7th Moon: the spirit world

After last week's post, I realized I have left the nature of the spirit world wide open. Spoiler alert, I have no plans to actually visit the spirit world in any of the five novels I will write in this series, so if you care, this blog post will be the one time I go over the actual details of a spirit world I intended to leave behind the veil.

The other dimension is yin and yang, or more accurately, from yang to yin. The spirit world is polar, running from yang, the pole of creation, to yin, the pole of destruction. The mortal realm is a plane of existence that exists at the point of convergence at the center of the spirit world. Everything on the yang side is Togenkyo, everything on the yin side is Jigoku. There is a natural flow of raw energy from yang to yin, Shinryuu shapes the energy into spirits called shikigami, charged with yang energy, then they take on mortal form as po energy, and when they reach the end of their lives, they convert to yin shikigami and go on to be consumed by Kageryuu and get recycled back to the beginning of the cycle all over again.

The natural flow does have exceptions, and it all has to do with hun, the spirit of mind that connects to the po, spirit of body. Everything in nature has po, but only humans have hun. The hun's purpose is to attain enlightenment through religion, gathering yang to return to Togenkyo at death. Hun that achieve enlightenment independently through self-discipline become bodhisattva and exist in Togenkyo as immortal beings while their po reincarnates with brand new hun that repeat the cycle. Hun that fail to become bodhisattva can still ascend to Togenkyo if their soul recieves enough prayers to be venerated as an ancestral kami, which yields the same result as becoming a bodhisattva except that the when the po reincarnates there is no gurantee that it will be protected through further cycles of reincarnation. Then there are the great kami of legend, the ancient gods of Japan. The great kami were ancestral kami that were so influential that their po did not reincarnate as mortals but instead connected to yoshiro and their shrines across Japan to persist as long as they are worshipped and the hun influence earthly matters by directing the flow of yang through Togenkyo to the mortal realm. Each of the great kami of legend is limited in their influence by position and only have power by directing the flow of energy in Togenkyo, meaning that if any of them returned to the mortal realm they would be powerless because once the energy gets to the mortal realm it has already settled and is too late for the kami to exert their influence.

There is one exceptional kami, Raiju. As stated in the last post, Raiju is the only spirit besides the dragons Shinryuu and Kageryuu that has any power that can be maintained even when in the mortal realm, specifically Raiju has electrokinesis in his own right and can manipulate electricity and even generate it even when bound in the mortal realm. Another thing that makes Raiju unique is that he is the only kami that consists of po rather than hun. in the time of swordsmith Masamune, a samurai named Kyutsume killed eight men in battle before loing his own arm and being forced into retirement. His eight victims returned as undead and tried to reanimate the severed arm using the corresponding po which should have passed into Jigoku. Their plan was to get revenge against Kyutsume by creating a monster with his arm to kill him by his own hand. However, they performed the ritual incorrectly and the price they paid was that they each lost an equal portion of their po and the collective po became a new spirit that was Raiju. Raiju returned to Kyutsume and became bound to a ten piece yoshiro that can be used to summon Raiju when all ten pieces are assembled by Kyustume or a reincarnation of him. When Raiju is not manifesting with his yoshiro he is typically with Kyutsume who became a bodhisattva after death and creates random lightning storms, which, like all of the other natural phenomena under the influence of the kami is indiscernible except by enlightened mystics.

When a soul fails to attain enlightenment, they proceed into Jigoku where the hun and po are bound by the sins they committed in life and suffer accordingly, the greater the sin, the longer the suffering. Those who didn't sin very much but still failed to attain enlightenment will go through this phase quickly and once the bonds of sin break, the hun and po separate and are devoured by Kageryuu to return tothe natural cycle. This is arguably better than the alternative which is to become a yokai. Yokai are the result of a soul that does not repent through their suffering and instead embrace their sin and become corrupt. The po still separates and proceeds through the natural cycle, but the hun becomes yokai. Without po, the yokai cannot return to the mortal realm and must remain in Jigoku. The leader of the yokai is Akuma, the first yokai, as ancient as the great kami of legend. Akuma was a cruel tyrant in life who had so much sin that he became exceptionally corrupt and stubbornly refused to die. When he faced his ultimate fate of being devoured by Kageryuu, he fought until he subdued Kageryuu. Subsequently, Akuma became the ruler of Jigoku and torments the souls that end up there, attempting to corrupt any soul he can into another yokai to serve him.

