"I came down from the mountains to the Seppun lands because I'd heard of these gods who fell from the heavens and saved the Seppun tribe from the Noriaki. I was hoping for something more, something better than I had among the Hikaru, killing people for being on the wrong side of a river, stealing goats from time to time, getting into stupid fights, hunting animals all over the Spine of the World. And who better to deliver on that promise than actual gods?"
He shrugged.
"So you can imagine my disappointment when I arrived to find that they were basically just big people. Oh, very strong, very skilled, very intelligent people, but people all the same. No flying through the air or hurling lightning bolts or any of that. Worse yet, to my eyes, most of them offered nothing to the Hikaru, no future for my people. They could teach good farming? We didn't farm. It wasn't who we were. They could protect some flatlanders from the Noriaki? What did that matter to me? I'd killed my own share of Noriaki by that point. And many of the Kami seemed intent on recreating the remembered perfect order of Tengoku here in NIngen-do, without regard to the fact that Ningen-do is not Tengoku and humans are not perfect beings."
He chuckled, shaking his head.
"In my youthful anger, I actually took a leak on a wall Hida had built, because he reminded me so much of my own chief, only bigger, that his sense of self-importance was more than I could bear. And most of the Kami- including, my apologies, Nanzi-san, your mother- struck me as leaders I could not follow. Hida, Hantei, and Akodo all more or less said that the tribes would either join the Empire wholesale or be driven out by force of arms, their customs cast aside in favor of the new order. Doji... well. I do not think she or I could understand one another in the slightest, because she hid her concerns behind manners I was not equipped to penetrate at that point in my life. Bayushi didn't trust his own face not to betray him, so how could I trust him? Ryoshun was dead, Hisomu was missing, and their adherents were... nice enough people, so far as it went, but neither of those Kami stood to rule."
Sora made an oblique gesture toward his eye.
"This thing... shows me the future sometimes. Usually so I can avert it. But when i looked upon the Kami, they shaped so many futures, each of them, that it was almost painful, an endless whirl of
possibility. But much of what I saw appalled me. Of the ten Kami, two weren't present, and five offered no future as ruler that I wanted any part of. I actually attended a meeting of those who would have no Kami rule over us."
Here, he gave a derisive snort.
"There was no future there, either, only people united solely by their fear of what was coming, with no better plan than armed opposition. They had no serious way to prevent what was coming, only a defiance that ranged from heroic to utterly self-serving. So."
He gave another shrug.
"There were three Kami in a position to rule who didn't... alarm me on some level. Togashi was... enigmatic, but his followers seemed a tolerant bunch, and his plans for the Tribes were less... binary than Akodo's, Hida's, or Hantei's. Shinjo? The first thing I saw her doing was getting her hands dirty building not some stupid wall with no warriors to guard it, but a bathhouse for everyone to use. My old friend Koyama ended up winning her heart and marrying her, and I might have been happy with her on the throne, I don't know. She seemed so enraptured by exploring the new world she found herself in, it was... charming. But I didn't see a future for myself serving her directly. Not as a place to belong."
A pause, perhaps for breath, perhaps for a realistic interjection of some sort by one of the other people present.
"Which brings us to the Boss. I saw the same mixture of futures in many respect, some good, some bad, but... he always... listened to humans. He understood that our customs existed for
reasons, and he would listen to my worries, even when I barely knew how to form them into coherent speech. So I figured I would follow him on his early travels, bring him the concerns of humanity as best I was able, and if the Empire were headed in one of the directions I feared, well, I would take my leave of it at the border."
His expression twisted into a wry grin.
"So imagine my surprise when Shiba
won. After all of the noise I'd made about how the Kami had as much to learn as they did to teach, about how they had to listen to us, I could hardly just wander off."
His hand strayed up to smooth his beard.
"To this day, I bring the Boss such human worries as come to my attention. And when he asked me to serve as the protector of his children- his children born of the woman whose name I carry? For me, there was no going back. It wasn't divine power or wisdom I followed Shiba for. It was his humanity."
As he ended this rather lengthy speech, he cocked his head to the side.
"But it sounds like your journey to the Scorpion Clan was a very different one from my journey to the Imperial Families, and I'm getting quite sick of the sound of my own voice, so if you would care to share, Haka-san, feel free. You've listened to this much of my blithering, after all."
[ooc: Monologue of DHOOM to spare us a lot of 'uh-huh" back and forthing
]
