Domain Update: Rokushima Taiyou
Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2015 11:42 am
As part of my current work to revise Ravenloft for an upcoming campaign I'm running, I decided to revisit Rokushima, one of my favorite domains with one of my least favorite darklords. Haki Shinpi (besides having his name in the wrong damned order) is an impotent ghost whose existence is completely irrelevant to any adventures a GM might want to run in the domain. While adventures shouldn't require a darklord's presence, they also shouldn't completely ignore it either. A darklord should be a presence that warps the domain around himself, making everything about him even if indirectly. My revised Rokushima makes it a more rounded Japanese-inspired domain, directly referencing things like kaidan ghost stories and making Shinpi into more of a "demonic Oda Nobunaga" type, which has more of a Japanese resonance to it.
I also spell the domain "Rokushima Taiyou," since long-O sounds are Romanized as "ou" in Hepburn transliteration.
Edit: Based on the translation of the domain's name, its kanji should look like 六島 太陽 or more likely 六島の太陽 (i.e., "Rokushima no Taiyou").
***
Rokushima Taiyou
Rokushima Taiyou, meaning “the six islands of the sun,” would seem to be misnamed on two counts. The domain consists of four large islands in the midst of a poisonous, roiling ocean, surrounding an immense freshwater sea. The cloud cover, heavy mists, and dense fog rolling off the island’s many mountains make sunny days a rarity as well. Still, the eldest natives of the islands can remember a time when the name rang true—when there were six islands instead of four, and when the sun shone brightly every day.
The remaining islands are large and verdant along the coasts facing the Great Mirror Lake that they surround. The central portions of each island are dangerous mountains, a few of which are volcanic, before reaching the outer edges of the island ring, which face toward the Poison Sea. The Great Mirror Lake is fed by clear mountain springs and frequent rain, its waters cascading down jagged slopes of coral and rock into the venomous depths of the Poison Sea. Only the westernmost inlet to the Great Mirror Lake is navigable, making it difficult for ships from beyond the Mists to safely make their way to the larger freshwater port cities. Most simply dock at one of the small islands lying beyond the straits, the only place where merchants from all four islands can come to do business anymore.
The Rokuma are slight in stature but blessed with trim builds and elegant grace. Their skin tone ranges from creamy white to ruddy brown, and both hair and eye color tend toward dark tones, particularly black. Men and women alike grow their hair long; women wear theirs in elaborate fashion, held together with wooden pins, while men tend to keep theirs in neat tails or knots. Both genders wear wide-sleeved robes belted at the waist with a sash, worn over long shirts or shifts, but men also include loose trousers or wrapped leggings while women’s robes nearly trail the ground. Wooden sandals or soft slippers complete the native look, with the addition of broad straw hats on the few days the sun shines or the many days it rains.
Homes in Rokushima are almost inevitably made of wood, with sliding doors made of thin paper on wooden frames. The elite of the land, the noble warriors and their lords, build mighty stone castles and palaces with multiple tiers and high walls. Serene shrines dot the islands in places of natural beauty; whether humble of magnificent, these shrines are typically marked by uniquely shaped gates known as torii, thought to be passages between the human and spirit worlds.
The local weather is a study in extremes. Even with the sun rarely seen, summers tend to be oppressive, hot, and muggy, with frequent storms. Autumn is a time of rampaging typhoons that can last for days on end, often damaging homes or even sweeping away entire unlucky villages with mudslides. Winters are brutally cold, burying the entire domain under snow that does not abate for weeks at a time. The one time of the year that the Rokuma look forward to is spring, which is all too short but very pleasant, a time when the islands are covered in the pale blossoms of flowering trees.
The Rokuma are a people who place great emphasis on the importance of family and knowing one’s place. Because of the Rokuma philosophy that family is more important than self, family names are given before personal names (so a man named “Akemi Ichigo” is Ichigo of the family Akemi). In theory, being a farmer or craftsman is just as worthy as being a warrior or ruler, as long as one does one’s best in that position. In practice, the warrior elite of the nation do as they please while at least publicly trying to seem compassionate and generous to those lesser than themselves.
