Crane Lands - The Cave Of the Stone Children (Ishiko no Dōkutsu)

[Vutall]

The Cave Of the Stone Children (Ishiko no Dōkutsu)
The tsunami of 1120 destroyed a villagers’ shrine used for good-luck offerings and childrens’ blessings near Akagi Mori in the Umoeru Province. Days later, the shrine’s name scrolls and placards washed up in a cove, along with small stones with pits and markings that resembled a sleeping baby’s face.

A couple, Asaji and Taketoki, heard about the stones. Believing they were reincarnated children, they went there hoping to find the stone that was their own lost child. They took all the stones, scrolls, and placards and placed them in a cave entrance within the cove. In their grief, however, they now believe that all of these “stone children” are theirs. They prowl the area ambushing travelers, thinking them there to kidnap their family.

In addition, the two have taken to stealing food, offerings, and clothing from nearby villages, and a few villagers have gone missing. Those villagers are all ones who have lost their own children, and most of their peers simply believe they have flung themselves into the ocean. While questioning Asaji and Taketoki about the missing villagers may reveal nothing, the couple has been planning on kidnapping real children. Whether to do so as a sacrifice or to raise as their “own” children, they can’t agree

The cove, rocky and treacherous, takes some skill and dedication to explore successfully. A misplaced step can twist an ankle, throw a climber onto the ground, or inflict a jagged scar. The sun never seems to shine on the cove, and even during the day, the light appears muted, sick, and hazy. The water in the cove has strange currents that both allow detritus to wash up onto the sand and can drag a person underwater, deep into sharp-edged tunnels. The look of the water mirrors the cove’s unwelcoming environment, and bathing in it leaves the skin feeling sticky and unclean

The cave where Asaji and Taketoki placed the belongings extends deep into the cliff face, the air becoming strangely ashy and thick like fog, yet not from heat or fire. The tunnels, some flooded, are small, claustrophobic spaces, full of stalagmites and stalactites, jagged stones, and random twists that disorient visitors. Even Asaji and Taketoki haven’t sojourned deeper into the cave. If they did, they would hear children’s voices, laughing and whispering for them to continue their acts of thievery and murder, until all the children of Rokugan have perished

Tales Of The Cove
There is a certain rash that affects near-by villagers. It is a curse by the old, giant fish that sleeps in the cove.

A kami saved a boat of drowning fisher-folk by turning them into ocean waves, but its neglected shrine keeps it from returning to free them