So now the big question, if I have no intention of going to the spirit world in this series of stories, why is any of this relevant? This is relevant because of the Shrine of the Golden Dragon which was key in the war against the one hundred and eight yokai that was fought in the time of the swordsmith Masamune and is reenacted by the reincarnations of the yokai and the bodhisattvas that defeated them when the seal at the shrine was broken. In the book 7th Moon, the shrine's seal is broken when Ryu and Sakura leave, the yoshiro of Raiju are stolen, and Sasuke is killed. When the seal is broken the souls of the yokai are released to return to the mortal realm. The only way spirits of the dead can return to the mortal realm is if they have a body without a soul to inhabit. Historically, the only bodies without souls were corpses, but when 7th Moon genetically engineered artificial humans, they were not part of the natural flow and therefore they would not be viable. Once the seal at the shrine was broken and the yokai were free, they were able to reincarnate as the one hundred and eight soldiers that were successfully produced. Well, actually, to be more precise, one hundred and five of the soldiers were yokai, the remaining three were the bodhisattvas that defeated the yokai in the past, the protagonists of the story, Hidariude, Keisei, and Kichiku, who were reincarnated specifically to combat the yokai. The last three yokai were the Tsukomugami who used a machine body as Seichei, Kageryuu who like Shinryuu couldn't reincarnate until the biotech was perfected to create a suitable vessel, and Akuma who wanted to use Han Toromi himself.

I will go over the origins of the yokai and their relationship to Shinryuu, Raiju and the three boddhisattvas in a later book titled Guardians of Paradise, but it was hinted at in 7th Moon. A few decades before the time of the swordsmith Masamune, Japan was invaded by Chinese from the mainland. They failed in their invasion and drowned at sea attempting to return home. After the ritual that created Raiju, the yokai that inadvertently created him rallied the army of one hundred and eight yokai and Akuma took over their little plot and led his own invasion using the drowned bodies to march on Japan. Shinryuu brought together Kyutsume, Bakeneko, and Nyudo and blessed them to use their power to stop the yokai. Once the yokai were defeated, to make sure they never returned, the shrine was used to make a seal that prevented them from coming back to the mortal realm. To maintain this seal, there had to be a monk, a miko, and a sword priest to maintian the shrine and it's rituals. This tradition continued unbroken for eight centuries until Ryu and Sakura left the shrine and the seal began to be weakened, and was finaly broken completely with the death of Sasuke and the theft of the yoshiro.

The context of these spirits, both good and evil, is the world I have just explained. The stories I have to tell will take place only in the mortal realm and neither Togenkyo nor Jigoku, or any of the other spirits beyond the one hundred and eight yokai, the three bodhisattvas, Shinryuu and Raiju will ever have any role to play in any of these stories.

7th Moon magic system and website woes

First of all, 7thMoon.co went down a few weeks ago because I didn't renew the website builder, which turns out to also be the host service and it is currently not cos efficient for me to have a website for a book nobody is buying and a ame nobody is playing, so if you want it back, buy the book using the links here or go straight to Amazon and play the game on Steam and give me some feedback to let me know you actually like what I'm doing and that this project is worth me paying for my own website.

Second, there is some stuff I had thought about adding to my website, but since I don't have my own website anymore, I'll post it here. I had submitted my book to one reviewer who said I had an unclear magic system. I would like to explain the magic system here, starting with this handy venn diagram chart.

So we have a total of five categories of special powered individuals; robots, cyborgs, espers, bioroids, and shinto. Strictly speaking, only shinto and espers have any actual use of magic or anything even resembling magic.

