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.
Venomous Steel Force/Chi: +2 / +1 Cost: 4 Focus: 3 Weapon. Shadowlands. Lose 3 Honor. After an action resolves that this Personality performed: Remove all cards that the action destroyed from the game.
Will Venomous Steel remove from the game a personality whose death was prevented?
Will Venomous Steel remove from the game a personality whose death was delayed? If so, when will the removal occur?
[Mod edit: spelling - ALJ]
Will Venomous Steel remove from the game a personality whose death was prevented?
No. Venomous Steel only removes from the game cards that were successfully destroyed. Note that if a card is returned to play via a Reaction, eg The Empress' Address or Fortified Camp, it has still been destroyed by the action and so will be removed from the game.
Will Venomous Steel remove from the game a personality whose death was delayed? If so, when will the removal occur?
Venomous Steel's trait triggers at a particular moment in time, "After an action resolves". It checks at that time what cards have been destroyed (note: past tense) by the action and removes them from the game. It does not create a delayed effect that will remove from the game cards that are destroyed by delayed effects of the action, nor cards whose destruction has been delayed.
This is in contrast to Determination, which creates an Indefinite Conditional Effect: "After the action destroys any Personality, remove him from the game." This triggers each time a card is destroyed, which may be zero or many times per action; Venomous Steel triggers exactly once per action.