Though the rulers of the four remaining islands are brothers, no love is lost between them. They constantly skirmish with one another over outlying regions of their lands, though it has been a generation since they battled one another in earnest. The death of two of their brothers, followed by the destruction of their islands in horrific earthquakes and tsunamis, has made them more cautious about direct confrontations. Each of them considers himself the only true ruler of all Rokushima Taiyou, with his brothers as mere pretenders. The nation was once united under their father, a powerful and ruthless general, but they began to squabble over his empire almost before his body was cold. Though they publicly pretend to honor his memory and the ways of their ancestors, each is as cold, ruthless, and underhanded as he was, using the very concept of honor to motivate their people while holding it in no regard.
Tropes
Rokushima Taiyou is a direct analogue to historical Japan, particularly the Japan of the Warring States Period before the unification of the country by Tokugawa. It can just as easily replicate any major period of Japanese history, however, from the classical Heian Era to the unified but still violent Edo Period. Rokushima is a place to tell samurai stories (or jidaigeki in Japanese), but more importantly it is a place for traditional kaidan-style Japanese horror tales.
While kaidan can mean nearly any horror tale in its broadest usage, it more specifically refers to old-fashioned “scary stories” that call back to historical Japanese folk tales. Stories of the kaidan type typically include eerie happenings, ghosts, omens, and elements of vengeance. These stories also often include water as a ghostly element, due to traditional Japanese cultural links between water and the underworld. Horror in Rokushima follows these general patterns; for good reference material, check out some modern or classic Japanese horror films or manga, such as Ringu, Ju-On, or the works of Junji Ito.
Themes
• The Code of the Warrior: Life in Rokushima is structured around rule by a warrior-noble caste known as samurai. Their complicated system of honor, glory, and obedience is known as bushido, the “warrior’s way.” Whether a warrior actually believes in it or not, his public actions are judged based on his adherence to its precepts. The strict demands of the code often come into conflict with the desires of the heart or the realities of life, which in turns generates situations of drama, tragedy, sorrow, and horror. It also leads to many warriors confronting the basic hypocrisy of their code when obedience conflicts with compassion, both important virtues to the samurai.
• The Spirit World: The people of Rokushima believe in a vast pantheon of spirits, gods, and demons, all of whom are thought to be observing mortals out of interest, curiosity, or mere boredom. Appeasing these spirits and avoiding their ire forms a good portion of the average person’s daily life. Ignoring the demands of the spirits can lead to being cursed, or even being stolen away by a particularly angered being. In Rokushima, the spirits are real—and humans ignore them at their peril.
• The Cycle of Karma: The concept of karma can be simplified to the idea that doing evil deeds inevitably comes back on their perpetrator. An evil person may escape punishment for a long time—even his whole life, perhaps—but the darkness in a human soul inevitably finds an outlet to bring retribution on that person. Someone who avoids mortal justice may find themselves trapped as a ghost, damned for all eternity to never know release from pain. Even those who struggle to avoid the punishment of destiny often find themselves building the circumstances for their own destruction without realizing it. Things run in cycles, and every beginning holds the seed of its own end. This also speaks to the idea of impermanence; the Rokuma believe that nothing lasts forever, and all old things must pass in time to make way for the new.
The Darklord
Shinpi Haki was a ruthless man who exploited his enemies’ weaknesses without a shred of honor, even as he publicly paid service to the warrior’s code. In his lifetime, he took six warring islands and united them into a single mighty nation, beholden only to the strength of arms that he could muster. Even after he became lord of Rokushima Taiyou, he spent many of his twilight years putting down peasant rebellions, destroying religions that he considered dangerous to the traditional Rokuma way of life, and purging people of non-Rokuma descent to rid the nation of “foreigners.” As he grew older, he pitted his six sons against one another to vie for his favor, believing that only conflict could make them strong enough to rule in his stead.
Lord Shinpi succeeded all too well at molding his sons into his own image. All of them grew into ruthless, honorless conquerors who turned on one another as soon as he died. Shinpi Haki did not pass on peacefully in death, however. His many evil deeds trapped him in the mortal world as a ghost, a powerless spirit destined to watch and observe as his heirs tore his nation to pieces over pride and vainglory. Lord Shinpi’s rage grew as he watched his sons squander everything he had spent a lifetime building.
