The Shadowlands

[Vutall]

The Shadowlands
The Shadowlands is the nightmarish wasteland south of the Empire. Created by Fu Leng, the wicked Dark Kami, it is populated with all manner of vile creatures, such as goblins, ogres, oni (monstrous demons), and evil spirits. These Shadowlands denizens, which thrive on carnage and decay, continually attempt to consume the Empire and lay waste to its inhabitants. The Crab Clan built the great Kaiu Wall on the Empire’s southern border, and for centuries have guarded the thirty-foot-thick, hundred-foot-high defense to keep Fu Leng’s evil influence, commonly called the Taint, safely behind the Wall. Despite their vigilance, saboteurs influenced by the Taint occasionally experiment with Fu Leng’s power. Humans who dare to conjure and command the Shadowlands creatures do so using mahō, a forbidden blood magic that links them forever to Fu Leng and the underworld realm of Jigoku

South of the Emerald Empire sprawls the vile realm known as the Shadowlands. Spawned at the dawn of the Empire by the fall from the Heavens of the evil Kami, Fu Leng, the Shadowlands is the ultimate antithesis of Rokugan—a profane place of corruption, death, and destruction. It is a land steeped in vile power that emanates from Jigoku, the Realm of Evil, and its horrifying denizens have a single-minded purpose: to sub-jugate and destroy the Empire, and then the rest of the Mortal Realm of Ningen-dō.

Because it has played such a pivotal role in the history of the Empire, it is important to understand the Shadowlands—how it came into being, its essential nature, and the profoundly existential threat it poses