• Robots - humanoid machines that are designed for warfare and are typically more efficient by design, their primary advantage is that they are made of metal which is more durable, and they may also have special modifications that can make a type of robot more effective for particular tasks. The downside is that they follow programming and except for Seichei exhibit no free will which makes them effective servants but erratic without a master.
• Cyborgs - humans who have had machine parts added to them giving them certain mehanical advantages like robots, but still have free will as well as other possible biological advantages. Only four are in this story, Baz, Aka, Hidariude and a surprise at the end of the story.
• Bioroids - genetically engineered humans, they have a variety of advantages over humans but all are derived from existing biological examples, so while their abilities exceed human limits, they are not exceeding the limits of biology, physics, or any other science.
• Shinto - Japanese spirituality, blessed followers have access to certain powers that involve spirits, inhabitants of a parallel universe that does not strictly adhere to the laws of science in our dimension. However, while spirits are unrestricted in their own world, to exist in our world they do have to follow certain rules or else our world rejects them and expels them to their world.
• Espers - bioroids and cyborgs that have access to shinto powers that allow them use of psychic abilities that exceed normal abilities. Only five characters in the story have reached this level of power, Hidariude, Keisei, Kichiku, Douji, and Hime, although Hime's powers are limited because she is not a true esper.

Psychic Powers
Psychic powers are technically not magic, they are abilities that are possible due to neural resonance. Resonance is a natural phenomenon in which materials will vibrate at a particular frequency, triggered by proximity to vibrations of another object. Since such vibrations are due to waves, and the human brain emits measurable brain waves, this means that it is hypothetically possible for brain waves to resonate with other waves and allow for brain activity that extends beyond the brain. There are four specific abilities that come from this.

• Psychokinesis - this is the broader umbrella category for three more specific abilities, pyrokinesis, geokinesis, and electrokinesis, and usually an esper can only use one. The reason for this limitation is that using these abilities is already a strain beyond normal human abilities, even an esper's enhanced mind simply cannot stretch far enough to use more than one without breaking the esper's mind.

1. Pyrokinesis - brain waves resonate with heat energy, since fire is simply heat energy released from rapid exothermic oxidation or combustion, this allows an esper to manipulate the energy to control fire, including its direction, as well as igniting flammable materials by focusing heat energy in one spot or delaying a fire by holding back the energy. Pyrokinesis is limited by the fact that fire can't be created without fuel, so a combustible item is required, without a ready supply of natural fire, this ability generally doesn't work.
2. Geokinesis - brain waves resonate with seismic waves, the energy measured during earthquakes, this allows an esper to manipulate the earth to cause tremors and move stone. This ability involves a lot of heavy lifting, and like lifting with the body, lifting with mind causes strain. While the ability to move earth with the mind tends to be greater than the ability to move physically, it still has limits by the amount that can be moved and how far, for example, moving a small stone is much easier than moving a boulder, and moving a boulder is easier than cracking the ground open, and trying to make movements beyond what the esper sees is all but impossible for the esper to retain control of.
3. Electrokinesis- uniquely, Hidariude exhibits this power somatically instead of through his brain, although Douji and Hime could exhibit electrokinesis by synchronising their brain waves with the electromagnetic spectrum. Hidariude has an electrogenic organ in his arm that normally allows him to produce enough electricity to operate his cybernetic arm, but with trainign he can double or even triple his output in short bursts, and even direct the field as long as it remains in physical contact with him, his retractable blades, or his sword. However, once he releases the electricty, his control diminishes with distance and overuse strains his body so that he can be faigued if he attempts to increase his output beyond triple or use it multiple times in succession and this fatigue leads to him not being able to even produe enough electricity to use his cybernetic arm.

• Telepathy - neural resonance between espers, allowing them to share thoughts by synchronising their brain waves. This ability is limited to espers and they can only use it with each other, like many forms of communication, it requires both a transmitter and a reciever, meaning an esper can project thoughts only to another esper that can read the thought projections. They cannot read the minds of non-espers nor can they project their thoughts upon a non-esper.
• Precognition - The ability to predict events, limited to a few seconds at best, this ability is really only useful to evade and counter attacks. It is triggered by adrenaline and involves synchronising with an opponent who has simple thoughts from their lower brain regarding movements, and also suffers the restriction that the body must be able to keep up with the rate of perception, if for any reason the esper's reaction is slower than the opponent, the ability will prove ineffective.
• Transdimensional transcendance - the one ability useable by non-espers, though with extreme rarity, this alows an esper to interact with a parallel universe across a dimensional divide. excpet for a rare few nexus points where the dimensional divide is thin and the two universes overlap, the other universe is completely inaccessible to beings of this universe, but the spirits that inhabit it can exist interdimensionally, but have their own limitations that prevent most humans from being aware of their presence.

