Japan Special Ethereal Zone

[tHEhERETIC]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

I have been thinking about a campaign setting for a while now, and I want to throw it up here for brainstorming.

I am basing it off of Rolland Therrien's Laurence in the Land of the Kami, but I am ignoring the other installments of the Laurence making nice with ethereals stuff he did.

How the deal with Amaterasu worked out:

Native* ethereals are allowed to operated freely in Japan** as long as they do not serve or assist the forces of Hell, and do not exploit or seriously harm mortals. They can operate in the Vale of Dreams on the same terms, on appropriate*** dreamers.

The ethereals of Japan will police themselves, and assist the forces of Heaven in fighting the forces of Hell in Japan.

Angels et al are not barred from having dealings with the ethereals in Japan. Note that this is both less and more restrictive than the existing rules on dealings with Hindu, Voodoun, and Dreamtime ethereals. The latter are to be basically to be ignored everywhere on Earth, while the former can be trafficked with, but only in Japan.

Now there is a lot of subjective wiggle room in those terms. A Triad of Justice is going to interpret “do not exploit” lot more narrowly than a Mercurian of Flowers.

It remains to be seen just how all this will work out.

Because of this Ethereal Opening of Japan, teams of angels are being recruited to go there, find out what is going on, and fix it as needed.

Any suggestions or comments are welcome.

* From the folklore or religions of the area, or otherwise originating there.

** Due to skillful negotiating, “Japan” here includes the nation of Japan, Formosa/Taiwan, Sakhalin Island, all of the Kurile Islands, and both Koreas.

*** In Japan, of Japanese decent, dreaming about Japan-related stuff, etc.

I can't speak directly on Taiwan or the Russian/formerly Japanese islands, but I can speak of the gods of South Korea.

First, contrasted with the gods of Japan, the aboriginal gods of South Korea are kept very much on the downlow. There are the guardian gods Jangseung, typically one male and female that you can still find at some homes. Outside of that I only ran across one or two private shrines to fierce gods--anything else was at a Buddhist temple complex. There you will find a fascinating variety of interrelated gods, though few with any ties to the Japanese pantheon. Japan's attempt to impose Shinto on Korea largely failed, though it's possible that it's one reason the native religion is relatively hard to encounter here. http://koreabridge.net/post/seven-st...dostoevsky2181

--edit-- The near-eradication of Korean shamanism happened well after the Japanese occupation. Sad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_shamanism#History