Aeterna PublicaeBoard

Communist Volkstrad wrote:

Their entire view of the world was really different from ours, because while they were able to figure quite a lot of things out, the world was still a mystery, unexplored and unknown. There is an impressive blend of fact and myth in their telling of events. It's overall just very cool.

This is partially why I also like a lot of Japanese history; the blend of myth and historic known quantity. Even as late as the 19th and early 20th century you still hear lots of stories of spirits and demons running around and interacting with people.

You have events which are known, historically, to be legit, like the Genpei War. Yet in that same telling of events, you have stories about vengeful ghosts rising up to seek revenge. You have the common folk stories about Taira no Masakado, a real dude, who rose up in revolt against the Imperial Court.... and then how after his death, his head was mounted above the gates of Kyoto, yet continued to rave and rage at all that passed, and how his ghost continued to cause havoc and discord for over a thousand years after his demise.

Minamoto no Yoshitsune, real guy, who joined with five of his brothers he had never even met to destroy the Taira, the dominant hegemonic power over the country at the time, after their father's death and failed revolt when they were young. They established the first shogunate, the Kamakura Shogunate.

But funny thing, they say he went into the mountains as a young lad to be trained in the art of war by the Tengu King. Crazy stuff like that all throughout. You don't see this kinda thing most places at that point in history.

You have then the Bakumatsu, the end of the last shogunate, and all kinds of political intrigue between various factions throughout the country. Assassination, plots, uprisings, all kinds of cool stuff. Throughout Japanese history, you have all kinds of larger-than-life heroes that would fit right into Warhammer, but they were real.