In the Beginning
Before the mountains rose to dominate the land, the seas churned across the earth, and the skies cracked their first thunderous call, there were only the stars. And among them, locked together in perpetual disharmony, battled the Wyrms of the World. Eien-hebi, the Everserpent, lighting the constellations with radiant divinity, and her sister Musaborikuu, the Devourer, a dark shadow set to consume all creation.
For eons they fought, twisting and writhing in their antipathy, until finally the Everserpent consumed her dark sibling, even though she knew it would lead to her ultimate doom.
Musaborikuu’s spirit was poisoned to its core, and in her defeat she infested the Everserpent. Rather than wither and die in the darkness, Eien-hebi instead chose to burn like the brightest fire – one last display of glorious defiance among the constellations.
In death, her eyes became the sun and the moon, her scales became the plates upon which the land was formed, the shifting nature of the scales forming mountain peaks and the tidal floods, and from within this humanity blossomed like a wellspring from the ashes.
But it was not just the world of men that was born from that cataclysm.
The Everserpent’s final scream resounded through the cosmos, shattering its very fabric. The tremor caused by that cacophonous death rattle split reality asunder, creating two worlds – Chikyū, the mortal, and Kūsho, the Void. It is a cry that still resounds today, echoing through infinity. A noise that fuels the winds of magic blowing perpetually throughout the Void.
The First Age
Although she had been consumed by her sister, Musaborikuu the Devourer succeeded in unleashing her offspring on the world in one last act of spite. Hidden in the darkest shadows throughout the land the Norowareta – the Soulless, malevolent spirits that evolved out of the Devourer’s broken soul – were spawned.
For centuries they spread their darkness, cloaked in flame and shadow and contagion. War, plague and famine were rife, and misery ruled. Though armies rose to quell the evil of the Norowareta, their victories were fleeting, and soon forgotten as the Soulless would always rise again, hungry to consume any who defied their dominance.
Realizing the Norowareta could never be defeated by strength of arms, or even the will of a mortal soul, a little-known priesthood devised a ritual that they hoped might raise a power capable of destroying the Soulless forever. These priests, calling themselves the Crucible of Jade, sacrificed themselves by the score that they might harness the latent mystical aspects of the Everserpent, and manifest them in flesh.
From each of these seven aspects was birthed a divine being – an avatar of Eien-hebi. Rising from the earth, air and sea, these avatars were spawned with but a single purpose – to hunt down the Norowareta and destroy them.
These were the Shin’rei. Wielding weapons of war forged from the first tree they embarked upon a war that lasted a thousand years.
The land was riven with yet more strife, as gods fought across the earth. The land burned and seas boiled as these warriors of light and dark fought at the heads of vast armies. Empires rose and fell, and the earth was riven by the waxing and waning of endless war.
It was not until Hebinomichi’s return that the War of the Norowareta reached its cataclysmic conclusion. This Shin’rei had long ago turned his back on his brothers and sisters but now offered to fight alongside them, returning to do what must be done. With this powerful ally, the Shin’rei defeated the Norowareta in a final cataclysmic battle for the souls of humankind.
The Second Age
With the defeat of the Norowareta peace reigned for a generation. Cities were built anew, and the land and sea became verdant with life. Fish swam in abundant shoals and crops grew ripe in every corner of the world. The Shin’rei, revered as saviors, raised their own empires and ruled with benevolence
Alas, it took the blink of an immortal eye for the pride and hubris of the Shin’rei to flourish. After so long embroiled in conflict, they could never be content with peace.
They watched with growing resentment from their mountain holdfasts and island fortresses as their rivals built dynasties before their eyes.
It was Arashi who ignited the first spark of war. Seeing how revered her sister Akane was by her subjects, Arashi swept down from her mountain kingdom and besieged the Temple of the Sun. When Akane struck back, enraged by the desecration of her beloved temple, it was with her lover Saion by her side. Shizen, the Lord of the Wilds, whose hatred of Saion for his destruction of the land for the fuelling of his forges had festered for decades, came to Arashi’s aid.
Soon the other Shin’rei became embroiled in this internecine feud. Alliances were forged and broken, battles won and lost, until the land was once again left a charnel house of the gods.
Something had to be done, lest the Shin’rei destroy that which they had liberated from the scourge of the Norowareta.
It fell to the ancient priesthood—now known as the Hisuideshi—to reestablish their order to perform a ritual that would separate the Shin’rei from their earthly forms.
Their monks and acolytes quested across Ikaiguchi in search of the ancient texts that would reveal the secrets of this ritual, until eventually they gathered at the Tetsu-Kashiwa, the First Tree. During the ritual, the long-dead priests who had sacrificed themselves during the First Age were summoned as spirits. In their ethereal forms they fell upon the Shin’rei one by one, tearing their godly aspects away from their corporeal bodies and banishing them to the Void.
But the ritual had one unforeseen consequence – the essence of the Norowareta were also brought back to this place, though in a different form. The expulsion of the earthly manifestations of the Shin’rei spawned the Kurai Jūmin, who had lain in wait for a thousand years, and were now able to spread their foul influence throughout the world once more.
And the lands of men would never be the same.
The Third Age
And now we find ourselves deep within the Third Age. The old gods are long gone. This is the Age of Man.
The priests and scribes of Ikaiguchi, believe the Norowareta were defeated and ultimately destroyed.
They are wrong.
Clandestine cults lurk in the shadows, adherents of the many faces of the Kurai Jūmin. Evil stirs.
Soon the Darkness of the Devourer will wake…