[dragon] Why choose Tamori?

[Barry Kunz]

This is forwarded by request from the dragonstrategy forum.

>From: "Barry Kunz" <barryakunz at hotmail.com>
Quote: Hokosaki, Mike O'Brien and others, you owe it to this list to explain 
so please do.


Currently, I'm still traveling. I expect to make it home sometime around 
monday (things to do people to see). Given access to the internet (even if 
not my mail) the first thing I did was try find out how the clan was dealing 
with the news. To be honest it's been better than I expected....

Time for explaining. Lets set the stage just before the tournament, some of 
the dragon players have gathered into a circle and are discussing the matter 
of the top of clan prize. Some like Mike 'Kokujin is like a deathstar' 
O'Brien were obviously all in favour of joining up with the dark oracle 
being totally evil as he is, others like Bruno and Michael were honourable 
to the core.

Then you get to the rest of us...
After some discussion on the matter we realised it wasn't as easy a choice 
as I had expected (before the con I had asked Jon to choose attack Tamori on 
the off chance that he should make top dragon, he is dynasty after all) we 
were pretty confident either Spags of Justin would make top Feenix (neither 
did but the result was the same) and as such would be picking POWER. With 
the Lion almost assuredly picking the Tsuno option (currently theres some 
confusion over what he actually did pick). With those choices in mind we 
looked over our options.

Quote:
1) Ignore the threat of the Feenix and drive the dark oracle from our lands.
2) Ally with the dark oracle and turn our combined might against the Feenix.


Ignoring the threat of the feenix, who were about to gain more power and 
were not going to be threatened by the Lion, I felt would have cost many 
dragon lives possibly losing us the ki-rin shrine and the farming land we so 
desperately need.
Driving the dark oracle from our lands also does nothing to help our 
situation. It ends up with the dark oracle still alive and in another clans 
land. If the choice given was to destroy the dark oracle that choice would 
have carried greater weight with the assembled dragon.

The other option, ally with the dark oracle and attack the feenix. Shaitungs 
name was mentioned a lot, to be exact "Shaitung is going to be pissed at us 
if we go that way" and "Shaitung is so pretty when shes angry" followed of 
course by "Shaitung purdy". The fact that we were suggesting allying with a 
dark oracle was also pointed out, thats some bad mojo there.
End result we were sure would result in feenix casualties instead of dragon 
ones and that we all agreed was a good thing.

The greater 'corrupting the clan' issue was then brought up, it's been 
commented before that we would not have a single person making the decision 
to corrupt an entire clan ever again. It's a bad way of doing things, so we 
made some suggestions about how smaller parts of the clan could ally with 
Tamori without instantly turning the entire clan bad. Shaitung's name was 
again mentioned "she's gonna be pissed" and some suggestions were made about 
who might be the one to convince Tamori to attack the feenix. Having 
recently enough read way of the shugenja I mentioned Chosai as Tamori's 
brother but other names were mentioned, all minor.

Thats there and then, we were throwing around ideas and many of us who had 
previously been happy with the honourable choice (not Bruno and Michael who 
were 100% honourable all the way) were wavering. On consideration it was no 
longer so straight cut and was, no doubt, like all the other choices 
designed to be so.

After the swiss it was obvious I wasn't going to make the cut with a poor 
4-3 and Jon made it through as the only dragon player making the top 16. So 
at that stage we knew we weren't going to have the choice to make. 
Personally I was glad, no way I wanted to have to make that choice because 
after heavy consideration I didn't know which way to go. One hand had the 
pointless loss of dragon lives the other allying with a dark oracle! Both 
bad choices in my book, I think many maay have got the impression I was 
totally for the dark oracle choice because I was with Mike *shrug* he's 
another Irish dragon player or perhaps because I was arguing with both 
Michael and Bruno that the other choice had merits....
In retrospect I may have seemed a little bias towards the dark oracle when I 
was instead attempting to fence sit....

You have to remember at this point we were almost certain the top feenix was 
picking power (as he indeed did), after finding out who the top Lion was I 
attempted to try convince him to attack the feenix pointing out that should 
the dragon pick the honourable choice we would most certainly get butchered, 
it didn't seem to sway him at the time (the language barrier wasn't helping) 
but it seems it did have some effect judging by the currently confused 
choice (I thought the lion were attacking the feenix but with some posts on 
deathseeker it's probable that the lion will attack the Tsuno _first_ then 
attack the Feenix for picking Power).

So in the end Jon decided to join with the dark oracle and attack the 
feenix, he didn't do it to screw over the dragon. In fact Dragon players 
were the ones to convince him to go with that option. Let me emphasize, we 
had _one_ corrupt dragon Mike 'Kokujin is like a deathstar' the remainder of 
the dragon who were siding with the dark oracle choice were honourable 
dragon players faced with a difficult choice. Some like Michael and Bruno 
were willing to sacrifice everything to have nothing to do with Tamori.

I praise Hitomi that i didn't make top dragon that day for I honestly do not 
know which choice I would have gone with. I do think the Tamori choice has 
many merits while I also recognise the virtue of purity in the face of 
corruption.