History of Oyashima

A BRIEF HISTORY OF OYASHIMA

This swift overview omits much detail and many crucial events and people. Still, as a loose framework, it will help give you a sense of the ebb and flow of war and peace on the islands, and the arrival of the islands' modern day state of affairs.

[KAMI PERIOD]

0 First Kami shrine is established at Komagata

5 Edo begins the process of moving from a bustling village to a crucial center of trade with the establishment of publicly accessible docks and a fish market.

78 The establishment of the Nine Shrines (long since destroyed save for a single column) sets Miyako on its path to religious (and thus imperial) capital of the land.

104 A cloud dragon appears at the base of Mt. Fuji and declaims a series of prophecies, all of which turn out to be true. The last of the series declares a "wave of cold blue fire and insanity borne upon the breeze" to occur "19 Centuries Hence."

230 Bakemono from the wilderness sack and destroy Hiroshima and Osaka, leading to a 10-year war.

302 The building of the Great Market of Edo (and its related Bank of Edo) establishes it as the prime city of the land.

510 The Beast Army of the Monstrous Kingdoms (oni, bakemono, kappa, dragons, demons and others) sweeps down from the north and ravages the land. The next 40 years are a battle for survival on the part of the humans, spirit folk, and other good and lawful aligned creatures of Oyashima.

520 The Army of Mt. Fuji assembles at the mountain's base, pooling the resources of the remaining human warlords. This begins a 30-year-campaign to retake the islands.

550 The islands of Oyashima are united under a single ruler for the first time with the conquest of the Beast Army of Hokkaido by Warlord Honda. His family rules the islands for the next 95 years as the Iron Dynasty. With Honda comes the establishment of a new pantheon of Oyashima gods, supplementing but not replacing the Kami.

615 A major battle on Hokkaido, known as the Feast of the Seven Blades, marks the end of the Ainu people as an organized military force in Oyashima, and largely drove their people into the northern islands or the Central Range of Hokkaido. The Seven Blades were an adventuring group (two samurai, two kensai, two bushi, and a barbarian) from Miyako who infiltrated the Ainu fortifications and opened the gate to imperial forces.

[SHOU LUNG PERIOD]

645 Yai Ch'ing, World Emperor of Shou Lung, launches an invasion of Oyashima, landing on Shikoku. He is met with initially fierce resistance by the forces of the Iron Dynasty, who quickly collapse due to a combination of treachery, dragons, and ninja mischief.

647 After spending a full year on the run, Emperor Tetsuo Honda is captured and executed at the Kumano Shrine. Yai Ch'ing declares control of all of Oyashima, but a distracting war on the continent the steady defection of local warlords quickly reduces his presence to a symbolic one.

649 Under Yai Ch'ing's direction, temples to the deities of Shou Lung (including Shang Ti, Chung Kuel, and Kuan Yin) are established in most major cities.

655 Following a route of his forces and a bloodbath at the Sanko Shrine near Kagoshima, the great statue of Yai Ch'ing is toppled by a combined force of 19 daimyos known as the 21 Equals (the tally included two exceedingly powerful Wu Jen, the founders of the Edo and Kagoshima schools respectively, who were not acting as warlords but rather as individuals.) A truce is established, and the land governed by the Council of 21. Many of Yai Ch'ing's temples are destroyed but not all, and Shou Lung religion takes root.

[THE MOONS OF CHAOS PERIOD]

665 The Council of 21 splits into three factions over the question of taxation, pitting rural daimyos against urban daimyos against the daimyos of Edo and Miyako. Negotiations, scheming, and bribery fly as the council desperately tried to avoid civil war.

668 The assassination of two of the leading daimyos of Edo results in full-on civil war, which rages for a full 40 years.

710 The War of the City Castle comes to a close with the exhaustion of the armies and a partition of the land into three kingdoms: The Kingdom of Hokkaido (which includes Sendai and Mt. Tateyama), The Juridiction of Edo and Miyako (which includes Nagoya and Osaka) and The Southern Realm.

753 After 40 years of relative peace between the three kingdoms, a famine forces the well-equipped armies of Edo and Miyako south to extract food from the countryside. The Kingdom of Hokkaido takes this opportunity to attack, but Edo and Miyako's armies prove formidable enough to fight a two-front war.

791 A demon army raised by the conjurer Kai Shur of the Southern Realm routes the forces of Edo and Miyako, and destroys much of the latter city.

792 Shur loses control of his army, which carries him to the Abyss where he is devoured by a massive worm over the course of a long and unpleasant year. With the dispersal of the army, the Southern Realm collapses and is occupied by the forces of Edo and Miyako.

812 The marshaling of forces under warlord Kenji Miyamoto proves to be a turning point, resulting in a steady advance northward of Edo and Miyako's standards.

[MODERN PERIOD]

822 Emperor Kenji Miyamoto vanquishes the last of Oyashima's warlords - some say with the help of daemonic powers - at the Battle of Sapporo. For the first time since 550, the islands of Oyashima are united under a single firm authority.

982 Emperor Hideo Miyamoto (the current ruler) ascends to the Throne of Pearls.

987 Gaijin merchants land with Imperial permission, and establish a trading colony at Nagasaki. There is fierce opposition to this from factions within the Yoshida clan.

996 Fifteen Gaijin merchants are rounded up and burned alive on a funeral pyre in Nagasaki and letters are dispatched to the Gaijin Council of Ten threatening a similar fate to all who remain. The actions are chalked up to a single rogue daimyo in the Yoshida clan named Ichiro Oe. He commits seppuku, officially dishonored, but he has passed into legend as a folk hero in some parts.

998 A massive grain storage building belonging to the Yoshida clan is burned to the ground in Nagoya. Local dockworkers and firefighters do nothing as it burns. Yakuza connected to the Kato-Kai and the Fukui clan are suspected but nothing is proven in court.

999 "The Night of the Chain" - Three leading daimyo of the Fukui family and most of their followers, relatives, and employees are slaughtered near three different cities - Osaka, Kagoshima, and Nagasaki. The dead include Takara Fukui, head of the clan overall (and a rare example of a female successfully taking the reins of a major family), who is succeeded by her considerably more volatile and less experienced son Takashi. Hoping to preserve peace in the land, the Emperor orders his Lord High Executioner, Juro Kananosaki, to lead an investigation and execute or imprison all deemed responsible. The investigation points to three powerful daimyos in the Yoshida clan, who are declared outlaws and ordered to report to Miyako for sentencing. None of them do.

1000 A massive imperial manhunt is launched in Hokkaido for escaped and rogue Yoshida daimyo, samurai, ronin, and sympathizers. Several hundred are captured and executed, but several hundred more reportedly escaped by fleeing to mountain caves, crossing to the Forest of Frost or blending with the local civilian population. One of the daimyos, Nobu Nagai, is seized at the hot springs of Takikawa on Hokkaido, disguised as a woman. He is forced to commit seppuku with a dull kitchen knife and his body is pushed into the well of a local landowner who sheltered him. The landowner is forced to drink from the well before being pushed in himself, and held under the water with a pruning hook.

The other two rogue Yoshida daimyos, Nobu's nephew Shiro Nagai and Takeshi Fujimoto, remain free with an unknown number of their followers.

Though officially humbled, the Yoshida clan still enjoys a numerical and military advantage over their Fukui rivals, and if it came to open conflict with the Imperial forces, the final result would be uncertain.

1001 Present Year