In the end, his grudge grew too powerful for the spirit world to contain entirely. His evil began to draw demons, ghosts, and malicious spirits to him, feeding his darkness in a growing spiral of hate. Shinpi decided that all of his sons were equally worthless, and that the only person with the right to rule over Rokushima was himself. Armed with hatred beyond human reckoning, he haunted his sons’ dreams, pushing them to use ever more dishonorable methods in their battles. When hired assassins gave two of his sons cowards’ deaths, his blood connection to them allowed him to devour their souls and drag their islands down into the bleak spirit world he now inhabited.
Shinpi Haki now rules over two islands—a third of his former empire. While everyone believes these islands to have been utterly destroyed, the truth is that they and their people have merely been spirited away, doomed to live under Lord Shinpi’s tyrannical hand. Demons, ghosts, and monsters of all sorts fill the roles that noble samurai once filled, treating humans as little more than cattle and slaves. Lord Shinpi cares nothing for their suffering; he only wishes to rule, even if he rules over nothing more than a blasted, grey wasteland filled with corpses and monsters.
Lord Shinpi’s remaining four sons have turned into cautious men after the seeming destruction of their brothers’ lands. For now, he bides his time, filling their minds with dreams of conquest and glory in the hopes of pushing them into desperate acts. He knows that if they should die of peaceful means—such as passing away from old age—they will go just as peacefully into death and escape his clutches, so he tries every means available to him to ensure their violent, untimely ends. He has dispatched assassins against them, inspired their enemies to rise up, and even thinned the borders between the mortal and spirit worlds to allow monsters to rampage their lands. Despite his best efforts they remain alive, due to equal parts paranoia and martial strength. Every year makes Lord Shinpi a bit more desperate, a bit more likely to overreach and tip his hand. When that happens, no one knows exactly how his sons will respond. After all, how does one make war on the afterlife?
When he wants to close the domain’s borders, horrible typhoons rise up out of the Poison Sea, making it impossible for ships to survive unless they turn back for safe harbor. Using this ability distracts Lord Shinpi from his primary goals, however. While he is so distracted, his sons sleep peacefully and dream of the honor they once possessed—and of the better world they could build if they only put aside their old grudges. Shinpi fears what would happen if they were permitted to follow these noble impulses, so he never allows them more than a few nights of respite.
I also spell the domain "Rokushima Taiyou," since long-O sounds are Romanized as "ou" in Hepburn transliteration.
Edit: Based on the translation of the domain's name, its kanji should look like 六島 太陽 or more likely 六島の太陽 (i.e., "Rokushima no Taiyou").
***
Rokushima Taiyou
Rokushima Taiyou, meaning “the six islands of the sun,” would seem to be misnamed on two counts. The domain consists of four large islands in the midst of a poisonous, roiling ocean, surrounding an immense freshwater sea. The cloud cover, heavy mists, and dense fog rolling off the island’s many mountains make sunny days a rarity as well. Still, the eldest natives of the islands can remember a time when the name rang true—when there were six islands instead of four, and when the sun shone brightly every day.
The remaining islands are large and verdant along the coasts facing the Great Mirror Lake that they surround. The central portions of each island are dangerous mountains, a few of which are volcanic, before reaching the outer edges of the island ring, which face toward the Poison Sea. The Great Mirror Lake is fed by clear mountain springs and frequent rain, its waters cascading down jagged slopes of coral and rock into the venomous depths of the Poison Sea. Only the westernmost inlet to the Great Mirror Lake is navigable, making it difficult for ships from beyond the Mists to safely make their way to the larger freshwater port cities. Most simply dock at one of the small islands lying beyond the straits, the only place where merchants from all four islands can come to do business anymore.
