Lion Lands - Sesshō-Seki

[Vutall]

Sesshō-Seki
In Lion Clan lands, there is a story of a stone, a great boulder in the Plains of Battle. No grass grows near it, leaving a great ring barren all around, and animals that approach it die, fall, and rot where they lie. Even birds flying above the stone are stricken and fall from the sky, so that the bones of the dead are thick on the ground

These tales are often told from the perspective of a traveling priest—the friend of a friend of the teller—and the teller relates that this priest saw something on the stone. A spirit. A fox with nine tails, some say, or a woman weeping into her hands. Some say that the spirit is chained to the stone, others that it paces back and forth across the circle, reaching out for help but killing all that it touches

It is said that the stone is all that remains of an oni that plotted to kill the Hantei untold centuries ago. It was slain by the Emerald Champion—a Lion Clan bushi, according to local legend—who cut out its heart and buried the corrupt thing on the plain, sealing it away under a great stone. Perhaps it is this legacy of corruption and evil that calls to certain shadowed figures to come and camp on the edge of death.