Samurai

The Samurai of the Concordant Alliance are great warriors trained by the alliance and provided by the concord to each member of high nobility of the different clans and the alliance itself. They are well-trained stoic warriors who honor loyalty, bravery, and honor above all else, even their own life. They follow a written code created by the highest ranking Samurai themselves and the alliance.

Samurai often serve as the personal guard to the clan leaders as well as the Emperor or Empress themself, however they also serve as mercenaries if they are not conscripted by the alliance and may act as tithe collectors. A samurai must be available to be called upon by the alliance at any time, failure to do so will result in the stripping of their title, authority, and blades as well as banishment to the isles of Zuwe.

## **The Nomichi Code**

The Nomichi Code is the code with which all samurai are educated upon and live by, while there are those which are unwritten rules but upheld as intently as all the rest which are written.

1. **Rectitude or Justice**: “*Rectitude is one’s power to decide upon a course of conduct in accordance with reason, without wavering; to die when to die is right, to strike when to strike is right.’ Another speaks of it in the following terms: ‘Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. Without bones the head cannot rest on top of the spine, nor hands move nor feet stand. So without Rectitude neither talent nor learning can make the human frame into a samurai.”*
2. **Courage**: The difference between bravery and courage is this: Courage is worthy of being counted among virtues only if it’s exercised in the cause of Righteousness and Rectitude. “*Perceiving what is right and doing it not reveals a lack of Courage.'' In short, ‘Courage is doing what is right.”*
3. **Benevolence or Mercy**: a man invested with the power to command and the power to kill was expected to demonstrate equally extraordinary powers of benevolence and mercy: Love, magnanimity, affection for others, sympathy and pity, are traits of Benevolence, the highest attribute of the human soul.
4. **Courtesy**: For a true warrior, courtesy is rooted in benevolence: Politeness should be the expression of a benevolent regard for the feeling of others; it's a poor virtue if it’s motivated only by a fear of offending good taste. In its highest form Politeness approaches love.
5. **Honesty and Sincerity**: True Samurai disdained money, believing that “one must grudge money, for riches hinder wisdom.” Thus the children of high-ranking samurai were raised to believe that talking about money showed poor taste, and that ignorance of the value of different coins showed good breeding: Luxury is though to be the greatest menace to greatness, and severe simplicity was required of the warrior class.
6. **Honor**: Honor is a consciousness of personal dignity and worth, characteristic of the greatest samurai. They are born and bred to value their duties and the privileges of their profession. Fear of disgrace hands like a sword over the head of every samurai; to take offense at the slight provocation was ridiculed as ‘short-tempered’. “True patience means bearing the unbearable.”
7. **Loyalty**: Loyalty to a superior is pivotal in the appearance and maintenance of a samurai’s standing, true samurai remain loyal to those to whom they are indebted. Only in the code of chivalrous Honor does Loyalty assume paramount importance.
8. **Character and Self-Control**: Samurai should behave according to an absolute moral standard, one that transcends logic. What’s right is right, and what’s wrong is wrong. The difference between good and bad and between right and wrong are givens, not arguments subject to discussion or justification, and a samurai should know the difference. Finally, it is the obligation of every person to teach their children moral standards through the model of their own behavior: the first objective of samurai education was to build up character.
9. **Judgement**: Not all that a samurai serves will be righteous in intent with those who may wish evil upon others or may plot to overthrow the Concordant Alliance which unites all the clans in peace. In these moments it is pivitol for a samurai's judgement to be sound and just, siding with those who are good and true perhaps even if they are indebted.