Transdimensional Powers
There is a dimension that is beyond mortal comprehension that seperates the world we know from a paralell universe where our laws of science do not apply. Simply put, the inhabitants of this other world are spirits and they are capable of magic. However, while spirits are fully aware of our world, they cannot interact with it directly without a compatible vessel in this world, either an inanimate object known as a yoshiro, or a living being known as a yoshiromi. Using these vessels, spirits can enter into our world by using them as physical bodies, a process known as shintai, but their powers are limited once they do. Only three spirits can use their powers fully during shintai, the Golden Dragon Shinryuu, his countepart the Shadow Dragon Kageryuu, and thunderbeast Raiju. Raiju can use electrokinesis and prefers connecting with elctrokinetic espers so their abilities synchronize better. Shinryuu and Kageryuu are able to fully manifest, but strain their vessels in doing so and must either surrender their vessels after a short time to allow for recovery or risk destroying their host completely and be unable to return to this world at all, the amount of time they get depends on how much power they use during shintai. Aside from these exceptions, spirits are limited to being able to animate the inanimate and enhance the abilities the host has already. This means that they cannot impart any ability the host doesn't already have and prefer hosts that have similar abilities already. Aside from the the dragons and Raiju, other spirits include souls of the dead, shikigami, and the yokai demons. Souls of the dead are humans whose minds were able to synchronize with the other dimension so that when they die, they continue to persist in the spirit world. Typically, the souls of the dead attain a status of bodhisattva and reincarnate in the living world after serving their purpose and fulfilling their duties in the spirit world, becoming more powerful with each reincarnation. The yokai demons are powerful beings that serve Akuma, their king who subdued Kageryuu and forced the otherwise omnipotent being to join their ranks. In the spirit world, the yokai are tyrants that claim a territory called Jigoku where they torment human souls and attempt to corrupt them into yokai, and they want to enter our world so that they can torment the living as well as the dead. Finally, the shikigami are the random lesser beings of the spirit world that only come to this world when summoned by those who know how. Shikigami differ from other spirits in that they their lack of power and intelligence comes with the trade-off that they can inhabit any physical object without needing it to be a dedicated yoshiro, but otherwise face the same restrictions.

Magical Objects
Yoshiro - as mentioned before, yoshiro are physical objects that can be inhabited by spirits. The only yoshiro mentioned in this story are the blades of Kyutsume and the Genji gauntlet that collectively form the yoshiro of Raiju, the Masamune Shinryuu that can be a vessel for Shinryuu or the souls of its previous wielders, and the statue of the Golden Dragon, which is supposed to be used for Shinryuu, but never functions as such during the whole story.

Yoshiromi - as mentioned before, yoshiromi are humans that act as vessels for spirits. Technically, this means that the espers are all yoshiromi as well as Seichei as the Tsukomogami and the bioroids as reincarnations of the yokai, but formal use of the term is reserved for Douji and Hime as the intermittent hosts of the dragon spirits, and Hidariude as temporary host of Ryu and Shinryuu. Otherwise, they are reincarnations, the difference being that reincarnations inhabit their vessels for their entire mortal lives.

Shimenawa - a rope decorated with zig-zag paper lightning bolts that protects yoshiro or yoshiromi, in this case allowing for others to control shintai, meaning that it can be used to stop shintai and expel a spirit from its host.

Onifuda - written prayers, which in themselves lack any significant powers, except when a miko (female shrine attendant/priestess) or kunoichi(female ninja) makes one using flashpaper by writing in ink made with sulfuric acid on cotton sheets, then it becomes an explosive that is particularly compatible with pyrokinesis.

Once Upon a Time

I was planning on talking about Black Clover, but that's moving so freaking slow, it's going to have to wait until there is something worth writing about. In the meantime, I'm going to give an update on Once Upon a Time.

The series attempted a reboot, which was a good idea, but perhaps they should have taken a cue from fellow fairy tale show Grimm and went out a high note. After years of establishing the complicated family tree of Henry Mills, they decided to send him off to an alternate fairy tale world where he falls in love with a Spanish Cinderella and another round of the Dark Curse moves the new cast to a suburb of Seattle. The problem is trying to keep track of all of the new characters and old ones and how they work with the third iteration of the curse.

