Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Draken Korin" data-source="post: 456732" data-attributes="member: 3196">Verick's Horse, A Brief BackgroundAkodo Iwashiro, my father, went west after the disgrace that nearly ended the Akodo family. He was a great samurai and tactician, who had dedicated his life to mastering the art of war. But what is a samurai without a master, and without his honour. Perhaps it was incorrect, but he saw no advantage to ending his life over that loss. Instead he took his swords and went into the world to seek a new way.He wandered as a ronin for some time, always travelling westward, encountering many different people, and learning many things. Eventually he settled at the northern edge of the great mountain range that stretches through Rasheman. That was where he met my mother, and began the family of Akodo Iwashiro in the west.His travels had shown him a unique perspective, limited these days to a select few, and those of the Unicorn clan. That the mobility and speed of a horse mounted warrior is a formidable tactical advantage. He learned this not from the Rokugani, but from the Hordeland barbarians who came to respect and befriend him in his travels through the Hordelands.It was this perspective that gave my father a new purpose in the west. With a strong wife, and a new son, my older brother, he pooled the last of his resources and acquired a string of horses from his old barbarian friends, now to the east. Over the years, he became expert at the husbandry of horses, and their training and breeding, building a name for himself in the west.After many years refining the integration of his arts in horsemanship, and melding them with the old ways of war from Rokugan, he formed a school of war, to share his knowledge. The training was rigorous, and my father was a harsh master, but his methods produced some of the finest cavalry and foot officers, and tacticians in the west. My brother was always to be the heir to the school, while I, a dreamer and dilettante, learned little of the ways that had been brought west with my father. My horse, Snow on the Grey Mountain, was the first thing I remember my father giving me. In retrospect, I know it was a lesson, to teach responsibility, and in some ways, it pushed me in the right direction.From his foaling, to his training, I was the one responsible for him. A responsibility which I took more seriously than much of the other things I had done to that time. When my father died, and I took it upon myself to return his ashes to his ancestral home, with the shards of his Jade sword. Snow carried me there, and it was somehow fitting that the first thing my father gave me helped me to carry out the last thing I would ever be able to do for him.More than Kaz's ill considered decision to move in into the open. I blame myself for Snow's death. Ultimately, I was responsible. No one can understand what he meant to me, especially not a self-important girl whose claim to being a servant of nature I find as hollow as the winter wind. Snow on the Grey Mountain was a part of my family, and one of the last connections to the west. Now he is dead.Verick</blockquote>

Verification