Emperor TenguReport
English：Emperor Tengu · Characters
The Scorchlander emperor the nobles installed on the throne after the Red Rebellion — mediocre, cruel, and swinging the strongest sword in the game.
Tengu is the reigning emperor of the United Cities, holding court in the throne room of the capital, Heft, usually flanked by his diplomat Koin. He carries the highest-damage katana in the game — a Meitou-grade blade by Cross.
He also almost never uses it.
A man who was chosen
Tengu did not inherit the throne. The bloody end of the Red Rebellion (see United Cities) carried off a great many nobles, and the previous emperor, Anzai, with them. With the rebellion put down, the Noble Circle picked a new emperor from among their own — a man markedly more impulsive and less sensible than his predecessor.
The causal chain behind that rebellion is worth laying out in full, because Tengu the man is its product. The southern half of the Empire suffered a drought, then a famine; the cities had relied on Traders Guild caravans for supply, but Shek raiders and bandit bosses blockaded the roads and hijacked the grain convoys; and what little did arrive was hoarded by the southern nobles and auctioned among themselves[V1 0:13:03][V2 0:02:08][V3 0:02:08]. With no alternative to starving, the citizens rose. The streets ran with the blood of United Cities citizens, and Emperor Anzai died in the chaos[V4 0:18:22].
What really determined the shape of the Empire afterwards was how it ended: the nobles won. They crushed the rising, then put Tengu forward from the capital as the new emperor — a cruel, spoiled and dull-witted choice that made it convenient for the noble bloc to keep hold of power[V5 0:05:13][V4 0:18:22]. The rebellion's only policy legacy was a single measure, applied with total thoroughness: poverty became a crime in law[V1 0:13:03]. A riot that broke out because people were starving to death ended, legislatively, in starving to death being made illegal.
An unsigned letter circulating in the Empire records how some nobles reacted at the time:
Our new emperor is Tengu? How can THIS be our replacement for Emperor Anzai? A man so brash, so unintelligent... there are such better candidates within the noble circle yet they chose a buffoon to rule the elite. The only explanation for this that I can fathom... a buffoon is easy to control. — Puppet
The name
The tengu is a yōkai of Japanese folk belief: long-nosed, cave-dwelling, mixing human, ape and bird features. At the same time, "tengu" in Japanese is a byword for a conceited braggart — a double meaning that is almost certainly deliberate.
Appearance and ability
Tengu is a Scorchlander, with the race's characteristic glowing eyes behind his dark glasses, but his skin is unusually pale and his hair dark, so at a glance he is often mistaken for a Greenlander. He wears a Noble's Robe and Noble's Trousers (masterwork) over a Blackened Chain Shirt, with geta on his feet and Ashlander Stormgoggles on his head.
As a fighter he is merely "slightly above average": weapon skills and blocking around 57–63, high Dexterity, but almost no armour and dodge and martial arts close to zero. This is Empire noble culture in miniature — a sword is a status symbol, not a tool. Most high nobles only need to be able to swing one well enough to buy their bodyguards a few seconds. What actually protects him is the Scorchlander retinue stationed in the palace: 5 Samurai Elites, 8 Samurai Captains, 2 Samurai Heavies and 5 Jonin Elites.
The source of the fear: the Vault
Tengu's real instrument of rule is not force but rumour. Fear of him among the Empire's lower classes is close to instinctive:
Don't EVER mess with the nobles, don't look at them, don't breathe near them… Unless you want to wind up in Tengu's torture Vault with all the other rebels. — Peasant Ju
Tengu's Vault sits in the rocky ground at the southern end of the Skimsands, guarded by samurai, holding the Empire's most troublesome prisoners under the authority of the Vault Warden. The assassin Luquin spent fifteen years inside — arrested and paraded through the streets for assassinating Lord Kurusaga and issuing death threats to the remaining nobles, and finally forced to write a book praising the emperor, Beautiful Tengu: A Tribute.
