To: l5rstory@frpg.com
Subject: Kisada's Wake
Date sent: Wed, 2 Sep 1998 08:58:23 EST

Greetings,

The Hidden Emperor, Episode 2 came out shortly before GenCon. One of the cards in that set was, of course, Kisada's Funeral. I knew this was going to be an important new card, especially in the GenCon tournament, and I'm a long-time Crab player. When I found out that I could go to GenCon, I posted a message to the l5rinfo list that I would hold a wake for Hida Kisada.

On Thursday, the first day of GenCon, someone came up to me and said, "Ree tells me you're going to have a wake for Kisada." I replied that yes, I wanted to do it, but I hadn't yet made any definitive plans. I resolved to do that tomorrow.

On Friday, I got up early, and made up a quick half-page little flyer announcing the wake and telling people where my room was. I took it to Kinko's and spent two bucks photocopying it. Before the first round of the "Test of the Jade Champion" tournament, I started handing them out. I figured that I'd get a few die-hards after the tourney, we'd go to my room at Marquette University (I figured it'd hold a dozen or so people), get some munchies, relax, and shoot the breeze about L5R.

I think I realised the enormity of what I had done when Mindy Sherwood-Lewis got up on a chair and announced the wake to all the L5R players in the qualifier. It became rapidly apparent that the idea of holding a memorial for Kisada was a tremendously popular idea, and there was no way that I was going to fit everyone who was interested in attending the wake into my room at Marquette.

I had created a monster.

Sometime before the last round of the tournament, I announced to people, "Don't go to my room! I'm working on something else!" I would try to scout out some other locale for the wake. John Wick, bless 'im, came up with the brilliant idea of holding the wake in the Hilton, where he'd given RPG seminars earlier that day, and would be staging the L5R live action role-playing (LARP) session the next night. We scouted it out. By the time we got back from locating the toom, it was obvious that the Kisada mourners were dead-tired, and the wake wouldn't be a success if we did it then and there.

Enough people had come and talked to me about it, and been enthused by the idea, that I figured it was better to wait and do it right.

On Saturday, I went down to Kinko's again and copied up another handout, this one telling people the wake had been postponed and would be held after the LARP, which I thought would be about 10. Late in the afternoon, I had a good thought to get everyone at the wake to sign my "Test of the Jade Champion" T-shirt. I got an indelible marker from another fan without too much asking around.

The wake almost got screwed over again when the room Wick and I had scouted was being prepped for something totally unrelated to GenCon, and we couldn't use it. So I stuck up more signs, and used one of several little small conference rooms in the same area that the LARP was being held in. People began coming in, and I started getting them to sign the shirt.

The LARP ended shortly after midnight (earlier than some dire warnings I'd heard). The assembled people gathered and heard from three people who had killed Kisada.

Ree Soesbee got up first. As the current storyline director, she was the one who finally decided to do in the Great Bear. Ree described how she first saw Kisada in one of her booster packs. She looked at the cards and thought, "Wow, he's pretty amazing. I wonder if he'll join Crane..." The second time Ree saw Kisada was when he was coming over the hill, leading a huge Crab army in an attack on her last Crane province. (Cries of "Not in the face!" were heard from the audience.)

Ree also informed us that Kisada was known as "The Great Bear" not only because he was the biggest man in Rokugan, but because he was the hairiest man in Rokugan (at which point I lifted up my T-shirt to show my own rather hirsute chest).

I then drafted the person who played Kisada in the LARP (Warren Banks was the name, I think) to "lay in state" on the table at the front of the room while John Wick spoke about Kisada.

Wick said, "You know, this isn't the first time Kisada's died." He originally died in Anvil of Despair, during his encounter with Fu
Leng. But sometime after Wick wrote that up, he got an angry phone call from Ryan Dancey: "What's this sh*t about Kisada dying?!"

Kisada was saved... for the moment. Wick went on to describe what happened when he went back to re-write the confrontation between Fu Leng and Kisada. Fu Leng took the Hantei sword and shoved it through Kisada's guts, and suddenly Wick was surprised to find himself typing what Kisada said next:

"Is that all you f*ckin' got?"

