Hundreds of years ago in Japan, there was an old man who was raising a son. However, the son was rather unusual. He was hideously in appearance due to birth defect. The man was the last in a long bloodline, so it was essential for him and his son to carry on the bloodline. However with his son's appearance, finding a wife for him would be impossible. It was then that he decided to devise a special curse, one that would ensure his son eventually got a wife. The curse was designed to infect women and change their bodies so that they would bore only female children, and that their offspring would then in turn only give birth to female children and so on, with the exception of those conceived by his son. The curse would also stop the aging of any girl once she reached marriageable age, leaving them eternally young and beautiful. The first woman to be targeted by the curse was a young woman named "Makiko". She was the most beautiful girl in the land. The curse worked and all of Makiko's children were born female. The man's intention was to fill the land with so many pretty girls that any one of them desiring marriage would eventually have to marry his son due to lack of supply of marriageable men. After a generation, the land was abundant with young and beautiful girls- just as the man had hoped for.
However, with the male population repeatedly suffering due to constant war. That, combined with only girls being born due to the "Makiko Curse", this quickly lead to a population crisis. A law was passed by the samurai that any girl born with the curse or any woman seen resembling Makiko (a sign that they had the curse) were to be killed on sight. This lead to a terrible slaughter. Those who survived fled to the secluded mountains. Over the generations, their numbers grew as quickly as their hatred did. They trained to fight and to kill by the bloodthirsty Lady Akuza. Lady Akuza then formed the "Shadow Heart" clan and organized it into a standing army, posed to reclaim the lands the woman lost and to extract revenge on those who exiled them. Makiko herself disappeared shortly after this began and decided to hide among a neighboring mountain range, where she did everything she could to spread the curse. Her aim was to make every individual in Japan infected with the curse so that no more perverted men like the one that cursed her would ever exist again, and that Japan would then be ruled by only women with eternal lives.
Unknowing the what Makiko was doing, The hatred growing among the clan for the outside world gained the attention of Yohko, a half demon under the mind control influence of Yaksha, the goddess of war. Yohko and Akuza formed a pact that would eventually lead to the summoning of Yaksha to the realm of mortal- to Earth. Under Yaksha's seemingly limitless magic over women, she rendered the Shadow Heart troops invulnerable against attacks by men- whether they be swords or arrows alike.
Ancient texts described that a cure for any curse could be obtained by capturing shrines in all of the holy cities. The desire of every Shadow Heart member was to resume a normal life and raise a normal family, free of the curse that binded them. They quickly mobilized with the goal of seizing those cities. This was during the peak of the fighting during the feudal era, so battles were frequently waged all across the country. During this peak, the Shadow Heart army descended form the mountains and dominated every battlefield. Army after army were completely destroyed without the loss of even a single Shadow Heart soldier. One Shadow Heart woman was single handedly capable of wiping out entire battalions. Due to such flawless victories, the clan was able to secure the capital of Edo in only a week. Yaksha intended to rule Japan and use it as a base of operations in advancing into and conquering the rest of the world, using the Shadow Heart as her tools.
Meanwhile, Makiko herself had become nothing much more then a walking corpse. She had become the very source and sustainment of the curse.
The Samurai and other warlords were greatly alarmed by trhe Shadow Heart's war progress. Their very power and rules had become threatened almost overnight by this new menace. One warlord, Lord Masamune, sent a spy named "Mayumi" to infiltrate the Shadow Heart. The infiltration was successful and Mayumi provided Masamune with a great deal of information about the clan, including who their leaders were, what their soldier strengths were, what their combat capabilities were, and where the army currently occupied at any given time. However, her most important piece of information was that Yaksha, being a female god, could not protect her troops from attacks wielded by other females. Word got out and the warlords scoured the land for combat-competent females that weren't already in the Shadow Heart. Masamune had one capable female assassin who loyally served under him. Her name was "Aya," a girl with blood ties to the west. Masamune sent her on a mission to eliminate Yaksha before his rule was threatened by the advancing Shadow Heart army. Aya has served for many years, and was wanting to retire from the business of killing. Lord Masamune agreed that she could leave the clan to live a normal life- on top of a heap of financial rewards, if she completed her mission.
However, during that time Mayumi's cover was blown, and she was captured by her enemies. This distressed Masamune and added that Aya should also rescue her during the course of her mission. This did not stop Mayumi's sister, Natsumi, from venturing out to save her as well. Mayumi's last bit of information the discovered before she was caught was where Yaksha would be staying for the night in the outskirts of occupied Edo...in an area where the troop concentration would be the lightest. There were 20,000 combatants in the Shadow Heart army and another 20,000 noncombatants in support of it. The area would have not much more then 2000 at the time of Yaksha's stay. It was Aya's perfect opportunity to carry out her mission.
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Remember, this map has a melee system that's different then usual. You mast stay moving to dodge enemy attacks. Normal enemies can slay Aya very quickly if you go toe to toe with them. Stop in between enemy swings to attack, use special abilities when outnumbered and keep using drain soul to keep mana topped off.
Credits to all resource authors are given in the map.