Ninja in the Outer World (CNH)

__NOTOC__
Most of a ninja PC's life takes place away from the clan. The ninja is off in the world, exploring new lands, establishing identities in distant cities, and performing missions to benefit the clan.
The ninja character is usually among people who don't know his secret. Here, expressed as advice to the ninja character, are some ways to maintain a secret identity.
==Don't Impress People==
It is easy to impress people with your ninja skills. The problem with this is that people remember being impressed. The more people who remember unusual things about you, the greater the chance they will add stray facts together to reach a conclusion you don't wish them to reach.
It's especially foolish to demonstrate traits that do not belong to your cover identity. If you are pretending to be a normal fighter do not offer to pick a lock. If you are pretending to be a common thief, do not ever wear chain mail or any armor too heavy for practitioners of that profession.
Don't demonstrate the full level of your experience. You are at your most dangerous when enemies underestimate you. Even if you are a veteran ninja with many years of experience, pretend to be a green warrior. Once you have established this background, don't ever let on that it is not true. The temptation to do so can be great, especially when it becomes possible to impress a potential lover through tales of your prowess.
==Go Without Your Ninja Tools and Weapons==
This sounds like a cruel punishment—when you have spent so many years learning the basic skills of the ninja profession, why should you not have its potent tools readily at hand?
But remember this: If you are captured, you may be searched. Tools such as the ninja-to, nekode, metsubishi, and many others are clear evidence that you are a ninja. Even cunningly disguised tools can be found. But tools that are not present cannot be found.
Therefore, you should carry your ninja tools only when you wear the ninja night-suit and are on a stealth mission. At other times, use gear that it similar but not so telling: Carry a wakizashi instead of a ninja-to, a kawanaga instead of nekode, and so forth.
If you plan to be on the road for several weeks or months, it is best not to carry any ninja gear. The opportunities for discovery are too great. When you visit cities where your clan has set up contacts and safe houses, you can borrow gear for specific missions.
==Establish a Safe House or Cache==
When you plan to be in a city or castle for an extended period of time, you can set up a safe house or cache for ninja tools and weapons.
Depending on the size of your ninja clan, there may already be a contact and a safe house in the city or castle you are sent to visit. It is no great task for you to ask your clan lord to send some of your gear to that contact. This is not a safe or automatic process. Your gear will be handed over to a low-ranking ninja of the clan, who will deliver it to its destination, putting him in great danger of discovery and death. This ninja is your brother or cousin, so such requests should not be made trivially.
If there is no contact already established in the place to which you are headed, you can prearrange to have your gear delivered to a specific rendezvous, at the same risk to personnel and material as above.
After you reach the new site but before your rendezvous is to take place, you should establish a cache, a secret place to leave your ninja gear where its discovery will not compromise you. (It is against all common sense to set up your cache beneath your bed.)
Ideally, a cache should be in some place that is easily visited by anyone; the fewer people who can visit it, the shorter the list of suspects if the cache is discovered. In this public place, the cache should be well hidden and difficult to approach casually. Here are some possibilities:
* A barrel in the back of an easily accessible but seldom-visited storeroom
* An old crack in a wall a dozen feet up
* Beneath the floorboards of an abandoned temple
* A box covered with a shallow layer of earth in an overgrown field
* A porcelain jar submerged in an untended pool
Remember to leave inconspicuous signs, visible from a distance, to assure you that your cache has remained undisturbed since your last visit. Someone may have found your cache, then returned everything to its original condition, alerted the local lords, and arranged to ambush whoever comes to get the equipment.
For example, if your cache is in a storeroom barrel, you could place a spot of glue on the seal of the barrel. When you visit, glance casually at the spot; if it is broken, you can be certain the cache has been found and that you should not try to retrieve your gear. If your cache is in a crack in a wall, you can dust the surface of the wall below and above with a little soot, which will certainly be disturbed if someone has been there. These techniques can save your life.
==Once Established, You Become a Safe House==
Do not forget that once you are set up in a new identity, you become a safe house for other ninja of your clan. From time to time, allied ninja passing through your region or coming to the same city or castle to set up identities will seek out your help. You are obliged to provide reasonable amounts of help at the ninja's request. Of course, you are obliged to provide even unreasonable help at your clan lord's request.
==Spy On Your Friends==
You should honor a true friend with true friendship, but you should also know your nonclan friends better than they know you. You must learn all you can about them. Find out what their interests are, what their true identities are, who their lovers are, what their letters say, why they carry the mementos and other items of sentiment they do, and what truly drives them.
To a young ninja, this may sound like a cruel betrayal of people who intend you no harm and may have saved your life. In a sense, it is. But there are compelling reasons to take this course.
First, it may reveal enemies. Despite your instincts, it may be that an ally is your enemy—and not even because of a personal reason. He may be on a secret mission that would thwart your own mission, or may have a longstanding grudge against another ninja of your clan.
Second, you can often do your friends good by knowing all there is to know about them. In spying on a friend, you may discover some secret need he dares not express, or someone else may be investigating him, pointing to an enemy he did not know about. So long as your friends remain friends, your investigations can ultimately do them only good.
Third, consider this: Although you bear no ill will toward your friends, you have an agenda that is different from theirs, an agenda that is hidden from them. If you are ordered to betray them by your clan lord, that is what you must do. If this is true of you, it could be true of one or more of your friends as well. You need to know the circumstances under which one of your trusted friends could become an enemy.
Fourth, and last: Spying on your friends acts as a constant reminder of your priorities. When you take this course, you can never let your allegiance slip from family to friends. You are always on guard against letting your cover identity become your true identity. This is best for the clan, and so it must be done.
This spying should not be accomplished quickly. Your current assignment is another task with a different target, so your researches into your friends constitute a hobby and should be pursued at a slow, comfortable pace. You might be in the company of these people for months or years; pace your investigation accordingly. Nothing will give you away as easily as undue haste.
It is here that maintaining an identity as a poet or writer is useful to you. It will give you a higher level of credibility when you ask people questions about their careers and exploits. However, it will not help you if you ask so many questions that your friends come to consider you a nosy person.
Do not be compulsive about your investigations, however. If you fall into a pattern of espionage that your friends can detect and take steps against, you doom yourself.
==Always Have a Reason==
At every time of night or day, have in mind an explanation for any unusual thing you are doing. Remember that excuses for friends can be different from those presented to the authorities. Friends will keep secrets for you and will believe things that the authorities will check out for themselves. Here are some examples:
"Why are you wandering the halls of the daimyo's palace, off-limits to the likes of you?" Answer for a friend: "I saw a shadow slip into this area and, curious, I followed. There may be a spy loose in these halls." Answer for a guard: The same, but wait for a moment of distraction on his part and hurl a pebble or smoke grenade into some dark corner to give him something to react to and to convince him that there is an intruder loose.
"Why were you following me?" Answer for a friend: "I've had a premonition about you all day. I think you are in danger." Answer for someone in authority, who may be asking why you were following someone else: "I was not. Why were you following me?" or "I was admiring the material from which his robe was made. See the flow of colors, the expert cut of the cloth..." Sometimes a ready excuse will be more useful to you than a plausible one. Hesitation can doom a good lie, while calm confidence and quick response can carry a bad one.