And that's what Kisada (and the Crab) are all about: standing on the great walls of Kaiu, day after day, and saying to the
Shadowlands (and anyone else trying to tear them down): "Is that all you got?"

After Wick was done, I let our "body" get back up and take a seat, and it was my turn. What follows is close to what I said -- or what I meant to say:

"I asked John what the colour of mourning in Rokugan was, and was told it was white, so I'm going to put on the Test of the Jade Champion shirt, even though there's now a lot of black on it. [What's written on the shirt is copied below]

"Long ago, a Crab lord -- perhaps even the very first Hida himself -- married and was about to start a family. He asked a monk -- maybe it was even Shinsei -- to bless his family. Shinsei thought, and said to Hida:

"'Father dies, son dies, grandson dies.'

"A Dragon or Phoenix might have simply contemplated the words. A Crane or Scorpion would have thanked Shinsei eloquently. A Lion or Unicorn might have raised an eyebrow.

"But the Crab got up and said aloud what all of the others only thought. 'Why have you wished death upon my family?' he said.

"Shinsei looked up at Hida. 'It is a great tragedy when a parent outlives a child. This is the way of things: for a family to
disappear in this order, generation after generation.'

"Shinsei's blessing to Hida reminds us that death is the way of things. But when a life is over, any man should be measured not
only by his greatest highs, but also by his deepest lows.

"Hida Kisada stood on the walls and defended the Empire from the worst things you can imagine for decades.

"He sold his own son, Sukune, to those same forces.

"Great highs. Terrible lows. But no half measures. No compromise.

"Hida Kisada was a great man. An unforgettable man.

"Finally, I'll let you all in on a little secret. I am not a playtester, but I can tell you that the original title of Kisada's Funeral was Words Without Deeds. How do I know this? Kisada's Funeral is my card. Now I know that some of you hate this card... [interrupted by applause from crowd] but I guess some of you don't. In any case, I am very proud of that card. I hope that you agree that he got a memorable send off."

I then invited everyone downstairs to the bar and said, "Live every day as though it were your last... because one day you will be right." Several folks went down to the bar and were very loud and drank much beer until it closed. A good time was had by all.

On Sunday, John Zinser told me, "Kisada's wake was the event of the con." He said about three new people who never would have tried L5R otherwise, stopped by the AEG booth after they'd heard we'd had a wake for one of the L5R characters.

Likewise, Ree stopped me the next morning and said, "Kisada came alive last night. We had a real, emotional wake... for a character who only existed on cardboard." When she later announced the final four players in the Test of the Jade Champion (speaking in character as Doji Shizue), she said that Yakamo's tetsubo had been brought directly from Kisada's funeral pyre to the contest.

John Wick said to me Thursday night, "You know what gives you perspective, Zen? When you learn that one Magic expansion sold more cards than all the cards in your game put together."

Hey, John, do you think you'll ever see over eighty people showing up after midnight to celebrate the memory of one of the Weatherlight crew?

That gives you some perspective, too.

After hanging on to the T-shirt for some months, I sent it back to John Wick c/o AEG as a gift for the L5R design team. Here's what's written on the shirt:

Warren "Hida Kisada" Banks

Moto Chang / Ryan Lermer

Neo-Masters were HERE / [Void symbol] Ojihiro [Earth symbol] Iwanomi

Smoke from pyre rises / An era of magic ends / A new one begins / -
Yogo Ono (Kae)

Bayushi Murai / Scorpion Clan Poet / "I can swim"

Doug " " Evans

Dion Rigdon / "I am the Son of Storms"

Jim "Shinjo Mikuda" Adams

Scott Parrish / Long live The Bear

Once again, Kisada has the last battle action. - "Otaku Rea" Klosky

May you be our best ancestor! / Hida Dragonbane

James W. Hart / L5R forever

Hobie "Daidoji Ichiro" Rupe

Kitsu Skyi / Noel Meyer

Ryan Anderson

Jeremy "Hiruma" Kilburn

Tom "Ikaru Koton" Cottone

Cheyenne "Tetsuya" Meyer

Henry "Hida" Lopez

Jimmy "Iwanomi" Beck

Bran "Ikaru Jukimo" Galad

"Daidoji" Eric Wiener

George "Ikara Abunai" B----- [illegible]

