Imperial Herald #14, Legend of the Five Rings History
Forbidden Knowledge
More Black Scrolls were recovered. Many shugenja now knew of their existence and of the awesome powers they could convey. Isawa Tadaka and Isawa Uona became corrupted by the knowledge gained from the scrolls, but still the Phoenix Council of Five strove to understand their significance.
Battles large and small grew common. Land was taken, retaken, and lost over and over, churning the peasants' farmlands into huge fields of mud. The harvest was terrible. Famine, combined with the still-raging plague, exacted a tremendous toll on the Empire.
The barriers between the material world and the nether regions of the underworld began to weaken. Immensely powerful Elemental Terrors - oni of heretofore unknown powers - emerged.
Kachiko tended Hitomi's injury, seeking to twist Hitomi's hatred for Yakamo into an all-out desire to destroy the Crab Clan in vengeance for refusing to support Shoju's coup. Kachiko provided and ancient and powerful artifact, the Obsidian Hand, for Hitomi's use, and it began to darken her soul.
Kachiko also managed to trap her lover, the Crane daimyo Doji Hoturi, in the imperial capital. She used another ancient artifact, the Egg of P'an Ku, to create a duplicate of Hoturi. This False Hoturi left the capital and returned to the lands of the Crane, where his boorish behavior and increasingly insulting remarks caused great disgrace. He recruited a mad army from the Shadowlands and began a wild campaign of terror