Alt-Onin: Upper Haishi River Estate Briefing

The Estate on the Upper Haishi River is a small village, nothing notable - The prince’s estate is the mile or so south of the Atago Shrine (kami of fire) near the bridge, both of which remain intact. Much of the valley was largely wiped out by flooding last year, and the fields sit fallow. Less than a dozen families live on the estate, the rest having died, moved away, or taken up banditry. Large piles of rubble block the valley roads, bridges are washed out and replaced with ad-hoc bridges of felled trees, the village is reduced to the signs of homes buried beneath mudslides; only a few lonely houses remain on the hillside. Since the go-kenin (Murakami Gyoto) and family are missing along with the village charters, the estate can effectively be claimed with little effort by anyone willing to press their claim forcefully. One of the surviving villagers remembers that a younger Murakami brother went off to fight the Mongols or something (he is unclear); maybe he went to Uwajima, a city in the south where the Prince also has some estates in jeopardy.
Currently, the estate is in dispute between Ogawa Yoshitaka, a vassal of the Kono steward of the Misaka River area over the mountain, and the Koseki-Ji under Priest Chimon. The Shingon temple is a major landowner in the region; it owns the neighboring land and claims the locals as parishioners. On the other hand, a Kono Clan vassal named Ogawa Yoshitaka desires to annex the estate to his own directly, though the legitimacy of his claim is unknown. He is a young hothead, prone to rash action and bristling with pride like a good samurai should. Lord Ogawa periodically rides in with a few samurai to provoke the sohei and reinforce his claim on the land.

The villagers just try to stay out of the way, since they don’t have any say about who controls the valley. They will pay taxes either way. Nobody goes out at night on the estate. There are stories of the unquiet dead (Yurei) roaming about some nights, part of the unseen world leaking into the world of the living. A pack of wolves has also moved into the area, drawn by the abundance of game and sudden population drop. They can be heard howling on clear nights. A couple of the surviving families are now likely living in the hills, surviving on theft, banditry, and hunting and gathering.

The larger Kono Clan in Matsuyama disregards the whole issue as a local problem. Either way it resolves, they get their cut. The clan leaders are currently building strong defenses along the shore, and cannot be bothered with parochial matters. They are also preoccupied with Yamana-Hosokawa issues brewing in the capital, as all of you should be.