Divine Blood Kitsune

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Kitsune

Category: Mimic

Active Psychics: 100%

Common Talents: Illusion, Gestalt

Status: Less than 50,000 total, less than 5,000 with 1 or more gestalts, less than 500 kumiho

Location: East Asia, immigrant populations in other parts of the world

Life-Force: Amber, Chakra, Deceptive, Indirect but Unstable
Description:

While the Reynard and other fox stories of Europe can probably be laid at the feet of the therianthropes or other races, the kitsune species is behind the stories of magical foxes in China, Japan, Korea and other parts of the Far East. They generally appear as human men or women with a fox-like tail. The heads range from totally human to almost entirely vulpine. They claim this is a factor of family.

The precise coloration varies, but includes the traditional red or orange as well as predominately black or white kitsune as well. The coloration of their tails matches that of their hair and is usually in two tones. Eye colors range from blues and greens to ambers and browns. Some kitsune have as many as nine-tails and the more tails they have, the more powerful they seem…and the more bizarre their behavior.

Kitsune are considered a mimic race, but no one is really sure how they’ve managed to avoid breeding themselves out of existence. They are scattered across the world with only a handful of populations here and there. Mostly they seek out lovers from among the human population, most of their children seem to be half-blooded with only traces of the normal Kitsune abilities. Despite this, they seem to be maintaining their populations, which still means their population density is decreasing.

The foxes have a reputation for having erratic personalities. They’ve been called schizophrenic, bi polar, manic-depressive and worse. Other races are never quite sure how to deal with them and the secretive nature of the kitsune has only made the issue worse. Regardless of any eccentricities, most foxes tend to align themselves on a pretty firm set of morale guidelines. They’re just cagy as anything about revealing what those guidelines are.

The lifespan of a kitsune is uncertain. Some appear to be as ageless as the Gods and Demons while others don’t get out of their fifties. The fact that some of them still have a habit of switching identities makes this even harder to track. For further fun, some families of kitsune have admitted to passing on ancestral names to their children as well as the normal policy of taking up the identity of normal humans.

Kitsune are inherently bi-sexual with little to no gender-image, regardless of whatever their physical form, their personalities are more or less androgynous. Also, sexual monogamy is not in their basic wiring, but they can manage it with minimal effort. However, the most intimate bond kitsune have with any loved is in essentially becoming that loved one.

Abilities:

Most obviously, kitsune have a knack for illusions. While they can’t match the sidhe dreams and only a rare few are able to produce phantasms, there is no doubt that they are very skilled with the sort of basic illusions that any shaper can employ. They most often use this to conceal the fact that they themselves are not human, but they are also usually able to create simple illusions in their immediate area with only a little bit of training.

However, the talent that really makes the kitsune unique, and the one that would cause many other races to think hard about eradicating them, is their ability to gestalt with another sentient being. Some hints of this ability have been leaked out into the world, creating the tales of the liver-eating kumiho or those of a Kitsune possessing and replacing noble-women.

While initiating a gestalt, the kitsune basically transforms into a mass of microscopic organisms which enter the target body through skin and orifices. Ideally, the subject is willing and the initial combination is performed with no resistance and no problem. Taken slowly and properly, to avoid damaging either the subject or the kitsune, this part of the process will take at least one hour. Over the next day, the merged being is weak and sluggish in both mind and body while both entities come to a final agreement. The end result is an irreversible transformation where there is one body housing two minds and souls.

The gestalt has a number of benefits. Among other things, gestalted kitsune have increased lifespan and life-force, they have access to the skills and knowledge of both minds as well as any natural talents the subject may or may not have had. With multiple minds, they are better protected in the mind-scape and given that even mind has some measure of physical control, they are effective at multi-tasking.

Also, gestalted kitsune have a small measure of shape-changing ability. They are able to take an idealized form of the individual they gestalted with. Each form will have tails, one tail plus one for each time the kitsune has gestalted, and they usually have some other vulpine characteristics. The exact appearance of this new form is determined during the period when the gestalt is first settling.

Full, proper gestalts are not something that can be done repetitively. Even after the merger has “settled” there is still a long period during which time the personalities get used to each other and relearn how to utilize old skills with a new body. In addition, the body and souls will not fully recover enough for another successful for gestalt until years or even decades have passed. The shortest recorded time between the eighth and ninth tails is at 1,188 years, for instance. The more entities within one kitsune, the longer it takes them to get in tune with each other enough to attempt another gestalt. Currently, no kitsune has lived long enough to attempt a ninth gestalt (tenth tail) though nine-tailed kitsune seem effectively ageless.

The majority of kitsune never gestalt. They mostly have no need for an extended life-time or more power and they rather like the idea of being alone in their head. In general first gestalts usually come when the close friend of a kitsune is terminally injured or ill as the gestalt process repairs wounds and cures most diseases or genetic defects. Second gestalts are even more rare since a successful gestalt would require agreement and cooperation between both minds in the kitsune and the newest subject.

