Baifa Monü Zhuan
- Intent: To add lore to one fo the lesser known continents of Atrisia
- Image Credit: EnGadget.com: SHadow of the Tomb Raider Art
- Canon: N/A
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- Landmark Name: Ukiyo-E
- Classification: Ocean (Coastline), Massive Jungle, Mountain Ranges, Swamp/Grove (Interior), Canyon (Izaniyaki), Lake
- Location: Atrisia
- Affiliation: Atrisian Commonwealth
- Size: Massive Continent
- Population: Moderately Populated
- Demographics: Atrisian's largely as few others can survive on the continent itself.
- The Oni: The descendants of the ancient Atrisians. They are the inhabitants of the few surviving cities, striving to preserve life and fight the creeping darkness and sickness. They are taller than average Atrisian's, with darker skin and more exotic eye colors (gold, amber, jade), though the "Oni" moniker is an external exaggeration. They are a civilization struggling for survival, maintaining ancient light-based traditions.
- Taeki: The primal, primitive Atrisian's, direct descendants of those corrupted by Shonagon. They are a death cult, reveling in the darkness, body modification (emulating predatory wildlife), and ritual sacrifice to the Moon Goddess/Death God (Shonagon). They are scattered, organized into tribal death-sects, and dominate the jungle's interior, tombs, and crypts. They actively seek to unleash the dark energies the Tiantai sealed away.
- Accessibility: Hard to reach and highly dangerous. Access is a journey into escalating peril.
- Coastal Defense: The coastline is surrounded by Immolation Waves, fierce, tide-driven currents that smash most vessels against the sheer, statue-ringed cliffs.
- The Broken Bridge: Submerged ruins of ancient land bridges can only be crossed during the low-tide nadir a perilous, short-lived window.
- The Gates of Atrisia: A small handful of treacherous, highly defended, and narrow passes cut into the massive coastal cliffs. Ancient, gigantic statues the Silent Sentinels surround the continent, serving as warning markers.
- Internal Navigation: Once past the cliffs, the continent is an endless sprawl of thick, shadowed jungle and forest. The canopy is so dense that air travel is hazardous (poor visibility, aggressive flying creatures), and ground travel is a constant battle against terrain, hostile wildlife, and Taeki traps.
- Description: Ukiyo-E is a continent perpetually suffocated by its own bio-mass and cursed history. It is a vast, primeval land defined by a dense, toxic jungle canopy that filters the sunlight, plunging the interior into eternal, humid twilight (the Shadowed Sun effect).
- Terrain: Dominated by immense, sweeping cliff faces (often obscuring deep, fast rivers), and massive mountain ranges where ancient, vine-choked structures crumble. Swamps and groves harbor sickness and predatory flora.
- The Threat: The continent is a colossal ecosystem of danger. Life is hyper-aggressive: Bone-eating parasites, carnivorous fish, giant predatory reptiles, plague-carrying insects, apex terrestrial predators (massive wolves, 'hawk-tigers'), and airborne threats. The ruined cities are not just overgrown; they are now living ecosystems of danger, where the Taeki battle for dominance against nature's reclamation.
The Well of Souls: The legendary site where Shonagon slew the Sun God, Chujo. It is a terrifyingly deep, ancient stone shaft lined with petrified wood platforms used by Taeki for their most sacred and violent rituals. The Taeki believe casting victims here perpetuates the cycle of corruption. Rumored to be a thin veil to the underworld, it is a nexus of dark Force energy.
THe coastline: Tall and dangerous with caves and alcoves around the continent. The waves crash in and smash most vessels in the water. Accessibility from the air is highly recommended.
Izaniyaki Cliffs: A deep, sprawling canyon complex bordering the coast. These cliffs are a Rite of Passage for the Oni, where they must climb the impossible sheer faces to retrieve the feather of the dangerous, giant Hawk-Bat a test of courage and dedication to their ancestral legacy. The deep gorges below are a Taeki hunting ground.
