A small village is being persecuted by robbers who return every harvest to seize the village's crops. Faced with starvation, the villagers send out a mission to find and recruit some samurai to defend them. With no pay to offer except rice, and knowing full well that only down-on-their-luck samurai would even consider accepting such an deal, the villagers can only hope that their saviours will appear before the rice is ready for harvest.

Picture	Name	Description
	Kambei	Highly expereinced, educated fearless and skilled. Kambei is the embodiment of everything a great samurai should be. Yet he is a failure. He played a key in the Great War for the losing side.
	Katsushiro	A fledgliing samurai, too young to have fought in the war. He's grown up feeling he didn't have the grit necessary to survive in this world, and has devoted himself to bushido to fix that problem. He's benn looking for a master samurai to train him, and when he meets Kambei he knows he's the one.
	Kikuchiyo	A man turned in a machine very strong - his massive sword and steam-powered arm can tear through brick walls. But he's not skilled. All he knows about fighting he's made up as he's gone along, by emulating real samurai. His embarassing secret is that he was born a farmer, a low class, just like the people of Kanna Village.
	Gorobei	after fighting in the Great War, and joining the countless ranks of ranin samurai. Gorobei became a street performer, using his fighting skills to pay for his meals. A dishonorable fate for a samurai, but Gorobei doesn't care. He's roated more in the real world than ideals."
	Kyuzo	After fighting in the great War, Kyuzo landed a job as a guard in the Magistrate's house. A rare master of the double-sword technique, Kyuzo spends his days in silence, pursuing fighting perfection, having to listen to the Magistrate and his son brag about the end of the samurai.
	Shichiroji	During the Great War, Shichiroji was Kambei's pilot and partner in battle. Five years ago, after narrowly surviving a raid, he gave up the samurai life and settled down with a woman name Yukina and helps her run the Firefly House. He likes the idea of a quiet life, and tries very hard to live it believing that fighting is not for him. Nut his taste for battle always pulls him back.
	Heihachi	A younger samurai, mostly self-taught and skill machinist. If he did have any involvement in the Great War, it was as an engineer, not in direct combat. Since then, he's been a lone named, going wherever he feels like, collecting machine parts, paying for his room and board by chopping wood, another skill - he can use his sword to slice wood into toothpicks.