Rokushima Taiyoo (Long?)

[gatchafox]

Hi -

New to FoS. I'm planning a Ravenloft Campaign set in Rokushima Taiyoo. I have Oriental Adventures and I told my players that i'm making a dark Oriental campaign. I've rewritten the background for Rokushima Taiyoo a little too. My question is, does anybody have any ideas or stories that you've used for RT? Any advice?

Here's my revision of RT:

The Fall of the Last Emperor
By Eric Dashen

In the Island of the Sun lived the Emperor, who had six sons. Their mother died just after the last had been born and the Emperor had little time to raise the boys by himself. The sons spent most of their time under the watch of various attendants and masters. Like their father, each of his boys was bred for greatness and their natural strengths were honed and shaped into powerful tools.

The Emperor’s most precious treasures were not his boys, but the nation that he worked tirelessly to protect it. He viewed his sons as the future guardians of the land and expected much from them. The boys worked hard in their studies, learning how to govern and protect the land as best they could.

Busy with affairs of the empire, the Emperor paid little attention to the boys’ efforts. Any acknowledgement the Emperor gave a son was scare and coveted greatly by the boy. The situation quickly became worse as jealousy set in among the brothers. They now fought one another to impress their father more in hopes of receiving a simple nod of approval.

The competition for the attention of their father remained strictly academic until the eldest son reached sixteen years. Now at the proper age, the oldest son, who traditionally would become Emperor after his father passed, was invited to attend all imperial functions with his father.

The other sons went mad with jealousy and lashed out against their brother. While he slept they cut his life braid, a lock of hair that symbolized his royal birth. The oldest son, humiliated by his brothers actions, retaliated. When the Emperor had heard of the disrespect his sons displayed, he called them forth and berated their actions.

At that moment, each son learned a valuable lesson. It was easier to get the Emperor’s attention by lashing out at each other, than by showing respect and following traditions.

As the years went by, the sons fought more and more. Public humiliations were not uncommon, nor was the occasional black eye or arcane burn. The Emperor looked upon his sons with shame. They had failed him. They would destroy everything he spent his life building. None of them was fit to protect his nation after his death. But, the Emperor thought to himself one night, what if I never died?

The Emperor strength lay in his skills as a warrior, a strong general upon the battlefield. Before the birth of his third son, he led his forces to victory against the nation to the east. He conquered the savage rat folk on the southern coast six years later when they began to interfere with trade routes. The Emperor was a warrior, not a wizard. He would need help to achieve his latest ambition.

He summoned a council of all the great mages and wise men in the land, including those of the Vanara and Spirit Folk. The council met for many days. In the end, nobody had an answer that satisfied the Emperor’s desire for eternal life. Furious at their incompetence, he had all the wise men banished from the land.

With nobody left to help, the Emperor took it upon himself to find the solution. He spent all his free time reading the ancient texts, searching for anything that may help. As his sons continued to act out against one another, the Emperor’s hope of saving his nation from his sons diminished.

Then, one day, the Emperor discovered a book that he had never seen before in his private library. Bound in leather, the ancient tome was written in dark red ink. As the Emperor read, it seemed to him that the book spoke to him rather than him reading its contents.

After only just mere minutes of examining the text, the Emperor had found his answer. The text described a summoning spell that would call forth a spirit. The Emperor could steal part of its life force to prevent him from dying. There was risk involved, but the Emperor trusted his skill in the katana to handle and problem.

The Emperor called his sons to the palace and announced that none of them was worthy of ruling after his death. He hinted at his plans to rule his land forever and then granted each of them a region of the nation to preside over under his protective eyes. The sons, enraged at this announcement, argued with the Emperor. However the Emperor would not listen and sent his disrespectful children away.

Many years were spent preparing for the summoning. Using methods unknown to any other man, the Emperor wrenched the spirit from its own existence into ours. The spirit screamed and struggled against its magical bonds, clawing at its own blackened skin, falling further and further into madness in this foreign reality. As the Emperor attempted to leech its life force, he made a mistake. The spirit managed to escape from its bindings and lunged at the Emperor.

The maddened spirit grabbed the Emperor and flew high into the air in a great blast of darkness. Miles above the land, the Emperor drew his katana and fought against the screeching spirit. As the Emperor struck a fatal blow, the spirit burst into pieces of shadow that fell towards the land. The Emperor, no longer held by the spirit, fell as well.

The Emperor’s fall from the sky ended upon the very circle that bound the summoned spirit. A large crack thundered across the land. The island shook with a violent shudder as its Emperor died. The walls of the palace cracked and fell. Villages and towns sank into nothingness. Dark water flowed from the binding circle, drowning everything for miles under its frigid surface. Like spokes on a wheel, enormous cracks raced from the palace across the land, splintering the island into six large pieces. The dark water flowed into these chasms creating large rivers that isolated each region.

Caught by the wind, the remains of the maddened spirit were spread across the island and surrounding waters. Wherever the dark remains landed, a shadow spread. This darkness gave birth to many horrors that survive in these shadow lands. Brave heroes who try to rid their homeland of these horrors are often never seen again or become tainted with pure evil.

Time passed after the Emperor’s death and each of his sons now acts as feudal lord over his region, now isolated by rivers that flow from the dark water lake where the palace once stood. War between these island nations is common, each son claiming that he has a right to his father’s throne and rebuild the Emperor’s nation.
---------------------------------------

The basic concept is that the Emperor summoned the spirit of the island and created a link between his blood and the island. So now whenever he or any of his kin (ie his sons) die, a part of the island dies too.

Again, ideas, suggestions, adventures, monsters - whatever would be a big help.

-Eric Dashen
gatchafox

[Gemathustra]

Just to nitpick, but, "books" in Asian cultures tended to be scrolls, sometimes very elaborate scroll with borders pasted in, but, scrolls, not "leather-bound tomes".
Usually they were made out of paper, but the oldest ones were made from wooden, sometimes bone strips tied together.

[gatchafox]

Ah, good suggestion. Easily fixed.

[WolfKook]

I used a story about an old man (Bushi) who was the only one who spoke the language of my PCs (Who came from the core) and helped them get along in RT. After they trusted him, he asked them to help him recover his grandfather's samurai armor, which were a family treasure stolen by a rival family when his granfather was defeated, and which lose gave dishonor to his whole family. However, the place in which the armor was hidden was known only to the current head of the rival family, who was now a powerful warlord at the service of the shujin. After they got the map from the warlord's library, they had to cross two of the islands to get to the armor, only to discover that the armor was cursed with the spirit of an Oni who would possess anyone who wore it.