The jungle: The overwhelming primary feature. Massive, ancient trees form a canopy so thick it creates the 'Shadowed Sun' effect, making the ground level dark, oppressive, and humid. Sections transition into toxic swamps or hot, dry 'desert' valleys caused by resource depletion. The true danger lies in the ruined cities, tombs, and crypts, which act as breeding grounds for plagues, advanced predators, and Taeki cults.
Temple of the Sun God: One of the few regions on the continent that is not plunged into permanent shadow. Due to a geographic anomaly or ancient Tiantai blessing, the sun's rays are almost perpetual here. A thriving city of the Oni (unnamed, or perhaps Thoris) meets with the outside world here. It serves as the spiritual heart and last bastion of the Oni, a beacon of light (and relative safety) against the jungle's blight.
Storm Cliffs: A jagged, perpetually wind-battered mountain range obscuring the ancient Temple of the Moon Goddess, Shonagon. This entire area is controlled by the most radical Taeki sects. They have transformed the cliffs into a ritualistic death trap littered with pit traps, rigged rockslides, poisoned blades, and bone-relic shrines. The Temple itself is said to be the source of the continent's endemic darkness, housing the elder Shonagon cult leader.
The River Zarkheba: The primary navigable (though extremely perilous) artery slicing through the heart of Ukiyo-E's Gloom-Wood Jungle. Its waters are a slow, black, and poisonous current, choked with decay and pollution from ancient Tiantai seals and Taeki rituals. It is a river of death, where nothing natural dares to drink. The river shuns common predators; only venomous, mutated reptiles thrive here. Giant, glistening pythons thick as a man's body and possessing unnaturally sharp fangs coil and hunt the riverbanks, capable of snatching prey directly from passing vessels. Carnivorous parasites survive in the toxic flow, ready to infect any exposed flesh. The jungle crowds the banks, forming a "palisade of darkness." Though the animals of the jungle avoid the poisoned water's edge, the air is filled with "the shrieking laughter" the demonic, inhuman cries of monstrous, winged primates and other foul beasts that haunt the depths of the trees. The Taeki believe these creatures hold the corrupted souls of the wicked. Vessels that attempt to flee upriver occasionally reappear days later, drifting slowly down the black current. They are always empty, covered in dried blood, with cargo intact, crew vanished, and often one single survivor driven utterly mad by the river's unknown horrors.
K'hul-Asir: The Ghost of a City. K'hul-Asir was one of the earliest settlements of the Tiantai, now entirely consumed by the jungle and the shadow. It is not merely ruined; it is a monument to decay, where the venomous green life grows between fractured piers, shattered streets, and crumbling plazas. The only structures that pierce the heavy canopy are the black fangs of buckling towers, reeling drunkenly against the gray sky. Broken pillars and crumbling mounds testify to its former grandeur. The style is massive, cyclopean, and utterly alien built by a people whose masonry now seems to defy time only to serve as a sinister monument. In the city's center lies the ruin of a massive temple complex. A broad, cracked expanse of grass-grown slabs leads to a massive sacrificial altar. The stone block is marked with ancient blood channels, whose dark stains have not been washed away by "the rains of ten thousand years." The altar is a lethal, heavy stone lid, designed with hand-holes "curiously unsuited to human hands." It conceals a crypt below. Lifting the altar triggers an ancient, catastrophic counterweight trap, causing the nearest tower to crash down and cover the location in shattered masonry, ensuring the "old ones guarded their treasure well." Beneath the sacrificial altar lies a carved crypt filled not with dust, but with undreamable, glittering wealth. It is a pit brimming with rare Atrisian gems diamonds, bloodstones, rubies, and opals that catch the limited light and transform it into a "pool of splendor" or a "bloody haze." This treasure is less wealth and more a powerful, Force-sensitive lure left by the Tiantai to test (or doom) those brave enough to breach the city's silence. Over the ruins broods a silence as sinister as a sleeping serpent. The only movement comes from the occasional "winged ape" that squats on the high pinnacles, acting as a living, horrific lookout before it flaps off into the poisoned air.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Ancient is the best way to describe Ukiyo, the first inhabitated continent as many believe within the history of Atrisia. It was settled by some of the earliest and most primitive settlers of Atrisia, developing the basis for many of the creation myths such as the Sun god and moon goddess. Shonagon and Chujo who created with their blades the ocean. From their union the nine continents of the world were created with the first one Ukiyo.
