Champions of Kamigawa Vignettes

Let’s take our first steps into this new plane with some short stories! You can find a portal containing links to all of them here, but I’ll also include individual links below. I’ll give quick summaries for all of them, but I’d urge you to just go read them yourselves. They aren’t long, they’re free, and most of them are worth a look. Also, Magic’s short stories have a tendency towards twist endings, so those will all be spoiled if you read the reviews first.

Mountain Secret, by Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar

Kumano, Master Yamabushi, has been living on a mountain top for years. Then kami show up, because somebody has been spreading a rumor that Kumano holds “the secret to O-Kagachi’s rage”. Kumano claims ignorance, the kami don’t believe him, and he kills them (yamabushi do hold the secret of killing kami). The story ends with him descending his mountain to go look for, and kill, whomever has been spreading the rumor.

This is a very good introduction to Kamigawa. Despite being a short story it starts with a slow build, setting up a mysterious tone and feel for the world, then moves on to introducing the kami and their war against the mortals, drops a few hints about O-Kagachi and Konda while keeping the mystery of what is going on, and then delivering a good action scene. The only complaint I have is that it is also setting up the mystery of who has been spreading rumors about Kumano and why, a story that will never be resolved. But the story offers enough good stuff that I don’t really mind.

A few trivia points:

• The master yamabushi’s full name is given as Ryusaki Kumano. This will be contradicted in another online source.
• Kumano has all sorts of powers other than pinging for 2 mana. He hulks out via a meditation technique and has lived on a mountain top for years without food.
• That mountain top is near Untaidake Peak.
• The kami who show up are utterly bizarre, as they should be, though surprisingly they aren’t supposed to be any recognizable cards. They are Kakkazan, Great Kami of the Mountain Fire, and the Kami’s of Ash, Searing Wind & Black Glass. Who knows, maybe we’ll see Kakkazan someday? If they keep making sets with 70 new Commanders, at some point they will need to use some obscure characters, right?
• Kakkazan calls O-Kagachi by his name, which in interesting as the novels don’t actually name him until the second book.
• Kumano does know that Konda committed a “crime” to cause the spirit war, though perhaps he’s just inferring that from the fact that Eiganjo has been the focal point of kami attacks.

Duty Bound, by Ed Stark

When general Takeno hears that the village of Kodaira has been attacked by nezumi, and that the villagers are hiding inside the local military outpost, he immediately rides out… but after his troops have killed the rat-men, we learn that his main concern was to punish the outpost’s captain for letting civilians in one of the daimyo’s forts without permission.

This one is perhaps a bit on the nose, but I remember liking it at the time. Kamigawa was the first time Magic made a white mana aligned character the big bad of the story (we had things like the Farrelites or the Order before, but they were never the main villain) and this story is a good introduction to that concept. Heck, perhaps it is even a better example of a white villain than Konda himself, as Takeno’s motivation is a clearly "white" obsession with rules and laws, while Konda often came across as more power-hungry and egotistical than in it for the greater good. Reading this story again though, Takeno has perhaps such a (stereo)typically “white” motivation that the twist of him punishing the captain rather than praising him for saving the villagers is a bit predictable.

• The samurai general’s full name is Munetsugu Takeno. The article that contradicts Kumano’s name actually gets this one right.
• Takeno seems a lot more ill-tempered than in the books, but perhaps that’s just because there he is constantly standing next to Konda and has to behave himself.

Everything, by Gwendolyn Kestrel

Azami, head librarian at Minamo, tells her life story from a first person perspective. She was approached by a spirit in her childhood who asked what she would give up to gain knowledge, to which she answered “Everything”. “Then you shall have it”, the spirit said. We then hear of a few events where various people in her life died while she pursued knowledge. Eventually she discovers the kami which she saw was just a minor river spirit, and that all those deaths weren’t part of some bargain with a great spirit, but her own fault. She then closes with this quote: 

“Yet even now, I do not mourn for the dead. I do not repent my actions. I regret the years of self-delusion. I had lived a lie. The worst aspect, the thing I cannot reconcile, that which makes me bitter, is that I would rather not have learned the truth.”

Phew. Azami sure is a horrible person!

