Creamsteak
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The Rokugan IR Turn 0 Thread
The history of Rokugan begins in the Celestial Heavens, which at the time were one with the mortal world. There, Lady Sun and Lord Moon were born from nothing, and together bore ten children were named Hida, Doji, Togashi, Akodo, Shiba, Bayushi, Shinjo, Fu Leng, Ryoshun, and Hantei. Lord Moon, Onnotangu, was jealous of his children, however, and did not wish to share their mother’s love with them. He swallowed nine of them, leaving only Hantei, who hid in a cave. When Hantei grew to adulthood, he faced his father in combat and cut open Lord Moon’s belly. From the wound, the eight living children of the Sun and Moon spilled out. One child, Ryoshun, died in his father’s stomach and went on to watch over Jigoku, the realm of the dead. Lord Moon’s blood and Lady Sun’s tears also fell from the sky, raining down on the earth. From the mixture of blood and tears, humanity was born. The kami, too, fell to the earth- Fu Leng landing in a deep pit that would become the Shadowlands, the other eight ending up among the new race of humans.
When humanity was born, it was not alone on the earth. Nezumi, nagas, kenkus, and kitsus lived on earth before humanity arose. The oldest naga stories speak of a race that was flourishing when they were young. All were pushed aside by the rise of the empire. The nezumi empire was shattered by Fu Leng’s Fall, and the nezumi reduced to their savage state in order to survive the horrors of the Shadowlands. The nagas began their long sleep, planning to reawaken when they were needed once more. The kenkus simply withdrew into the deepest forests. The kitsus were hunted down and nearly exterminated, until Akodo saw their intelligence and compassion, and brought the survivors into his clan.
When the kami fell to earth, they held a series of contests to determine who would rule them. Hantei won, and so his line was the line of emperors for a thousand years, until the crowning of Toturi. Fu Leng, alone in the Festering Pit, gathered his own hordes of oni and ogres, and soon made war upon his sisters and brothers and their clans. The other seven kami gathered great human heroes around them, forming the seven great clans of the empire. This young empire could not stand against the power of Fu Leng’s Shadowlands horde, until a small man appeared from the West, calling himself Shinsei.
Shinsei spoke with Hantei for a long time, imparting his philosophy, which was recorded by Shiba and became the Tao of Shinsei. Then, Shinsei took one human from each clan- Hida Atarasi, Doji Konishiko, Lady Matsu, Lady Utaku, Lord Isawa, Lord Mirumoto, and Lady Shosuro- into the Shadowlands to fight Fu Leng. Shinsei and his Seven Thunders defeated Fu Leng, binding his power within twelve Black Scrolls that Shosuro- the only survivor of the Seven Thunders- brought back with her to the empire.
A thousand years passed- not peaceful, for the clans warred against each other virtually without ceasing, as they do to this day. Still, this time is called “A Thousand Years of Peace,” because for a thousand years Fu Leng’s power remained contained in the Black Scrolls. During this time, the Ki-Rin clan, led by the kami Shinjo, left Rokugan to explore the rest of the world. They wandered for eight hundred years, returning in 815 as the Unicorn clan.
The minions of Fu Leng did not rest for a thousand years, however. Not only did the creatures of the Shadowlands attack the empire from without, but the Taint of the Shadowlands began to spread within the empire as well. A Crab scholar named Kuni Nakanu discovered the Taint as early as the year 100, noticing its ability to animate corpses. Four centuries later, a sorcerer now called Iuchiban discovered Nakanu’s works and used them to develop spells of maho. He animated an army of skeletons and zombies within a cemetery in the heart of Otosan Uchi (known as the Battle of Stolen Graves), but he was eventually caught and imprisoned within a tomb deep in Crab territory. His loyal followers, known as Bloodspeakers, continued to pass on his teachings despite their master’s apparent defeat. Iuchiban’s spirit has not lain quietly in his tomb, either. It escaped once, after two hundred years of imprisonment, and very nearly did so again in recent memory. No means has yet been discovered to destroy Iuchiban’s spirit forever, and until that happens, the danger he and his Bloodspeakers represent continues to threaten the empire.
