#Scholar-Teacher Set (學者・敎師)

Contents

Authority. This document is a variant rule (Variant). As with every variant rule of this volume, it is premised on GM permission, and fc cannot override co Canon. The figures on the starting drifted-goods card are a narrow Canon — canonical only within this volume. This document follows exactly the 5 components of makeup and the document format that the Identity Sets — Overview fixed.

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#Scent — One for Whom Knowing Was the Occupation

#Opening Fragment — How to Count the Years

The rain stopped before the mountain gate.

The man stood beneath the eaves of the mountain temple, mud-covered. On his back was a fieldwork backpack, and from the shoulder strap a name tag stamped with the name of a scholarly society still dangled. Until half a day before, he had been taking rubbings of the inscription (銘文) on a stone lantern at a ruined shrine. When the fog lifted, he saw — there was no road.

An old monk coming out with an armful of firewood saw him and halted. After gazing for a while, he gestured with his chin toward the inner side of the eaves. "Warm yourself at the fire."

The man bowed deeply, went in, and sat. Only when he was beside the fire did his hands begin to tremble.

"From where do you come."

"I... lost my way." It was not a lie. "Reverend, I will ask something strange — what year is this, now."

The old monk neither laughed nor was startled. "Wandered enough to lose the count of years, did you." He set one stick of firewood on the fire, and the old man counted on his fingers. "Since the matchlock came to the western island — the fortieth year, they say."

In the man's head, the numbers rolled of their own accord. Even as he took off his fogged glasses to wipe them, his fingertips were writing the year on his knee. The trembling stopped. He was in the dead center of an era he had dug at for twenty years. Right now, within this mountain gate — no, perhaps in this whole country — at the thought that he alone knew what year it was here, the man very nearly laughed.

"Reverend, then over in Owari — " the man brought out place-names from his books and the names of battles. Battles he had written papers on. Houses he had memorized from historical sources.

The old monk tilted his head. "Battles in Owari are common enough. But a battle by such a name — I am too unread, I do not know it."

"That cannot be..." The man named another event. And another. Half got through. Half were tales the old monk was hearing for the first time.

"A young man who has read many books." The old monk said it with no reproach in his manner. "But to count the years by the matchlock alone is a merchant's reckoning. On this mountain we count differently. I — became a practitioner in the year the demon's mountain rose."

"The demon's... mountain?"

"It was ten years after that the tengu's emissary came down the mountain." The old monk stirred the embers. "The high ones of Hiei drove those ones away. In that year the bell of this temple, too, wept for three days."

The man could not open his mouth. They were events in none of the historical sources he had read for twenty years, in none of the footnotes. The matchlock had come in the same year as his books, yet beside it a history in which a demon's mountain rose and the tengu came down was laid side by side.

The man opened his backpack. He took out a notebook half-wet with rain and pressed the cap of a ballpoint pen. Click — at that small sound the old monk raised his eyes.

"May I write it down. The things you have just told me."

"What sort of brush is that."

"A brush with the ink inside it." On the bleeding paper the man wrote the first line. Forty years since the coming of the matchlock. The demon's mountain rose, the tengu warned. — In the place where the history he knew had ended, the history he ought to write was beginning.

The old monk gazed at that swift movement of the hand for a while, then said. "A learned man. — Have you a place to stay."

#Scent — A Treasure, or a Heresy, or Both

The researcher of the fragment above is a Kamikakushi who crossed over on a different day, through a different gate, from the sample party of this volume — the passengers of the night bus (sample characters). Drifting is not a single event but a continuing phenomenon (the principles of drift), and the scholar is the quietest sort among the people that phenomenon brings. No sword, no gun, no medicine. What there is, is four hundred years inside the head and a few books in the backpack alone.

In this era that knowing is a treasure — hands that read and write letters command a price in any camp. At once it is a heresy — a mouth that says it "knows" whether the heavens turn or the earth turns becomes dangerous the instant it reaches the ears of Hiei. And most often, it is both.

The Foresight of the canonical modern person is knowledge inside the head — one asks the GM, references it, is cut by the discrepancy. What the scholar-teacher set adds is one direction. It turns knowledge into output. An appraisal certificate, a rough map, a genealogy, and teaching. Knowledge inside the head falls together with that head when it falls, but knowledge at the fingertips remains on the paper and remains in the body of a disciple. Even if the scholar dies, the map remains — that is the whole of this set.

