Or, you didn’t read the augury right, morons.
So about a thousand years previous to the story the Joa had an empire, Tsuvane with a Capitol on the Sonnu River. This empire fell because of a combination of Kaiju sized plague demon and a misinterpreted prophecy. (Assumptions were made and you know what happens when you assume.)
Now the prophecy was pretty simple and it involved a warrior and mage gaining the favor of the Spirit of the Black Mountain– important note: in Joa mythology, the Black Mountain is the gate to the underworld. (This is an important detail. The plague demon was very much eating souls, and they needed someone to get the souls back and put them back together.)
Guess what stupid mistake the priests/nobles made? Go on. Guess.
They sacrificed the mage thinking their chosen noble warrior would gain the mage’s power, and then go on to kill the demon. Now, this kind of bequeathing of magic is actually possible in this setting. It has to be at the moment of death and the mage has to really, really want to transfer their power. It doesn’t last long unless the mage is able to create a specific gift to give the recipient. (Which Joris wasn’t able to do. This is also an important detail.)
This was not what they were supposed to do.
What was supposed to happen was both warrior and mage were supposed to go through a mutual power-up via a series of trials. After they’re both sacrificed to the Spirit of the Black Mountain. They were also supposed to be granted limited conditional immortality and be the adopted sons of the spirit of black mountain.
That did not happen.
What happened instead: noble warrior gets brief power up but fails to kill the Kaiju. (Because he was alone and the power-up was brief.) The noble warrior dies and the demon keeps demoning, turning everything into an apocalyptic wasteland except a very narrow area around the Black Mountain. The Kaiju is hemmed in by other gods/spirits outside the boundaries of the empire but the Joa empire is kind of screwed over except for that little narrow strip around the Black Mountain.
Meanwhile, Joris has come back to life in the underworld and is going through TWO power-up trials at the same time because the black mountain spirit is kind of an asshole and is entirely DONE with these stupid monkeys who can’t follow VERY CLEAR INSTRUCTIONS. I mean Joris keeps coming back to life after he dies and he is often able to talk himself through tests that should have been strictly combat-only—but Joris is doing a two-person trial alone and it takes him twice as long to get through even though he pretty much has a rubber soul and isn’t likely to die any time soon.
It takes him years. By the time he gets out, there are very few Joa left. They think he’s a spirit at first (modern Joa still aren’t sure he isn’t one). Joris raises the dead against the plague demon and eventually destroys it. From there Joris protects the remaining Joa, who work to restore the waste.
This was originally posted on Patreon on 08/26/2022
Note: Many parts of this post are no longer accurate 8/30/2025
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