Why is jade rare?
Personally my thought is that since a Hida is now the Sun and a Crab does not cry that the Jade is not being restored... :) I was just reading Way of the Shadowlands or Bearers of Jade today and they had a CFS in there about releasing some memories that caused Ameratsu to cry thereby destroying a bunch of Shadowlands creatures. So how do you make the Crab Sun cry?

Yakamo doesnt cry. Only girls cry Jade is rare due to the four winds assault on the city of the lost and the Battle at oblivions gate. Both involved using most of the jade in the empire. Crane now have a virtual monoply on jade due to trade with a Yobanjin tribe. Of course the crab still mine it with help from Munjina.

Say what you want about them using it up during Oblivions Gate, but we all really know that it's because Yakamo doesn't cry like Ameratsu used to. In most of the Shadowlands book they seem to rely on a plentiful supply of jade weapons/powder to affect invulnerable Oni. So clearly the Crab, no matter how strong, would be in very dire straights if it were as rare as the fiction stories make it out to be currently. In the books of the Shadowlands most stories have runners that bring lots of jade powder for samurai to put onto their weapons while involved in a battle.

It's one of the less realistic things in L5R. It's a finite resource, but the Crab tend to go through their supplies like there's no tomorrow and have been doing so for centuries. Suspend your disbelief and simply accept what the rules tell you about availability. Or change that, but don't try to make it all make logical sense. That just doesn't work.

You could claim it's rare like certain crops are rare. There is an amount of jade that can be mined per year. The Crab use most of the jade produced per year defending the wall. This leaves a very small amount of jade to be used for other purposes making it expensive. It doesn't actually make sense, but it's passable.

Sure, I'm just looking for cool ways to describe it tot he players. Depends on how you look at the game I guess. A more mythic feel would have the players scheming for ways to get Yakamo to cry. A more down to earth game would have the players recruiting geologists looking for new mines or asking the mantis to find some.

You might just want to play off both explanations. Rokugan is deep seated with superstition, so making Lord Sun cry might do it or it might be some folklore that was spread to make Lord Sun appear more merciful. Remember the “Way of” Series? There were a number of exaggerations found within those beautiful tomes. :)

Forgive me for bringing reality into this discussion, but i thot i'd do some wiki-research on Jade in the Real World, in hopes of making sence of this whole thing. boy was I wrong. But for the strong of heart, here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade Short form: Jade is really 2 different types of rock, jadite (the rarer) and nephrite. Ancient Chinese did not discern the differance between the two. It's about as hard as flint, and axheads have been found of jade. Coloration ranges from white to lavender to blue to several shades of green. (Holy Kryptonite, Lord Sun!)

In Rokugan, their is only one type of Jade, and Jade is more than 90% green.

If you want Yakamo to cry, send Chuck Noris into heaven.