Bakekujira
Overview
For centuries, Azuma has been restricted to using small fishing vessals in coastal waters, with intercontinental travel only being a recent development after contact with Ogygia. Fishers were forced to subsist on whatever local waters would provide, but every so often, the ocean would provide an unimaginable bounty. Rarely, whales would come inland, bringing with them a host of fish and sea creatures, and some would even beach themselves on the shore. These rare, auspicious events provide vast resources to a fortunate village, and appropriately, the whales that sacrificed themselves were treated with a divine reverence. Prayers were said for their passing and their stripped remains buried in funerary mounds; shrines were built from their bones in their honor; trinkets of their images were carried to bring fortune in fishing voyages.But as Azuma discovered the wider world and developed more powerful fishing barges, the tides changed. Why wait for divine gifts when they now had the ability to hunt these whales and pull in large hauls of fish? A whaling industry began, and its bounty brought a horrible curse.
Massive, white whales appeared off the coast of Genbu, and when excited fishermen went to investigate, they saw that the whales were not truly white, but were living corpses, pale flesh and bleached bones gleaming in the dark. The ocean around the rotten leviathans swarmed with thousands of alien fish, and flocks of unidentifiable birds screamed in the air above. The fishemen fled in terror as the bakekujira and their horde swam out to sea, but disease and misfortune followed them home. Every seven days, the bakekujira returned, and so too did the coastal villages rot away.
Only after several exorcisms and rituals and the complete end of the whaling industry did the bakekujira stop their assault. Even now, the ocean rarely gives its gifts, and when it is insulted once again, the bakekujira return to remind Azuma of its ultimate master.
by Rakakuza
