The Scattered Lotus Cluster

[nothri]

Alternatively, someone who obsessed as much over immortality as the First Emperor seems to have done (thank you wikipedia!) might achieve immortality as a mummy but be haunted by mortal frailties. He feels the 'phantom pains' of old age, despite having moved beyond any state in which he should be plagued by them. Perhaps he can banish those pains for a certain amount of time, but they always come back. Oh, even worse- perhaps he feels not only the pain and experiences the loss of memory and faculty he knew as an old man, but finds these problems growing worse as the years pass. In other words, his immortality comes with the weakening of muscle, memory loss, and other signs of age proprotional to his hundreds of years as an immortal- it is as if he did not die but continued aging well after any mortal being would have died. Far from banishing the woes and fears that old age had instilled in him, immortality has compounded those troubles. Or, as yet a third option, when he sleeps the sleep that all mummies must, he 'dreams' intensely of the afterlife. Vivid and powerful, he is subjected to every terrible fate and punishment said to await evildoers in the Chinese version of hell (Yami, isn't it?). He fears that he has not truly escaped the spectre of death. The fact that each time he sleeps he seems to take longer to return to the waking world, and that the punishments get worse and more intense....he fears his hard won immortality is just a fleeting thing, and that one day death will claim him completely. Thus he's haunted by the fear of death as much as an immortal as he ever was as a man. More, perhaps, because his dreams seem to confirm every fear he used to entertain as a mortal- once he could live in the hope of ignorance that the afterlife was not what he feared, now he hosts a growing and grim certainty that it is far worse.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

IIRC, Chinese folklore has a whole bunch of Hells. That in itself might be a good reason to use the afterlife-dreaming idea, because he'd never know what horrible fate he'll experience each time he dreams.

Perhaps he's not only suffering from the aches and pains of age, but his eyesight is failing? He could have been a great lover of books and poetry in life, and now he can't read them anymore. If he'd deliberately kept his subjects illiterate to maintain his own power and superiority, he might be forced to abduct foreign scholars to read to him, assuming he can find someone who can read his culture's writing.

[d'Ysmaul]

Sorry for necroposting (on my first post, no less...)

The Rokushimans do *not* like sailing the Poison Sea... Their native suspicious of outsiders is exacerbated by suspicion of those who cross the Dokyuumi's waters (who must be in league with the evil sea spirits, in the Rokushimans' eyes).

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but as of 3.x most of Rokushima's contact with the Core is from the northeast - traditionally an unlucky direction and the kimon ("demon gate," exactly what it sounds like.)

Whenever Rokushima gets xenophobic, I can see talk about kimon coming up. Maybe Kimonban is the new Nanban?

On a different note, because the Hyakki Yako domain is genius...

Hyakki Retto (the Hundred Demon Archipelago): Scores of islands dot the Poison Sea (their numbers and location seem to over time.) According to Rokushiman legend, every last one of them (or at least every one with a torii) is part of the Hyakki Retto. On misty nights of the year, the islands become one and the Hyakki Yako begins, and woe betide the mortal who encounters it before the parade has passed under every torii gate in the Poison Sea.

When the borders are sealed, the islands become one, just as they do during the Hyakki Yako. Any attempt to leave an island while the borders are sealed will automatically succeed, taking the traveler to the next island in the Archipelago regardless of how far that may be.

[Sareau]

Oriental folktales are delightfully gruesome, enough so that an Asian themed cluster would be refreshing.

My first thoughts:

*grafting the Elder Vampire template/salient powers onto a pennangalan for a nice starter menace. I've loved the pennangalan ever since I read Seabury Quinn's short story "The Malay Horror", and would love to see one used in it's native setting as vampires are in Eurocentric tales.

*The Chinese actually do believe that if the First Emperor is disturbed in his tomb at Mount Li, he will awaken and rule once again. Since he was a bloodthirsty monster in life, one only imagines what sort of horror he is now. The terra cotta warriors found surrounding the tombs could be a fairly elite guard if they are constructs awaiting the Emperor's word. If a group of players can be convinced the Emperor is not going to get up and get bizzay, they could easily be the catalyst that causes the old bird to decide it's time to re-establish the Middle Kingdom.

*Dragons have a much different outlook in the Orient than elsewhere, often being the servants of the Celestial Bureaucracy. The seas were their homes, but they pretty much did whatever they liked.

*The Oriental belief in the sea monk (bonze) seems to invite resurrecting the old ixitxaxhitl for a side adventure roaming the islands.

*The all-too human horrors of the Opium Wars and the fleshpots of the Southeast peninsula almost scream for further abuse with inhuman monsters pulling the pursestrings.

*Kaiju Island!

[whalejudge]

It's sort of a silly idea...but what about a godzilla like darklord? Slumbering away unless disturbed, like Ankhtepot?

[Sareau]

What do you think Kaiju Island was a reference to?