The Rokuma are slight in stature but blessed with trim builds and elegant grace. Their skin tone ranges from creamy white to ruddy brown, and both hair and eye color tend toward dark tones, particularly black. Men and women alike grow their hair long; women wear theirs in elaborate fashion, held together with wooden pins, while men tend to keep theirs in neat tails or knots. Both genders wear wide-sleeved robes belted at the waist with a sash, worn over long shirts or shifts, but men also include loose trousers or wrapped leggings while women’s robes nearly trail the ground. Wooden sandals or soft slippers complete the native look, with the addition of broad straw hats on the few days the sun shines or the many days it rains.
Homes in Rokushima are almost inevitably made of wood, with sliding doors made of thin paper on wooden frames. The elite of the land, the noble warriors and their lords, build mighty stone castles and palaces with multiple tiers and high walls. Serene shrines dot the islands in places of natural beauty; whether humble of magnificent, these shrines are typically marked by uniquely shaped gates known as torii, thought to be passages between the human and spirit worlds.
The local weather is a study in extremes. Even with the sun rarely seen, summers tend to be oppressive, hot, and muggy, with frequent storms. Autumn is a time of rampaging typhoons that can last for days on end, often damaging homes or even sweeping away entire unlucky villages with mudslides. Winters are brutally cold, burying the entire domain under snow that does not abate for weeks at a time. The one time of the year that the Rokuma look forward to is spring, which is all too short but very pleasant, a time when the islands are covered in the pale blossoms of flowering trees.
The Rokuma are a people who place great emphasis on the importance of family and knowing one’s place. Because of the Rokuma philosophy that family is more important than self, family names are given before personal names (so a man named “Akemi Ichigo” is Ichigo of the family Akemi). In theory, being a farmer or craftsman is just as worthy as being a warrior or ruler, as long as one does one’s best in that position. In practice, the warrior elite of the nation do as they please while at least publicly trying to seem compassionate and generous to those lesser than themselves.
Though the rulers of the four remaining islands are brothers, no love is lost between them. They constantly skirmish with one another over outlying regions of their lands, though it has been a generation since they battled one another in earnest. The death of two of their brothers, followed by the destruction of their islands in horrific earthquakes and tsunamis, has made them more cautious about direct confrontations. Each of them considers himself the only true ruler of all Rokushima Taiyou, with his brothers as mere pretenders. The nation was once united under their father, a powerful and ruthless general, but they began to squabble over his empire almost before his body was cold. Though they publicly pretend to honor his memory and the ways of their ancestors, each is as cold, ruthless, and underhanded as he was, using the very concept of honor to motivate their people while holding it in no regard.
Tropes
Rokushima Taiyou is a direct analogue to historical Japan, particularly the Japan of the Warring States Period before the unification of the country by Tokugawa. It can just as easily replicate any major period of Japanese history, however, from the classical Heian Era to the unified but still violent Edo Period. Rokushima is a place to tell samurai stories (or jidaigeki in Japanese), but more importantly it is a place for traditional kaidan-style Japanese horror tales.
While kaidan can mean nearly any horror tale in its broadest usage, it more specifically refers to old-fashioned “scary stories” that call back to historical Japanese folk tales. Stories of the kaidan type typically include eerie happenings, ghosts, omens, and elements of vengeance. These stories also often include water as a ghostly element, due to traditional Japanese cultural links between water and the underworld. Horror in Rokushima follows these general patterns; for good reference material, check out some modern or classic Japanese horror films or manga, such as Ringu, Ju-On, or the works of Junji Ito.
Themes
• The Code of the Warrior: Life in Rokushima is structured around rule by a warrior-noble caste known as samurai. Their complicated system of honor, glory, and obedience is known as bushido, the “warrior’s way.” Whether a warrior actually believes in it or not, his public actions are judged based on his adherence to its precepts. The strict demands of the code often come into conflict with the desires of the heart or the realities of life, which in turns generates situations of drama, tragedy, sorrow, and horror. It also leads to many warriors confronting the basic hypocrisy of their code when obedience conflicts with compassion, both important virtues to the samurai.
• The Spirit World: The people of Rokushima believe in a vast pantheon of spirits, gods, and demons, all of whom are thought to be observing mortals out of interest, curiosity, or mere boredom. Appeasing these spirits and avoiding their ire forms a good portion of the average person’s daily life. Ignoring the demands of the spirits can lead to being cursed, or even being stolen away by a particularly angered being. In Rokushima, the spirits are real—and humans ignore them at their peril.