The spine of this volume does not bend here either. This book is not a book that makes the modern person strong. It is a book that gives the drama of a future being consumed. The scholar's drifted goods hold no magazine and no syringe — instead there are glasses that are finished if broken, a ballpoint pen that is finished if it dries, and a book that does not wear down but gets wet. And as the researcher of the fragment confirmed on the first night, what the scholar consumes first is not an object. The loss of twenty years of study becoming, whole, "a memory of another world" — on the far side of that loss is "the liberation of having no orthodox history (正史) to protect," and the drama of this set walks between the two.

#Sub-branch — Three Strands of Former Occupation

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#Set Data

The frame of Overview Law 1 as is, made of the five components alone.

#Component 1 — Starting-Ability Adjustment

Among the canonical modern person's starting automatic abilities (Stratagem acquisition, Medicine entry, Negotiation entry, Perception entry), replace the 1 the sub-branch designates. A Novice slot for a Novice slot — the ability points do not rise by a single point.

• An ability gained by set replacement (Geography, Disable, Agitation) is Licensed (3) capped — Overview Law 1 as is. The master-eligible list (Stratagem, Medicine, Negotiation, Perception, Deceit, Survival) is invariant.
• Use alongside the background Memory of the Modern Age is free. The ability-perk list of that background (Stratagem, Medicine, Negotiation) does not overlap with this set's replacement abilities, so the forced-move rule of Overview Law 2 will never fire.

#Component 2 — Set Technique

#tier 1: Literature Appraisal (文獻鑑識) — chosen instead of canon Foresight

[aptitude] Literature Appraisal (文獻鑑識)
Effect: Always on. Two strands.
 1. Appraisal — +3 to a check that discerns the provenance, authenticity, or
   dating of a book, document, talisman, or article. The check formula follows
   the object: a document or genealogy is 2d10+Wisdom+Stratagem, a map or
   place-name is 2d10+Wisdom+Geography, handwriting or signs of forgery is
   2d10+Wisdom+Perception. The Target Number is set by the GM — by custom 11 / 13 / 15.
   On success, you may throw the GM 1 question about that object's history.
 2. Record — 1 time per interlude, make one piece of information seen and heard
   and confirmed firsthand in that adventure into a record (a report, a rough
   map, a genealogy, a manual). A record is an object — it is handed over,
   sold, taken. One who reads the record and acts gets +2 to 1 non-combat check
   that information directly bears on (1 per scenario per record, no attack check).
   There must be paper — and in this era paper is not free.
The ability-score special (Courage/Finesse/Physique -1, Wisdom/Presence/Fate +1)
and Energy Transfer are kept not as a technique but as the skeleton of the occupation
(Overview Law 2 — the canon-protection principle).

The border with Foresight is one line. Foresight asks the world; Literature Appraisal asks the object in hand. A scholar who forfeits Foresight loses "how did this war end," in exchange gains "of which era's script is this sword's inscription" — and can write that answer on paper and hand it to another.

The contact point with the Onmyoryo arises here too. As the chronology wrote down, the Onmyoryo's rite of identification discerns "whether it is of the Spirit Realm." Literature Appraisal discerns "from whose hand, in which era, it came." When the two appraisals overlap, authenticity becomes complete for the first time — and when the two appraisals diverge, a scenario begins.

#tier 3: The One Who Teaches (敎える者) — chosen instead of the canon tier 3 choice

[Kata] The One Who Teaches (敎える者)
Energy 2 / limit: 1 per interlude / non-combat only — the lesson takes half a day.
Effect: To 1 comrade spending the same interlude, teach 1 ability you hold at
 Novice or above. Until the next adventure ends, that comrade treats that ability
 as Novice (check +0) — the unskilled penalty (-2) disappears.
Restrictions:
 - The martial-arts (武藝) category and ability-score-only abilities cannot be
  taught. A blade learned from a book is not a blade, and temperament is not
  a thing of the lesson.
 - It has no effect on a comrade who already has that ability at Novice or above.
 - The teaching that 1 scholar can maintain in the same period is 1.
Narrative: If the same comrade has learned the same ability across three adventures,
 then thereafter, when they spend points on that ability by the growth rule, the GM
 may recognize this lesson as discipleship (師事). What is waived is not the points
 but — the absence of a master.

