Originally posted to the CGL Battletech forum as a fanfic story seed.

Michi Noketsuna was the first to give voice to the truth.  Warlord Grieg Samsonov and Coordinator Takashi Kurita had betrayed the Dragon’s most loyal servant.  True, the life of each samurai belongs to his lord – but this was dishonor beyond the bounds of the Dictum Honorium.  The Ryuken had proven that honor was in right thought and right action, not merely right appearances, and this was their reward?  It was unconscionable.  A samurai from their ranks who sank to such treachery would be fortunate if death were his reward.

Michi Noketsuna was the first to repudiate the covenant that his lord had broken.  Free of his oaths to House Kurita, he pledged his loyalty to the man who had forged the Dragon Sword.  Where he led, those who remained followed.  And if their new master could only cleanse his own honor in death, they would follow there as well.

A single wakizashi was now poised to spill the blood of every surviving samurai of the Ryuken.  Michi Noketsuna had found the one point of leverage that could forestall his mentor’s seppuku: responsibility.  Unable to condemn loyal men and women to death under the weight of his own karma, Minobu Tetsuhara reluctantly declared himself ronin.

Under a white banner, the Ryuken boarded white ships and lifted from a white world.