The Lion possess a number of star systems second only to the Mantis (the Matsu alone have over a dozen), but the seat of their power is unquestionably Katana’s Edge. The home of the Akodo family, Katana’s Edge is where the Lion keep their Imperial War College (their only significant training ground outside of Shori), where Akodo and Ikoma tacticians study battle plans throughout the ages, constantly looking for a new edge to aid their clan’s commitment to ceaseless warfare. The planet is also at least nominally the home of the Kitsu – although in practice, the Kitsu mostly live aboard ships during the age of Emerald Stars, as they are constantly seeking out new worlds in order to understand their intrinsic connections to the Spirit Realms.
As they have since the founding of the Empire, the Lion possess the largest military in Rokugan. An army and navy that massive requires a place to train, and for the Lion, that place is Shori. It is here that the Lion not only drill their troops before they’re sent to other outposts within their vast territory, but test out innovative tactics conceived at the war college on Katana’s Edge, wargaming out every possible situation. The Clan of Akodo has carefully cultivated various biomes across the planet, creating not just natural but elaborate city and space station setups (many of which resemble key potential future military targets) in order to prepare for the day when their carefully-studied battle plans might come to fruition. Not many Lion actually grow up on Shori, but virtually every soldier in their vast armies has trained here at some point.
For all that they have taken surprisingly well to the new age of interstellar travel, at the heart of the Lion sits a resentment that things have ever needed to change in the first place. Much of this energy is channeled into the clan’s trademark belligerence towards their neighbors, but some of it has been focused in a different direction. On the world of New Beiden, the Lion have created a throwback stretching thousands of years into the past, to a time when samurai used only katanas, bows, and lacquered wooden armor, where peasants tilled the fields by hand and everything existed in its proper place in society. Samurai of a more traditional nature from every clan find New Beiden a relaxing place to spend vacations attuning themselves to their ancestors and living life as all Rokugani once did. Advanced technology is allowed here only by special dispensation – primarily the equipment needed to support the Lion’s unsurpassable action films industry, one of their most important sources of revenue and one centered on the planet.
While clans like the Unicorn, Mantis, and Dragon make it a point to establish diplomatic relations with newly-encountered alien species, other clans take a different approach. The Lion have pacified numerous alien worlds, claiming them in the name of the Empire of Emerald Stars, typically evicting the aliens on evacuation ships, firing them off into the unknown with only what they can carry. Their advanced tactics and technological superiority typically means theses campaigns are over in days or weeks, but on one world, they’ve encountered something a bit more challenging.
On the planet known as Red Fields, the Ghak’to have proven a continuous source of trouble for five years now. Nearly as advanced as the Rokugani, but with much smaller numbers, the Ghak’to’s resourcefulness and outright ruthlessness have made them a formidable foe against which the Lion cannot seem to consistently make headway. Were it not for their ongoing border skirmishes with the Mantis, perhaps they could allocate more resources to the battle for Red fields, but until that conflict settles, the soldiers there will just have to make do.