Can you activate Farthest Fortess' battle action and then bow it to pay for the weapon? Would the rest of the effects (personality bow and card draw) still go off once the stronghold is bowed?
Buying a weapon with Farthest Fortress
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.
Can you activate Farthest Fortess' battle action and then bow it to pay for the weapon?
Yes you can.
Would the rest of the effects (personality bow and card draw) still go off once the stronghold is bowed?
The rules state that abilities on bowed cards may not be used. However this does not mean that an action that has been legally taken from an unbowed card stops to resolve when the card bows, otherwise you could never use an ability on a card whose costs bow the card.
As a consequence, after you bowed Farthest Fortess to pay for the Weapon and it attached to your performing Personality, you may still target and bow an enemy Personality with lower Force and, if you attached a Weapon and bowed a Personality, you draw a card.