Cosmology: The Middle Kingdom

Heaven

The Chinese character “tian” refers to all three Heaven, the sky, and the weather. To the Shén, those three concepts are one and the same. Heaven is the Gods’ abode and workplace, where palaces, citadels, and offices sprawl amongst the upper troposphere’s clouds. While other pantheons break their own overworlds away from tellurian skies to avoid, for example, getting in the way of spacecraft launches, the Shén wouldn’t dream of dwelling in a different World than their human charges. How, then, might they manage and monitor the weather? Can you imagine the paperwork? Accordingly, jets that fly high enough above China find themselves soaring amidst cloud-wreathed pagodas, with serpents and star-spirits darting back and forth in their path. There were even a few crashes early in the 20th century until Nüwā built an Air Traffic Control Constellation. Heaven is accessible via sky ladder or by climbing certain mountains

The Mountain of Flowers and Fruit

The Mountain of Flowers and Fruit (Huaguo Shan) is in eastern China’s Jiangsu Province. Occupied mostly by sentient monkeys, this mountain is the birthplace of Sun Wukong himself. The mountain is an independent principality ruled directly by the Monkey King and his junta of primate officials, who meet in the famous Water Curtain Cave. They offer asylum to any demon who comes there and manages to impress them (and has the emotional fortitude to survive spending their entire day surrounded by obnoxious monkeys). Every time the Shén attempt to seize control of the Mountain, the monkeys there initially welcome their conquerors with open arms, then make them wish they’d never come there as only annoying monkeys can. Meanwhile, Sun Wukong himself mysteriously disappears for the duration of the conflict; don’t tell the other Shén, but he’s usually hiding out in a café in Nanjing watching Snapchats of the chaos. The Mountain of Flowers and Fruit supports itself with tourist revenue, establishing an odd precedent for tourist locations where you go to get pickpocketed on purpose.

Womanland

Another independent principality, Womanland (Nüguo), lies in southwestern China. The Tang Priest, Sun Wukong, Pigsy, and Sandy stopped at this state, populated entirely by women, on their way to fetch the scriptures from India. It was an eventful visit. First, the Tang Priest and Pigsy drank from Pregnancy River (yes, this is a real place), the source of all new births in Womanland, and had to visit Abortion Mountain (unfortunately also a real place) in order to alleviate…whatever would have happened. Then, when the Queen of Womanland proposed marriage to the Tang Priest, they said yes and then ran away. Ever since, relations between Womanland and Heaven have been chilly at best.

Unlike the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, which has been more or less frozen in the past (plus cell phones), Womanland is a technologically advanced mini-state within the Chinese hegemony. The Communist Party has an attaché in town, but she doesn’t control anything, really; the Queen of Womanland is squarely in charge. During much of Chinese history, when Confucian patriarchy dominated politics, Womanland positioned itself as a counterpoint and counterweight to those tendencies.

Diyu

The Shén share an underworld with the Devá, Palas, and Kami. Together with nine other royal judges, Yanluowang (also known as Yamaraja, listed under the Devá but with joint citizenship here) processes each new ghost who comes to Diyu and assigns them to one of the thousands upon thousands of afterlives, torturous or otherwise, that wait below — or else determines they died before their time and annuls their death.

However, not all the dead wind up in Diyu — far from it. Many dead from the populations that venerate the Shén remain within the World, albeit invisibly, as tutelary Shén of clans or locations. But individuals with more Buddhist influence on their afterlives are directed towards the more regimented afterworld.

Diyu’s largest city, the Dark Capital, even now looks like a Chinese metropolis from 1,000 years ago, with city walls, temples, palaces, residences, and a gigantic citadel which houses the Courts of Hell and, most important of all, the official administrative records of the afterlife. It was from these records that Sun Wukong erased his name, along with every other primate’s on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, when he made havoc in Heaven and Hell.