The figures were taken small on purpose. What this technique trades is one breath of the canon tier 3 choice — Squad Command, Energy Infusion, Field Search. It is an exchange that forfeits one breath of the battlefield to gain half a day of the interlude, and the reward of the exchange is not a figure but a scene. The face of an ashigaru who has come to read letters for the first time, the hand of a miko writing down the names of medicinal herbs — the flower of the teacher sub-branch blooms here.

#Component 3 — Starting Drifted Goods

The one-backpack principle (Overview Law 1) as is. The place the Depletion System foretold when it said "the drama of drifted goods without [Depletion] is handled by each set of the 02 series" is — this very set. The scholar's load barely dwindles. Instead, in this era paper is itself wealth. A thing that wears down need only be worried about losing, but a treasure that does not wear down summons the hand that would take it and the mouth that bids it be offered up.

#Component 4 — Conflict Hook

Two, the canonical modern person's list of Three Ways and Six Hearts conflicts made concrete through the scholar's lens.

• The true answer and the wanted answer — the lens of "loyalty (忠) or freedom." The lord asks. Do the heavens turn, or the earth. Is this sortie auspicious. Loyalty says to submit the wanted answer, learning says to submit the true answer. The true answer gives off the scent of heresy (the faith of the Sengoku), and the bent answer — a brush bent once — does not straighten again.
• Whose are the letters — the lens of "the class system and equality." Why can the peasant's child not learn letters. Teach, and one is driven as a person who shakes the order; turn away, and it is to cease being one who teaches. Act, and one is driven as a 魔; stay silent, and one loses 仁 — the on-the-lectern (敎壇) edition of that fork in the road the canon wrote down.

#Component 5 — Adaptation Variation

The canon rules of Adaptation are all as is. The set paints only two lines of color.

• Fast path — scholar. The occupation of the fan. A hand that has read the logic of military treatises in books all its life reads the logic of formations fast too — from the very first technique borrowed from the scholar occupation, the same-occupation exemption applies. By the same grain, the absorption of this era's letter and learning systems is the fastest of all the sets. Classical-Chinese sources, cursive script, document formats — a few interludes and one becomes a reader of this era's letters. This side is the domain not of a check but of staging.
• Blocked path — shinobi. Borrowing the techniques of that occupation has the exemption rule never applied to the end — the Energy penalty remains to the end. A hand that writes down what it knows is, to the end, clumsy at the way of erasing what it knows. One who records is one who leaves traces, and the scholar is one who has spent a lifetime learning only the way to leave traces.

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#Friction with the Era

Friction is not a penalty but the material of a scene. The places the scholar collides are four.

#One Who Knows Letters Cannot Read the Letters

The first friction comes from the first document. A letter dashed off in cursive, a prohibition (禁制) framed in classical Chinese, the worn inscription of a stone monument — to an eye accustomed to type four hundred years later, this era's letters are half a cipher. The first few days in which one who was a scholar (博士) is treated as illiterate are the rite of passage of this set. Fortunately those days are short — the fast path of Component 5 is that road. Write the very process of regaining letters as a scene. There is no finer picture than an old professor learning cursive from a child-monk of a temple.

#Learning Belongs to the Temple and the House

In this era learning is no public good. Letters are learned as much as one needs by a monk at a temple, by a retainer in a house, by a merchant before his ledger. A shop that gathers children to teach them letters is not yet on any roadside. And knowledge is not published — it is sealed as a secret transmission (秘傳), inherited as a family treasure (家寶), policed by oral transmission (口傳). The modern-learning instinct of "making known what one knows" is, in this era, eccentricity, and at times provocation. A scholar's innocent question asking after a school's secret transmission can become cause for bloodshed.

#The Weight of Paper

In this era paper is, sheet by sheet, an object. The habit of taking out a notebook to write down whatever comes to mind is, seen from beside, the eccentricity of scattering gold coins, and once that eccentricity becomes rumor — an eye that targets the backpack of "the Kamikakushi who uses paper like water" arises. The scholar's load has almost no [Depletion] tag. Instead there is this danger. A book and a record are treasures that do not dwindle, and a treasure that does not dwindle is coveted alike by thief and lord and temple. Not to be taken, one must offer up; not to offer up, one must hide — and hiding is, as Component 5 wrote, the thing the scholar is worst at.

