Cultists of Chen: A Ninjago backstory

The Library of Domu

As Chen approached the wide wooden double doors of the Library of Domu, he noticed that it was much quieter around here. There were a few monks walking around the building, one monk watering some plants in a nearby garden, another monk holding a ladder steady for yet another monk to clean the Library's walls. "Oof!" Not watching where he was going, Chen bumped into his father, who had arrived before him and was standing in front of the doors to the Library. Ignoring Chen, his father looked up at the top of the doors, saying, "We're here." Then, he stepped forward and pushed open the set of doors. The doors were well-oiled, they gave off the slightest of creaks upon opening.

It was very quiet inside the Library, so quiet you could hear a pin drop. "Wow," Chen muttered, looking around him. In his few visits to this city, he had never been in this Library before. Tall shelves were lined up against the wall, with books piled neatly in rows among them. In the centre, there was a thick octagonal pillar in dark red paint, with scrolls lining the sides. Placed at the bottom were glass cases. In the case in front of Chen was a scroll that looked ancient. Stopping in front of it, Chen read the words on it. "Scroll of Airjitzu", it read. Never heard of it, Chen thought. "Alright son, we'll just be looking around here, your father has a reading list", said Chen's mother, "just don't wander off too far, okay? We'll meet at the entrance in two hours." Nodding, Chen turned and looked around. He found a long, unoccupied table at the far end of the library, so he headed towards it. There was a young monk sitting at the desk next to Chen's, who was quietly practicing some calligraphy. Setting his bag and staff down next to the table, Chen pulled a chair out from under the desk, which made a loud squeaky noise. Startled by this noise, the monk made a wrong stroke with his brush across the page, the ink spreading across the paper and onto the mat beneath the paper. Turning to face Chen, the monk raised his fist and mumbled something, then grabbed another piece of paper and started to write again. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to..." Chen muttered, embarrassed. He could feel eyes watching him. Lifting the chair a little bit, he made sure to quietly set it down on the polished floor, then he slowly sat down in it, leaning forward and twiddling his thumbs, imagining his wooden stick figures back at home. Why couldn't he have brought one of them along to kill some time?

After a few minutes of thumb twiddling, thumbnail chewing, pattern tracing on the wooden table and dreaming of stick figures, Chen sat up and looked around. All he could see were monks and tall bookshelves. Oh, and books. Books, books and more books. Chen wondered what those books were all about. Reading was probably more fun tan all the stuff he was currently doing. So he got up and walked towards the nearest bookshelf, skimming through all the titles. All the books he saw were for older adults. So he walked towards the librarian's desk. The librarian was an older female monk, hooded with scarlet cloth, wrinkles on her face. She was sitting at her desk, folding some origami with some coloured paper. She stood to greet Chen when he approached her, a mildly confused look on her face.  Probably wondering why this little kid would be wandering around in here. "Hello-" Chen started but was quickly shushed by the librarian. He hadn't spoken for a bit and the first sound that came out was rather loud. "Hello," Chen said again, lowering his voice, "do you have any, uh comics in here? A kid's section, perhaps?" The librarian considered this for a moment, then pointed to the left side of the building. "Upper left," she whispered before sitting back down and continuing her art. So Chen walked over to the far left, where he was met with a sad little red carpet measuring about a metre long by a metre wide. Next to it was one small bookshelf with four squares, each square holding about five or six books. These were about the most colourful things Chen had seen in the entire library, which had an overall colour scheme of dark red, light orange and a bit of gold. These books were had rainbow-coloured covers, like green, blue, yellow, orange, purple, all that. However, one look at the titles, like Tinkerbell, or Lilo and Stitch, and Chen knew that these were for toddlers. So he left the carpet and continued to walk around the Library. He walked towards a section of the library labelled "Young Adults". Tilting his head to look at the titles on the book spines on the nearest shelf, he saw some interesting titles.

Mastering Your Bamboo Staff: Attack and Defense. Hmm, Chen wondered, if he could master that bamboo staff.