocent bystanders', these ordinary people, but then you wound them terribly, forcing them to abandon their ordinary lives to keep themselves from extinction. Then you wait thirty years. What are they going to be. Are they going to be healed all up and moving on as if nothing had ever happened? Are they going to be still starving and wounded, trying to pull themselves to a standing position after all that had happened? Are they going to have given up, succumbing to their own aware as a remnant of an older age, living on memories and poetry alone? Or are they going to be so gunshy after all that has happened to them that they take an aggressive stance, deciding it is better to get in the first blow because the other clans are going to just try to hurt them again anyway?

I don't have the answer. From what I've heard of Gold, it almost seems like the last will be true. My only, most sincere hope is that, no matter what comes out of the sets ahead, we will still have our heroes.