As per What Fire Has Wrought, "Granting or removing recognition of cadet house status, as with Great House status, was the prerogative of the Empress alone."

There will be four Great House-style write-ups for individual cadet houses in Heirs to the Shogunate, although they won't be as in-depth as the Great House write-ups in Dragon-Blooded due to word count restrictions. One of them is for House Ferem. Covering multiple Northern cadet houses wasn't feasible with the word count available.

"Opening of the West to mortal trade via Wu-Jian" refers specifically to trade routes via Wu-Jian that mortal crews can safely navigate. The Realm has had limited access to the West for longer than that via Fajad and the Caul (which is how they've controlled Wavecrest for longer than 100 years), and ships with Dragon-Blooded heroes aboard have been able to navigate more perilous routes via Wu-Jian for over 100 years.

Depends on which Lunars you're talking about. But there used to be significantly fewer Lunars in the West than in other Directions because it wasn't much of a front in the war against the Realm, which also meant that many Lunars in the West were there because they had little interest or investment in the war against the Realm. Since a lot of long-range contact between Lunars is about the war against the Realm, this meant less contact overall. But there was still personal correspondence, educational visits, etc.

When the Realm had little to no influence in the vicinity of Luthe, Leviathan wasn't that bothered.

The Guild is, by and large, not "the Guild." Ground-level Guild ventures are their own entities; when the Guild merchant prince Bear-Rider Vai organizes a caravan, it'll be known as Bear-Rider Vai's caravan, not Guild Caravan #8063. If the Guild stonemasons in Nathir organize into a guild, it'll be a Nathir stonemason's guild, not Guild Stonemason Branch #1138. (It may in fact end up being the only stonemason's guild in Nathir, so there won't be anything to differentiate itself from.)

Legion skirmishers do not include cavalry. The Realm does not field its own cavalry, relying on auxiliary forces drawn from the satrapies.

It's copypasta from prior editions where Sesus was male.

Caulborn so rarely leave the Caul that I don't think there'd be any coherent stereotypes about them.

That'll likely be addressed in the Caul material in the final manuscript of Fangs at the Gate.

Probably nothing happens; the Caul's Essence is attuned specifically to Lunars and Dragon-Blooded. But an individual Storyteller should definitely change this if appropriate to their game.

Assuming we get a chance to discuss Nir-Netari in later canonical material, she's intended to be a ghost, so she couldn't have any Exigents. If you want her to be a god with an Exigent in your game, you probably have a clearer idea of what to do with her than I would.

I suspect he'd be thrilled to have a way out of his current situation, where he has a Sword of Damocles hanging over his head for the rest of his probably short life.

That's tricky. On the one hand, Exigents are inauspicious; on the other hand, rejecting the Regent would further destabilize the Realm (a replacement seems unlikely at this stage) and would accelerate the slide toward civil war if not triggering it outright. Likely the houses best positioned to go for the throne would use this as an excuse to push their candidates, while those in weaker positions would back Fokuf to maintain the status quo. This could be good material for a civil war scenario at your table!

If you come at the king, you'd best not miss. A clumsy effort in this regard will just tip off House Ragara (which isn't an ATM compelled to dispense money), and in any case will be ledger accounts rather than hard currency. House Ragara doesn't need money, and a single debtor defaulting won't hurt it; the only real risk is of cascading into widespread rejection of Ragara economic authority throughout the Realm. Outright reneging on debts to Ragara without collapsing its control of Realm finance would hurt Peleps far more than Ragara, as other sources of funding would be pressured to cut Peleps off.

We currently have no plans to explore Gloam in published material, so that's entirely up to the Storyteller.

It's unlikely that any out-of-house spouses were ever promoted to the rank of general, but the occasional out-of-house dragonlord would have been plausible. But the specifics of whether barriers to promotion were were official or unofficial, and where those barriers stood, is something to resolve at your table based on the needs of relevant PC and NPC backstories.

A spirit shape, like any other shape, is specific. Your wolf spirit shape is a specific wolf; you can't turn into a different wolf as your "spirit shape," let alone turn into a dog and say it's your spirit shape because they're both canines. This is the same as any other shape; you can't perform a sacred hunt on some random dude and then use that shape to turn into the Empress because they're both human shapes, and you can't perform a sacred hunt on a chimpanzee and use that shape to turn into a gorilla or orangutan.

(And I don't think "stuck with" is fair phrasing; you don't need the ability to make every conceivable type of beastfolk for it to be impressive that you can make beastfolk.)

Nope, still waiting on pitch approvals. (These things take a while.)

The current system is that books for Exalt types (Dragon-Blooded, Lunars, etc.) get Kickstarters. Other books, such as the Storyteller's Guide, do not.

Either I'm still not understanding your question correctly, or your understanding of the situation is incorrect. We do not write stretch goal material ahead of time. We didn't write up Sublime Danger in advance and then "bank" her for the Lunars Kickstarter companion volume; she hasn't been written up yet.

A single Exigent write-up, even with a really bare-bones Charm set, is significantly larger than a normal stretch goal. If we're able to do it, it'll involve spacing out stretch goals more widely than usual to compensate. E.g., instead of getting one stretch goal when we hit $X and another when we hit $Y, we'd get no stretch goal at $X and the bare-bones Exigent write-up at $Y. Or maybe skip $X and $Y and get the bare-bones Exigent write-up at $Z.

In any case, we'll continue to discuss specifics with the Onyx Path Kickstarter team and figure things out before the Exigent Kickstarter (if any).

I don't understand the question. Could you clarify?

The former.

More than likely.