If I play Chikushudo's Trickery to force a battle, then play Surprise Attack (for, say, to drop either the Fire or Earth rings), am I still the defender when it comes time to resolve the non-province based battlefield Surprise Attack creates?
Who is the aggressor?
A topic from AEG's L5R CCG Rules forum, copied for Oracle of the Void from a copy of the forum saved in October 2015, so pages it didn't save are missing. Players' names are left out; the rules officials are named. Rulings are as they stood on these dates; later rulings, the rulebooks and the Rules Archive may differ.
If I play Chikushudo's Trickery to force a battle, then play Surprise Attack (for, say, to drop either the Fire or Earth rings), am I still the defender when it comes time to resolve the non-province based battlefield Surprise Attack creates?
I'm not going to ding you for "asked and answered" because you would've had to slog through a lot of hypotheticals to get there, but the answer can be found here.
Whoever was the attacker in the beginning attack will continue to be the attacker for all attacks spawned off it.