Any room for another domain? I’ve been lurking around the boards unregistered for a bit, now, but totally got inspired by this thread--you guys are
good. Anyways, I thought the Tokugawa Shogunate needed some love, so here’s my own stab at world-building. Feel free to mess with it however you’d like; it’s my first try at this, and I’d appreciate any help you can give.
Oh--and I don’t know any Japanese, so all of the place names and such are cobbled together from online dictionaries and wikipedia. Did I get anything wrong?
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The war is over: everywhere, culture blossoms like flowering trees in spring. Yet there’s still that society of evil bards to take care of--and those rumors about the doppelgänger art thief--and that noxious green smoke surrounding the wizards’ college--and the hauntings--and the stabbings--and the disappearances--and the slow, unavoidable implosion of the central government--and let’s not forget the Phantom Duelist...
...And everybody’s so all-fired
arrogant!
Golden ages aren’t always what they’re cut out to be.
***Heiseijima***
CL: 8
Cultural Background: Edo Period Japan
Landscape: A temperate island: mountains to the north, plains and rolling hills to the south. Heiseijima’s countryside is renowned for its pristine beauty, and has been the subject of more than a few poems. (For some reason, the maps you guys have drawn up don’t show up on my computer, so I’m being sorta vague about specifics; it should go pretty close to Jomon, though, and it’s not too large)
Major Settlements: Hanami-kyo, pop. 50,000: The bakufu’s administrative and cultural center, straddling the Ashi river near the coast; it somehow manages to be sprawling and well-manicured at the same time, with a particularly robust merchant quarter, an active theatrical community, and a profusion of public parks and gardens. The shogun’s complex lies on a hill to the north of the city. Hanami-kyo has suffered many fires over the past several centuries (in the nation’s false history), and whole districts have been devastated and rebuilt; accordingly, the city has more than its share of ghosts and haunted sites. The rest of the domain is more sparsely populated; other settlements include Irukawan, pop. 10,000, further south along the coast, and Matsujuku, pop. 2,000, a small logging and mining town in the foothills of the Eien mountains.
The Folk: Around 110,000 people, all told. Humans comprise most of the population, though elves, half-elves and spirit folk are noticeable minorities (around 3-5% each). These latter races, however, tend to have only a nominal sense of racial identity and “solidarity;” they mix freely with humans, and are as likely to be found in Hanami-kyo as in the countryside. Most Heisei-jin are passionately literate, artistic, refined and romantic...and thus, utterly infuriating to anyone with a lick of common sense.
Characters: Dedicated spellcasters are common, both divine and arcane; the capitol also has a decent amount of rogues. Bards are characteristic of the domain: budding performers recieve one-on-one mentoring in a regulated music school system, and the island bursts with experienced koto, shamisen, and shakuhachi players, among other musicians. Straightforward melee combatants, however, are extremely rare. Those that do exist are usually ridiculously ostentatious about it, and often prone to overstating their abilities; a few, though, are simply down-to-earth misfits in an effete society.
Languages: Rokuma, some Hua
Religion: Minglun jiao, the kami. A bit of the Celestial Beauracracy’s religious philosophy has begun to trickle over from the mainland, as well.
The Law: Ostensibly a military dictatorship, actually an immense oligarchic beauracracy referred to as the bakufu. Shogun Yoshiyasu absents himself from decision-making almost entirely, preferring to while away his time on entertainment and artistic pursuits; when forced to “lay down the law,” he usually orders the execution of whomever he likes least, hoping that the problem will solve itself. The bakufu itself is little better: Heisei-jin make excellent functionaries, and the island’s governmental apparatus is a overweight, antiquated mess, mired in red tape and ceremony. Real power lies with the shogun’s advisers--scions of noble families, who play the various government departments off of each other in order to further their own petty ends. To date, their innumerable rivalries and counter-rivalries--as well as the sheer number of beauracrats--have kept the country in a finely balanced equilibrium, and everything appears serene on the surface. Yet the system is rotting from the inside out: if some dramatic event does not occur to hasten its demise, the bakufu is doomed to a long, slow collapse.
Trade/Resources: Silk, ceramics, gold and silver, art. Heiseijima has enough farmland to be economically self-sustaining, and has been voluntarily isolationist in the past. Recent international developments (see Politics, below) have spurred the bakufu to open the country’s ports; still, they keep foreign trade limited, and only export luxury items. (Most of Hanami-kyo’s merchants are focused on domestic money-making.)
Coinage: Koban, currently inflating rapidly thanks to a flush citizenry and a profligate government. Some in the treasury department have proposed a shift from coins to paper money, though this would hardly help matters.
Politics: As the Law section above indicates, the government’s internal affairs are backbiting, ineffectual, and far too convoluted to describe comprehensively--though the bakufu’s officials take pains to maintain the illusion of institutional harmony. The interdepartmental feud dujour, however, is the rivalry between Yoshiyasu’s corrupt spymaster and his marginally less corrupt chief of Hanami-kyo police. What began as an abstract debate about the particulars of jurisdiction has developed into a deadly game of one-up-manship between the two men and their organizations: the secret police has taken to yanking random “offenders” from the streets in an effort to prove that their interpretation of the law is correct, and the public police has behaved little better. Of course,
both interpretations of the law involve a 95% conviction rate--but both men find this fact irrelevant. After all, it’s
where the criminal is executed that really matters...