The main problem with the story is that you can see the twist coming miles away. She’s the one who didn’t care for her mother because she was studying. She’s the one who left her friend in some quicksand to escape with an ancient scroll. She’s the one who poisons the head of the library. It’s entirely clear from that text that it’s her fault, so it would’ve been more of a twist if it somehow had all been set up by the kami. It also adds little to the world building. Although Azami will appear in a few more vignettes, she isn’t a main character, and we learn nothing more about the war. It’s just a character piece on a very minor character, and not a terribly interesting one at that. Pretty skippable.

Very minor nitpick: after the kami who promised her knowledge is killed it doesn’t evaporate, like kami do in the novels. It’s rather important for this story, as otherwise Azami would never have learned of its true nature, so we’ll let that one slide. All the kami are weird and unique by design after all, so maybe this one has a special power of remaining as a corpse?

Worst superpower ever.

Eight and a Half Tales, by Rei Nakazawa

Sensei Eight-and-a-Half-Tails is on a path to the Sokenzan mountains, running into the ravages of war. He collects a sword from a dead samurai who used to be a student of his. He takes the sword to the samurai’s sister, who tells him to keep it. He takes it as a reminder of his failure. This story is interspersed with flashbacks to the various good deeds and accomplishments throughout his life that led to the growth of his nine tails. Then in the final flashbacks we learn that Konda had asked him to devise “a very complex meditation into the nature and spiritual energies of the kami.” He realized it could manipulate the barrier between worlds, but only a madman would do so, and surely Konda wasn’t a madman? After the start of the kami war, realizing his role in its beginnings, he chopped of half of his final tail.

Get it, Eight and a Half Tales? Because he is Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, and each tail has a tale?

I kid, I kid, I think it’s actually a pretty nifty title.

When this story was first released it seemed like it was very important, as it was the first to really delve into the beginnings of the kami war. Turns out it wasn’t though, as Eight-and-a-Half-Tails will never appear again, and future explanations of the origin of the war will complicate matters by involving a whole bunch of other characters, but we’ll get to that in due time. For now, even with its lessened impact on larger continuity, I think this is a pretty great story. I like the world building, the characters, the somber tone and the way the flashbacks are expertly woven into the present day story.

• The sensei’s original name was Wise-Muzzle
• He got his fifth tail after developing a magical tricks which “allowed the user to learn but one form of mystic protection, and attune his opponent to that form, creating a perfect defense against any foe with minimal effort.” Which is one way to reference the rather abstract mechanic of his card. I’m normally not a huge fan of trying to cram the card mechanics into the storyline too blatantly, but this is kinda clever, and more importantly, it’s just a small, unobtrusive part of the story rather than a major plot point.
• Konda’s request is brought to him by lady Pearl-Ear, who we will see a lot more of in the novels. I don’t think she ever discovers she was instrumental in causing the war this way though.

Security, by Gwendolyn Kestrel

A Nezumi village hears weird moaning. Forked-Tongue, a shaman living nearby, says it’s Horobi, Death’s Wail, and that they need to sacrifice to it every three nights to keep it at bay. They decide to sacrifice Sonokura, a human drunkard who has been living in the village. In the epilogue we see Forked-Tongue telling her treasures that as long as Kitanosu village keeps feeding Horobi, it won’t visit them.

Hey, after three stories in which nezumi appeared as (minor) bad guys, they get to be main characters! It’s cute enough, with a decent twist. Actually, the twist here is partly that it actually is Horobi after them, which is similar to the twist I suggested for the Azami story… It’s kind of a bummer that the one Horobi story we got doesn’t go into its origins with the Reito massacre, which was a very significant event in the kami war according to the flavor texts in the set but which never gets explored in any stories. I would’ve preferred a bit more “significant” story to this rather random one, but it is still fun enough.

The Dragon’s Errand, by Alexander O. Smith

If you’ve read only one of these vignettes, it’s probably this one, as it was re-released years later in an Uncharted Realms article around the time of Kiki-Jiki’s reprinting in Modern Masters 2015.

It starts with Meloku having captured Kiki-Jiki and questioning him about the whereabouts of a pearl the akki stole. We then flashback to Kiki stumbling into a dragon’s lair. The dragon enlists him in stealing the pearl. But after grabbing the thing he looks into a magic mirror, then smashes it when his reflection starts acting weirdly. This somehow brings the reflection to life. Finally we figure out that the Kiki Meloku captured is the reflection, and that the real one has returned the pearl to the dragon. Turns out the pearl is actually the dragon’s egg. The dragon tells its unborn offspring to go easy on the akki when its grown up.