The sentences in that book read like this:
One of the sharpest minds I've ever had the pleasure to meet, Emperor Tengu's wit never ceases to amaze me during his visits... — Luquin's forced dedication, written in the Vault
The arithmetic of taxation
The surface where Tengu's regime touches players most routinely is the tax collector, and the cost-benefit ratio of that institution is dreadful. One commentator recorded a case where the United Cities dispatched an entire army to a player outpost to collect 4,500 Cats in tax, and the whole column was eaten by Beak Things before it reached the walls — his verdict being "no wonder Tengu is so unpopular, given he is already famous for beating his own subjects"[V6 0:17:41].
That is a player's snark, but it doubles as characterisation: a regime that treats taxation as a display of authority rather than a fiscal instrument will lose a military unit over four and a half thousand Cats.
Interacting with the player
Talk to Tengu directly and you get the most malicious joke in the game. He solemnly commissions the player to slay an ancient "Grievewrath", explaining that you must first find the skeleton wizard "Clunknad Spanner" to brew you the "Elixer of Godly Powers", and then ceremonially hands over a sack containing "Tengu's Seal" as proof of identity.
The seal is a gnawed fruit core. Every person, creature and item he mentioned is nonexistent. The instant the player takes the sack he bursts into an unpleasant laugh, mocks the player along with his guards, and then abruptly announces that it is time to get back to work.
If the player is already allied with the United Cities (and not simultaneously allied with the Rebel Farmers, the Holy Nation, the Shek Kingdom or the Anti-Slavers), war and expansion become conversation topics, although he usually palms the player off on Koin. If the player has already put down figures like the Bugmaster, Esata, Holy Lord Phoenix, Tinfist or Cat-Lon, you can refuse to be called "servant" and threaten the emperor instead.
The world after his death
Tengu's survival is the linchpin of the entire northern Empire. If he is killed or imprisoned while the city nobles remain in place:
- The capital, Heft, falls entirely into the hands of the Empire Peasants.
- Stoat and Heng are left half-destroyed and sink into civil war with Rebel Swordsmen.
- Samurai patrols drop sharply across the map: The Great Desert −50%, Stormgap Coast −40%, Heng −23%, Bast −21%.
- Noble Hunters stop spawning, and the Rebel Farmers are replaced by the more elite Rebel Swordsmen.
- Cannibals begin to infiltrate the Great Desert.
- Drug raids, tax collector visits, tax-evasion inspections and similar events all stop triggering.
If the player owns an outpost, killing or kidnapping Tengu brings a large samurai force led by Eyegore down on it; if Eyegore is already dead, an elite hunter squad comes instead.
An open question: who benefited from the Red Rebellion
Tengu's accession leaves one question permanently unanswered: who did all of this serve? One fairly aggressive reading treats the Red Rebellion as a commercial coup engineered by Traders Guild leader Longen[V7 0:11:38].
The basis for the inference is a set of coincidences in timing: the strongest commercial organisation on the continent, capable of holding supply lines open in the most dangerous regions anywhere, somehow "failed" at famine relief specifically; and once the dust settled, the too-capable Emperor Anzai was dead, the impulsive and unwise Tengu was on the throne, the Noble Circle had been butchered into a power vacuum, and Longen's reputation slid into it without a scratch[V7 0:11:38].
It is worth noting that this reading is not confined to video commentary: the wiki's own Emperor Anzai article states that his death and the Red Rebellion "are believed to have been orchestrated chiefly by Longen, the leader of the Traders Guild, with possible conspiring aid by the Nobles."
Contradictions
The wiki describes the Noble Circle as "a clique of confidants handpicked by Tengu himself", while also saying the emperor was chosen from within the Noble Circle. Both statements stand and the game does not reconcile them; the most reasonable reading is that the Noble Circle existed as a class before Tengu, and that after his accession he reorganised his own "inner circle" of four. One video holds that the inner circle around his accession included Lord Kurusaga, but by the game's present day that character has already been assassinated by Luquin.
Video citations
- The Complete Known History of KenshiHeroInHisHead
- Kenshi: Major Powers | United Cities and Holy NationCivilizationEx
- History of Kenshi: Major Powers | DocumentaryCivilizationEx
- The History of Kenshi | DocumentaryCivilizationEx
- Kenshi: History of the United CitiesCivilizationEx
- Kenshi | The Nugget Mafia (Ep. 2)HeroInHisHead
- The Real Villain Of KenshiHeroInHisHead