Cynis Shungado

Type: Dragonblooded

Aspect: Wood.

Residence: Imperial Palace.

Cynis Shungado is a Dynastic elder, at least by some reckoning, now in his second century. He is amongst the Realm's greatest artists and a master of the woodblock print, though some would argue such an accolade. Before Shungado, the world of sexual illustration was a suggestive one, with maidens gazing at phallic objects or clothed lovers gripping at each other's robes, with variants meant as humour or parody occasionally making an appearance. Shungado instead pushed artworks literal in their depictions of sex, insertions and licks and masturbation all.

More recently, Shungado had overseen a development less than a century old, that of replacing the insertion of colour by hand with a form of multi-block colour printing, an innovation which had made the pillow-book and pornographic wall scroll suddenly available not just to the rich of the Dynasty but to wealthy commoners and nearly all members of the patrician class.

Of course, traditionalists such as V'neef Mahara had little good to say about Shungado's work... overt depictions of the sex act dismissed as 'crass' and 'unsubtle', painting images meant to become prints and colouring by woodblock criticized as abandoning art in favour of low-quality mass production. The Immaculate Order too is hardly fond of Shungado, for reasons quite obvious.

Colloquially, many call colourful printed pillow books ‘shunga’ in his honour.

On the 9th Ascending Wood RY768, Shungado’s drug-slathered embrace set Ledaal Shinjo on an adventure of which he has little recollection. Tepet Sorae and Sesus Kimiasha fell victim to a similar mishap in the days that followed.