#Where the Scholar Dwells

Even so, in this era there are places that recognize a learned one. Just as the canon recommended bases to the modern person — the Akechi domain respects the scholar, and Sakai, being a city of reckoning and documents, pays a price even for an outsider's letters. And one line of the chronology — there is Enryokan, the yoma-research academy the scholar Ashikaga house founded. That academy, treated as heretical by the Hiei League, is the roof that fits best with a Kamikakushi who sees yoma with an unprejudiced eye. But remember — to enter under a heretic's roof is also to enter one's name on the heretic's register.

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#Growth Curve — The Naturalization One Writes Out

Neither former occupation nor a dual build opens — the canon choice-instead principle as is. What follows is not data but the curve of a narrative.

• The first season — the scholar who cannot read. Until letters are regained, his learning is the record alone. He writes what he hears, draws what he sees, counts the pages left in the notebook. As the researcher of the fragment did, the first record is most often for himself — where is this, what is the same as the books and what is different.
• After regaining letters — the scholar who sells. Once he can read cursive and write classical Chinese, work arises. The ghostwriting of letters, the ordering of genealogies, the appraisal of a temple's collection, the authenticity of treasures. On the day a record is first exchanged for another's money, the scholar gains an occupation in this era — the day he is called not a Kamikakushi but "the teacher who reads letters."
• The end of Adaptation — two strands of shadow. At one end is one who borrows a single room of a temple and teaches children. The word terakoya does not yet exist in any world — but in this branched world, perhaps it is he who plants that seed first. At the other end is a guest member of Enryokan. As the one human who describes (記述) yoma without fear, one who adds a single "natural history of the future" to the library of a scholar house.

Whichever end, it is a narrative that looks in effect like a new occupation, not data. Put it into words — the modern person + scholar set is not the scholar occupation. The canon's scholar is a strategist (軍師) — a person of the fan and the formation and the prophecy, and the master's seats of military science and prophecy belong to that occupation. The set's scholar is a person of literature and education, and is a modern person to the end. Even if one borrows the arts of the fan a move at a time through Adaptation, one cannot become the occupation of the fan. However high the borrowed moves pile up — his true vocation is to write, and to teach.

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#Table Hooks

This section is a Scene Tool — a scenario seed a GM picks up and uses on the spot.

#A Single Forbidden Book

A lord has obtained a single Nanban book at a western port (Saikaido). No one can read the letters, but the plates are — a star chart. And only the PC scholar discerns what that picture claims. The Hiei League calls the book a heretic's scripture and comes to burn it, Enryokan comes to copy it, and the missionary who is the book's original owner comes to take it back. The lord's question is one — "Does this book become a weapon?" The rules and circumstances of the Kirishitan faith are entrusted to the canon, and the scenery of the Nanban port to fc09 — this hook is the one bridge that connects this volume to that side.

#Two Appraisals

A "famed sword of the future" has come to the trading floor of Sakai. The Onmyoryo's rite says it is genuine — there is spirit-aura, plainly. But to the PC scholar's eye the script of the inscription on the hilt is discrepant. For a thing of the future, it is the wrong future. If the spirit-aura is real but the object is false — it means someone is transferring and grafting on the spirit-aura of another hundred-year-old object, and it means the only one who can plausibly forge a thing of the future is one who has seen the future. The instant the appraisal result is made public, the PC can turn the face of the Onmyoryo, the trade of the Sakai Guild, and an unseen fellow-countryman (同鄕) — three at once — into enemies.

#The Young Lord's Master

A lord has summoned a Kamikakushi scholar as the one in charge of the heir's education. It is exceptional, and therefore dangerous — half the retainer corps bares the teeth it has sharpened, saying "to entrust the young lord to one of unknown provenance." The child is bright, and as a bright child ever is, asks what must not be asked. "Master, why can the peasant's child not learn letters." — it is the moment the conflict hook of Component 4 walks right into the middle of the lesson. It is where the One Who Teaches technique shines brightest, and where a single answer can tilt the next hundred years of a whole house.

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The glasses will one day break, the ballpoint pen will one day dry. So the scholar teaches — to write a thing over from head to head is the one resupply permitted in this era.