Twenty-five years ago, the Emerald Empire suffered greatly to achieve victory against an invading horde of gaijin demons from a distant land. This conflict, called the Destroyer War, left vast portions of Rokugan in ruin, including virtually the entirety of the Crab and Scorpion lands as well as sections of all other clan holdings. Although the Great Clans won victory for their Empress in the end, the result was an Empire weaker than it had been in centuries, and in a poor position. Thus it was that the Divine Empress commanded her forces to travel to the now-empty nation known as the Ivory Kingdoms, the distant land that had perished giving birth to the Destroyers, and to claim it in the name of Rokugan. Here, in this distant realm, the Empress’s loyal vassals would claim the resources needed to repair and rebuild their homeland.

For more than two decades, the Great Clans and their associations among the Imperial families and the Minor Clans have done exactly that. The vast, untamed wilderness that sprang into being after the death of the Ivory Kingdoms is now simply known as the Colonies, and is a hotbed of political and economic turmoil. For many years the balance of power between the clans has been carefully maintained by a stern, traditionalist Governor, one of the most powerful samurai in the world and a hand-picked agent of the Divine Empress. That Governor has fallen, however, murdered in his own palace by agents of a sinister, poorly-understood threat known simply as the Dark Naga. In the wake of his death, a new Governor has been appointed, a much younger woman who has proven uninterested in tradition and conservatism, and who instead has embraced progressive, unconventional practices in a realm already on the brink of chaos by virtue of its very existence.

With the rights of exploration available now to all by Imperial edict, the Great Clans now rush to claim the forgotten treasures of the Colonies, placing themselves at great risk by moving into unexplored territories full of unidentified threats. Back in Rokugan, the threat posed by the Dark Naga continues to distract the people of Rokugan, and the developments in the Colonies go unnoticed for the time being. With increasingly radical discoveries being made more and more frequently, however, including an inexplicable link between the former Ivory Kingdoms and the heretical philosophies of an ancient monk called Fudo, the distance between two lands grows with each passing day, and it is only a matter of time before the Empire of Rokugan looks to its Colonies and questions their strange ways…

Welcome to Emperor Edition!