That all assumes a normal, proper and willing gestalt. Kitsune are also able to predatorily apply the process. Rushing and forcing a gestalt results in only a fraction of the benefits as well as traumatizing the victim’s mind almost irreparably. Demonstratively, gestalting in this way does not produce a second tail until at least ten victims have been absorbed.
With the victim resisting and not cooperating, there is also the chance of an entirely failed gestalt. A failed gestalt will usually result in the death of the victim, but can result in the death of the kitsune, especially when the intended victim has psychic abilities themselves. The organic components of whoever died are purged violently from the survivor leaving an organic sort of goop. In either case, the physical appearance of the survivor is often drastically different and in cases where the victim survived and the attacking kitsune died, it sometimes results in the victim becoming half or even full kitsune themselves.

As to why kitsune take the risk of all that to force a gestalt, it does allow for a possibility of quicker road to the power of a nine-tailed fox while believing they can avoid the interference of eight separate minds. Forcefully gestalting in this manner does not require as much time to recover from. The predatory kitsune, usually referred to as a kumiho, can pretty much merge into a new victim every few months. In addition, while nine-tailed kitsune have nine shapes that they can take, even the weakest of kumiho will often have dozens of forms.

Some entities cannot be successfully gestalted. This includes Immortals, incidental immortals, Visionaries and shapeshifters. Those with an inborn Talent for outright regeneration are not impossible to gestalt with, but it is extremely difficult. They have to either be totally willing with no doubts or else be totally and completely unconscious and helpless for the entire process of gestalting.

Kitsune cannot normally gestalt with other kitsune, something about their make up makes it hard to have a complete merger. The predatory style used by kumiho does work on other kitsune. Kitsune tend to view kumiho the same way most people would view a rabid dog or serial killer. Kumiho are the boogeyman under the bed and part of why the kitsune are even cautious and cagy around each other.

Weaknesses:

Kitsune have to be careful with medical treatment. Most pointedly, they have a severe allergy to all anti-biotic medicines. Anti-biotics or anti-bacterials will cause severe organ breakdowns and internal bleeding wherever they go in the body. A normal dose of anti-biotics for an adult human could potentially kill a kitsune if they are not treated, though it might take some time.

Gestalted kitsune have multiple personalities that are all conscious of what is occurring around them. Even for those that willing accepted the gestalt, this can cause a lack of focus as the kitsune essentially argues with itself over what actions to take. Especially in the year or so immediately after gestalting, they are prone to internal arguments. Likewise, they can have a reduced resistance to poisons or diseases for at least a year after gestalting. Finally, if they were ever to make public the truth of their gestalt process, they could expect a lot of hostility.

As for the kumiho, they grow increasingly erratic with each victim. Contrary to what they think, their victim’s minds and souls are not gone, merely unbalanced. And given enough time, they start to recover, they are merely locked in the unconscious and subconscious parts of the kumiho’s mind. While the kumiho maintains almost total control of their body due to how they accomplished their gestalts, but the accumulated other minds will start to torment the kumiho more and more.

Reproduction:

Kitsune are not true-breeding like changelings and since they’re mostly scattered across populations, most of their children end up half-kitsune rather than full. Despite this, they’ve been maintaining their population and even having occasional growth here and there. On the one hand, a survivor of a kumiho assault will sometimes find themselves as a full-blooded kitsune in the aftermath, but that is a one in thousands event, pure and raw luck not enough to account for the reproduction.

The secret of the matter is that gestalted kitsune can essentially self-inseminate. Assuming there is at least one gestalt of each gender within them, they can produce purely kitsune children based on each unique pair of minds and bodies available to them. They are not limited in number, but can only have one such pregnancy every five years and can’t sustain more than twins successfully.

Kumiho flat can’t reproduce. The cacophony of souls and minds in their mindscape, even if they are never consciously aware of it, simply prevents any possibility of reproduction aside from the already mentioned rare fluke of a survivor coming out of the affair no-longer human.

Kitsune children have a range of vulpine features. The majority lend toward looking primarily human with a tail, maybe fox-ears, but some appear as a humanoid fox similar to what one would expect of a Hollywood werecreature.

History:

The kitsune were originally a race that would be more appropriately referred to as a blend and they were working their way to absorbing into the human gene-pool and disappearing aside from the occasional human throwback in the same way that the true nagas of India did. The first development of the modern kitsune came out of a period of plague roughly ten thousand years BC. Somehow a mutation in the plague led to a mutation and fusion with the kitsune that became their ability to dissipate and essentially infect another entity. Since then, the foxes have been elements of mischief, wisdom, mirth and terror all across the Far East.

There are currently no more than five living nine-tailed foxes, all are believed by other kitsune to have reached that status naturally. All have a great deal of power and ability, easily deep into the second tier. The kitsune have no organization and indeed do not often work with each other, but the reputation for the higher tailed individuals is respected in Psyche, Yomi and Nirvana. Most of the Community assumes the tales of super-powerful kitsune to be just that, tales and exaggerations. Outsiders mostly assume kitsune are all limited to rather basic illusions.

Index of Other Divine Blood Stories and Art in my gallery

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Novel Sample Chapters:
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Magnets: http://fav.me/d6eju4e
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