<<Setting Sun Over Two Cranes In Single Nest<<

No longer willing to play a back seat in Imperial politics, the Dragon sought to end these ridiculous dynastic shenanigans. A huge force of Dragon marched down into the Imperial delta to throw down the false Empresses. Upon arriving, they found the Crane Empresses already dead, killed in a duel with each other. The Horse ambassador to the Dragon Clan, a sickly male shugenja, found something wrong with them and surmised that they were actually one soul split into two, thus solving the riddle of the Crane Clan.

The Dragon daimyo, after policing the Empire for so long and seeing all the worst of humanity, was finally, supremely disgusted. He told the whelp Horse ambassador that an Empire like this should only be ruled by one so sickly as he and retreated to the Dragon Mountains.

The Imperial shugenja invested the boy as Emperor.

In the mountains, the Dragon daimyo called from his stronghold for the Kami to free his clan from the rotting turmoil of this world. His pleas were answered by a Celestial Dragon coming from the clouds. She promised to always keep the Dragon Clan pure if he swore to venerate and only walk among the kumo. (Kumo means “cloud” but it also means “spider”.) He so swore and so the silver dragon also swore an oath of fealty to the daimyo, stepping down in the Celestial Order and becoming a silver-haired human woman. A new family was born into the Dragon Clan, all their floating fortresses were restored and they retreated from the Empire.

Meanwhile, the Crab Clan had been disintegrating. Without religious, military or political authority, they had become the “lame dog” of the Empire. They had even taken to hiring ogres to patrol their borders so other clans would not simply march troops in and take it from them. Their old friends the Lion took pity on the Crab and offerer to accept a pledge of fealty from the Crab daimyo. He consented, and the Crab left their lands to live in a desert where no crab could survive.

>>Third Era, Foreigners Invade>>