Nakahama

Ah! I should do one of these. My greatest regret this game is Not Enough Time, especially when grading and an article deadline caught up to me and I basically missed the last two IC days. End of the semester is... rough. I did have a delightful time playing with everyone I got to play with, though! Thank you all for your patience with my pokeyness.

I'm not sure really what to say about Sorato up front (but that might also be because I'm still surfacing from the above and my creative writing energy is a bit depleted temporarily). I don't think his tale is run out; there's still plenty more he could do and more to explore about the character. He's not a character whose playability depends on keeping anything secret, though, so ask away if there's anything you're curious about! I'll reply and bounce into others' QAs as I'm able--supposed to be working on, uh, work writing today.

It was fun interacting with you, and you were a great help on the jimen tori plot!

Will he stay on Nakahama or head off to other adventures elsewhere?

Your students are lucky to have you; more of them should know it.

If you need an extra eye on the article, let me know.

Thank you for being a fellow awkward shugenja! I liked Sorato and Kanna in scenes together, and their like... vague connection with him being an Agasha and she being a Tamori. Like suuuuuper-distant kin.

Will Sorato try to find the Jigoku Flower as his goal? xD

Enjoyed getting a chance to breathe underwater thanks to the the Shugenja crew, even if the thread stuttered. I didn't get a lot of sense of where Sorato came from in the bits I spotted. What got him sent on this particular assignment?

Kakita Haruhi wrote: Thu Dec 11, 2025 11:41 am It was fun interacting with you, and you were a great help on the jimen tori plot!

Will he stay on Nakahama or head off to other adventures elsewhere?

Yes! I was so pleased to get to play in the jimen tori quest with you. Best serendipitous costume choice for Ochiba's party.

Sorato might be on Nakahama a while longer if there are things the clan needs him to take care of here, but he won't be staying long-term. He's a ramblin' man! His backstory has him being assigned to different research sites at relatively short intervals. Part of the silly story rationale for this is that he's got Wrath of the Kami: Air and Elemental Imbalance: Air, which I imagined as representing the fact that air kami are especially agitated by his presence and no one has figured out why--so if he settles down in the same place for more than a year or two (maximum, I've been pretty vague about it), this gets worse over time and starts to create hyper-localized weather patterns that can cause problems. Before that happens, he'll be off to the next mission.

If I play him again I need to find ways to draw that out more. It's something Sorato is used to and (somewhat) at peace with so it's not like he's dropping it into casual conversations, but it does shape his life rather.

Tamori Kanna wrote: Thu Dec 11, 2025 1:41 pm Thank you for being a fellow awkward shugenja! I liked Sorato and Kanna in scenes together, and their like... vague connection with him being an Agasha and she being a Tamori. Like suuuuuper-distant kin.

Will Sorato try to find the Jigoku Flower as his goal? xD

Yes, thank you, that was fun! I regret that we didn't have time to hunt the murder flower together. It really was interesting how Sorato and Kanna did come off as a bit... cousin-y? Especially because they were both on the more herbalist/alchemist side of their families' trope pools. I really enjoyed scenes with Kanna for bringing out that side of Sorato's character.

Suzume Hitomi wrote: Fri Dec 12, 2025 3:31 am Enjoyed getting a chance to breathe underwater thanks to the the Shugenja crew, even if the thread stuttered. I didn't get a lot of sense of where Sorato came from in the bits I spotted. What got him sent on this particular assignment?

Yeah, that was a scene I really wished I'd had proper time for. I was delighted to get to use that spell, though.

I wanted to play a character whose presence could be explained as "you were in the right galactic neighborhood, so it was easy to redirect you to Green Carp for a few weeks" rather than a specialist who would be really dedicated to winning something. On the other hand, they should have some connection, and not just be on vacation (no shade to the vacationers in this case, I just find that harder to write because it's not much of a hook for interactions in itself). Sorato is a field researcher who gathers botanical samples and other such tasks for the Agasha no Atsumaru family, who are in the setting fluff as agriculturalists and biological researchers. That angle was partly inspired by the descriptions of under-explored jungles and mysterious flora on Shiawase Island--it seemed plausible the family would go "there might be something useful there; you scout it out since we've been invited to send someone."

So he's a nerd, but a generalist and field worker, not a lab researcher. I decided Wrath of the Kami and Elemental Imbalance probably also mean that nobody wants you hanging around their sensitive kami-powered lab machinery and other high-end spells long-term. I gave him a recent mission delivering and installing equipment for a Phoenix colony planet that had just concluded, leaving him free to be dispatched to Nakahama instead of coming straight home.

Miya Kisha wrote: Thu Dec 11, 2025 12:02 pm Your students are lucky to have you; more of them should know it.

If you need an extra eye on the article, let me know.

Aww, thank you! I made Hatoful help with the final proofread on this one. But I do have another revision for a different piece due at the end of this month... that one has less murder and general soap opera business though. (Not none. But less.)

This one is really good!

Thank you for joining us, despite your schedule!

Despite Sumie calling Sorato lame...she might actually have been a good associate of his as a doctor, herbalist, and something of a "toxicologist", if she wasn't too busy being edgy all the time, ugh! Also, just randomly happy that Sorato had the turtle pastries, ran into Kaiu Takeo for his only talking moment, and checked into the Temple of Light!

There is one thing I must know...what would have happened if he did have the Void-trait associated moonshine?

Sorry to hear that you bandwidth was drained so thoroughly keeping you from playing more. Any thoughts on WHY he is cursed by the air kami?