Songs You Know By Heart

[Lady]

Songs You Know By Heart

The year is 1845, and the place is Feudal Japan. Closed off from the rest of the world, but with external pressures to open trading coming from all sides, Japan has still managed to rise culturally and economically. The Emperor is the most popular and loved ruler in fifty years, and the royal family is thought to be made up of heavenly people descended from the gods. The country runs smoothly and efficiently, the shogunate handling all matters of state and war while the Emperor and his advisers handle matters of politics and religion. The economy is running steadily, with the merchant class seeming to gain in wealth and power as the years progress, and the artisans in the cities creating new works of beauty and crafting amazing inventions. Everyone seems happy. Everyone seems healthy. Everyone loves their rulers.

Except...not everyone is happy, nor healthy, and certainly not everyone loves the Emperor Raidon or the Empress Fuyo. With the rise of the merchant class and the subjugation placed upon them by the shogunate and samurai, the common people grow restless and agitated. Talk of rebellion is spread through the townships. And though members of nobility and the military try to ignore the steady drumming of insurgency rising from their very cities, it is becoming harder and harder as the rebels take on strength and determination. Adding fuel to the fire is the inability of the royal family to provide the empire with an heir. Empress Fuyo, though she had been the wife of His Excellency for nine years, has not had a single son to carry on the heavenly line. Rebels spit venom at the weary empress, their insults multiplying as they shout things like "Barren woman!", and "We don't want a son-less empress!". The rebels look to Akina Nakahara, the favored courtesan of His Excellency, and plans to kick the empress off her rightful throne to put Akina in her place culminate at an alarming rate.

Outside the rising palace mutiny, the criminal organizations known as Yakuza war against each other to see who will come out as "ruler" of their personal crime syndicate, and bloodshed runs in the city streets. In the center of this criminal warfare, the drug Opium has begun to rise in popularity. Addicts, the desperate men and women who scrape and claw for the morphine-like drug, fuel the income of the mainstream opium sellers and yakuza. Opium dens and brothels have become common institutions within the cities, and there's a drug for sale for every addict, and a sleeper for sale for every man or woman willing to pay for the services.

Now, with crime turning to war in the cities, with talk of revolution spoken not only by the common man but by the very people in the palace service, with disease and addiction and the seedy atmosphere of brothels and opium dens calling out to people in the streets, will the Heavenly Kingdom crumble? How can any of us survive where even songs we thought we knew by heart are changing into strange melodies? The answer...well, that's all up to you. Enjoy the Heavenly City, at least while it lasts.

[SARAH BETH REED]

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with Pennbrooke Prepatory