Gecko Village (咯咯村) is a small farming hamlet that sits on the old road between Sowa and Ganju Shi, historically under the protection of Ganju as one of Fu Guanting's outlying holdings. For most of its existence it was a place of no particular consequence: rice, ducks, and a handful of families working paddies at the edge of the forest.
The Menace of the Cockatrice Demon
That obscurity was shattered when the Cockatrice Demon, 雞蛇妖 Ji She Yao, descended on the hamlet. He killed or cowed most of the adult men, kept the village headman alive just long enough to be a mouthpiece of terror for his neighbors, and began demanding “brides” from among the young women. Those he took were not always killed, some he transformed into enormous eggs and stored away indefinitely; others appear to have been charmed or enchanted into acceptance; a few of the older women, strangely, seemed to develop a real fondness for him. By the time outside help arrived, the village had shrunk noticeably, the fields had gone untended, and the remaining population were hiding indoors during daylight.
The hamlet’s deliverance came at the hands of the Black Team, who were passing through on their way to Donglin City and found the village in a very different state than they had been briefed on. After a difficult fight the demon was restrained, and Dancing Phoenix, King of Sowa, arrived and compelled Ji She Yao with the Ruler of Admonition to restore every egg-bound victim (including the headman’s own daughter) to human form.
Realignment
Ganju’s soldiers had not come. Sowa’s king had. In the aftermath, Gecko Village formally severed its fraying tether to Ganju and aligned itself with Sowa: a reorientation that, in the years since, has carried it along with Sowa into the wider orbit of the New Jiao Empire. The change is quietly remembered in the village as the day a farmer’s daughter was un-made from an egg by a king who came when no Emperor would.
Table of Contents
Type
Hamlet
Related Ethnicities
- Jiao
Owner/Ruler
Dancing Phoenix (formerly Fu Guanting)
Additional Rulers/Owners
- Fu Ruogang (former)
Owning Organization
New Jiao Empire (via Sowa; formerly Ganju)
Related Characters
- Cockatrice Demon
- Dancing Phoenix
- Black Team