After a thousand years of relative peace, Fu Leng began to stir once more. Bayushi Shoju, champion of the Scorpion, discovered a scroll of prophecy that predicted the return of Fu Leng in the time of the last Hantei. Attempting to prevent the dreadful prophecy from being fulfilled, Shoju killed Hantei XXXVIII and tried to seize the throne. The Emperor’s young son excaped the coup, however, and Akodo Toturi killed Shoju in the throne room. The Scorpion clan was obliterated by the other clans of the empire in retaliation for the coup. Instead of preventing the prophecy’s fulfillment, Shoju made it possible, as the young Hantei XXXIX was easily overcome by Fu Leng.
Following the coup, Yogo Junzo opened the first of the twelve Black Scrolls, unleashing Fu Leng’s power and beginning the evil course Shoju had hoped to prevent. With each additional scroll that was opened, Fu Leng’s control over the Emperor grew more complete. Hida Kisada, champion of the Crab began to move against the Emperor, perceiving his weakness and inability to rule effectively. Striking a bargain with the Shadowlands, Kisada fought his way to the Imperial Palace. What he found, however was not a weak boy, but a dark deity. With eleven Black Scrolls now open, Fu Leng’s possession of the young Hentei was complete, and he quickly cut down the Crab champion. The oni that had marched with the Crab joined their dark master, and the weakened remnant of the Crab army retreated.
In the end, a descendant of Shinsei known as the Hooded Ronin led seven descendants of the original Seven Thunders into Otosan Uchi to face Fu Leng once more: Kisada’s son Yakomo, Utaku Kamoko, Doji Hoturi, Isawa Tadaka, Bayushi Kachiko, Mirumoto Hitomi, and Akodo Toturi. As they fought, Togashi Yokuni revealed himself to be the dragon Togashi, and explained that he had kept the twelfth Black Scroll hidden inside his heart for centuries. Hitomi opened his heart to remove the scroll, killing Togashi, and opened the scroll. With that Fu Leng’s power was fully restored- but he was also fully manifest and fully mortal. At last able to harm Fu Leng, the Seven Thunders renewed their efforts, and Toturi and Hoturi struck the killing blows, destroying the dark deity forever. Toturi took the throne, establishing a new dynasty as Toturi I.
Only two years into his reign, Toturi was kidnapped by ninja and held in ruined Morikage Castle, in the Phoenix lands. The Scorpions once more took the blame, as their association with ninja was famous, but the Emerald Champion, Kakita Toshimoko, refused to exterminate the Scorpions again. Instead, they were sent into exile in the desert wastes to the west, the Burning Sands, while their children were fostered with Toshimoko’s clan, the Crane.
When Toturi was at last found, he was changed: A shadow seemed to have fallen over his eyes, and his behavior went from erratic to completely insane by the end of the war. The ninja who kidnapped him were not Scorpions, but representatives of a more mysterious force: the Shadow, a nameless, formless being left over from creation. The Shadow sought to unmake the empire and all humanity by erasing names, memories, and even forms, re-creating the world in its formless image. Its ninja servants were fearsome representatives of this agenda: Literally faceless, they changed shape easily and walked through shadow.
The Scorpions were not completely blameless, for they had sheltered the Shadow in their schools and castles for a thousand years. When Shosuro returned from the Shadowlands after the first defeat of Fu Leng, she brought the Shadow with her. Faking her own death, Shosuro became Soshi and founded the Scorpion school of shadow magic. Scorpion shugenjas and ninja were marked with shadow brands, which gave them access to the power of the Shadow but began to rob them of their humanity. Such was the fate suffered by the Emperor.
Totuti’s corruption spread chaos through the empire. As his madness increased, so did the strife and warfare among the clans. The chaos extended even to the heavens, as Hitomi challenged and defeated Lord Moon and rose to take his place. Yakamo would later follow her, assisting Lady Sun in her Seppuku and ascending as the new sun deity.
