Ambition's Debt

Through Ambition's Debt

Our Story So Far:

Night has fallen upon the towns and villages of the Jade Empire, hiding shadows in the deeper shade of night. Once Rokugan's fields and valleys knew peace. Once-but long ago ...

In the Empire's last six months, upheavals have threatened stability and destroyed peace. Earthquakes, famine, and other devastation have shattered Rokugan, bringing fear. The Kitsu, once masters of the spirit world, have found their way barred by something that is destroying the soulds of the dead, one by one. Blood calls to nothing, and the Kitsu Tombs are silent and darkened by restless and angry spirits, cut off from the peace of the Land of the Dead.

In the Naga forests, a new army has risen, one led by a legend. Hida Yakamo, whose life was destroyed in a terrible battle against the Shadowlands, has risen once more. He is not undead, nor tainted by his journey beyond death. Instead, he holds the mind of the Naga race within his soul, and his eyes speak of worlds beyond our own.

The Crab serve him. The Naga revere him as the new Shashakar. In some lands of the Empire, the peasants worship him as a new-born kami. His name is told through the courts of the Jade Empire as if he were the Emperor himself, and children cry his name as a battle-kiai as they play at being bushi.

He leads the armies of the Lion and the Crab, striking out to the south of Hiruma castle, devastating the Shadowlands as they pass. But even the light of his jade hand cannot stop the invading Shadow. The Shadow slips past the armies into the courts of Otosan Uchi, and it tears at the Emperor's mind. In Otosan Uchi's fileds, Shinjo's armies-of Scorpion, Phoenix and Unicorn troops - gather. To the north, even the Mantis armies pause in their seige against Isawa lands, and the Crane sue for peace between the feuding Doji and Daidoji factions.

Outside of the Emperor's palace, Shinjo screams for revenge over her brother's death. Immortal and a kami, she has slept for seven hundred years, returning with little care for the interval that has passed ... or how the Empire she once knew has changed. She fights only to see Toturi destroyed, and the Shadow, his ally, fights to see her fall.

As the armies of the Kami destroy Toturi's forces, screaming for the Emperor's surrender, Toturi steps to his balcony. Unafraid, he raises his hand and speaks, ignoring the bloodshed beneath his feet, the terror and fire in the city of the Jade Throne. "The law proclaims it, my blood demands it, and those who deny me betray their oaths to the Empire." With that, he lifts his hands to the heavens and faces the Sun Mother herself. "I am your Emperor."

As he speaks, the sky turns black, then blood-red. The Sun, burning in the distant heavens, grows weak and pale, and then the darkness swallows her whole. In the farthest south, two men enter a deserted city, determined to find the source of the Shadow.

To the north, in the Shrine of the Three Sisters, an obsidian sword's blow decides the course of the future.

One Moon; one Sun.

One destiny ...