[GM question] Why did mayor Heh Shan-Bao perform his ritual?

[Brenden Falke]

Obvious spoiler warning. Don't read if you're not a GM.

From page 4 in book 1:

> Heh Shan-Bao attempts and fails to perform a ritual to heal the Tan Sugi and seal off Kugaptee in hopes of protecting the village from the fiend’s growing influence and power.

From page 69 in book 1:

> Willowshore didn’t learn of the jorogumo takeover of all Shenmen until late spring of 7108, news that compelled the town’s governor Heh Shan-Bao to attempt a dangerous ritual to restore the protective power of the Tan Sugi monastery. The ritual backfired and instead awakened the fiend Kugaptee’s legacy

So... which is it? Did kugaptee's influence and power start growing (if so, what caused this?) that drove the mayor to perform the ritual, or did he find out about the Jorogumo and in an attempt to protect his town perform the ritual, which then awakened Kugaptee?

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

The way that Heh Shan-Bao's entry in Book 3 describes events, the governor regarded the lurking evil under the Tan-Sugi as one among the many problems that Willowshore came with when he moved in, which he planned to solve.

Just to be Safe:

Much of the reasoning given there aligns much more with the idea that rumours of jorogumo provoked his hasty ritual plan. His dialogue suggests that even a dead Kugaptee is a threat lying in wait, and so hoped to avoid the jorogumo ever finding out.

It seems like the timeline version may be partially inaccurate. It's probably fair to say the governor always regarded the Tan Sugi as a ticking time bomb, and that he hoped to protect the village from that eventuality, but it was how the jorogumo would react to the discovery of the lurking evil that seems to have actually been at the forefront of his mind.

That said, I'm reasonably certain Book 2 has a fair amount of detail about how Kugaptee's influence had indeed been steadily clawing toward his rebirth by corrupting the monastery--albeit some years before the governor's arrival. It's plausible the governor was partially aware of the slow corruption of the Tan Sugi thanks to his spirit advisors, but it wasn't an urgent issue until the jorogumo came along