Aka was a tiny old monk of the Brotherhood of Shinsei who lived in a small monastery, spending his time gathering thousands of birds to him. Eventually a sparrow carrying a message descended on the monastery and Aka relieved the creature of its burden. Time later he passed the message to a group of samurai. The bird had been magically summoned by the Summon Bird spell to deliver a Crane economic report to Otosan Uchi, but the spell had expired before the sparrow had reached the capital city, so the Crane sent the samurai to get the information back before their enemies would locate it.