Slightly over a dozen blocks within Pear Blossom Dome make up the slums reserved for the poorest of the heimin living aboveground. Serving the Scorpion as clerks, janitors, and food-service workers, they live in large dormitories with shared bathrooms and bathing facilities. The poorly maintained streets are lined with cheap sake houses and large, often jam-packed, eateries. Propaganda posters and reminders of the many regulations in effect here cover the poorly kept walls of aging buildings, reminding the commoners of the honor of serving the samurai and the consequences of dissidence. In reality, the peace here is primarily maintained by a coalition of gangs and thugs allowed to operate freely by Scorpion magistrates, so long as they maintain the governor's peace and pay their tithes. It is widely known that the Scorpion leadership turns a blind eye to such arrangements, attributing much of World of Dreams’ success to lax oversight and creative interpretation of regulations.
Many of the heimin living here work for the gangs in one way or another, often allowing the senior oyabun access to sensitive information not readily available elsewhere. This means that those willing to work with the thriving lowlife of World of Many Sins have ample opportunities to acquire information normally beyond their reach. For this reason most embassies maintain working relationships with a select few informants willingly trading koku for rumors and hearsay.
Location rules: Seeking Information
A character may spend a time slot in Slums seeking information regarding anything the world's lowlife might know, rolling Lore: Underworld / Intelligence or Investigation / Awareness against TN 25 and paying 1 koku plus 1 koku for each Raise called. Raise(s) will allow characters to discover secret or otherwise hard to discover information. In order to seek information, post the rolls and specify the topic in your private forum and link that post to the thread here.
This roll cannot be used to acquire Information points and is meant to provide the characters a way to learn things otherwise beyond their means.
Should you fail a roll on which you called Raises, please let the GM's know. While snooping around might not cause immediate problems, there is a small chance that someone will take notice and use the information in one way or another. While the thugs and mobsters hold few loyalties, they are keenly aware of the current political situation and thus Crane, Mantis and Spider samurai have a higher risk of ending up being mugged or worse should the underworld informants find a reason to doubt their motives.