Given that the Utahin have refused to name a Dragon-Blood as Great Hero because they expect more of the Exalted due to their power and potential, the bar would be even harder to clear for a Solar or Lunar.

That's a fair assessment, though the details of what sort of effects might be generated aren't nailed down yet. I'm hoping we can address war manses in a future book.

Yes, that's correct.

Probably around the same order of magnitude, but we're still developing the Lookshyan military section of Heirs, so I don't have a definite answer yet.

Conveniently, The Realm specifies that House Cynis currently has a dragon of legionary troops in Greyfalls. (p.159) Presumably there's also a Cynis garrison and perhaps some local auxiliaries; you should figure out the numbers based on what you think will work best for your game.

It's deliberately ambiguous as to whether the dragonlords are receiving orders from another source or not. They are not visibly acting on any clear, dynamic agenda, regardless of source.

Yes, though not what you'd expect.

Sijan isn't in Eight Directions; we're holding off so that we can present it in either Abyssals or Liminals.

Thank you! We're proud of it.

I'm not sure what you mean. Could you elaborate on what part of the text is causing confusion?

There used to be more legions than there are now, and higher-numbered legions weren't necessarily renumbered after lower-numbered legions were disbanded. (It's also possible that some legion numbers have been permanently retired for various reasons, whether to honor a legion lost in battle or to condemn legions involved in failed coup attempts.)

I'm not really going to have a clear picture of that until we start outlining Abyssals.

6+ is all plateau. We don't want players to feel that they need shenanigans to hit Essence 6 or 7+ in order to play in the big leagues.

I don't think we've published anything specifying that, and it's unlikely to come up in future published material, so do whatever makes the most sense at your table.

That depends on which characters are telling the stories!

Just the one, as per What Fire Has Wrought: "Promoting [Tepet Ejava] to general, they placed her in charge of the one legion that had been foisted on the house in the partition of the Imperial legions — the infamous Vermilion, or “Red-Piss,” Legion."

That's correct.

As per What Fire Has Wrought, "Husbands normally retain their family name when they marry. However, since peasants and outcastes largely lack family names, one who marries a patrician or Dynast takes on their spouse’s family name. When people of different social classes marry, the lower-class spouse is elevated to the higher-ranking spouse’s social class — at least officially." So an exiled male Dynast who marries outside of the Dynasty (assuming the necessary Imperial judges can be assembled) would bring his spouse into the family.

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.