[Legends] The Conquest of Beasts

[Golnax]

After Kusagakure was officially and fully founded, the village given its' name by Aimi Kaguya, the leading military minds of the Gold Army met to decide what to do. All were in agreement that for an army this size they did not control enough land and that what land they did control was far too spread apart. Land would need to be claimed further north to help bridge the gap that the armies of Wind had created. More than this, though, word had reached them through scouts about the approaching powers creeping in around them. Wind was to their north, Fire to the west, Water to the east. If they were to not be taken over by one of these Great Nations, they would need more forces to defend themselves and more land from which to pull resources from.

Aimi Kaguya volunteered himself and every soldier who had partaken in his training in the use of chakra to head north through the former Dungeon Country and into the Land of Beasts. Not only was this country vast in scale, as soldiers who had formerly lived in Dungeon told him, but it was hardly populated by people. The land was, instead, populated by and large by the beasts that dwelled there and the cyclical seasons that governed their rise and fall. Additionally, the founder of Kusagakure knew, again from information gathered by others and told to him, that he had an advantage over the peoples of Beast that they could not afford to pass up.

His Advisor and the samurai generals or the Morimoto agreed, and thus Aimi Kaguya set off north with most of those who he had trained in the ways of chakra - especially those who had followed his tutelage in Katon ninjutsu. As before when moving from north to south, Aimi guided his soldiers up through Dungeon in small groups, gathering at specific checkpoints and being careful to avoid the forces of Wind whenever possible. As a result the move from southern Gold, the former land of Plains and Sea, took a little over two months.

When they arrived, however, in the southern, hilly portion of the country, Aimi approached the settlement with a threat and an ultimatum. He declared that he was Aimi Kaguya, leader of the armies of Gold, the Great Unifier, and that he was there to take their country over. He demanded to fight their most powerful warrior and a champion was sent forth to duel him. This individual was ultimately more capable physically than Aimi would have dared to imagine someone from such a sparsely populated and far off country could be and proved to be something of a challenge even to his physical might. However, there was nothing this champion could do to stop Aimi permanently and thus the duel was conceded.

Rather than kill this champion, Aimi Kaguya presented the people of the hills with his ultimatum. They could resist and he would burn down their homes, uproot their hills and force them into submission, or they could submit willingly and he would grant them that which they had been asking the shinobi villages for ages; chakra. Presented with this temptation and mercy, the people of the hills of Beasts eagerly accepted and joined his ranks.

More than teach them about chakra, Aimi promised to help them take control of their lands from the beasts. He had heard tales from his soldiers who knew of the area but he also listened to the natives who made it clear just how awful these wild animals were. Thus, to further win the affections of these people, Aimi Kaguya took to the air and lead his soldiers just beyond the hills and the cattle to the edge of the wild plains. There he burned them down, flying through the air and using his Glass the Fields ninjutsu to make short work of anything living beneath him. In this way Aimi Kaguya took the lead deeper into the country and his soldiers followed, slaying any surviving animals that came their way. So it was that for many, many days Aimi Kaguya burned Beasts, leaving glass and ash in his wake, cutting a path from north to south.

When he and his soldiers, along with the southern hill people, reached the cavernous settlements to the north, Aimi presented them with the same ultimatum, this time backed up not just by a display of his power in the form of flames which the people had been able to see for many days before his arrival but also the testimony of their brother tribe who eagerly vouched for him. With now only the charred remains of the beasts that had haunted their lives remaining, the people came out and joined with Aimi.

As a reward he began to teach these people the ways of chakra there on the glass and in the ash as a gesture of good faith. It wasn't long after that he received word from his Advisor in the south that the Land of Steppes had been conquered. With this news Aimi Kaguya was assured that he now had the territory he needed to be considered a major, if small, national power in the world, and the Great Unifiers' plans changed from conquest to the future. He began planning the founding of a new village and relations with Wind who had been his main antagonist during the Great War these past 5 years.