Historical Disputes of the "Eastern King"

In the island songs of the sea folk, the "Eastern King" or "King of the Eastern Mountain" is widely known on Raiden's land as the "Wicked King." He was the first domain lord installed by the great serpent Orobashi, and also the last.

The "King of the Eastern Mountain" has no known personal name and was of low birth. Some island songs call him "the abandoned child of moonlight and tide," or "the child forgotten by the moon." Perhaps he was an orphan who had lost his clan, or a wanderer's son cast adrift upon the current.

Though he had neither surname nor given name, nor any clan strong enough to protect him as he grew, the Great Watatsumi Omikami still took the child in—just as he had once taken in the remnant people trapped in the abyssal deeps.

Later the boy studied under the Mouun sisters, learned the whale-songs and rites of the Watatsumi people, and his memory was dyed in color by palaces of coral and giant clam, by shining schools of fish and rainbow-hued merfolk; his body was honed swift and strong by rough reefs and endless waves.

The island songs of the Uminami clan tell that when the boy became a youth, the shrine maiden Mouun invited him to swim together in the waves of moonlight and stars. Amid the waxing and waning of that glow, the youth sensed the speech and feelings of sea beasts; amid the shrine maiden's gentle, sorrowful murmur, he decided the road thereafter.

It is said that after this night swim, the youth grasped the sword forms called "Moon-Mouun" and "Evening Tide." Though he left no children, these forms were taught among Watatsumi warriors and refined generation by generation, and so never died out. On Watatsumi Island, poor in sword tradition, these two forms remain to this day techniques hard to match in true combat.

When the Great Watatsumi Omikami set out on the eastward campaign from which there would be no return, the youth led the first charge, breaking through like bamboo, and first took the island then called "Eastern Mountain" by the sea folk. The title "King of the Eastern Mountain" was the Great Omikami's reward for that merit. Yet in the legends of today's Yashiori Island residents, this fierce and terrible "Eastern Mountain King" bears the cruel name of "Wicked King."

In the end the "Wicked King," together with his lord, met the judgment of the "Musou no Hitotachi," and Mouun, who had once ridden the waves with him under the moon, also perished amid her people's lament in a storm of black crow feathers…

All dust settled. All things went against their wishes.

It is worth noting that on Watatsumi Island today people still call strong and gallant warriors "descendants of the Eastern Mountain King"—though the young and arrogant "Eastern Mountain King" never lived to join with the one he loved, nor to enjoy a peaceful future free of waves.