#The House Special — Name, Blood, and Roof
Contents
Scope declaration / opt-in. This issue is a knowledge and atmosphere resource. It adds no new rules, no sheet, no check — it carries only material for understanding and imagining a house. Explanations of structure and names rest on actual history (Reference); atmospheric description and the sample houses (Scent) are Fiction-Only, and the sample houses are used only by tables that adopt them as a Variant of
co-99-01. A character's house is handled by the canonicalBackgroundssystem, and this issue does not replace it but fleshes it out.
#Brief — What This Issue Is
A sword is held by one person, but the weight of that sword is not one person's alone. Behind it stands the house (家). Dead ancestors and descendants not yet born, retainers and a domain and a single banner (family crest) — all are carried in a single sword.
Konsei Reiyotan treats the house in two places. At the large scale, the 13 Great Factions — domains and great buke like Kagura Domain. At the small scale, Backgrounds — the origin of a single PC, such as a Fallen Noble. But in between, "how a single house is actually built" is set down nowhere.
This issue fills that gap. There are four strands.
- How a buke is formed — the internal structure and offices of a warrior house, from the head down to the ashigaru. (
01) - How a kuge is formed — the court nobles of Kyoto, who stand not on land but on house rank and court rank. (
02) - What form a name takes — the several layers of family name, clan name, imina, common name, and family crest. (
03) - How to build a single house — composing the houses of PCs and NPCs through a handful of questions. (
04)
#Commentary — A One-Line Thesis
"A house is not 'what one does' but 'whom one comes from and whom one goes to.' Blood, name, and roof — know them, and you see why a person takes up that sword."
#Meta Card
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Series | zn (one-shot series) Issue 03 |
| Title | The House Special — Name, Blood, and Roof |
| Character | Knowledge- and atmosphere-type one-shot — house structure, name forms, composition guidance (no rules) |
| Length | 5 documents (front + buke + kuge + names + composition) · reading time about 18 minutes |
| Blocks | Brief · Reading · Table · Example · Scent |
| Authority | Knowledge (Reference) and atmosphere (Fiction-Only). Only the sample houses are opt-in |
| Dependencies | co references (backgrounds · factions · relationships). No new rules |
| Main-line version required | co >= 1.2 |
| Current version | v1.3.1 (zn03-VERSION) |
#Block Manifest
| Document | Blocks | Contents |
|---|---|---|
01 Buke | Brief · Reading · Table · Scent | Structure and offices of a buke — head, headship, branch kin, karo, retainer corps, roto, oku |
02 Kuge | Brief · Reading · Table · Scent | The house rank, court rank, and family vocation of a kuge, and the reality of the Sengoku period |
03 Names and Crests | Reading · Table · Example | The 6 layers of uji-kabane, family name, imina, common name, henki, go + family crest + a name-assembly example |
04 Building a House | Reading · Table · Example | Narrative guidance for building a single house through a handful of questions + 2 sample houses |
99 Closing Fiction | Scent | "The Third Son's Name" — a single night in which a third son who received neither the shared name-character nor the headship carves his own meaning into his own name |
Reading order: front → 01 → 02 → 03 → 04. In a hurry, just open the list of questions in 04 and a house takes shape.
Closing fiction. At the end of this issue is "The Third Son's Name" (pure Scent fiction) —
99.
#Production Notice
This issue is Issue 3 of the Konsei Reiyotan zn (one-shot) series. The structure of buke and kuge and the forms of names rest on the actual institutions of Sengoku and medieval Japan, but the passages entangled with the Spirit Realm and yoma, and the sample houses, are fiction of this setting. Character rules use the canonical Backgrounds, Renown Title, and Factions as they are; this issue only adds atmosphere and detail to them.
#AI Use Notice
A considerable part of this material was produced with the help of generative AI (LLM) in the processes of planning, drafting, prose tidying, and proofreading. The GPT Image 2 model was used in the image-generation process. Claude Code and Codex were used for the Japanese and English translations. Final editing and the responsibility for publication rest with the producer.
Should there be changes to domestic or foreign law concerning works that make use of AI, the relevant law is followed.
#Scent — One Sentence
"A house is a single banner the dead have entrusted to the living — to raise it or lower it is the living one's part."