Henry and Regina are back, along with Regina's sister Zelena, who has a now grown daughter named Robin who has fallen in love with Alice from Wonderland, who is the daughter of Captain Hook from an alternate world and Mother Goethel who entrapped Rapunzel who is also Lady Tremaine the mother of Druzella and stepmother of Cinderella bringing everyone except Tiana and Jack into one tangled family tree. The problem is, alternate Hook is supposed to be from a world that exists because of a wish that just happened last season, and yet he is tied to a history that goes back to when the fist curse was cast, not to mention we already covered Cinderella, Tremaine, and Druzella in two episodes back in Storybrooke and Rapunzel in another, which means we are crossing a lot of wires here. Oh and also they've added new rules to the curse yet again. This show has been entertaining, but they are struggling to hold this version together and they need to wrap this up and end the series with this season.

I'm back! Reign of the Nephilim, Final Fantasy updates, and other stuff that happened in the last six months

It's been a while and I feel I owe an explanation. I was on unemployment and I was supposed to report when I was working, and since technically this is advertising, it counts as work and I didn't want anyone catching my blog and saying I was working for one day a week and having to face a penalty. Just playing it safe. Well my unemployment ran out and I got a new job, so I'm bring back the blog and boy did I have some stuff that I missed out on.

First of all, during National Novel Writer's Month I came up with a new book, Reign of the Nephilim. It's about Noah's sons, Shem and Ham, before the flood. The story begins with the family being told that the flood is coming and they need to build the Ark, but while collecting materials, the brothers, as well as their great great grandfather Enoch, and Shem's wife Nora, all get dragged away by the Nephilim who drag them into their holy war. With the protection of their guardian angel Kanjahiel, they struggle to survive the war of ancient gods from various mythologies which are all actually half-angels that are destined to be washed away from the world in the flood. I tried to make it a good action story, but it will probably need a bit more work before it can be published.

Then there's Final Fantasy XV, which has some cool DLC, the Assassin's Festival and the Multiplayer Expansion Comrades. The Assassin's Festival, like the Moogle Chocobo Festival is a time-limited, non-canon event in which a town in FFXV gets redecorated for some mindless fun. This time, Noctis brought his friends along which results in some fun dialog, and there's a fun combat story that uses Assassin's Creed style gameplay to pit Noctis against a Niflheim officer anmed Loqi Tummelt, placing the event in a particular point in the story between their first confrontation with Loqi and their final battle with him before leaving Lucis. The story is short, but good. I haven't played Assassin's Creed, but this event does make me interested. The festival is largely a tribute to the game, which, like Cup Noodles and Coleman camping gear, is inexplicably existing in the game's world in the exact same form as it does here. The weird part is, they also mention a legendary Assassin in the local lore of Lestallum, suggesting that it is both a part of Eos history and it's own fictional story. If you don't think about it too hard, it's a ton of fun. All the mini-games are back from the Moogle Chocobo Festival and we finally get the prize from the Dream Egg, an alternate costume for Noctis. 

Then there's Comrades, which allows you to fill in the gap of ten years since Noctis went in the crystal. For this you play as your own original character, a member of the Kingsglaive turned Hunter, the Kingsglaive part is really just a way to explain why you have magic comparable to Noctis, including warping, summoning weapons, and magic that can be used for offense, defense and healing. There are a few tweaks, mainly that you no longer use items, except ingredients which strangely function like phoenix downs and if you don't use them in battle you get a bonus meal. Also you have some different weapons to work with, and overall it feels like FFXV version 2.0 with an overhauled system. I would argue the original game was better, but if you actually care about the story it's a great answer to what happened to the rest of Lucis besides what you see at the end of the game. Also, if you want to make your own character to visit Eos and play on your own this is fun for that too. The multiplayer part is actually optional, if you don't want to pay for PSN Plus you will be supplied with AI support, the multiplayer option is just if you want to play with friends or other actual people. The story to comrades is that Exeneris in Lestallum can provide enough power to sustain Lucis through the Long Night, but you need to collect meteor shards to get that power and then distribute it as you see fit to open options to customize your character. Everything from the beta went into the final game, but that just scratched the surface. While your main base is Lestallum, you also have to connect to four other outposts that you can visit. Familiar faces will come in from time to time and some play a somewhat major role, Iris runs the clothing shop, Cid upgrades weapons, Vyv collects and organizes your photos, and Monica and Holly are basically your new bosses. If you're wondering about Gladiolus, Prompto, and Ignis, they are busy but visit Lestallum from time to time so you get to see them and catch up with their activities. Going solo, it's a decent fanfic, if you've got friends it can probably be even cooler, but for now, I'm just playing through the story. Once I've got my act together, I'll go online and recruit people to play this game with me.

