Freakazoid + L5R = Freakazumi

It's a little after noon on a lazy Sunday, so of course I'm drinking tea and dicking around in my downloads folder. I have an old PDF regarding updated schools in L5R that I decide I want to review.

L5R stands for Legend of the Five Rings, an RPG set in Rokugan, which the game designers swear isn't feudal Japan no matter how much it seems like it. Like most successful RPG systems, there's a core handbook and several smaller additions containing more info and optional choices for building a character. The problem with L5R is that they think it's a really good idea to categorize all their books by similar titles. The Way of the Phoenix, for instance, is the second edition clan book for the Phoenix clan. Can you guess the title of the Crane clan's book? That's right. The Way of the Crane.

New editions get new titles, but they all get the same kind of title, which is why I got confused this morning reading the following lines:

"Ancestral Hiruma School (Bushi) (Formerly 'Hiruma Lost School') Originally appeared in Bearers of Jade."

Wait a sec. Did that just say there was a book called "Beavers of Jade"? No, but I just woke up, I haven't had my caffeine yet, and I'm not wearing my glasses.

Now, you all are thinking probably that the first picture in my mind was something sexist. Perhaps a joke about a vagina made out of jade or other such crude genital humor. (In retrospect, a woman with a jade vagina would be highly amusing in certain situations. I am not kidding when I tell you that L5R uses jade to fight something called "The Taint". I swear this is what it is called.)

Sure, there are vagina jokes to be made about "Beavers of Jade". But that's not what first came to my mind at twelve o'clock on a Sunday. No, my first mental picture was of beavers made of jade, or perhaps real beavers who'd been magically turned into jade. My first mental picture was of Freakazoid, and him berating the sinister (albeit minor) character in "Dance of Doom" who possessed a watch that turned beavers into gold.

"Leave the beavers alone already, wouldja? Geez! We were all having a good time! And then you had to come along and ruin it, ya ruiner!" Freakazoid yells, or something much to that effect.

Now put the whole thing a thousand years ago in ancient Japan and you can understand why I had to reread that section to prove I hadn't lost my mind.