Wuyue, the Five Sacred Mountains

You can’t get to Heaven from just anywhere, unless you have a somersault cloud or sky ladder. If you want to petition the Gods, climb one of the Five Sacred Mountains. They are:

• Mount Song in Henan Province
• Northern Mount Heng in Shanxi Province
• Mount Tai in Shandong Province
• Southern Mount Heng in Hunan Province
• Mount Hua in Shaanxi Province

A grand temple surmounts each of these peaks. There’s a really long line, and if you’re able-bodied you must climb every step (if you aren’t there’s a chairlift, but there’s a line for that, too) to be considered for entry. At the temple itself, demons staff the processing center’s desks, where you must present a petition on one of the provided forms for consideration, as well as a bribe, using one of the provided bribery shrines. Some petitions are accepted right away, especially if they’re done by hand in fancy calligraphy or accompanied by really convincing bribes (like your grandma’s pork buns). Then you file into heaven, where you will probably get lost, because all the signs are in seal script (and be grateful for that — they only updated from bronze script this year). Attempts to jump the line or sneak in put you face to face with ogres with cudgels who will throw you out. It’s a long way down.

Other mountains or ranges are sacred specifically to Buddhism and Daoism. The Wudang Mountains, for example, are the home of the World’s most important Daoist temple complex and its caretakers, the infamous Wudang Clan.

Primordial: Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West

Looking upon the refined elderly noblewoman who entertains divine and royal visitors with tea, songs, and poetry at her Jade Mountain country house, you wouldn’t know her true form is a coruscating, roaring storm of fangs, fur, and tails. Xiwangmu and her husband Dongwanggong, the King Father of the East who lives in a stone mansion on the Eastern Wild Mountain, represent the natural chaos counterbalancing Chinese civilization. Xiwangmu was the first sovereign of the Shén, reluctantly adopting a more Godly form to help the pantheon form; but she retired to Primordialhood as soon as a Jade Emperor presented himself. Hers are the Peaches of Immortality, which Sun Wukong stole from a Heavenly party, and the Elixir of Immortality, which Chang’e took to the moon.

Titan: Ao Guang, the Azure Dragon King of the Eastern Sea

Ao Guang rules the color blue, the eastern direction, the element of water, an entire household full of errant princesses and half-competent creature officers and divine superweapons, and a lot of stress. All he wants to do is have a little peace and quiet, maintain the sea and the weather, and occasionally scare a few mortals with a tsunami or flood to keep them on their toes (and sacrificing generously). But ever since Prince Nezha humiliated him and his family in front of all the Shén, and Sun Wukong proved himself the worst houseguest ever and absconded with his As-You-Will Gold-Banded Cudgel, every Scion who visits the East China Sea wants to show up at his doorstep and challenge him to a fight, seduce one of his daughters, or steal magic towels from his guest quarters.

Purview: Water.
Virtues: Dominance, Yin.

Titan: The White Eyebrow, Betrayer of Shaolin

The White Eyebrow (Bai Mei in Mandarin, but more commonly known by the Cantonese pronunciation Bak Mei) was a Chan Buddhist monk and Scion of Laozi who achieved one of the less healthy forms of alchemical immortality. Expelled from the Shaolin Monastery for his research into Daoist black magic, he betrayed Shaolin to the government and/or set it on fire and/or punched everyone inside to death, depending which story you believe (and he refuses to clarify). Since then, he’s been associated with various shady organizations as well as the White Lotus Society and the Wudang Clan, and grown in power until he was able to steal Titanhood from…whoever it is you steal Titanhood from, but rest assured someone got betrayed in the process. The infamous “Death Touch” is the ultimate technique of his notorious White Eyebrow Style of Chinese boxing, derived from the older Tiger style.

Purview: Kung Fu Treachery (Epic Dexterity).
Virtues: Rapacity, Yin. The White Eyebrow is no longer welcome among the Shén; he just happens to be irreparably Yin-imbalanced.