Then from her came the mountains and streams, the trees and finally the creatures of the world. The pair ruled their world secluded and in harmony for a time until they grew bored and Chujo sought for his amusement another. Finding amusement as he created human's. Bringing them to the world and hiding them at first from his wife Shonagon. Her maelstroms were said to be massive and soon it was discovered.
In her anger she slew her husband, casting him into the well of souls while corrupting her husbands creations into the Taeki. With his last breathe Chujo declared that he would ensure there was a thousand lifes birthed a day to replace the corrupted she took from the light. Shonagon said she would ensure the cycle would continue a thousand a day birthed and corrupted to forever replace each other throughout the centuries.
That is how the legend goes in the few murals that have been uncovered, the ancient settlements, the temples, the stone buildings are overgrown and the Oni the remnants of the ancient Tiantai followers who had sealed away the continent from the world making their own city to worship and preserve lives. The Taeki on the other hand being sealed away developed their own society worshiping the darkness.
They reveled in it, they became part of it as the continents majority of time was spent in darkness with a shadowed sun. Moons from Atrisia and the position casting it into the shadows. From it a more dangerous environment has developed and what is in legend considered an exodus. The Tiantai called it a cleansing, they took that which was dangerous and would feed upon the developing beings and locked them away to guard the entrance to the underworld.
The TIantai left the continent itself and leaving behind their children to protect it. The Oni faced against the Taeki for the time. With their civilization on the last days, it was believed the gods were at war and something happened. An incident that shattered and resonated through the force within the unknown regions. The Muurshantre Extinction was the event but it was seen as an omen that the Taeki used to further the dark influence of themselves on the land.
Constructing temples as the jungle seemed to become corrupted they became twisted as well as their beliefs going more and more into the darkness of the cult. Death worshipers, ritual sacrifice and raising themselves among the creatures around them. THe more dangerous the creatures the more they emulated them taking on regalia, bones, body modifications to try and have fangs and claws.
The history of the Taeki is intrinsically tied to the continent as they shaped it and from them came the rebels. Deemed the Oni, the demons of their people, the good ones, the ones who retreated away from the cults and lived within the light of the Sun god and sought to join with the long legendary beings who had raised the continent to lock them all away from the ocean. Who constructed the temples that were being overtaken by the tombs.
THe continent sat there for centuries upon centuries becoming more and more a source of plague and sickness, with creatures continuing to slowly become more and more dangerous predators until it in some ways was a mini Dxun to compare ot to anyplace in the galaxy. Sei Murasaki explored it after the continent was brought into the Kital Phard empire through a wrestling match between the Jade Empress and clan leader of the Oni.
The few Oni who were brought around to meet with the others. They were visited rarely, the continent fell msotly to being there within the Atrisian empire and then later commonwealth. Neglected while being left to its own devices under the various emperors and empress. It was revisited rarely with more recent activity coming when the First Order and KNights of Ren came from the sky. THeir blanketing of the planet stirred the Taeki from their caves.
Other things coming, the construction in Jar'kai, unrest in the provinces and more all brought attention to the Oni who worked to call for aid from the likes of Shoma Ike... while the politics were important. the Oni had lost a great deal of their people in the netherworld and darkness. plagues being a dangerous problems but the riches of the lands attracted the bravest of souls who would come to them. The threat of the Taeki was likely not of interest to the Ren but keeping them aware of the dangers was something that could be important.
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