Amatsu — the island of falling flowers

Cherry blossom, lacquered wood, and a five-storey castle that has never had a front door.

A sailor was blown off course in a storm and drifted until he found this island; that is how Amatsu entered the maps. The town is quiet, ceremonial, and built around water. North-west stands the Lakeside Castle, which nobody enters by the front because there is no front — there is a way in, and it leads somewhere deep. In the middle of the field, a shrine sits half-sunk in a lake, surrounded by bamboo and pine, and it is the most photographed place in the east.

Threads

none here — the traditions are outside the guilds
the Lakeside Castle depths
the sunken shrine, the castle's hidden entrance

Follow one of these and the next page picks the story up.