Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

Clef

It wasn't too long before the obsidian rocky grounds of the Mountain Graveyard, contrasted only by the creepy bony remains of people who once died in this place, whether it was in the battle that formed the place, or in the power struggles between bandit gangs afterwards, changed into a more ground shifting and industrial zone. Once in a while the crew encountered a still working natural gas or oil pumping device or some sort of ground pounding pneumatic hammer of gigantic proportions that seemingly crushed one's ear drums from kilometers away with its crushing sound. It was like the goal of this gigantic machinery was to crush the ground all the way to the other side of the planet...

"It's grinding the rocky minerals into shards, I think... If I knew how deep the pressure pulse goes I'd probably shriek my voice out!" Meiko scratched her chin after examining the ground dust that flew out in blinding clouds from under its rampaging pounds.

The change signaled that the crew was slowly approaching Otogakure. A once desolate place, a gentle grassland where animals roamed free and there was nothing but green plains as far as an eye could see. These plains were initially much larger than Konohagakure and belonged to Fire Country and the Fire Daimyo. That was before it was decided to find another ninja village here, close to Konoha, where the locals could be tutored by Konoha and fostered into another ninja village which would potentially grow strong enough to rival the Great Ninja Villages and in such case Fire Daimyo would have ruled over two Great Ninja Villages greatly expanding his influence through intimidation of great power.

The Daimyo then gathered a large number of ninja from around the land, excused some criminals that wished to reform asking of them to take important positions in this newly established village he called Otogakure or the Sound Village. The people who lived their lives as rogues knew very little of how to manage a village but they didn't want to resume their past shady lives, knowing full well that being so close to the Konoha borders they'd have ninja swarming the place and overthrowing them within moments of one shady action from their part.

Having no idea how to attract ninja to live and breed, creating a new generation of ninja in their newly found village the criminals simply attracted musicians and traveling artists from all around the world, asking them to tutor the youth who were supplied by Konoha Ninja Academy's exchange programs in the arts of music. The hopes were that once the young ones knew of the musical arts as well as the art of ninjutsu they'd eventually combine the two together. The result was not entirely a failure of this plan – a handful of young ones found a newly discovered love for the art and began a slow prospering tradition of combining ninja arts with music and sound in general.

The secondary effect which the newly appointed council of Otogakure could not have predicted was the musical culture that formed in the village. Common settlers who were accepted into the village freely as new villages, allowed to live in village conditions instead of being forced to work the land under constant threat of bandit raids and rogue ninja playing with their lives like a pretentious child plays with the lives of ants beneath their magnifying glass. Those very simpletons became fascinated with the music they've heard as all the traveling musicians attracted to tutor the youth decided to make a quick ryo entertaining the locals.

Eventually, simpletons of basic tastes became experts, in just years villagers became dabblers of the miraculous arts of music and began playing the instruments themselves. They began creating new styles of music, experiments and a musical celebrity culture unlike anything else formed in the village. A cultural awareness of such exquisite tastes could have only been found in the royal and elitist districts of Kirigakure which was known for its snobbish and posh tastes in culture and entertainment. However, whereas Kirigakure devoured all cultural arts: film, theatre, circus and music, Otogakure simply became the capital of rather average ninja and amazing musicians.