The Tales of the Ninja Coder

Every Friday, the Kokakumanzoku division has a meeting. This morning, Jōji spoke about a project that he and Anna, one of the fighters on Kento’s team, had recently completed.

Anna is a sweet-faced little woman from the southeastern islands. To look at her, you would never guess that she is an expert with grappling hook, kama, and I think maybe even wakizashi, nor that she knows the streets and roofs of Kusatsu like the back of her hand.

So their project — not an entire campaign, but a small-scale project called “Many Houses” — involved testing out the Sure-Footed school of combat, including the Hearty Brawl tactic. Although many smaller clans and upstart types have been using the Sure-Footed school for some time, Clan Noriaibasha has not tried it yet.

Jōji and Anna were pleased to report that the new techniques allowed them to engage some fearsome foes with minimal casualties, and to take territories much more quickly than we might otherwise expect. Many of the priests and nobles expressed interest.

I congratulate my clan-mates on their successful sorties!

After defeating the Hakkā in the morning, the rest of Saturday was an exercise in frustration. I arrived at Ichimen only to have my chain break almost immediately. I went back to Castle Noriaibasha for a new one… but of course, Satonori wasn’t there to get me into the armory, so I could do nothing.

I looked through the lists of specifically identified enemies and determined a few that could be assigned to Satonori and Haruna. And I did some major work on the revised version of our Bright Square technique, which would be useful on Monday.

That took until sundown. Then I left the castle, wondering if anyone would contact me on Sunday to say, “We can get you into the armory now!”

Sunday passed uneventfully.

Then I went in yesterday morning and showed Kento the new Bright Square techniques, and he passed them on to Seijun. And Satonori got me into the armory, and I picked up fresh weapons and went to Ichimen and slew two fierce enemies before meetings took over my day.

And as I was getting ready to leave, there was an urgent call from Seijun. It seems his team was trying to use the new Bright Square technique, but they were getting carved into sashimi by the opposition. They needed help, urgently, and perhaps it was all my fault? I raced to Ichimen to see what was happening…

…and it turned out that only half of Seijun’s troops had been briefed on the new tactics! No wonder they couldn’t coordinate with each other! This was most definitely not a flaw in the kata I had devised.

This is one of the things that drives me most insane about working with Clan Noriaibasha. The moment anything goes wrong, urgent messages are sent hither and yon, and everyone must drop everything they’re doing, even if it means abandoning the pursuit of another enemy that we’re just about to kill.

They say that I might have access to the armory today. I pray that I can make progress against the unending tide of bureaucracy.

The Teitōken campaign is in a shambles.

For all of its history, the Teitōken campaign has been part of the greater, overarching Futa Jūichi-yon schedule. In order for us to meet that schedule, all enemies in Ichimen and the surrounding forests and wilderness had to be neutralized by June 20th.

On Thursday, as it became clear that this was never going to happen, the nobles made a decision: The entire campaign was shifted to the Mitsu Jūichi-rei schedule. This would give us another full month to get everything complete…

…but things are never that easy. In addition to all the foes we’ve been worrying about, there has been a resurgence of the Mōjin resistance movement. We can no longer ignore them.

To make matters worse, the Tendai priesthood is insisting that we capture the suburb of Koyōshi, on the outskirts of the Keishutsu district. Kento is quite upset at this news; he asks, “Where were they during all the strategy meetings? We showed them the maps, we asked them if there was any other territory we might need. They said nothing! Why do they think they can suddenly ask for new conquests now?!”

I agree with him completely, but there is no arguing with them.

Finally, because I am now a full member of Clan Noriaibasha, I must have entirely new weapons with the clan crest on the pommels and scabbards and so forth. I am sure it doesn’t matter to my enemies if the manrikigusari I strangle them with has a tassel in the Noriaibasha clan colors just behind the grappling hook or not, but it does change the weapon’s balance and slows me down.

That’s not even counting the fact that I spent almost all of Friday waiting around for the quartermaster to issue me weapons, and the weaponsmith to sharpen and polish them for use.

Finally, Seijun still has the idea that we will somehow vanquish the previously-identified Ayamari by the old June 20 deadline. Seijun is deluded. I will have to explain this to him on Monday.