• The Cycle of Karma: The concept of karma can be simplified to the idea that doing evil deeds inevitably comes back on their perpetrator. An evil person may escape punishment for a long time—even his whole life, perhaps—but the darkness in a human soul inevitably finds an outlet to bring retribution on that person. Someone who avoids mortal justice may find themselves trapped as a ghost, damned for all eternity to never know release from pain. Even those who struggle to avoid the punishment of destiny often find themselves building the circumstances for their own destruction without realizing it. Things run in cycles, and every beginning holds the seed of its own end. This also speaks to the idea of impermanence; the Rokuma believe that nothing lasts forever, and all old things must pass in time to make way for the new.
The Darklord
Shinpi Haki was a ruthless man who exploited his enemies’ weaknesses without a shred of honor, even as he publicly paid service to the warrior’s code. In his lifetime, he took six warring islands and united them into a single mighty nation, beholden only to the strength of arms that he could muster. Even after he became lord of Rokushima Taiyou, he spent many of his twilight years putting down peasant rebellions, destroying religions that he considered dangerous to the traditional Rokuma way of life, and purging people of non-Rokuma descent to rid the nation of “foreigners.” As he grew older, he pitted his six sons against one another to vie for his favor, believing that only conflict could make them strong enough to rule in his stead.
Lord Shinpi succeeded all too well at molding his sons into his own image. All of them grew into ruthless, honorless conquerors who turned on one another as soon as he died. Shinpi Haki did not pass on peacefully in death, however. His many evil deeds trapped him in the mortal world as a ghost, a powerless spirit destined to watch and observe as his heirs tore his nation to pieces over pride and vainglory. Lord Shinpi’s rage grew as he watched his sons squander everything he had spent a lifetime building.
In the end, his grudge grew too powerful for the spirit world to contain entirely. His evil began to draw demons, ghosts, and malicious spirits to him, feeding his darkness in a growing spiral of hate. Shinpi decided that all of his sons were equally worthless, and that the only person with the right to rule over Rokushima was himself. Armed with hatred beyond human reckoning, he haunted his sons’ dreams, pushing them to use ever more dishonorable methods in their battles. When hired assassins gave two of his sons cowards’ deaths, his blood connection to them allowed him to devour their souls and drag their islands down into the bleak spirit world he now inhabited.
Shinpi Haki now rules over two islands—a third of his former empire. While everyone believes these islands to have been utterly destroyed, the truth is that they and their people have merely been spirited away, doomed to live under Lord Shinpi’s tyrannical hand. Demons, ghosts, and monsters of all sorts fill the roles that noble samurai once filled, treating humans as little more than cattle and slaves. Lord Shinpi cares nothing for their suffering; he only wishes to rule, even if he rules over nothing more than a blasted, grey wasteland filled with corpses and monsters.
Lord Shinpi’s remaining four sons have turned into cautious men after the seeming destruction of their brothers’ lands. For now, he bides his time, filling their minds with dreams of conquest and glory in the hopes of pushing them into desperate acts. He knows that if they should die of peaceful means—such as passing away from old age—they will go just as peacefully into death and escape his clutches, so he tries every means available to him to ensure their violent, untimely ends. He has dispatched assassins against them, inspired their enemies to rise up, and even thinned the borders between the mortal and spirit worlds to allow monsters to rampage their lands. Despite his best efforts they remain alive, due to equal parts paranoia and martial strength. Every year makes Lord Shinpi a bit more desperate, a bit more likely to overreach and tip his hand. When that happens, no one knows exactly how his sons will respond. After all, how does one make war on the afterlife?
When he wants to close the domain’s borders, horrible typhoons rise up out of the Poison Sea, making it impossible for ships to survive unless they turn back for safe harbor. Using this ability distracts Lord Shinpi from his primary goals, however. While he is so distracted, his sons sleep peacefully and dream of the honor they once possessed—and of the better world they could build if they only put aside their old grudges. Shinpi fears what would happen if they were permitted to follow these noble impulses, so he never allows them more than a few nights of respite.