Not everything is gold though, King's Knight came out and it's kind of crap. It gets bogged down with the gimmick of collecting multiple characters which is awesome, except that it isn't long before your characters get overpowered and you can't move forward with anyone new. The original was probably better than this overmarketed update with a weak story and weak gameplay. Basically, it's just a vertical shooter, the screen scrolls up and you avoid obstacles, collect items and fight monsters. What sucks the most is that only a few battles in to the story mode, you can't defeat the enemies before you scroll past them, or worse, into them. Brave Exvius and Mobius have raised my standards for mobile apps from Square Enix and King's Knight fell short of those standards. If you're into shooters, maybe you'll enjoy it, but I prefer my good old RPGs. How many of these cross genre crapfests will SE try before they realize they need to stick to what their good at?

However, there are worse things, like the Michael Jackson Halloween special a few months ago. Thriller was a seasonal classic, so it would make the perfect basis for a full length Halloween special right? Maybe, but this was not it. The worst part is, not only is it nothing but one cliche after another, but the story is supposed to be about fighting conformity, both figuratively and literally as the villain is actually named Conformity who has outlawed dancing in her microcosm. I'm sure Michael Jackson would have been proud of the message, but the execution is flawed as we follow two cookie cutter protagonists, the heir of a family business who wants to pursue artistic dreams rather than follow tradition and an overworked assistant who has dreams beyond climbing the corporate ladder.Their adventure follows the standard series of three encounters including a generic introduction, and one dark mirror for each showing what their future holds if they keep on their current paths. Michael Jackson music plays in the background way too quiet and subtle for an eponymous star vehicle, all leading up to the climax of combining the three spirits back into Michael Jackson. So to recap, we fight conformity by combining three people into one and do a perfectly synced flash mob, because everybody following the King of Pop is not any sort of conformity. The irony hasn't been so bad since Captain Planet made plastic toys. I'm not trying to say anything bad about Michael Jackson, but perhaps Thriller should have been left alone, never has there been a better example of a remake gone horribly wrong, let this special go the way of the Star Wars Holiday special and never air again.

On the other hand, the David S. Pumpkins Halloween special was awesome, partly because it was only a half hour instead of a full hour so they had less time to screw it up, and partly because it didn't take itself seriously at all. Basically they just took the viral sketch, and redid it with enough filler to drag out the joke for it's own special. For a joke that made it's point by not making any sense, this one met expectations.

I also want to take a moment to talk about the Disaster Artist, a movie about the worst movie ever made, The Room. The reason I bring this up is because The Room was the running April Fool's joke on Adult Swim until Toonami came back and replaced it one year, but I got to hear Tommy Wiseau say "You're tearing me apart Lisa!" before Toonmai made it's epic comeback. Curiosity led me to figure out the context only to learn there really isn't one. The Room is so bad, it has become a cautionary tale in film school of what happens if you don't listen to anyone and make a crap project despite people telling you it's bad. This concerns me, because I'm afraid 7th Moon will become The Room, and I will end up the next Tommy Wisseau. On the other hand, he is the most famous maker of a bad film in Hollywood who's still banking off of it, so maybe it's not so bad.

Finally, coming back to Toonami, Dragon Ball Super has been coming along, Iron-Blooded Orphans returned, Stardust Crusaders has made me fall in love with Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop are doing a Space Cowboy Showdown and now we have Black Clover, which looks promising in a "What if Naruto took place in a Western/European setting?" sort of way.

Follow ups to come soon, stay tuned!