Finally, in a moment of clarity, Toturi recognized that the only way to save the empire was to commit seppuku. Meanwhile, Hida Yakomo was leading an army to Volturnum, the city of Shadow located in the Shadowlands. There, the armies faced the Shadow and its minions at Oblivions’ Gate- the portal through which the spirits of the dead pass on to Jigoku, the realm of the dead. Fighting to prevent the Shadow from closing the portal and destroying Jigoku, and thus erasing the empire’s memory, the massed armies of the clans fought fiercely against ninja and Shadowlands creatures alike. The ronin Ginawa saw Toturi’s spirit and pulled him through the portal for Jigoku, and the purified Emperor led the armies to victory.
Toturi was not the only spirit to return from Jigoku during the Battle at Oblivion’s Gate, however. Large numbers of spirits found themselves on the wrong side of Oblivion’s Gate at the end of the war. In the end, they followed three main paths. Believing that they had already lived their lives, and that they did not belong in modern-day Rokugan, many of the spirits paid their respects to their descendants and committed Seppuku, many throwing themselves off the Cliffs of Golden Tears above the Phoenix temples. Others rejoined their clans and lived among their descendants. For clans such as the Crane and the Lion, hurt badly by the wars against the Shadow, the aid of such spirits played a crucial role in rebuilding the clan’s fortunes. A final group of spirits was led by Hantei XVI (known in life as the Steel Chrysanthemum) and his chief lieutenant, Hida Tsuneo, who established themselves in what was left of the Crane Lands. Drawing spirit armies into his service, and pressing his claim upon the throne as a Hantei instead of an upstart of no lineage, Hantei XVI eventually threw the empire into an eight-year civil war.
Hentei’s army of spirits was finally defeated through a combination of Scorpion treachery, Phoenix magic, and Toturi’s diplomacy. Pretending to turn against the Lion and Dragon clans they had allied with previously, the Scorpions pretended to side with the Hantei and Tsuneo. They then led the spirit armies into Beiden Pass, Where the Shugenjas of the Phoenix had laid a trap: A mighty ritual brought the walls of the pass down on the army. Beaten, Hantei negotiated a peace with Toturi, with a simple cost attached- Toturi must give one of his sons the Hantei name. Hantei Naseru spent much of his childhood at the estate of Hantei XVI, and carries the name of the last imperial line.
Read the official timeline here.
Read the continued official timeline here.
The history of Rokugan begins in the Celestial Heavens, which at the time were one with the mortal world. There, Lady Sun and Lord Moon were born from nothing, and together bore ten children were named Hida, Doji, Togashi, Akodo, Shiba, Bayushi, Shinjo, Fu Leng, Ryoshun, and Hantei. Lord Moon, Onnotangu, was jealous of his children, however, and did not wish to share their mother’s love with them. He swallowed nine of them, leaving only Hantei, who hid in a cave. When Hantei grew to adulthood, he faced his father in combat and cut open Lord Moon’s belly. From the wound, the eight living children of the Sun and Moon spilled out. One child, Ryoshun, died in his father’s stomach and went on to watch over Jigoku, the realm of the dead. Lord Moon’s blood and Lady Sun’s tears also fell from the sky, raining down on the earth. From the mixture of blood and tears, humanity was born. The kami, too, fell to the earth- Fu Leng landing in a deep pit that would become the Shadowlands, the other eight ending up among the new race of humans.
When humanity was born, it was not alone on the earth. Nezumi, nagas, kenkus, and kitsus lived on earth before humanity arose. The oldest naga stories speak of a race that was flourishing when they were young. All were pushed aside by the rise of the empire. The nezumi empire was shattered by Fu Leng’s Fall, and the nezumi reduced to their savage state in order to survive the horrors of the Shadowlands. The nagas began their long sleep, planning to reawaken when they were needed once more. The kenkus simply withdrew into the deepest forests. The kitsus were hunted down and nearly exterminated, until Akodo saw their intelligence and compassion, and brought the survivors into his clan.
When the kami fell to earth, they held a series of contests to determine who would rule them. Hantei won, and so his line was the line of emperors for a thousand years, until the crowning of Toturi. Fu Leng, alone in the Festering Pit, gathered his own hordes of oni and ogres, and soon made war upon his sisters and brothers and their clans. The other seven kami gathered great human heroes around them, forming the seven great clans of the empire. This young empire could not stand against the power of Fu Leng’s Shadowlands horde, until a small man appeared from the West, calling himself Shinsei.
