The story
Fiction and adapted settings written by Akitsora Gaming for this title, including invented dialogue and events. This is not a historical or folklore reference. The rules and specification tables define the gameplay and math.
“Count the lamps if you must. Do not count as far as a hundred.”
— An old rule for the hour of the ox
I. The hour of the ox
The town is asleep. Once the last house blows out its lamp, the street changes hands.
The demons are not there to frighten anyone. They are simply the residents of this shift — the daylight town belongs to people, the town at the hour of the ox belongs to them. It was agreed a very long time ago. It is only the human side that has mislaid its copy of the agreement.
There is one rule. Being seen is no discourtesy. Being counted is another matter.
II. The commander
The one at the head of the parade is the least hurried of all of them. Nurarihyon, supreme commander of demons.
His talent is not sorcery. It is that he can walk into any house in the country and the household will assume he was meant to be there. He sits down, drinks the best tea in the house, finishes a pipe, and is shown politely to the door — and only after the door is shut does anyone think to ask who that was.
Tonight he is not going indoors. Tonight he is leading. He draws on the pipe, breathes out, and what comes out is not smoke but onibi — will-o'-the-wisps.
The fire is not there to light the road. The old people say a wisp is what the dead did not finish saying, burning one word at a time, and that the number floating in its heart — ×2 to ×20 — is what it means to collect tonight. Whoever the fire drifts over is multiplied by it. The commander never discusses this. He simply sets the flame down on top of you.
III. A parade that never forms a line
People who have never met it picture a procession: banners at the front, a palanquin in the middle, drums at the back. People who have actually met it describe something else.
Demons do not queue. They are spread through the whole town — one crouched on a roof beam, one floating in the well, three more laughing in the dark of a corner (they could not tell you what at; demons find different things funny).
So there is no formation to count. There is only how many of the same thing turned up tonight. A whole crowd of karakasa-kozo hopping on their single legs down one alley is an occasion. Hitotsume-kozo opening that one eye from every direction at once is another.
They do not have to line up to count. 8 or more of them only have to be there at the same time.
IV. The neighbours
Shuten-doji has come down from Mount Ōe with the smell of drink still on him. It was a cup he should not have accepted that cost him his head, so tonight he sniffs at whatever he is offered before he takes it.
The daitengu stands motionless on the ridge of the roof, and when the feather fan closes every paper door in the street rattles at once. It is a very good pose, and he knows it.
The rokurokubi runs her neck along the gutter for the length of the street until her face arrives at your window and asks, smiling, whether you are frightened. In truth she only wants someone to talk to. Nobody in daylight will stay up this late with her.
The kappa waits by the water channel for someone willing to wrestle. He is impeccably polite and always bows first — though only slightly, because the dish on his head spills.
The chochin-kozo carries a paper lamp bigger than he is, tilting all the way down the road. The yurei has no feet, which is why she travels faster than anyone. And when the nopperabo turns around there is nothing on that face at all, so what you see on it is yourself — and you jump, and so does he, because he forgets every single time what he looks like.
V. Hyakumonogatari
What actually summons the parade is people.
The rule is this. At nightfall you light a hundred lamps, sit in a circle, and take turns telling one ghost story each. When a story ends, one lamp is blown out. The lights go down one by one, the room draws in an inch at a time, and by the last few nobody wants to be the one who speaks first.
The bronze candlestands around the town are that rule in miniature: three short candles side by side, two of them already out, one blue-green flame still standing in the middle. What it means when one lights up is simple enough — that many to go. 4 of them burning together and the hundredth lamp has been reached.
At the moment the last candle is blown out, a woman in blue is standing on the other side of the lamp. Aoandon. She does nothing and says nothing. She has come to see what people have managed to frighten themselves into.
By the time she arrives the door is already open and the street outside is already full — and for the next 15 rounds nobody is going to light anything again.
VI. The night is long
Once the door is open, the fire is not given back.
Every wisp the commander breathes out is kept — ×2 to ×500 — stacked one on the next, burning until dawn. That is the only difference between this night and every other night: it does not reset.
The parade grows as it goes. 3 more candlestands catching adds another 5 rounds, and not one of the wisps already stacked is given back. By the end not even the demons could tell you how many of them came out tonight, which is precisely why they will not let anyone else count.
VII. Daybreak
The east turns pale, a cockerel goes off, and the street is empty.
The umbrella is back against the wall, the bowl is where it was, the candlestand is burned down to a stub. Walking the same road in daylight you could persuade yourself the whole thing was something you drank — until you notice that the candlestand really is a good deal shorter than it was yesterday.
Also: half the best tea in the house is gone.
They have not gone far. They have only put the fire away, and are waiting for the next hour of the ox.