Kareki

Karaki was a farming community and one of the many isolated villages of the Fochu Peninsula in Wa. It was known for being the former home of the famous Peachling Girl.

Description
Kareki was a more prosperous village than most in the region, because it had good farming.

Most of the structures within the village were simple peasant shacks known as minka, built from wood with latticed walls and straw-thatched roofs. Apart from these poor residences were small barns, warehouses, and shops. At the center of the village was a little courtyard containing two sculptures, one memorializing the village's founder Hoteo, the other signifying the freedom-fighter Oe-Ura, also known as the Peachling Girl, and her pets.

As a whole, the people of Karaki were much more welcoming of strangers than other settlements of the peninsula.

The hamlet had a population of about 340 individuals after.

Geography
Kareki was located along the Nanaichi River near the western edge of the Momoben Forest on the western side of the Fochu Peninsula of Tsukishima. A trail led west from the village to the settlement of Utumoi on the coast.

Government
Villages in Wa were run by an administrator known as a shoya, typically a minor samurai, and Kareki was no different in this respect. The shoya could call upon a local militia if needed. The shoya of Kareki after Wa Year 1770 (1352 DR) was Oshikochi Tanan.

Trade
The cost to spend the night in one of the small minkas was 4 fen. The village did not produce anything more expensive than 4 yuan to sell.

Defenses
About 34 citizens of Kareki served in its militia. These persons were only armed with simple clubs or spears.

Religion
Like most of the villages of the Peninsula, the people of Kareki were followers of the Path of Enlightenment. Unlike the other settlements, however, they did not demand a test of faith from strangers and were more welcoming of those of other faiths.

Notable Inhabitants

 * Hoteo, the village's founder, who was actually an ambassador from the Celestial Bureaucracy.
 * Oe-Ura, the Peachling Girl.

History
Kareki was an ancient settlement, being founded as early as around by a man named Hoteo, who was in truth sent from the Celestial Empire to reign in the rebellious coiled dragon Za-Jikku. Hoteo created a magical copper hammer with which to defeat the dragon, but instead, Za-Jikku defeated Hoteo. The gods transformed Hoteo into a statue, which rose up from the very ground and stood in the middle of the village. It still held the copper hammer for a thousand years.

Sometime around, a poor farmer from Kareki was fishing in the Nanaichi River when he discovered a floating peach. The beach burst open to reveal a baby girl. The farmer took the child home to Kareki, and he and his wife raised the orphan. She grew up to be Oe-Ura, a river spirit folk who became a champion for the poor commoners of the region.

Her fame concerned the daimyo, and he ordered her to be executed. Her parents hid her in Momoben forest, and he had them executed instead.

Sometime after Wa Year 1770 (1352 DR), the same Za-Jikku who had defeated Kareki's founder began murdering citizens of the many villages of the Fochu Peninsula, transforming them into magical butterflies, the breath of which would create yun ch'i, the vapor of death, which he would use to live forever.

Around the same time, a band of brigands known as the Blue Kumi Bandits stole the copper hammer from Hoteo's statue and took it with them deep into the Momoben Forest.

However, the hammer ended up at the bottom of a lake in the forest, within a treasure chest, which had fallen into the water when the bandits were attacked by a giant carp living in the lake.

Also at about the same time, in an unrelated occurrence, the shoya nearly died from an allergic reaction to a bee sting!

Appearances

 * Test of the Samurai