7) Laws and Weapons

Laws & Weapons—especially Firearms: The Edicts on Arms and Star-Metal

Fearful of slipping back into clan anarchy, the Shogunate codified arms control with a thoroughness that would make a record-keeper weep with joy. The Edicts on Arms and Star-Metal begin with a simple premise: weapons exist for defense of the realm, not display of defiance. Swords remain samurai badges; Oni may carry heavy hammers within Akumatani and Kirin Steppe; Tengu keep training blades within monastery and Reikonzan bounds; Okami bear hunting spears on the Kirin Steppe. Anything beyond this demands license, registry, and ritual.
Firearms—teppō—are allowed but fenced and hugely frowned upon. To kill someone with a firearm is regarded as cowardly and dishonorable. Every barrel bears a maker’s crest, shrine stamp, and serial brand entered in the Sakuragawa Arsenal Book. Manufacture occurs only in chartered workshops under the eyes of guild elders, shrine auditors, and a Shogunate clerk who can recite ore weights from memory. Domains hold quota-bound arsenals; deployment requires a two-seal order (daimyō + magistrate) or a Harbor Warrant for coastal defense in concert with Ryūjin patrols. Private ownership is forbidden; peasant militias train with bows and staves; yōkai units rely on traditional arms and arts. After the Shimabara-like peasant rising a generation ago, the Shogunate added powder ration books and mandated ballistic inventories after every drill.
The edicts also choke off dangerous innovation. Star-metal from the Fallen Star Wasteland may be collected only by shrine teams; its use in weapons is a capital offense unless marked Divine Utility (bells, wards, medical needles for miracle surgery). Experiments that “pierce veils” require Council approval and a Seihō dispensation—hard to obtain, easy to lose. Smugglers and rogue artificers exist, of course: Tanuki tale-peddlers whisper of hidden pistols in merchant sleeves; Kitsune courts sniff out false papers; Oni blacksmiths boast of unbreakable barrels. Yet the system holds because it ties fear to paperwork, pride to permits, and ruin to a single missing stamp.
Pros and cons are baked in. The upside: no army can explode overnight; raids remain local; Yūrei aren’t mown down by peasants with cheap guns. The downside: when a storm of a different scale arrives—star-born relics waking, or fleets the Ryūjin cannot politely turn away—Yamato may find its armories tidy but behind. Tokugawa knows this, which is why his personal guards train with matchlocks under moonlight, in secret yards where the ink dries before the smoke.