The Inciting Incident

[RelentlessImp]

There are many secret societies within Shou Lung itself that seek to bring down the Kuo Dynasty; the Society of the Jade Empress, for instance, wishes to replace the Kuo Dynasty with the Hai Dynasty, a grudge stretching back multiple dynasties all the way to the Year of the Purring Pard. The Many-Hued Peacock Society wishes to see the intricate and complex bureaucracy of the Empire destroyed. The Society of the Purple Lotus wish to do away with the Mandarinate and return rule directly to the noble families of Shou Lung. But they all fail, and pale, in comparison to the Emperor's own secret society, bodyguards, and police force - the Royal Vagabonds.

For centuries, the Royal Vagabonds have lived apart from the rest of Shou Lung, a secret clan of ninja that serve the Emperor directly, with no allegiances to aught but the Emperor of the current dynasty. Their children are raised in a secret village, and drilled from birth to live and die for the Shou Emperor, and enter service from an early age. Scant few individuals know of the Royal Vagabonds, for they come and go like the shadow, and only they themselves can count their number.

That is, until about a century ago when the various oni of Shou Lung banded together and invaded the secret village of the Royal Vagabonds, warping their minds with fell magic and enslaving them into their service. Calling themselves the Five Storms, they turned the Royal Vagabonds' loyalties to themselves, and they systematically set about erasing every claimant to the throne of Shou Lung over the next fifty years. Only one family survived, and then, only barely; only Li Huiling and his young son, along with a group of vassals and guards, fortuitously forewarned, manage to turn aside the assassins' blades and flee, but not before stealing into the Imperial Palace and making off with the Emblems of Imperial Authority.

With the death of the Seventh Emperor Chin of the Kuo Dynasty and that of his young son in 1312 DR (Shou Year 2562) and the assassination of any other who could lay claim to the throne save their puppet, the Five Storms installed the only remaining candidate, Takahiro Soto, to the throne of Shou Lung, while the Five Storms continued their search for the Emblems of Imperial Authority that would legitimize his rule.

Unfortunately for them, Li Huiling had fled far. Pausing in the flight of his household only briefly in Hai Yuan, in the forest bordering the ocean, to entrust the warding box in the deep, secret vaults of his late wife's ancestral home, Laoshulin, her birth family having been spared for having no claim to the throne of Shou Lung. Then, with the aid of his late wife's family, they commissioned a ship to take them to distant Ausa, where Tsutoku changed his name to Kaijitsu Rokuro. Selling his ancestral blade, Suishen, to a rich merchant in Ausa to further their flight into the historically antagonistic state of T'u Lung. They eventually settled into Wai, in a city known as Xianxiang, a place known mostly for its pleasure district, and Rokuro became a simple glassblower, apprenticing to an established one in Xianxiang. He proved to be a skilled glassblower, and before long had taken over his master's glassworks, the ancient master surrendering it to the youth to retire and live out his dotage spoiling his great-grandchildren.

His son, name changed to Kaijitsu Lonjiku before he could even remember his birth name, proved to be equally as talented as his father, and soon the two were churning out elaborate pieces to decorate the homes of decadent noble, shogun, and even the more prominent pleasure houses of the city. But Rokuro never forgot the assassination. As he grew older, he knew he had to reveal to his son his true heritage, and so soon commissioned a ship to take them back to Shou Lung, to return to Laoshulin where the Emblems of Imperial Authority still lay.

Unfortunately, a massive storm hit the coast as soon as they reached Laoshulin, and after several days in Laoshulin while the storms raged, Rokuro agonized over how to break the news to Lonjiku. Unfortunately, Lonjiku's patience was not the best when it came to a subject his father had been so tight-lipped about, and he opened the warding box, exposing the Emblems of Imperial Authority to scrying. Horrified, Rokuro sealed the box up and told the head of his household guard to get everyone back onto the ships, including Lonjiku, and sent them off into the storm, promising to follow later after throwing the potentially incoming assassins.

It took barely an hour for the Royal Vagabonds to sweep across Laoshulin, with the three vessels only barely away and into the storms. With chilling efficiency, the assassins slaughtered every last person in Laoshulin, too quickly for them to even learn of the vaults the warding box now lay in, forgotten. They learned of the family's flight to T'u Lung, and dispatched a small group to settle and assimilate into the country and continue their search for any survivors. They learned of the three ships capsizing and sinking in the wild storms that raged across the coastline shared between, and assumed the Emblems of Imperial Authority had simply sank to the bottom of the ocean, along with any issue.

Lonjiku, however, survived, drifting on broken planks all the way to the wharves of Ausa, getting fished out of the harbor. Returning home to Xianxiang, he resumed his life, married a wife, had children, killed his own wife for birthing a bastard, and ultimately died when his wife's adulterous son led goblins into Xianxiang as retaliation for his poor treatment.

Edited March 27, 2023 by RelentlessImp (see edit history)