Iuchiban's Legacy
The Scorpion Clan records present three different versions of the sorcerer Iuchiban's origin; any or none of them may be correct. Acting in secret, even from his own followers, Iuchiban forged a quartet of swords, their blades christened in blood and forged from the souls of Rokugan's greatest samurai. Through hellish sacrifices, he forged the swords upon an altar of blood and fire, a stone made of an oni's skull covered in flesh, fire, and the molten steel of the Moon's own hatred. This foul stone was known as the Anvil of Despair, and the cries of the souls it has devoured can still be heard on the darkest nights in the Twilight Mountains; its hunger has not yet been sated.
Using this dread artifact, Iuchiban bound the spirits of four great champions into his blades, twisting their souls to match his designs. He imbued them with a thirst for blood, a thirst that could never be quenched. He embedded their martial prowess within the steel of the blades, allowing whoever wielded them to channel their power. Finally, he took their vaunted code of Bushido, which the champions had practiced and embodied all their lives, and warped it into a dark reflection of itself. The souls were bound now by the blackest aspects of their personalities, rather than the brightest. Iuchiban named the weapons Passion, Revenge, Judgment, and Ambition and sent them out through his spies as gifts from the imperial court... to the daimyos of the Crane, Lion, Crab, and Scorpion Clans.
In the hands of their respective "owners," the Four Bloodswords struck with devastating effectiveness. The Crane daimyo, given Passion, flung himself into the sea after confessing his love for a geisha less than half his age. The leader of the Lion Clan, possessed of Revenge, launched an ill-conceived assault on the Dragon fortresses for some imagined slight; she died before the gates of Mirumoto Castle. Judgment, the most feared of the four blades, drove the Crab daimyo to seppuku after convincing him to murder his own children in their beds.
Only Ambition, the sword given to Bayushi Rikoji of the Scorpion Clan, did not drive its recipient to death. Therein lay the beginning of Iuchiban's undoing... but that is another tale.