#The Faction Triangle

Contents

Canon. Defines the basic faction layout for an Edo campaign.

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#Scent — Three Shadows

Different shadows overlap in Edo at night. The shogunate carries a light and tries to erase the dark; the Hundred-Tale Society gives that dark a name and makes a home in it. The human conspiracies stand between the two and convert fear into documents, experiments, and merchandise.

#Law — Faction Placement

• For each scenario, determine one central faction and one obstructing faction first.
• Factions are not an enemy roster; they are the source of information, concealment, deals, and blowback.
• In long campaigns, avoid repeating the same incident type; instead let the same faction appear in a different guise each time.

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#Scene Commentary — Factions Need Each Other

The faction dynamic is not a simple hostility chart. The shogunate dislikes the Hundred-Tale Society but does not want to provoke every yoma at once. The Hundred-Tale Society avoids the shogunate but can feed information to PCs when human conspiracies are turning yoma into commodities. The conspiracies try to exploit both — and know they risk being hunted by both.

A good faction conflict asks "who is most dangerous in this incident" rather than "who is evil." In one scenario the shogunate may be the obstacle and the Hundred-Tale Society the informant. In the next the Hundred-Tale Society may be hiding a witness while the shogunate is the only legal support available.

Questions to settle when building a faction scene:

• Which faction loses if the truth of this incident goes public?
• Is there simultaneously someone who wants the yoma eliminated and someone who wants to exploit it?
• If the PCs accept one faction's help, which faction grows suspicious?

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#Session Application — Layering Two Factions

• First scene: a shogunate-commissioned incident turns up a Hundred-Tale Society clue, and the human conspiracies' hand appears belatedly.
• Complication: attacking either faction benefits the other.
• Closing question: who will the PCs block in this incident, and whose help will they reluctantly accept?

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#Three Pillars

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#ex3 Faction Trait Application

The detailed organizations of ex3 follow the Faction Trait rules of co. The Faction Trait entry in an organization document is not a mere background advantage — it is a passive trait of the [Aptitude] type.

The Faction Trait is the device that reveals each organization's essence on the battlefield and in incidents. The shogunate moves through documents and orders, Kagura Domain through military order, the Hundred-Tale Society through Kaidan, Black-Tag Office through records, Hidden Hannya through reversed seals, Black-Tag Gang through price, temples and shrines through purification, dojos through licenses, merchant companies through supply, theaters and pleasure quarters through rumor.

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#Reading as Historical Power Structures

The faction dynamic is not a purely fantastical org chart. It translates the actual power channels of the Edo period into a yoma-lore setting. The shogunate holds the force of law, documents, and policing. Domains hold the prestige of their land and family name. Temples and shrines hold the mandate of funerals, registration, sacred precincts, and sealing. Merchant companies and the townspeople's world hold money, logistics, and rumor.

The Hundred-Tale Society and the human conspiracies move into the spaces between those channels. The Hundred-Tale Society holds no official authority but survives inside the Kaidan and fears people tell. Black-Tag Office manipulates records; Hidden Hannya experiments on seals and bodies; Black-Tag Gang rides the grey economy of pleasure quarters, gambling, and smuggling.

A GM reading this for the first time will find the following connections useful.

Read this way, each faction is not a suddenly-appearing evil organization but a function that grew from a crack in Edo society.

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#Edo Echoes of the Main-Game Factions

The main-game factions of co do not survive intact in Edo. Warring States factions are torn apart, absorbed, and renamed by war, sealing, shogunate administration, and the Spirit Realm gate management system. When reintroducing main-game factions in ex3, ask "where did that function and guilt flow?" before asking "does that organization still exist under the same banner?"

Human factions splinter through many channels. Exceptions like Kagura Domain survive under a domain name, but most scatter into shogunate posts, temples and shrines, merchant companies, dojos, pleasure quarters, shadow organizations, and regional remnants. Yoma factions fare worse. Except those given shelter and names by the Hundred-Tale Society, or those absorbed by human conspiracies as targets of experiment, merchandise, or operations, most dissolved as organized forces once Spirit Realm gates came under shogunate management.

What remains is not a complete kingdom but an echo.

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#The Fall of the Enryokan

The Enryokan is the reference case for this principle. When the gates of the Spirit Realm came under shogunate management, the Enryokan — which had studied coexistence with yoma — lost influence rapidly. The shogunate needed that knowledge but viewed its independent accumulation outside the shogunate as dangerous.

The decisive blow was the disappearance of Ashikaga Yoshihiko. After a warrant was issued on suspicion that Yoshihiko had colluded with Tamamo-no-Mae of Biu Mountain, he vanished. Shortly after, the Enryokan effectively collapsed, and most of the research materials disappeared before the shogunate could secure them.

After the collapse, the Enryokan's remnants flowed in four directions.

The Enryokan is therefore better treated in an Edo campaign as "who is distorting its legacy and why" rather than as "a living organization." The shogunate needs the Enryokan while distrusting it. Hidden Hannya converts its understanding into dissection and control. The Hundred-Tale Society searches its lost research materials for yoma names and locations, then transfers them into the order of urban Kaidan.

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#The Triangle

Edo yoma incidents do not end with just one of the three factions. The shogunate tries to erase the incident, the Hundred-Tale Society tries to preserve the yoma's name, and the human conspiracies try to seize that name and power for their own use.

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#How to Use Factions

When designing a scenario, the GM sets the faction positions first.

1. Apparent Client — the one who calls on the PCs. May be the shogunate, a domain, a dojo, a merchant company, a temple, or a Hundred-Tale Society contact.
2. Actual Perpetrator — may be a yoma, a human adversary, a conspiratorial faction, or the concealment system itself.
3. Those Who Exploit the Incident — factions that want to spread, conceal, or trade on the incident rather than resolve it.

When all three are the same, it is a simple incident. When all three differ, it becomes a Strange Tales of Edo incident.

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#Campaign Tone by Faction

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"Edo's darkness is not one. That is why you cannot know which shadow you cut with a sword alone."