The Poor, The Lost, and The Determined

In the lands of Rokugan, Kakeguchi Sakiyori was the eldest son of a minor samurai of a vassal family and a peasant woman. His parents worked hard to raise him and his sister before Sakiyori was sent to school to become a samurai of the Crab Clan. Fortunately for Sakiyori, his time at school was mostly lackluster despite a few incidents that arose during his time learning. The most exciting thing coming from his graduation ceremony where he was attacked by a Ryokaku no Oni, or a Demon of Marriage, before being defeated and sent away. Sakiyori was convinced that his life was to be inconsequential and minor, stationed on the Wall and to follow orders as his father. In fact, he found his life rather dull and gray before he was sent to a local tournament as a backup as the main family’s son went missing.
 
It was only with attending this tournament did Sakiyori’s life truly changed. There he would discover his future wife, Soshi Iseki, to later be renamed Soshi Tanako of the Scorpion Clan after her graduation ceremony. Tanako, known as a Shugenja, or a spellcaster, and only daughter of the Soshi Magistrate, found her charmed by the simple country bumpkin and all too eager to marry such an eager man. The tournament itself fraught with danger and his own whirlwind romance, it didn’t take long before an outsider was attending as a guest of the Scorpion Clan to learn of the Scorpion way of life. Things seemed to blossom with each passing day, seeing both his future bride before being accepted into a brand new dojo to learn the ways of the Bitter Lies Swordsman. Sakiyori truly saw himself blessed as he soon married Tanako, growing more as a man than ever before as he was soon blessed with a family and even the important task of taking care of a precious dragon egg and to raise it as his own child.
 
However, fortune was a fickle mistress to Sakiyori as anything given was surely taken away. He was assigned to investigate a forest with a group of comrades, both to discover the Lord of the Forest and to find sinister a sinister group of blood Shugenja known as Bloodspeakers. They were able to discover that the Lord of the Forest, a spirit of great power, was being enslaved by Bloodspeakers through odd rituals enhanced by the Void. While others sought to stop the ritual, it was Sakiyori’s duty to keep the Lord of the Forest at bay. Yet, it was during the middle of the fight that the Bloodspeakers attempted to enhance the mystic connection between them and the Lord of the Forest through their ritual. Unfortunately, due to consequences of battle, the sigils on the ground had shifted the powers of the ritual into something truly unpredictable. Power surged through the great spirit as his body broke down, enhanced by the power of the Void, as it created a portal as it started to suck in its immediate surroundings. Unfortunately, the closest if not only thing by it was Sakiyori, finding himself lifted and flung into the spirit’s body…
 
When Sakiyori awoke next, he found himself lying on the ground of a vast field of reeds. Picking himself, he realized things were truly wrong as he inspected himself and his surroundings. His precious blade of frost, Hifuri, had lost its powers and was reduced to nothing more than a normal katana, his jitte, Dokune, and a large majority of his equipment was missing. As he checked his equipment, the one thing he did not recognize was an odd compass among his possessions. Its needle was constantly spinning, shifting back and forth in random directions. It puzzled the simple man before it seemed to finally settle, pointing in a direction as, with Sakiyori not having much left to do, set off to find his companions, or at least to find his way home.
 
On his travels however, it became more and more apparent that, wherever Sakiyori was, it wasn’t Rokugan. The people seemed to speak in an odd tongue, brigands were more plentiful, and they assaulted him with various weapons he had never seen before. At first, he thought of himself as having transported to Gaijin Lands, or the lands outside of Rokugan. But the reality of his situation only truly hit him after he rescued a merchant from bandits. With some successful acting, he revealed his intentions to see a map, with the intent of trying and finding his way back to Scorpion Lands. Yet, upon inspecting the map, he could not find the Scorpion Lands… in fact, he couldn’t find Rokugan anywhere on the map. Even drilling the merchant for information was a fruitless pursuit as the reality sank into Sakiyori’s mind… He was not of this world…
 
It was then that Sakiyori resigned himself to a dejected fate. His comrades he did not care about, but his wife and his two daughters… they were his whole world… He found himself depressed, his world of color once more returning to the dull grey of monotony as he cared less and less about himself and others… before remembering the odd compass among his possessions. He pulled it out as he inspected it, wondering what sort of magic had been cast by the kami on such a thing, and discovered that the needle wasn’t pointing North. A needle that didn’t point North was deemed useless to some, but something in Sakiyori’s gut urged him to follow the compass…
 
He wasn’t sure how long he traveled, the days and nights just slowly blurring together in their grey hue as Sakiyori clung to the faint hope that his own deluded mind provided in that little compass. He had eventually found himself in a cave, clearing out a den of wolves, before discovering the needle’s slight movement. He continued to explore the cave deeper, searching for nooks and cracks before finding a small alcove behind some larger boulders. He squeezed his way on in, feeling the scrape his armor against the rocks before he was finally in the small room. There the needle started to spin wildly, spinning faster and faster before a faint shimmer seemed to appear in front of him…
 
Of course he didn’t recognize the shimmer immediately, though he found such striking similarities between it and the spirit portal that initially sent him to this strange land. He reached a hand to the shimmer, wondering if he could possibly go through… that maybe he could return home. As his fingers touched the shimmer, it seemed to grow, glowing as its color shifted to a darker hue as it swallowed his fingers… before his fingers brushed against something hard. With a small swallow, he wrapped his hand around the small object, gripping firmly before the shimmer disappeared, leaving the compass to spin once more. Slowly, he twisted his hand, inspecting the object in his hand, before finding himself nearly crying…
 
A flood of joy surging through his body as his delusion was not wrong. Within his hand was a single blackened egg with ruby cracks spiderwebbing along its shell and a piece of paper… It was the dragon egg he had with him when he first transported to the strange land, and an apparent letter written in a familiar handwriting. It was Tanako’s handwriting, detailing a page within his wife’s journey of Sakiyori’s sudden disappearance. It described his wife’s faithfulness and her desire to find her husband… before the words became splotched as Sakiyori’s own tears fell and muddled the ink on the parchment…
 
He had thought he had lost it, that he had lost it all, that the Fortunes had forsaken him in his time of need, but he was wrong. It was just that their influence just could not fully reach… whatever Bloodspeaker ritual happened within Rokugan had changed a spirit’s power so greatly that not even the Fortunes could have predicted what could have happened… And now his wife was desperately searching for a way to find him, for them to reunite. This egg was the start, the beginning of something truly great as Sakiyori clutched it tightly. How could he not be happy and joyous at such a thing? Of course, he had no way of knowing how he could possibly help his wife… He could not even cast magic as his body had not been blessed by the Kami in Rokugan…
 
Yet… this was not Rokugan…
 
This was a brand new land, full of new and interesting things… It was then that Sakiyori made a vow to himself. It seemed that whenever the compass wasn’t spinning, that it indicated a connection to his home, and the possibility of retrieving something precious to him. And if that was the case, then all Sakiyori had to do was to be patient. He would not be able to help his wife… but he could prepare for the chance to either see her or to join her. Picking himself up slowly, his resolve now fully steadfast as he slowly and tenderly packed the dragon egg away. He did not know if he would be able to hatch such an egg within these lands, but he was certainly going to do his best. And the first step, as his Yasuki friends often said, was money… And what better way to make money than in the capital?... Now was not the time to mope… now was the time for action…