Shinsei spoke with Hantei for a long time, imparting his philosophy, which was recorded by Shiba and became the Tao of Shinsei. Then, Shinsei took one human from each clan- Hida Atarasi, Doji Konishiko, Lady Matsu, Lady Utaku, Lord Isawa, Lord Mirumoto, and Lady Shosuro- into the Shadowlands to fight Fu Leng. Shinsei and his Seven Thunders defeated Fu Leng, binding his power within twelve Black Scrolls that Shosuro- the only survivor of the Seven Thunders- brought back with her to the empire.
A thousand years passed- not peaceful, for the clans warred against each other virtually without ceasing, as they do to this day. Still, this time is called “A Thousand Years of Peace,” because for a thousand years Fu Leng’s power remained contained in the Black Scrolls. During this time, the Ki-Rin clan, led by the kami Shinjo, left Rokugan to explore the rest of the world. They wandered for eight hundred years, returning in 815 as the Unicorn clan.
The minions of Fu Leng did not rest for a thousand years, however. Not only did the creatures of the Shadowlands attack the empire from without, but the Taint of the Shadowlands began to spread within the empire as well. A Crab scholar named Kuni Nakanu discovered the Taint as early as the year 100, noticing its ability to animate corpses. Four centuries later, a sorcerer now called Iuchiban discovered Nakanu’s works and used them to develop spells of maho. He animated an army of skeletons and zombies within a cemetery in the heart of Otosan Uchi (known as the Battle of Stolen Graves), but he was eventually caught and imprisoned within a tomb deep in Crab territory. His loyal followers, known as Bloodspeakers, continued to pass on his teachings despite their master’s apparent defeat. Iuchiban’s spirit has not lain quietly in his tomb, either. It escaped once, after two hundred years of imprisonment, and very nearly did so again in recent memory. No means has yet been discovered to destroy Iuchiban’s spirit forever, and until that happens, the danger he and his Bloodspeakers represent continues to threaten the empire.
After a thousand years of relative peace, Fu Leng began to stir once more. Bayushi Shoju, champion of the Scorpion, discovered a scroll of prophecy that predicted the return of Fu Leng in the time of the last Hantei. Attempting to prevent the dreadful prophecy from being fulfilled, Shoju killed Hantei XXXVIII and tried to seize the throne. The Emperor’s young son excaped the coup, however, and Akodo Toturi killed Shoju in the throne room. The Scorpion clan was obliterated by the other clans of the empire in retaliation for the coup. Instead of preventing the prophecy’s fulfillment, Shoju made it possible, as the young Hantei XXXIX was easily overcome by Fu Leng.
Following the coup, Yogo Junzo opened the first of the twelve Black Scrolls, unleashing Fu Leng’s power and beginning the evil course Shoju had hoped to prevent. With each additional scroll that was opened, Fu Leng’s control over the Emperor grew more complete. Hida Kisada, champion of the Crab began to move against the Emperor, perceiving his weakness and inability to rule effectively. Striking a bargain with the Shadowlands, Kisada fought his way to the Imperial Palace. What he found, however was not a weak boy, but a dark deity. With eleven Black Scrolls now open, Fu Leng’s possession of the young Hentei was complete, and he quickly cut down the Crab champion. The oni that had marched with the Crab joined their dark master, and the weakened remnant of the Crab army retreated.
In the end, a descendant of Shinsei known as the Hooded Ronin led seven descendants of the original Seven Thunders into Otosan Uchi to face Fu Leng once more: Kisada’s son Yakomo, Utaku Kamoko, Doji Hoturi, Isawa Tadaka, Bayushi Kachiko, Mirumoto Hitomi, and Akodo Toturi. As they fought, Togashi Yokuni revealed himself to be the dragon Togashi, and explained that he had kept the twelfth Black Scroll hidden inside his heart for centuries. Hitomi opened his heart to remove the scroll, killing Togashi, and opened the scroll. With that Fu Leng’s power was fully restored- but he was also fully manifest and fully mortal. At last able to harm Fu Leng, the Seven Thunders renewed their efforts, and Toturi and Hoturi struck the killing blows, destroying the dark deity forever. Toturi took the throne, establishing a new dynasty as Toturi I.
