A pantheon of beings known as Kami or Gods rules the planet of Taria. The Universe created the original two itself when it first made the planet. Others came along as mortals were made and populated once the mortals believed in something so strongly. Then there was one who was a mortal. Kentaro stood up to Kenichi, and the people believed in so much not only did he win, but he was welcomed into the Heavens as a Kami. Then slowly, how he descended.
The Tales of Madness consists of three individual tales. Each with their own main characters in the forefront as we follow the descent into madness.
Volume One: Tale of a Sumotori
On Taria sumo is an ancient sport devoted to a man who stood up to the War Kami Kenichi and won. He fought to decide not only the fate of his town, or the island his town was on, but the entire Sasuke Empire. Now there’s an entire martial art and sport devoted to how the man defeated and became a Kami himself.
Hiroshi is a young boy born to an artisan father with a deep love and respect for the traditional sport and ritual of Sumo. After his father’s death, he chases his father’s dream of him becoming not only a sumotori, but a full rikishi. When he’s recruited into the fabled beya of Hajima under the retired Yokozuna Kenjiro, who seems to be slowly losing his grip on reality, has he got himself into something over his head?
Volume Two: Tale of the Village Protector
A once strong and powerful cultivator and teacher retires. All he desires is peace with his wife, and to give her a child for them to raise.
They reside in a small village where he's elected as the village protector. Everything is going well in their lives, until a mysterious oracle shows up to their village with a cryptic warning that the Kami, the gods of the world, are up to no good.
Silas wakes up, his town destroyed, and his power gone. The apprentice he was coerced to have and his wife, also gone. He has to uncover a plot by a rogue kami while discovering why he is powerless while he tries to find out what happened to his wife.
Volume Three: Tale of a Beggar
A cultivator but also a homeless beggar is sent to a western continent to help his master find a key that can help his Master's old friend.
Once in the west he finds resistance to learning about different gods, but finds the god the westerners worship isn't so different from the Kami. They all look the same in the pictures they've painted.
Everything changes when the town he's been staying is overrun by barbarians. They aren't cultivators, not really, they have an animalistic spirit and are very powerful in their own right. He's taken in as by the horde and while there he learns of an ancient relic that the lords of Demon have. The thing is, he's not the only one who knows about it. He has competition, a sect from the East is coming and is ready to make dark deals to get the treasure.