#About This Book — Shokoku Kenbunroku (諸國見聞錄)

Contents

Authority. The main text is Fiction-Only — one outsider's diary and the words of the editor who transcribed it, in which fact, rumor, and misunderstanding are mixed. Only the §At the Table of each observation chapter is Scene Tool; the Cross-Reference and the Sixty-Odd Provinces List are Summary. This volume has no Law — everything that needs numbers is the job of the canon.

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#How It Came to Hand — Paper Has Long Legs

The paper shop in Sakai sells paper by the kin (斤). New paper it sells in the front room by the sheet (張); old paper it weighs on a scale in the back room. Paper that goes on the scale with writing on it becomes wallpaper, or kindling, or an umbrella.

This book began in that back room.

"Nanban writing," said the shopkeeper, lowering a bundle wrapped in oilcloth from the back of a shelf. "No one can read it, so I take it by the kin. Had there been pictures I'd have paid more, but as you see, it's nothing but letters."

There were six bundles. When I untied the cords, the writing lay sideways and dense — running not right to left but left to right, like earthworms, or like ripples. And between each of its lines were grains of Japanese script. Someone had unraveled this wave-writing line by line.

"Where did it come from?"

"I took it in place of an unpaid bill at a brothel. The courtesan said she got it from a sailor, and the sailor — I don't know past that. Paper is a thing with long legs, after all."

When I had paid and stepped out the door, the shopkeeper added a word at my back. "About the Nanban man who wrote it. There's a rumor he walked the whole country. He wrote something everywhere he went, so on the road they called him the Brush, they say."

That night I opened the first bundle. The reading between the lines began like this: "The wind had died. The ship dropped anchor, and they say we go ashore tomorrow morning on the tide."

It took a season to read all six bundles. Having read them, I decided to bind this into a book. What you hold is that book.

Editor's note: Whose hand did the reading between the lines, we never managed to determine. But in the diary there is one interpreter who asked that his name not be recorded — the guess I leave in the reader's hands.

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#1. What This Book Is

This book is a travelogue an outsider walked and wrote with his own feet, transcribed by an editor who obtained the record. The narrator's name is Duarte Pinto — agent of a Nanban trading house, the man called "the Nanban Brush" on the road. Who he was, and where and how he walked, is recorded separately in The Narrator — the Nanban Brush. From landing at Saikai (Kyushu) until his legs stopped in Ou in the north, he spent two winters on the road and kept to the end one promise — to record what he saw and what he heard separately.

In transcribing it, the editor did only two things. One, bound the diary in the order of the journey — the two overview chapters and the ten observation chapters are the result. Two, added notes where the narrator could not see, saw wrong, or could not bring himself to write. As seen at the end of "How It Came to Hand," the quotations beginning Editor's note: are those. If the narrator's prose is at the eye-level of the road, the notes look down from a little higher — the words handed to the GM who sets the table are usually within those notes.

And this is the single most important line. This book is a book of land. If Sengoku Fudoki held the air of the era — what it is like to live through that era — this volume holds the face of the land on which that air settles. How the mountains are shaped, where the road bends, what is piled up in which harbor, over which pass the speech changes. If your campaign got its "when" and "who" from Sengoku Fudoki, its "where" it gets here.

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#2. How It Differs from Sengoku Fudoki

Two volumes that go on the same shelf, but they do different work.

The order is only a recommendation. The two volumes do not need each other — either is complete on its own. But read together, one becomes the background of the other. Read Sengoku Fudoki first and then this volume, and the people along the road the narrator walks are familiar; read this volume first and then Sengoku Fudoki, and the land those people stand on is familiar.

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#3. What Is Fact and What Is Observation

A sentence of this book is one of three.

What the narrator saw. Written as "this I saw." The most believable layer, but do not believe all of it — he was an outsider, he heard this country's words through an interpreter, and being a merchant who loved numbers he inflated numbers in equal measure. Even what was seen may not be as it was seen.

What the narrator heard. Written as "a tale I was told." Tales of lands his feet did not reach, something deep in a mine shaft, an old saying that the pilgrim road encircles something — the strangest passages in this volume are usually in this layer. That sailors of three ports spoke the same name does not make the name the truth. Only that the rumor was there is the truth.

What the editor added. The layer of Editor's note:. It sees from farther off than the narrator, but the editor does not know everything either.

And all three are Fiction-Only — no sentence binds your table. The GM may make the narrator's record literally true, may leave it only half right, may twist it into something the narrator was completely deceived about. Even a sentence written as "this I saw." Where this volume says something different from the canon, the one in error is always this book — precisely, the narrator who saw or heard it so. Leaving that discrepancy unfixed is not the editor's laziness. It is because that is the seat where the GM enters.

There are two exceptions.

• The §At the Table at the end of each observation chapter is not the narrator's diary but a GM scene tool — Scene Tool. It was made to be laid out and used at the table.
• The Cross-Reference and the Sixty-Odd Provinces List are a summary connecting this volume's ten regions, the canon's regions, and the names of the old provinces (舊國) — Summary. Where name and division look different from the narrator's prose, follow the tables.

Last, on Law. There is none. Within this book, neither does Wounds get reduced nor does Energy get depleted, and the dice of a check never roll once — the d10 and d100 in the appendix are dice for choosing a scene, not for a check. The narrator knew nothing of such things, and the editor did not write them. If a roll arises, go to the canon — that side is Law, and this side is the road.

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#4. How to Read

Of Sengoku Fudoki it was said not to read it through. The way to read this book is a little different — because this book is a road, it has its own way of being walked.

• Before a session, one region at a time. Read only the one chapter of the land where the next story will happen. Enter and leave that land together with the narrator, and that is preparation enough.
• During a session, keep it closed — only §At the Table is the exception. On the table, the main text of this book is not a tool. Only the §At the Table at the end of each chapter was written with the standing to come up at the table.
• When choosing the stage of a campaign, read it through. This is the one time this book recommends a full read. Walk with the narrator from landfall to terminus — which land your story wants, usually that land speaks to you first.
• On a second reading, try reading only the notes. Read the Editor's note: lines in sequence, and they become another thin book — a book for the GM.

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#A Word from the Editor

The narrator wrote that if the ledger is false, the merchant is ruined. The editor adds a line — a record may be wrong, yet a record in which you can see where the wrong came from is not ruined. Half of this book is fact and half is observation, and which is which half, it never said. I transcribed it in the hope that the hand drawing that boundary line would be yours.

The editor only paid the price of the paper — the price of the road, from here, you pay.