ShadowsOfKagemusha
Background
Special K University, Kagmusha Japan
Back in 2013, the Special K University brochure read something like this:
Junior colleges are a legacy of the occupation period; many had been prewar institutions upgraded to college status at that time. More than 90% of the students in junior colleges are women. Junior colleges provide many women with social credentials as well as education and some career opportunities. These colleges frequently emphasize home economics, nursing, teaching, the humanities, and social sciences in their curricula.
Special College K is a College that is slowly branching out of Junior College status and broadening its curriculum to include classes outside home economics, nursing, teaching, the humanities, and social sciences in their curricula. Those classes are still available, but Special College K also includes accounting, business, computer science, education, engineering, law, med school, and various sciences.
Special College K is also known for its extensive Co-ed athletics department, one of a small, but growing number of schools that allows both males and females to perform on the same team. Co-ed athletic activities include Archery, Baseball, Basketball, Gymnastics, Judo, Kendo, Swimming, and Track.
That's what the brochure said a few years ago. Then some students and teachers disappeared. One teacher and 3 students turned up dead. Those that were afraid left. Those that remained reported a sharp upsurge in erotic feelings, and some pregnancies among them. Strange lights filled the sky. The next day, the faculty of Special College K closed the school down to all but a select few faculty and students. No one knows why, but within the next few days of hiatus, the strangeness suddenly stopped.
Now several years later, the events are but a rumor, other than the pregnancies that were carried to term. Other than the rumors, some students at Special K never learn of this. They are content in their little Slice of Life. Other students may be aware, but this is college... and it is going to take more than a few rumors about eldritch horrors to keep a group of hormone-addled co-eds from experiencing their first taste of true freedom to the fullest...
One teacher and 3 students turned up dead. Those that were afraid left. Those that remained reported a sharp upsurge in erotic feelings, and some pregnancies among them. Strange lights filled the sky. The next day, the faculty of Special College K closed the school down to all but a select few faculty and students. No one knows why, but within the next few days of hiatus, the strangeness suddenly stopped.
In 2019, the events were but a rumor, with the whole thing being blamed on mass hysteria, and no explanation about the missing students and teachers whose bodies were never recovered. Any tentacles found were blamed on octopi and squid. Myserious goo was taken to labs and the results never published to the public. Most citizens of Modern Kagemusha never find out about rumors of students and teachers being trapped in some sort of "Dreamscape" of Kagemusha, only hoping for escape. One man came to the rescue, Tetsuo Sato, the owner of SatoVR, and the corresponding Shadows of Kagemusha IP. On the surface it's a game. According to rumor, it's an ongoing ritual protecting the world from... whatever came in 2013. As a side effect, the prefecture of Kagemusha would not suffer as the real world did in the wake of the latest public health crisis.
Shadows of Kagemusha VR Game
Vanilla Game (Edo Era)
The online video game takes place in a fictional province/prefecture in Japan called Kagemusha (And located in an area that corresponds roughly to the real Kagoshima Prefecture). It's most prominent city is also called Kagemusha. The history of the game starts in the 1630s with the fallout of the Sakoku Edict (Sakoku-rei, 鎖国令) of 1635, which in the real world intended to eliminate foreign influence, enforced by strict government rules and regulations to impose these ideas. In Shadows of Kagemusha, The goal with the Sankoku Edict was to attempt to cull the rise in Yokai sightings in the period.
The key points of the (fictional) Edict included:
- The Japanese were to be kept within Japan’s own boundaries. Strict rules were set to prevent them from leaving the country. Anyone caught trying to leave the country, or anyone who managed to leave and then returned from abroad, was to be executed. Europeans who entered Japan illegally would face the death penalty too.
- Catholicism was strictly forbidden. To encourage the search for those who still followed Christianity, rewards were given to those who were willing to turn them in. Prevention of missionary activity was also stressed by the edict; no missionary was allowed to enter, and if apprehended by the government, he would face imprisonment.
- Trade restrictions and strict limitations on goods were set to limit the ports open to trade, and the merchants who would be allowed to engage in trade. Relations with the Portuguese were cut off entirely; Chinese merchants and those of the Dutch East India Company were restricted to enclaves in Nagasaki and Kagemusha.
What they didn't know, was that a local Kami would take interest in a Dutch "bard" and manifest his tales connected tot he yokai as real events. It is not known whether he was causing the infestation intentionally, but a conclusion was eventually drawn that his stories matched up to events with a shocking degree of accuracy.
Meiji Era
With the westernization of Japan, came further rumors of yokai invasion, and Eastern and Western investigators alike gathered in towns with "ghost caves", haunted houses and such--all at the behest of a very wealthy older western man who had set up residence in a gothic mansion in the hills outside Kagemusha City.
World War Era
Many soldiers did not believe that Japan needed to awaken the sleeping dragon. A few of the more supernaturally inclined believed their emperor was being manipulated like a puppet by possible yokai influences. Special K university is founded by a board of wealthy benefactors in response to the great shame that was the Japanese loss of WWII. In particular, the most well funded department is Physics even though the university is fully accredited, and has a pretty good Athetic Department.
