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Kuni Nakanu 
Born: Unknown 
Died: 105
People

Kuni Nakanu was a Crab Clan shugenja who lived during the end of the first and beginning of the second centuries. He was the first person to study and name the Shadowlands Taint, which he began to study at the turn of the century.

Family[]

NAkanu was a distant cousin of Kuni, the founder of his family. [1]

Sensei[]

His sensei, a wise and unappreciated man, had always taught that to defeat an enemy, one must first understand them. [2]

Studies[]

In the year 95 [3] Kuni Nakanu began studying the signs and effects of the Shadowlands taint. [4] He learned how the bodies of the dead became possesed by dark spirits called kansen and how they gave the corpse locomotion. [1] After he remarked on the effect of the Taint on corpses, Nakanu spent 5 years researching a way to channel the power of the Taint into a spell. His purpose was simple; to use the corpses before Shadowlands could do so and turn them against the Shadowlands. [5]

Death[]

Nakanu met his end when during his research he was bitten by a zombie, and during the fight the entire building exploded, releasing other zombies chained to the walls. [2] Nakanu was eaten alive by seventeen zombies. [5] Nakanu ended up a zombie alongside those he had created. [6] The Ikoma Histories placed his death in the year 105. [7]

Nakanus' Journals[]

Nakanu's name was stricken from the Clan records, his possessions were confiscated and destroyed, and his quarters were burned to the ground. A resourceful apprentice stole into his library and made off with the bulk of his notes. He made for the Phoenix lands, hoping that the shugenja there would grant him shelter in exchange for the information he carried. He never made it; he vanished somewhere en route, and the text he was carrying vanished with him. So it remained for the next four hundred years. [1] The Journals of Kuni Nakanu described in detail the effects of the Taint on living and dead corpses as observed in his experiments. [4] The journals were lost for centuries until they resurfaced in the hands of Iuchiban. [5]

Crab's View on Nakanu[]

When he died, his creations ran loose in Crab lands, murdering many, earning him the hatred of his fellow Crab to this day, regardless of the value of his research. [2] Few slim volumes of his research were rescued by his apprentices, apprentices whose souls were consumed by Fu Leng. [8]

Shadowlands' View on Nakanu[]

The Shadowlands considered Nakanu a lost opportunity, a failure. They had expected maho might have gained a slim measure of acceptance in the fledging Emerald Empire. Instead, Nakanu became a highly visible example of what happened to those who meddled with darkness. The death of Nakanu forced Fu Leng to find other avenues to make maho seem inviting, losing time which was used by the Crab to firmly entrench along the borders of the Shadowlands. [8]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 The Tomb of Iuchiban: The Journal of Kuni Visten
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Forgotten Lore, by Shawn Carman
  3. Imperial Histories 2, p. 35
  4. 4.0 4.1 Bloodspeakers, p. 50
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 Way of the Scorpion, p. 29
  6. Enemies of the Empire, p. 261
  7. Winter Court: Kyuden Kakita, p. 87
  8. 8.0 8.1 Way of the Shadowlands, p. 27



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