The Demon Warrior Empire was a pre-dharmic society among the recently fallen Wan Kuei that stood in opposition to the Five Emperors.
Overview[]
The Demon Warrior Empire formed from those fallen Wan Xian that accepted their new, demonic state and sought to embrace it, likely during the early Fourth Age. Warring against each other and those Wan Kuei that had not joined with them, the Demon Warrior Empire sought to encompass all former immortals into their ranks. Its members were diverse, comprising of those that simply sought power and those that sought to accept the new role Heaven had apparently laid on them. Proto-dharmas like the Way of Ten Thousand Screams likely originated in the Empire, seeking to master the P'o and the new demonic urges.
The Demon Warrior Empire found opposition from the Five Emperors, who gathered those around them that believed that the original mandate of the Wan Xian had not been taken from them, forerunners of the Way of the Resplendent Crane. The Emperors were powerful enough to suppress any uprisings of the Demon Warriors, but could not extinguish them completely. To try to avert conflicts, the Five Emperors created basics of the Great Principle to establish rules for all fallen Wan Xian to follow.
The Five Emperors were aided in their endeavour by the appearence of Xue, whose teachings had synthesized the five ways that would lead back to Heaven and who further refined the Fivefold Way. The Demon Warrior Empire's sympathizers turned towards the new teachings and applied them to their own philosophy. Pre-dharmic works like "The Righteous Fire" became new holy scriptures for the quest for the Hundred Clouds. Schisms among the remaining followers lead to the creation of the Howl of the Devil Tiger, who emphasized their cursed nature as the result of ethical failures, and the Dance of the Thrashing Dragon, who instead emphasized the spiritual corruption of their new form and the abominable state of undeath they were trapped in. The new Dharmas were forbidden from creating large, unified groups, out of fear of a new Celestial Devil uprising.
Among the Quincunx and other Courts, the Demon Warrior Empire is a half-remembered memory of the barbaric times before Xue's teachings. Some Devil-Tigers, however, seek to return to the state of the Empire, forming the Searing Wind sect that seeks to create a new Demon Warrior Empire without the strictures of the Courts.
References[]
- KOTE: Kindred of the East Companion
, p.101 - KOTE: Dharma Book: Devil-Tigers
, p.6-7, 46-47 - KOTE: Dharma Book: Thrashing Dragons , p.11