A bit of a strange story, as most of it is told from the perspective of Kiki-Jiki, who never really grasps what is going on. It works pretty well though, as Kiki has loads of character. Despite being… kind of awful? Apparently he was kicked out of his family “when you used your sister in lieu of a rock for throwing practice in the lava fields, and taught your older but marginally stupider brothers how to play "taunt the oni."”, and he chuckles at the memory of someone dying in a lava flow… yet somehow he is still weirdly likable. Any story that manages to pull that off is doing something right! It’s another fairly inconsequential story, as an origin story for a character who will never reappear, but again, one with enough charm to be worth reading on its own.

• At one point Kiki says “By the Patron’s bulbous bile-sacs” Cool to see the Patron of the Akki referenced so early when it won’t get a card until the second set of the block.
• We also get a reference to another legendary akki: “He had heard stories about Zo-Zu the Punisher leading the bravest of the akki on stone-throwing practice near where the soratami chariots were known to fly.”
• Meloku will turn up in a very minor role in the novels. There he hangs around in Eiganjo for years, but surely he had a few vacations back in the Soratami city in that period to run into Kiki-Jiki in this story.

Thankless Child, by Rei Nakazawa

A boy shows Dosan, the Falling Leaf a wolf cub he found. Dosan tells the kid a story about Iname. According to this story the kami were born from a Great Void and created Kamigawa. Iname created the first Kami Child, becoming the kami of life. As the Child grows up it leaves Iname for longer and longer periods, causing its parent starts to fear it won’t need him anymore. As a result, life throughout the world starts to get sick, need sustenance, etc. Eventually the Child wants to leave entirely. Iname kills it, causing the first Kami death and creating his Death Aspect in the process. Dosan then spells out the moral of the story, that parents have to think of their children first. This convinces the boy to let the wolf pup go back into the wild.

I’m never a huge fan of in-universe myths (remember my review of The Myths of Magic?), and the moral of the story is a bit on the nose (Well, Dosan is telling a story to a 6 year old boy, so perhaps I should forgive him for that), so this story isn’t really for me. Still, it’s cool to have at least some idea of how the people of Kamigawa think the kami fit into the world. Not horrible, but not very exciting to me either.

In a weird error, the red and green Myojin’s are referred to here as those of Infinite Anger and Creation’s Web, rather than Infinite Rage and Life’s Web. Something tells me Rei was working from a style guide that was created before templating of the cards required some names to be shortened.

Bonds of Ice and Fire, by Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar

The story starts long after the kami war, with an old Seitaro and Shujiro Yamazaki living in a large mansion. Seitaro is approached by his great-niece Mariko, who studies at Minamo. She asks him how the brothers became the heroes of their village but remained unknown to the rest of the world. He explains how after a failed assault on Eiganjo they received a note from their father urging them to come home. On the road there they found what they thought was a kami and killed it, but it turned out this was a summoning of their father. When they killed it, their father died. This left the village without a defender, so the two of them swore to never leave and protect it from kami attacks in his stead. When Mariko leaves she asks if she can hear more stories when she returns from her studies. Seitaro agrees, but says that there is one question she may never ask: “why Shujiro and I no longer speak to one another.”

This one is quite grim, and again the twist is a bit predictable (there are some hints that something is wrong while they are fighting the “kami”, and since the dad is the only other character we know about…), but I still like it. It’s quite atmospheric, I like the two brothers as characters, and it is also just cool to have a story from a different point in time than all the others.

Speaking of timing though… it is a bit strange to see this story released in the Champions batch of vignettes. See, at the start of the story we are told the following:

“Shujiro had become, since a neck-wound from a kitsune arrow that nearly took his life, both quieter and more reckless, a monster held in check only by his brother’s indomitable will.”

The two brothers appear in the books, and Shujiro gets that wound in a battle near the end of the first novel, so it seemed that after that the two returned to their father’s village… but then they appeared again in the second novel! And although they themselves don’t show up in the third, the attack on Eiganjo they were apart of is still going on there. So the flashback part of this story has to happen after all three novels. Making it a bit of a spoiler that this story blatantly calls the attack “failed”. It’s not a problem nowadays of course, but I remember it causing some confusion when it was first released.

