At the tail end of the Nineteenth Century, the island nation of Nihon was ruled by a Shogun from the Kinugawa clan, the famed general Yoshiteru Kinugawa. However, culturally, three separate 'factions' of sorts had emerged amongst the unified clans: The traditionalists to the North, spearheaded by the Uesugi, the nationalists to the South who followed the Hojo banner, and in the center of the country, the Ashina modernists.

This difference in ideology would only spark into a war in the spring of 1884, where a group of youths and bandits set Yonezawa Castle alight and killed Uesugi Mochinori. Rumours abound that these youths were hired by the Kinugawa Shogunate, and saber-rattling began between all three regions and the capital.

Thanks to their modernist viewpoints, the Ashina faction were a bastion of trade with foreign powers, managing to leverage the Albian Navy and their surplus to blockade many of the traditionalists' ports. Eventually, the north was starved to a degree that the native Ainu people were able to reclaim some of their former territory on the mainland.

Eventually, the Ashina modernists made peace with the Hojo nationalists, and the coalition between the two stormed the mountainside capital, officially winning the war and setting up the Ashina Shogunate in the Winter of 1892.

The official histories do not record that Yoshiteru Kinugawa did not die with his reign, and instead fled to the Ryukyu islands, where two of the survivors of the Winter Isle, Shinobu Hisame and 'The Yurei', hunted the man down.

The reforms put in place by the Ashina Shogunate in the weeks following included fully opening the country to outsiders once again, as well as employing veterans of all sides in the monumental task of guarding the roads from wild Yokai and bandits. The latter of these reforms did not stick, however, and it was soon up to the criminal 'Ninkyo Dantai' gangs to guard the rural towns of Ashina.