Beijing, Summer of 1550

Eventide of Albion: A World of Darkness Chronicle - Momocon 2025

As the heavy warmth of early summer settles over Beijing, the city pulses with the rhythms of a great imperial capital, outwardly serene beneath its gilded rooftops and high vermilion walls. The Jiajing Emperor, Zhu Houcong, reigns in seclusion within the Forbidden City, more attuned to alchemical elixirs and Daoist rituals than the affairs of court or the perils threatening his realm. To the common people, the Son of Sky remains a distant, divine presence—his will made known only through the edicts of ministers and eunuchs who drift like pale shadows through the corridors of power.

Beyond the palace complex, life persists with regimented grace. Merchants ply their wares in the bustling hutongs; artisans hammer, paint, and fire porcelain in the kilns of the outer districts; Confucian scholars debate philosophy beneath the locust trees of the Imperial Academy; and farmers, newly arrived from the countryside, sell baskets of peaches and bundles of fragrant herbs in the market squares. City gates open at dawn and close at dusk. Curfews are posted but rarely explained. Rumors flit like crows over rooftops, but most citizens speak of nothing beyond the weather, the harvest, and the rhythm of ritual.

But beneath this ordered façade, Beijing trembles.

To the north, near the Great Wall, whispers of war grow louder. Mongol horsemen from the steppe, hardened by hunger and ambition, raid the outer provinces. The Tümed, under the cunning Altan Khan, test the strength of the Empire’s borders, and refugees trickle southward with tales of burning villages and vanished soldiers. The court dismisses these tales as exaggerated. The guards grow more watchful. The streets, more crowded with desperate strangers.

Yet even this unrest is but a ripple atop deeper waters.

The true rulers of the night are not the emperor’s ministers, but the Kindred, who linger in shadowed courtyards and jade-carved halls. Jin Gui, the porcelain-masked elder of the court of shadows, is said to drink the blood of poets and governors alike. Her Zongshi warred amongst themselves in hidden crypts and opera houses, masked behind silken fans and ritual courtesy. Old monsters from the Western Roads stir beneath opium dens and foreign merchant houses, their fangs wrapped in silk, their eyes ever westward.

The Veil is thin here, under the weight of ancient rites and imperial neglect. Hungry ghosts are said to cry at night from the Temple of Earth, and spirits glide along the canals beneath the moon. A few monks dare to chant sutras longer into the evening, their incense thick enough to hide the fear in their eyes. The Wan Kuei—or so they name themselves—speak of balance, of dharma and restraint, but the balance is shifting.

And yet, the people of Beijing live on in blissful ignorance.

Children chase kites in the summer wind. Scholars argue the Five Classics. Servants scrub stone floors under the watchful gaze of dragon-gargoyled eaves. The city sings a lullaby of obedience and routine, while a storm gathers beyond the horizon.

The sky is still blue, but the Eventide has begun.