Confused about certain NPC ** SPOILERS**

[itaitai]

** SPOILERS AHEAD**

Was wondering if anyone could explain to me how Heh Shan Bao what happened to Heh Shan Bao throughout the story.

I understood that after the failed ritual he got trapped in him own mindscape, but i don't really understand if he is possessed by Kugaptee or has his own free will.
Also he disappears after speaking with the PCs, where does he go?
How did he become a yohoi and how did the corrupted Willowshore came to be?

It might all be written in the book, but i was really confused about the his transitions throughout the adventure.

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

Just finished reading through parts of No Breath to Cry:

Book 3:

I just about answered that the Governor seems to be the same in this mindscape as the NPCs are in the other one--a trapped soul--with the exception that he's spent 6 months as the only 'real' person in a private hell with about 300 people he knows are dead because of him, who gather to attack his manor every night, but then I noticed one line that further complicated the matter.

He's still a trapped soul, and I don't believe he's possessed, but it seems like he was devoured by Kugaptee and this mindscape is the last scrap of his mind struggling to keep going while being absorbed. Even so, from his perspective, he's otherwise still just trapped in a living hell mindscape of his own creation.

A potential source of confusion is that when he talks to the PCs he cries out that he IS Kugaptee, but I don't think this is meant to be taken literally. At this point, the guilt for the town's deaths weighs heavily on a tortured mind. Even if he means this statement literally (as opposed to just being metaphorical about his role in causing all this), it's more probable that his 6 month extended encounter with derealization have caused him to identify with the fiend, and not a reveal that he literally is Kugaptee.

Once he hands over his notes (or is defeated in combat) he dies and explodes, and then his mindscape collapses, which is about as definitive of a death as you can get for the purposes of this book, however...

Book 4:

Chapter 1: Willowshore's Return lays out what I just uncovered more cleanly and in one place (whoops) and further illustrates that Kugaptee still has the Governor's devoured soul trapped in the mindscape, even if Willowshore has escaped back to reality. This Heh Shan-Bao has lived as the immortal ruler of the mindscape for 115 mental years, seeing it become a city of undead and dream-monsters. Almost nothing remains of his own identity, consumed by Kugaptee and made to become a thought-puppet that bases its identity on the townsfolk's imaginings (becoming a yohoi), but deep inside there's still a scrap of the real Heh Shan-Bao not yet crushed by Kugaptee's influence.

As for the corrupted version of Willowshore, that's also a projection of Kugaptee's dreams much like everything else that remains behind.