Also, the ending is a bit weird, as you’d think accidentally killing their dad would be what drove the wedge between them. What could be worse than that? Like with so many of these stories, we never got a follow up, so we’ll most likely never find out.

The Dragon Shield, by Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar

The temple of the Order of the Sacred Bell is attacked by kami. Jugan is summoned to protect them, but the monk Kazuki is told by his master to start ringing the Sacred Bell to summon help.

This is the vignette with the least "story" of the bunch. Kazuki is summoned by his master, then they watch the battle for a while, and then he’s tasked with ringing the bell, leaving us with an open ending that of course… what? Oh? This story will actually be followed up upon in a later vignette? Oh, well, awesome! That gives the whole thing a bit more importance, and also just a bit more story.

Despite being not much of a story, I do like that we get to see it, as this is the start of the Battle of Silk which is, like the Reito Massacre, is an event known from flavor text.

• The Order has placed its Bell inside the great tree Fudaiju, which is surrounded by a huge circle of horizontally growing trees simply called “the Wall”. Kazuki believes the Wall is larger than Boseiju or the Center Tree, though he has never traveled to either.
• Generations ago a monastery was destroyed by stampeding serows (again a reference to a card that won’t be printed for several sets! And this one isn’t even a legendary creature!). The monks only found the bell among the rubble, which they brought to Fudaiju. Thus began the Order of the Sacred Bell.
• Unlike those from the first story, these Kami are clearly recognizable as Orbweaver Kumo, Venerable Kumo and Thousand-Legged Kami.
• This story has a very literal example of Soulshift: 

“There were kami inside of the creature?” Kazuki gasped. He could hear his voice cracking with fear once again. “For every kami that he defeats,” Masuyo answered calmly, “Jugan could bring others into the utsushiyo. Some kami of the forest do not die, my pupil, so much as they are pushed to the other side of the veil for a time. We can hope in this case it is for a very long time indeed.”

• Also, it has a hint to Jugan’s death trigger, which will be followed up upon in the sequel:

“Besides,” Rokuan smiled, “I do not think Jugan will leave this world without a blessing for those he protects.”

• Speaking of Jugan, he will also show up in the novels, and will be mentioned in the follow up story. We’ll cover his continuity there.
• We know from the flavor text of Time of Need that the Battle of Silk will last 6 years!

Told in Whispers, by Rei Nakazawa

Students at Minamo try to find an ancient scroll telling of Towazu, the Unspeakable. Actually reading the scroll turns one of them mad by filling his mind with the Unspeakable’s knowledge. It turns out it was all a ploy by Azami to get more people with this knowledge in her grasp.

Fans could actually vote from a list of 10 legendary creature who they wanted the final story to be about. This story is quite cool, although I hope the voters were happy getting a story that is much more about Azami than the actual Unspeakable. Personally I like it. After “Everything” spend its entire runtime setting up her character, it’s cool to see an actual plot involving her. In fact, what we learn here about her secret prison of madmen in the basement, and the fact that apparently headmaster Hisoka made her give up her private library makes me kind of sad we never got a third Azami story that gave us a payoff for all this stuff.

• Is it me, or is "Towazu" a pretty... speakable name for the Unspeakable?
• We hear the mad student say the following: “The world today. War, blood, tears. A great crime, a parent’s woe.” This is a hint as to what Konda did to piss off O-Kagachi.
• Azami’s last name is given as Ozu. This is not contradicted by the article that got Kumano's name wrong, because that doesn’t give any other name for her at all.

Final Thoughts

Kamigawa gets off to a good start with a pretty solid collection of vignettes. There are a few less interesting ones, but none of them are really bad. It is interesting that they tend to get the same criticism from me despite being written by different writers. Twists that are somewhat predictable, setting up characters for adventures we’ll never get to see… I guess these are just common pitfalls for short stories. Luckily these stories tend to score very well on their character work and their worldbuilding, which more than makes up for these shortcomings. And as a storyline junkie I’m of course just very happy to be getting more stories for this block than usual!

I’ll figure out the timeline when I’ve covered all the novels, but I’ll warn you now, for all these stories except the Brother’s Yamazaki and Battle of Silk one we really can’t say more than that they happened "somewhen" during the twenty years of the Kami War.