Unfortunately, this example is rather indicative of Heisei politics as a whole.
Internationally, things are just as interesting. Heiseijima’s military is a joke, and the island would normally be a prime target for Jomon’s expansionist designs--especially because Lord Minamoto despises the shogunate as a bunch of ivory-tower sissies. However, the threat of invasion has spurred Yoshiyasu’s advisers (in a rare moment of agreement) to open the country’s ports; Heiseijima’s mountains are rich in silver and gold, and the Minister of Trade now ensures that a good deal of it flows straight to Tekkoukyuu. Thus, Minamoto is in the uncomfortable position of having his softest military target bankrolling his military ambitions. As much as it irks him, he knows that it’s bad strategy to invade the country--and face economic catastrophe until he can get its mines under his control--when the bakufu is willing to give him considerable tribute for free. Add that to the fact that many of Jomon’s aristocrats have taken a liking to Heisei luxury items (and would likely be upset if anything interrupted overseas trade), and the clockwork darklord has no choice but to take a more subtle tack. He’s currently using espionage and coercion to undermine the bakufu from within--not that it needs the help.
Heiseijima’s recent moves towards internationalism, however unwilling, have caused other countries to take notice. The daimyos of Rokushima Taiyoo view the shogunate with a mixture of wonder and envy: they’re rather awed by its wealth and refinement, but they would likely attack it if they were not so consumed with infighting. Other nations are friendlier: Hua scholars and Singapurensian merchants can now be seen wandering Hanami-kyo’s streets, braving the haughty attitudes of the natives in hopes of returning home richer and wiser.
Darklord: Shogun Iwanari Yoshiyasu
Being a bastard child is no picnic. Born a bamboo spirit folk in a family of humans, Yoshiyasu was always a black sheep. His home society was located on an unknown prime material world, and was consumed with feudal warfare. Though nearly all of the Iwanaris were dedicated fighters--not of exceptional lineage, but more honorable than most--Yoshiyasu had no stomach for battle, preferring artistic pursuits instead. His family supported his proclivities, and ensured that he had a proper education and training in his areas of interest. Before long, Yoshiyasu was renowned the country over as an exceptional painter, poet, and musician: a true renaissance man in a land of warriors.
Unfortunately, artistry only goes so far. When Yoshiyasu’s family drew the ire of a larger neighboring clan, they invited all of their members back home to prepare for battle--it was going to take some fancy strategy to win against their opponents’ superior numbers. In deference to Yoshiyasu’s temperment, they gave him a noncombatant job: he would be a courier, tasked with traveling to a distant allied family and asking them to send desperately needed reinforcements. The artist left the Iwanaris’ compound fully aware that his actions would decide his family’s fate.
On the night of the battle, the cavalry never came. Yoshiyasu, resentful of his “unrefined” relatives and thinking himself above battle altogether, had shirked his duty, choosing instead to attend an autumn moon viewing with a few of his aristocratic friends. As his family was brutally slaughtered thanks to his own arrogant negligence, the mists rose up around him...
Now, Shogun Yoshiyasu rules over a country of people just like him, and it’s not going so well. He’s the greatest artist in his domain, yet the constant need to attend to affairs of state distracts him from his work. He compensates by keeping official business to a bare minimum, holding painfully short cabinet meetings and summarily executing anyone who seems to be causing trouble; this brand of “leadership,” naturally, is ripping his government apart. Even so, the self-centered shogun would be entirely unremorseful--if the Dark Powers hadn’t seen fit to give him a warped sort of conscience. Every month or so, Yoshiyasu is seized with the inescapable desire to wreak bloody, martial justice upon the world. The pressure to do so builds and builds until he finds it impossible to concentrate on anything else: his dreams are filled with clashing samurai, and he becomes confused and prone to memory loss. To date, he has only found one way to satiate this urge.
All over Heiseijima, rumor tells of a Phantom Duelist: a hooded figure dressed all in black, who appears only at night. He is said to accost lone passers-by, accusing them of dishonoring their warrior ancestors, then formally challenging them to an iaijutsu duel and cutting them down where they stand. Nobody has seen the Duelist and lived, as no Heisei-jin are martially adept enough to defeat him; it is said that he doesn’t discriminate between good or evil when choosing his opponents, but will challenge anyone who appears “soft.” Some peg him as a vengeful samurai ghost, teaching his decadent descendants a grisly lesson about the importance of bravery. Some deride him as a myth--but never walk alone after dark, just in case.
Nobody except Yoshiyasu knows the truth. Though his swordsmanship improves tenfold whenever he issues a challenge as the Duelist, he is secretly terrified during every confrontation--and he can never stop himself from fighting to the bloody finish. Unbeknownst to Yoshiyasu, however, random dueling is not the only solution to his problem:
any display of courage or honor can temporarily relieve his cursed bloodlust. Yet since the shogun is unlikely to act justly or responsibly of his own accord, and since he is too mortified to tell anyone about his secret identity, he will probably never realize that he has other options. The way things are going, the Phantom Duelist will be around for quite some time...
)
I'm just glad that my breaking into the thread a year late and yelling "here's a domain what I wroted" isn't seen as too off-base.