Only two years into his reign, Toturi was kidnapped by ninja and held in ruined Morikage Castle, in the Phoenix lands. The Scorpions once more took the blame, as their association with ninja was famous, but the Emerald Champion, Kakita Toshimoko, refused to exterminate the Scorpions again. Instead, they were sent into exile in the desert wastes to the west, the Burning Sands, while their children were fostered with Toshimoko’s clan, the Crane.
When Toturi was at last found, he was changed: A shadow seemed to have fallen over his eyes, and his behavior went from erratic to completely insane by the end of the war. The ninja who kidnapped him were not Scorpions, but representatives of a more mysterious force: the Shadow, a nameless, formless being left over from creation. The Shadow sought to unmake the empire and all humanity by erasing names, memories, and even forms, re-creating the world in its formless image. Its ninja servants were fearsome representatives of this agenda: Literally faceless, they changed shape easily and walked through shadow.
The Scorpions were not completely blameless, for they had sheltered the Shadow in their schools and castles for a thousand years. When Shosuro returned from the Shadowlands after the first defeat of Fu Leng, she brought the Shadow with her. Faking her own death, Shosuro became Soshi and founded the Scorpion school of shadow magic. Scorpion shugenjas and ninja were marked with shadow brands, which gave them access to the power of the Shadow but began to rob them of their humanity. Such was the fate suffered by the Emperor.
Totuti’s corruption spread chaos through the empire. As his madness increased, so did the strife and warfare among the clans. The chaos extended even to the heavens, as Hitomi challenged and defeated Lord Moon and rose to take his place. Yakamo would later follow her, assisting Lady Sun in her Seppuku and ascending as the new sun deity.
Finally, in a moment of clarity, Toturi recognized that the only way to save the empire was to commit seppuku. Meanwhile, Hida Yakomo was leading an army to Volturnum, the city of Shadow located in the Shadowlands. There, the armies faced the Shadow and its minions at Oblivions’ Gate- the portal through which the spirits of the dead pass on to Jigoku, the realm of the dead. Fighting to prevent the Shadow from closing the portal and destroying Jigoku, and thus erasing the empire’s memory, the massed armies of the clans fought fiercely against ninja and Shadowlands creatures alike. The ronin Ginawa saw Toturi’s spirit and pulled him through the portal for Jigoku, and the purified Emperor led the armies to victory.
Toturi was not the only spirit to return from Jigoku during the Battle at Oblivion’s Gate, however. Large numbers of spirits found themselves on the wrong side of Oblivion’s Gate at the end of the war. In the end, they followed three main paths. Believing that they had already lived their lives, and that they did not belong in modern-day Rokugan, many of the spirits paid their respects to their descendants and committed Seppuku, many throwing themselves off the Cliffs of Golden Tears above the Phoenix temples. Others rejoined their clans and lived among their descendants. For clans such as the Crane and the Lion, hurt badly by the wars against the Shadow, the aid of such spirits played a crucial role in rebuilding the clan’s fortunes. A final group of spirits was led by Hantei XVI (known in life as the Steel Chrysanthemum) and his chief lieutenant, Hida Tsuneo, who established themselves in what was left of the Crane Lands. Drawing spirit armies into his service, and pressing his claim upon the throne as a Hantei instead of an upstart of no lineage, Hantei XVI eventually threw the empire into an eight-year civil war.
Hentei’s army of spirits was finally defeated through a combination of Scorpion treachery, Phoenix magic, and Toturi’s diplomacy. Pretending to turn against the Lion and Dragon clans they had allied with previously, the Scorpions pretended to side with the Hantei and Tsuneo. They then led the spirit armies into Beiden Pass, Where the Shugenjas of the Phoenix had laid a trap: A mighty ritual brought the walls of the pass down on the army. Beaten, Hantei negotiated a peace with Toturi, with a simple cost attached- Toturi must give one of his sons the Hantei name. Hantei Naseru spent much of his childhood at the estate of Hantei XVI, and carries the name of the last imperial line.
Read the official timeline here.
Read the continued official timeline here.
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