Hentai DLC
The start of this DLC's gameplay is 2013, a re-imagining of a real event in which two teachers and 3 students died of causes that went unreleased to the press. In the game Shadows of Kagemusha, the event is a full on Tentacle Monster Invasion, to which JSDF does not respond well. The extremely well funded Special K University recruits students and teachers as part of a "Metaphysical Research Program" into the effects tentacle monster body fluids on humans, but also into whether or not magic is real. The Engineering department creates technologies that would be thought of in the real world, as "Mad Science". As the story progresses in this DLC, players eventually find themselves on a ship controlled by the Human Underground Reunification Teams, which effectively combines the shooter mechanics of the world war, with the creatures of other DLCs. This lends itself into a progression into what would become the Cyberpunk DLC which has few tentacle based dungeons but minimal focus on the tentacle monsters themselves. Coincidentally, it is believed by After Eden scholars, that 2013 is the year SatoVR is founded, but there is conflicting evidence to the veracity of this finding.
Cyberpunk DLC
The world of this DLC is crapsack, but it serves as an escape all the same. The things you would find in Cyberpunk games from the 1980s to the new After Eden calendar are definitely present in the Cyberpunk DLC, but not in a way that could infringe on any copyrights. In different branches of the timeline, this means different things. In the New Eden timeline (see Games and Campaigns) E.D.E.N. OS functions so as to allow portions of the system to be open source anyway, provided you had the money to convince EDEN Corp. to sacrifice the computing power to run your little pet project.
SatoVR
Tetsuo Sato
CEO of SatoVR the largest VR gaming firm in the After Eden world, primarily due to its freakishly fast advancement of full contact VR services, and rapid integration into E.D.E.N. OS, alongside their mutually beneficial corporate merger.
Stryker
Real name unknown, Stryker is a Zone Moderator for New Shanghai in Shadows of Kagemusha's Cyberpunk DLC. Like any moderator, Stryker has effectively God Mode capabilities, able to simulate Level 255, 65535 HP, and Break Damage Limits. For especially ornerous users or buggy situations, Stryker can remove these limitations (including issuing userbans and IP bans on a temporary or permanent basis) with proper authorization--which usually comes from whatever member of Corporate is available and wants to answer the call. Stryker has red Sentai armor of Legendary tier that has properties no player has identified. Stryker, like most moderators are equipped with Seiken blades.
Others
Guardian
Not much is known about this entity, other than he identifies as male, and is not staff, and he will sometimes step in to defeat people he deems to be "fighting unfairly" he is the highest levelled registered player in the game. It is believed that he is highly capable in both Wushu, and Kendo because of real life experience, and everyone thinks his moves are so impressive he has to be using a top of the line SatoVR Enviroglobe and suit. Guardian has grey Sentai armor of Legendary tier that has properties no player has identified. He is believed to carry Kusanagi, though no two users can agree on its skin. The most common rumors are that it may be a sakabatou, and others that it may even be as mundane as a machete, or even a billhook. Guardian is the highest level PC in the game.
Gobbledygook the Tinkerer
A normally nonhostile NPC merchant, whenever anyone with name markers enabled attempts to ascertain his level, they see it in red, and a Skull. This means his level is 10 levels or more higher than the highest level character in the game. He's one of the few non-hostile NPCs in the game that has a Player Combat Protocol. If any player chooses to fight him, he will fight to the death, and accept surrender provided they have attacked him fewer than 3 times. Each of the first three times if they fight to defeat, he will graciously inform them that he watched their stuff while they were gone (this is a bug for players who didn't tick the "corpse run" box). If they flee, he will act annoyed and claim that he let them flee. If a player has attacked him 3 or more times with a single character, he will attack that specific character on sight until they die or flee. He will also acknowledge any player's alts, and their characters in other versions of the game (Angrily if they fought him 3 or more times). If a player spends more than 25,000 of the game's respective monetary units with a single character, he will refer to that specific character with the -sama honorific. There is a rumor that within his 9 foot hobo sack, there is every single legendary item not known to be on a specific person, however his prices are high enough that players try to get what's in the hobo sack.
The Real World?
There are people in 2021 Kagemusha (mostly students, teachers, and alumni) who swear up and down the events of 2013 and 2019 respectively happened. In the A New Eden game, there is some ambiguity on the timeline, but Brandy/Orokana mentions that the 2020s didn't happen, so the canonicity compatibility of the two timelines is inconsistent. There are rumors in a period approximating A New Eden's 2030s that Shadows of Kagemusha VR was created with a magical ritual in order to contain tentacle monsters, and maintain the secret of their existence. If any of those rumors are true, then all of the people above have real world counterparts.
Rumors
A large portion of this section has moved over to the page for A New Eden. The section relevant to the events surrounding the creation of the game, and the region of Kagemusha Prefecture remain here.
- Guardian might be the owner of a local dojo in modern day Kagemusha named Akira Takeba, who claims to have been involved in the events of 2013. He carries a reverse edge sword with the false edge in his armpit, and the tsuba at his hip, patrolling the town for rapists. Those he deems minimal threat get the false edge, while worthy opponents get the backblade. The police overlook his vigilantism because encounters are usually nonlethal.
- Special K College has a suspicious amount of economic and political pull.
- a green looking individual has been spotted around caves south of Kagemusha City, though actual accounts of interacting with this individual are rare to non-existent
- some of the figures in the game correspond to real people.
- There is a modest economy in Ryo style coins that have a medusa on one side and a place called Chitsu Cavern on the other
- The same bard shows up in the Meiji and Edo periods https://rpol.net/portraits/m/mh19153.jpg