Moto Kisami (Doris Zaretsky)

"CLEAR" / Upeer

Eddie "Ujihiro" Santos

Jon "Kakita Musashi" Palmer

Sean "Shinjo" Nordell

Laura "Hida" Woods

Al "Hida" Feit

Oni no Traves Henerson

Marty Schuman / "Daidoji Tashima"

Of course I wish someone would tell me what this was all about much less what L5R is about! / Jason

Pipes & Deersticks? / Carl Moore / "Kitsuki Kono"

Not all power-mad enemies are bad / Josh Timmers

The path ends / The star falls / Enlightened by the lake / -Nik Olah

May he find peace / "Doji Kiko" / Melanie Howell

Farewell to the Biggest Baddest man in the Game / John "Jonqur" Hubbard

There is life in Death / Mirumoto Kyozo

Christopher Lockwood / Yieki Matsutori / You shall "rise again" some day my lord.

The Wasp will miss the Bear / Shawn Corman / Ashinagahachi Ichiro / "The Tennessee Wasp"

Of course every loss of life returns anew later -- but what happens when he's dead in the 1st place? / Shosuro Sarah

Conflict is a human trait / But there is nothing that says we can't instigate warfare between you. / -Stephen Rutledge

Eric "Hida Kaba" Suess

The Dripping of the leaves / The Falling of the snow... / Teardrops come. / Bruce "Isawa Soban" Harleck

Farewell... / ...Page #2 / Farewell Kisada (Uncle) / Hida Akada (Joshua Head)

All our hearts go out to the Hida :( / May His Soul Ascend / like the Moon in the Night / Rimoshi Kameda / Raven Clan Shugenja / (Brett Moroney)

Guy 'Quondeaux' Riccitelli / [Yin / Yang symbol]

"Tien" / [Row of four Chinese characters.]
(E-mail from Chun-Kai "Kevin" Wang: "I signed as Daidoji Tien on the shirt and just want to tell you that the "4 japanese characters" are 3 Chinese words which is my real name. The first one, the most simple one means King or someone in such position, the second word means Army or equivalent, and the third word means the victory. Together, I guess my name could be translated into, Victory of Daimyo's Army. I thought my true name was appropriate for Kisada.")

James "Bayushi Aramoro" Forest

Jeff "Hida Gontoro" Watkins

Bayushi Tobi

Doug Forster "Kuni Utagu"

Marty Loftus / - The sorry Naga

Kuni Ama was here

Pat Kapera / (Monkey)

Jason "Shinjo" Pitcole

Kara

Nelson "Suicidal Scorpion" Rodriguez

He was all Crab. D. Stegbauer

Dan "Page 1" Larson

Jeffrey "Nara" Valade

Michael "Yoritomo Mikel" Boswell

Ray Daugherty / "L5R Prophet"

Scott Hadsall / "Shashakar"

Marshall "Masara" Smith

Farewell Great Bear / "Mark DeLing"

"Hiruma" Paul Heaver

Meiko / "ECF"

Ray Greer / Farewell old friend.

Katie / Pure ----- [illegible]

Vaughn

Hida "The Rock" Kisada / Keep crunching

Ikerkun

Kaiu O-Suki

Jeff Cauwels

Hida / The Man! / Jac C

A Great Man To Realize Power in economics! / Taka

Rob Vaux / Crab Clan Cranky Guy [author of Way of the Crab]

"The only true test of courage... is the last one." / -Ree "Shizue" Soesbee

"Is that all you got?" / John Wick

"Ju" / David Williams [Signed after wake]

Duty before honor! / Ryan S. Dancey [Signed after wake]

[Excerpt from Game Designer's Journal #29.5, Gaming Outpost, May 2000]

"Last year’s Gen-Con [sic] saw a wake for another L5R character: the Great Bear, Hida Kisada. I didn’t kill him - that was Ree’s job - but I was there. It was moving. Hard to breathe. We said a lot of pretty words - pretty to a Crab’s ears, anyway - and said our goodbyes to one of the biggest L5R characters in the history of the game."