Autobiography of a Legend

That Kingdom In the Clouds

I don't know where to start with Cloud Kingdom.

Well, I guess I know where to start. One thing that you all have probably heard about but never seen is that Ninjago is one of Sixteen Realms. I, don't exactly know whether or not the First Spinjitzu Master created all of the realms after he left the First Realm, or if he just created Ninjago and all the other realms were already there. It's not really something we can exactly go looking into. The Cursed Realm is obviously one of them. The Underworld is one too. Those are probably the two that most of you would be familiar with.

Cloud Kingdom is one of them too. Normally, you can only access another realm from Ninjago through a few special ways. Dragons are able to go between realms, but there aren't anymore dragons in Ninjago that can do that. The easiest way is to use the Realm Crystal, which I'll talk more about later. The last way is to have some sort of special place in Ninjago that's linked to another realm. It's sort of like if you cut a hole in a wall between two buildings, and if you knew where the hole was you could go between them. Only instead of a hole, it's a giant swirling vortex in the sky.

The Blind Man's Eye is a big storm that passes around the Wailing Alps. If you get to the top of the tallest peak, you'd be close enough to the Eye in order to use something like Airjitzu to get into it. That's actually the reason that the first 'clue' to the tomb was Airjitzu. (If I hadn't made clear, Morro had stolen Wu's staff and shown there were three symbols on it that were 'clues' to the tomb of the First Spinjitzu Master. I didn't exactly get that myself since Morro only talked about the clues individually for a long time.) If you jumped into the Eye, you'd be able to enter the gates of Cloud Kingdom.

I think the reason why my thoughts on Cloud Kingdom are so complicated, is because unlike all of the other realms I've been to, Cloud Kingdom actually directly affects Ninjago. The other realms are all separate from our realm, but Cloud Kingdom isn't. That's because Cloud Kingdom is full of people that do one thing: they write destiny.

...I'd always thought that destiny was some sort of cosmic force that worked independent of everyone. And, to be fair, that's still somewhat true. What I've come to understand is that the writers of Cloud Kingdom aren't entirely how destiny works. They write down what they think destiny should do, and then destiny will take that and roll with it. Remember how I said that I see destiny like the key points that you have to hit in someone's story? Those guys would write those down in a scroll, and then destiny would take care of the rest.

Now, they don't do that anymore. After we caused a bunch of chaos while we were inside Cloud Kingdom, the writers decided that they wouldn't interfere in destiny anymore. I learned this when we went to try to return the Sword of Sanctuary to them, which is what the second clue was and from now on I'll be called it to the SoS (we actually ended up keeping the sword in a vault instead). To me, that says that destiny isn't just them. It's something that works through them, but isn't them exactly. They could get it going, but without them destiny would just do something naturally. Sort of like, if you diverted a river by digging a canal. You've changed where the water goes, but the water is still flowing either way.

The thing is, I never thought that it was people that actually decided to write down that I was going to be the one to become the Green Ninja. Whatever was written in the scrolls, it happened. They were the ones that put me through everything that happened to me. They were the ones that basically turned my life into what it was. Every single painful thing I had to do leading up to the final battle was because of them.

In some way, Cloud Kingdom is responsible for every horrible thing that's ever happened to me. The weird thing is, I'm not mad at them.

Now, I'm not saying that I'm actually okay with Cloud Kingdom. Knowing that destiny was being written by people is sort of messed up. Basically, Cloud Kingdom was able to control the lives of people in Ninjago. Whatever they wrote down happened. They could write down that it was your destiny to get thrown off a cliff, and somehow you'd one day find yourself going off a cliff. I think the ninja said they even witnessed something happen to Dareth's scroll that actually happened to him here in Ninjago. That's... messed up, in a lot of ways.