Otomo Gorobei’s sandals clomp swiftly down the hall amid the softer susurrus of Seppun Irie’s robes and the clack of Miya Retsu’s prayer beads. As they cut through the courtyard of the Imperial Apartments, they are in danger of being waylaid by Otomo Hanako, the Junior Assistant Vice-Minister of Public Gardens, who is bent under the weight of the case containing the documents prepared for Otomo Gorobei’s study and signature. She will have to be diverted if Otomo Gorobei is to avoid being buried in paperwork and trussed up in red tape!

Choose one of the following methods:

A: Alert the Junior Assistant Vice-Minister to a Public Garden Faux-pas.
It is within the Junior Assistant Vice-Minister’s purview to receive complaints about the state of public gardens anywhere in the Empire. Indeed, she will have to retrieve the paperwork to record your complaint! Make a TN 20 Lore: Bureaucracy, Lore: Law, or Lore: Gardens/Perception roll to point out a flaw that she will need to address–pronto.

B: Propose a Public Garden
You can always repel a bureaucrat with the threat of work. Make a Courtier/Awareness roll at TN 25 to propose the construction of a new public garden somewhere in the Empire. She will be dazed by the amount of paperwork this will generate. That will surely give Otomo Gorobei time to escape.

Advantages: Benten's Blessing

C: Criticize her performance as Junior Assistant Vice-Minister–very subtly.
Every so often, one must curtail the excessive self-confidence that can develop in even the most conscientious samurai by undermining them in the guise of a friendly conversation. Make a Games: Sadane/Awareness check at tn 20 to force her to flee the scene under the strain of your gentle, friendly scrutiny.

In the vastness of the universe, it is perhaps no surprise that a seemingly innocuous priority for a moderately known house of the Isawa might turn the fate of the empire.

Among the thousand things on Isawa Shingo's mind that morning, his house's long-standing grievance with the upkeep of the second-tier imperial gardens adjoining Asahina Seido was not at the top. But when he spotted Otomo Hanako, encumbered as she w was, he realized he might never get such an opportunity again. So as Gorobei neared the point where the hapless Hanako might have spotted him, her vision was completely filled by a well dressed and thoroughly insistent Isawa shugenja, detailing obscure technical infractions that Hanako herself was unfamiliar with but most certainly could not go unaddressed on her watch.

"Isawa Shige-sama,er, Shonohiko-sama," she tried to interject, completely flustered and not even able to compose a sentence in her own defense.

"That would be Isawa Shingo-sama, Otomo-san, or should I interpret this as your office's attention to detail in the maintenance of such sacred gardens?"

And so the "conversation" continued all the way to the imperials' temporary office space, an unrelenting Phoenix meaning that Hanako would never know how close she came to Gorobei that morning.

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Part A. Lore Law/Perception: success.

Unbeknownst to Isawa Shingo, his family's dilapidated gardens aided in the rescue of Otomo Gorobei that day!

This event has been passed!