Culture
Like most countries, the Emerald Empire has a wealth of ceremonies, festivals, social trends, and local practices that locals largely internalize. The Culture skill can be used to procure knowledge of these traditions and practices, even when a character is far from home.
The Culture skill covers knowledge of the Emerald Empire’s customs, traditions, families, trends, geography, and practices. This includes recent goings-on, historical events, and persons of significance, as well as staying current with the fashions that hold sway over the courts of provincial lords and the Emperor.
While such knowledge might seem trivial, it can allow a character to learn where to meet people of importance in a new place, how to interact comfortably with the locals, and what recent news to avoid mentioning while making pleasant conversation.
Culture Approaches
The Culture skill can be used as follows with the appropriate ring:- Recall Approach (Earth Ring): Remembering the names of the most influential members of a particular court, knowing the particular customs of a region, remembering the geographical features of an area.
- Survey Approach (Water Ring): Identifying a fellow samurai using their clan, family, and personal mon (crest identifying an object’s region of origin; identifying a samurai’s general status by their manner of dress; identifying which cultures have influenced a location; determining one’s location in an unfamiliar city based on common architectural patterns.
- Theorize Approach (Fire Ring): Guessing where an influential person might go in an unfamiliar city, conjecturing about the proper decorum for an unusual social situation, anticipating social trends in different regions.
- Analyze Approach (Air Ring): Detecting traces of a regional accent in a character’s speech, noticing slight imperfections in a mon or personal chop that reveal it to be a forgery, assessing the way a practice differs in a specific region.
- Sense Approach (Void Ring): Identifying the purpose traditions fulfill in society, identifying the rising stars at a particular court, intuiting the supernatural underpinnings of a cultural practice.