The Samurai all head out to the fields, which incidentally, is where they find the Korean Lee has wandered off to. Remembering her Summon that she had cast on Lee, Yuki walked over and put her hand to the ground where he stood and then forced the magical energies within her to cast Postcognition on the entire field.
It took a Surge, two Luck, and a burst blood-vessel in her eye, but Yuki somehow pulled it off. And for an instant she was taken back to another time!
Yuki watched events unfold –
Twenty four years ago, there was a great battle here. The Chinese came through with an innumerable army and Dragon’s Breath cannons and met what was thought to be the last hope for Nippon’s final defense. The greatest of Nippon’s warriors and generals gathered in the field of battle against them and the days were glorious.
But in the end, the Chinese were like the sands of the sea – there was no end to their number and as many as were cut down, more followed behind to replace them. At length, they had surrounded the entire Army of Nippon and continued the work of death until no Samurai remained alive – save thirteen generals of Nippon.
These thirteen generals were then bound and forced to watch, as the commoners of Kurokawa were rounded into the village and burned alive with the entire village, women and children and the elderly.
Then a Chinese Wu-Jen called Jan Xian came and decreed to his men that this battle had never taken place – that should it be mentioned again, the offender and his progeny would be killed by Jan Xian’s own hand – and he made each man take a sealed oath in the name of the Ancestors that they would never speak of it.
The Chinese left, but Jan Xian remained, alone with the thirteen generals, all laying helpless before him.
Then a horrifying sight, as the Wu-Jen slowly slit the throats of each of the generals one-by-one – with an arcane dagger, dripping an unknown venom. As each man died a gruesome convulsing death, a vile and unholy spirit went into the corpses, transforming them into terrible monsters – the Rokurokubi (or Pennaggolan)!
Yuki watched, as their heads then pulled free from their bodies – internal organs trailing behind them – to float in the air before the evil Jan Xian.
“Feast my Children!” the Wu-Jen laughed – and the thirteen former generals swooped down upon their own bodies to devoured the flesh from the bones!
The remains of the generals were then thrown down a Spirit Well and capped with a magical seal of some kind – a massive metallic disc, fashioned from black soulsteel and the moaning spirits of the dead generals themselves.
The Wu-Jen Jan Xian then summoned four Earth Elementals to dig a mass grave – covering over forty thousand dead in a mass grave.
When that was done, Jan Xian left – and the place was desolate for almost an entire year, before the war ended and new villagers were moved in to cultivate the land once more.
Yuki knows that this is the place of the dead – and the Korean Lee is standing directly over the sealed tomb of the thirteen generals. And under their feet not more than ten feet… thousands and thousands and thousands of bones…
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Topic: Mythic Nippon Adventure IV (Read 181169 times)