Post by Ejiki on Mar 18, 2017 23:15:04 GMT
This world is broken; its history, scattered.
When the grandfathers of our grandfathers were young men, their elders told stories of the past.
Of a man who brought energy into the world, shaped it and gave it form.
Of how he travelled the land, gifting this strength to each person he met.
And of how that power became Ninjutsu.
The stories go that this figure strode across our earliest history, bequeathing this new power to mankind and thus forever changing the course of time. They also say how he held within him a great sadness, a terrible pain from which there could be no escape, a howl of dismay which could never end. To free himself of this pain, he cracked it apart, gave it feet, and wings, and fins, and sent it forth into the corners of the land to forever hide itself and never shed its sorrow unto anyone.
The stories call this man the Sage of Six Paths.
From here we know only fractured pieces. We know that the newly empowered people of the world fought among themselves, a terrible war that engulfed the land.
We know that as each war ended another began, and we know that eventually the land was united under a great king. And that this king's power grew to a bright and stable future for all, but with it came a cost to himself. As his people were nurtured and healed of their past strife, as their cultures grew and their futures took seed, we know that holes began to form in the king's spirit. And we know that into those holes crept the pieces of sadness that had fled from the Sage of Six Paths. The monsters known as Bijuu.
Just as the Sage had not been able to contain all the pieces of that terrible sadness, neither too could the king. Eventually his very body shattered, and with it his kingdom, as the Bijuu tore like wildfire across his peaceful land. They burned the sky, churned the earth, tore the seas and sundered the air. They spread devastation, and sickness, and fear, and horror, as between them they changed the entire landscape of our world. What fragments of old maps we have seen shown a very different continent, with very different lands and very different homes. We know of histories with great heroes, their deeds lost to time but some of their names living onwards in the hearts of men. Uzumaki and Uchiha, Senju and Hyuga, a thousand others carved in stone or steel or wood and hidden in caves or temples or graves that have somehow survived the terrible upheaval.
We know almost as little of what the past has held as we do of what the future has in store for us.
But we do know that just as heroes have arisen before, so too will they arise again.
And we do know that those pieces of sorrow, those Bijuu, still stalk the earth. Their forms described by those who claim to have seen them match little of what crumbs the histories tell us, but that same piercing howl of betrayal and regret can never be mistaken.
The Bijuu have returned. Let us pray that men will once again be able to bring peace to our lands.
- A history of our world, one of a hundred versions told by the eldest and wisest of us
When the grandfathers of our grandfathers were young men, their elders told stories of the past.
Of a man who brought energy into the world, shaped it and gave it form.
Of how he travelled the land, gifting this strength to each person he met.
And of how that power became Ninjutsu.
The stories go that this figure strode across our earliest history, bequeathing this new power to mankind and thus forever changing the course of time. They also say how he held within him a great sadness, a terrible pain from which there could be no escape, a howl of dismay which could never end. To free himself of this pain, he cracked it apart, gave it feet, and wings, and fins, and sent it forth into the corners of the land to forever hide itself and never shed its sorrow unto anyone.
The stories call this man the Sage of Six Paths.
From here we know only fractured pieces. We know that the newly empowered people of the world fought among themselves, a terrible war that engulfed the land.
We know that as each war ended another began, and we know that eventually the land was united under a great king. And that this king's power grew to a bright and stable future for all, but with it came a cost to himself. As his people were nurtured and healed of their past strife, as their cultures grew and their futures took seed, we know that holes began to form in the king's spirit. And we know that into those holes crept the pieces of sadness that had fled from the Sage of Six Paths. The monsters known as Bijuu.
Just as the Sage had not been able to contain all the pieces of that terrible sadness, neither too could the king. Eventually his very body shattered, and with it his kingdom, as the Bijuu tore like wildfire across his peaceful land. They burned the sky, churned the earth, tore the seas and sundered the air. They spread devastation, and sickness, and fear, and horror, as between them they changed the entire landscape of our world. What fragments of old maps we have seen shown a very different continent, with very different lands and very different homes. We know of histories with great heroes, their deeds lost to time but some of their names living onwards in the hearts of men. Uzumaki and Uchiha, Senju and Hyuga, a thousand others carved in stone or steel or wood and hidden in caves or temples or graves that have somehow survived the terrible upheaval.
We know almost as little of what the past has held as we do of what the future has in store for us.
But we do know that just as heroes have arisen before, so too will they arise again.
And we do know that those pieces of sorrow, those Bijuu, still stalk the earth. Their forms described by those who claim to have seen them match little of what crumbs the histories tell us, but that same piercing howl of betrayal and regret can never be mistaken.
The Bijuu have returned. Let us pray that men will once again be able to bring peace to our lands.
- A history of our world, one of a hundred versions told by the eldest and wisest of us
