I am working on a 50,000 word story for a writing contest. Its...maybe dark fantasy would be the word to described it? Its not exactly high fantasy, and I don't think its swords-n-sorcerery considering the setting.
Its about a ronin who refused to commit seppuku after a dignitary visiting Meiyo-Hazumi was killed. Normally the ritual suicide would only be called for if the samurai's lord were killed, according to Raijou's code. This led the samurai to flee Meiyo-Hazumi as a ronin. He is caught and taken by boat down a passage of ocean to an island where, according to Raijou religious beliefs, the dead go to reach their final place in the Afterlife.
On this island he finds not supernatural beings awaiting, but instead a large penal colony where the inmates work in primordia mines near refineries set up by a group called the Keystone Foundation. During his time in the penal colony, he befriends a kappa that fought in the kappa-tengu uprising that was rapidly engulfing all of Raijou around the time the visiting dignitary was killed. From this one, he gets the "other side of the story" in regards to the uprising. Soon the kappa mysteriously disappears, and other inmates insist that the guards took him in the night to the Diyinfu, the entry into the Yamayuan, an place where the uncleansed hearts go upon dying.
Meanwhile one of the Keystone Foundation mining foremen arrives at his quarters after a long day of work to find the entire place ransacked, his bride melted to a puddle of slag and his youngest child gone. He has the sector around his quarters put on strict lockdown while guards search every cell, cavern, and facility for the murderer/abductor.
Amid the chaos of guards throwing open cells, the ronin manages to escape. He heads for the place the inmates called Diyinfu to find himself at a large, manor-like dwelling built into a mountainside. Having taken some of the guards' weaponry, he manages to make it into the Diyinfu.
The abductor is found to be a guerion, a type of all-purpose livestock animal bred by the Keystone Foundation. This one has some form of intelligence and speaks of being given its ability to speak from a "rock-coccoon." Then it begins whimpering about the its brain burning. The Keystone Foundation guards ask it to take them to the rock-coccoon. In exchange, they'll give it an antidote to remedy the high levels of primordia that gave the guerion its rudimentary intelligence.
In the Diyinfu, the ronin discovers steel-pods, within which he finds hideous things that are partly human and partly beast, and while there is some variation among the contents of the pods, they all seem familiar. He presses on to find the kappa and comes to a holding area with more fully developed experiments and suddenly it hits him: these horrible things resemble various minor divine entities from the Raijou religions. While many are quite monstrous, those based off of less hideous divinities have still been slightly transfigured to make them appear more monstrous.
The search party following the guerion begin to feel the heat eminating from the veins of primordia found all about the subterranean tunnel. The tunnel ends in a vast cavern, where they all see the missing child lying within a chalk-drawn symbol on the rocky floor. The ray of moonlight shining down on the dead child begins to shimmer and the blood and innards smoke as a hideous creature with a thick, slug-like body covered in sharp, bristly quills with a pair of sturdy legs and long, lean and muscled arms appears over the slaughter.
From behind the shattered remains of the "rock coccoon" steps a being whose body seems to be composed of the very same rock as the mountain and whose head resembles that of an ankylosaurus. The Keystone Foundation guards recognize this thing as an elf, an elemental force of nature given a vaguely human form. The elf's summoned monstrosity brutally eliminates the entire search party. It thanks the dying guerion for leading "the slaggies". With a touch of its hand, the elf reabsorbs the primordia it had infused the guerion with. The elf feels that it is early yet for the Awakening, but decides to make the most of its freedom. It has its summoned monster ripping apart the Keystone Foundation guards and removing their hearts, which combined with primordia, make very powerful explosives.
The ronin finds a researcher and demands to known where the kappa was taken. The frightened researcher begs to be released and says he'll talk. The ronin drops him and the research tells him where they took the kappa. Suddenly he hears the light tromp-tromp of people approaching outside. He takes a primordia grenade and tosses it toward the door, then grabs the research and makes a quick exit as the explosive goes off, blowing the would-be rescuers of the research to kingdom come. The ronin decides to keep the researcher with him as collateral to cover his escape.
The pair make it to a holding facility, where he sees that his friend the kappa is in a state of agony: his upper body is intact, though his lower body sans vital organs has been melted into some kind of thick, almost muddy substance. Contained primordia infusions keep the his vitals knitted together. The ronin attempts to approach the kappa and feels the aura of heat surrounding the kappa, which is due to the extensive primordia infusions. The kappa begs the ronin for death, in order to keep the secret of life from the hands of the Foundation. The ronin obliges the kappa then asks the researcher what the purpose of their experimentation of the kappa was. The researcher tearfully begs the ronin for his life, since he was only following orders. As the pleading ends and the researcher begins to talk about their research with the kappa, the air around him explodes with heat and his skin and muscle begins falling off his body in thick clumps.
Suddenly the ronin is batted to the side by a thick arm as something large and powerful charges past and slays the Keystone Foundationers that killed the researcher. The elf helps the ronin to his feet and takes him aside while the summoned monster from the cavern enjoys a quick meal. The elf escorts the ronin from the research facility and out into the surrounding forest.
From here the ronin smuggles himself back to Raijou with the intent of regaining his title as the Regent of Meiyo-Hazumi by defending the region against the Keystone Foundation's intended invasion. I think that, given his status as an outlaw and a ronin, he may have to go to the kappa and tengu and get their aid to accomplish his goal. The Keystone Foundation plans on using its twisted versions of the Raijou people's religious divinities to bend the people to their will and begin building a large enough force to search out and eradicate the other elves before they wake from their slumber.
![[A]](https://superherohype-data.community.forum/avatars/m/70/70800.jpg?1270390582){kind=avatar}
mostly because when I start writing, everything that's in my head keeps mutating into something else..
Keep us posted.
