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Entry tags:
( boomtown ) : application
Player's Name: Degen
Are you over 16? yes
Characters Played Here: Anna Demirovna
Character: Aoki no Teishi a.k.a. Sadako (Green Leaves Turn Red)
World Description: Rather than being based purely in Japanese and shinto mythology, Teishi comes specifically from the world of Teen Wolf. (Yes, that's a tvtropes link, because I feel like tvtropes generally goes more thoroughly into the setting than, say, Wikipedia.)
This means that what being a kitsune means for Teishi is taken from a combination of the show itself, actual Japanese folklore, and the (admittedly probably inaccurate, or at least unverifiable) version of the kitsune mythos that has percolated online. This last becomes relevant because there are indications in the show itself — namely, Noshiko referring to Kira as a "thunder kitsune" — that suggest that the show's writers employed these unverified online sources in their research (maybe they thought it seemed cool?). Thus, though Foxtrot's defining collection of lore only may or may not have any basis in actual Japanese myth, it is, for Teishi's purposes as specifically a Teen Wolf kitsune, true. While, in the original mythology, kitsune and foxes are one and the same, for the purposes of Teen Wolf's universe and this application, "kitsune" will be used as meaning a fox who, due to either age or birth, is a supernatural creature of the spirit world.
One quality of kitsune that is wholly Teen Wolf's own is the nature of a kitsune's tails. While Teen Wolf employs the popular conception that a kitsune gains a tail for every 100 years of life, it adds an additional element: kitsune may have their tails taken from them if they become nogitsune; that is, if they do not serve the god/dess Inari. Because of the ample references in myth to nogitsune/wild foxes with more than one tail (or, at least, the legendary nine-tailed Tamamo-no-Mae), my take on this is that the tail loss isn't an automatic thing upon "becoming" a nogitsune, but rather something that is sometimes done to nogitsune by the myobu kitsune who do serve Inari, as a way of curtailing (no pun intended) that nogitsune's power. One reason that it is important to limit a nogitsune's power in this way is that Teen Wolf kitsune have the ability to manifest their tails in the form of keiken knives, which are objects of great power (the older the tail, the stronger the knife), which are potent sorcerous reagents — as seen with the dark magic Noshiko channeled by breaking her keiken knives to summon and control Oni.
It bears emphasizing that Teen Wolf's kitsune put an especial importance on promises and vows. The sin of regret can kill, and a kitsune who makes a promise opens herself up to dire consequences should the promise be broken — including by the other party. For some kitsune (such as the show's nogitsune) this could be an intensifying/worsening of the kitsune's appetites, but without a clear statement from the show of the hows or whys of this, it is possible that it could vary by kitsune; possibly others simply wither away from the burden of the mistake. Regardless, kitsune are — true to their trickster natures — exceedingly fastidious about their agreements, preferring to avoid them whenever it is possible, and (if they are wise) doing their best to be clever in their wording when it is not.
History: Green Leaves Turn Red was born in a fox's den in a great forest in Japan in the year 785 C.E., give or take. The exact year is not important, and Green Leaves Turn Red — or Aoki no Teishi, as she usually prefers to be called (but more on this later) — does not know it. She does not know it, because she is a fox, and when she was born she was a simple field fox, with nothing to recommend her except cleverness (although she was very clever), and so had no knowledge of the great expanse of time. But it is of no matter: Teishi does not concern herself with the years that came before her (except, perhaps, as they pertain to the worship of Inari, or the Fujiwara clan, who were for many years her special favorites). What are more important are those years that followed. Listen and you will hear.
...Alright, so I realized that writing this entire history like it was a folktale would take entirely too long, but here is the early, character-defining moment where she sacrificed a child's life in order to fool death, managed to catch a bit of Life and Death in her mouth, and learned her true name. —Or, well, she probably did all that; it could be her own tall tale. But if it is, it's a tale she believes.
After her little encounter with Death, Green Leaves Turn Red lived on, eventually earning her second tail and the ability to use her illusion magic to truly shapeshift. At this point in her life, she remained a nogitsune — not in the sense of belonging to the void, but because she was wild, serving no one. By then she had learned from other nogitsune of the great fun there was to be had in the seduction of mortal men and women. And she had begun to notice a growing hunger in herself for something she could not yet place. So she changed herself into a delicately beautiful young woman, and gave herself a noblewoman's name (in the sense of having both a surname and a given name): Aoki-no-Teishi. "Aoki" for the tree with blue-green leaves where she sat and waited for Death, and "Teishi" because the kanji's meaning of "chaste child" appealed to her sense of irony. (At the time, the Chinese pronunciation of kanji was standard; in the modern era, "Teishi" would come to be pronounced "Sadako.") Once disguised, Teishi traveled to the nearest town, where her beauty quickly attracted the attention of a traveling samurai. (I am taking some cues from this story.) In sleeping with him, she discovered that she could draw his life force from him to feed her hunger. When the samurai discovered his subsequent weakness, she made a great show of concern, and insisted on using her knowledge of herbal medicine to nurse him back to health — not so much because she was genuinely concerned for his well-being, but because she wanted to accompany him on his travels. In this way, the newly dubbed Aoki no Teishi journeyed to the capital city of Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto).
Of course it was only a matter of time before she really did kill the samurai, but by then Teishi had found a new benefactor-slash-personal project: a young bureaucrat in the Fujiwara clan, only recently risen to power. Fujiwara no Masao thought only that his new concubine had beauty enough to make all of his rivals flush with envy. For her part, Teishi flourished in the imperial court: by ensuring that new emperors took their wives from the Fujiwara family, the clan effectively controlled succession; the kitsune's connections served her well. The Fujiwara's centuries of power would come to be known as the Heian period, a time of great poetry and literature, and Teishi came to be immensely fond of poetry in particular. Meanwhile, she amused herself by making trouble for Masao's rivals — not least by feeding from them — and urging Masao himself towards acts of vindictive cruelty against those who aroused her own jealousy. Or just because. This continued until one day Masao broke a promise to her. Just a little thing — he had sworn he would bring her a gift, and he did not — but it was enough, and that night, in her hunger, she killed him. Rather than be discovered, she faked her own death by suicide.
She could not afford to mourn Masao's death, much less her own role in it; it was simply how things were — her nature. Instead, she waited a generation, and then returned and attached herself to another promising young Fujiwara, and began again. And though she learned greater subtlety with her promises, her appetites remained unchanged.
By then, the other kitsune had named her for what she was: a Reiko — the ghost fox; a Koryo — the haunting fox that feeds on life. It was perhaps only a matter of time before she came to the attention of the myobu kitsune: the benevolent foxes who vowed to serve Inari, god of rice and mother goddess of foxes. In around the year 1100, the myobu kitsune came for Green Leaves Turn Red, and captured her. But the myobu kitsune are not unreasonable; they do not pass up the opportunity to reform. And so they told Green Leaves Turn Red that she had a choice: she could join them, vowing to serve Inari and to act as a guardian to those mortals who honored the goddess... or she could be made a true nogitsune, cast into the void, with her tails taken from her. Green Leaves Turn Red had worked hard for her tails, and wasn't about to give them up; she took the myobu kitsunes' offer, and vowed to serve Inari.
All things considered, it was not so bad. She was not expressly forbidden from using her powers, so long as she exclusively used them to punish the sinful. And following her vows to Inari kept her hunger in check...though she did find herself missing the fun of the games she used to play.
And so it was for centuries. Teishi grew more adept at learning when it was acceptable to bend the rules — her vows bade her protect those who followed Inari, which generally meant practitioners of shinto, but foreign travelers and converts to other religions were fair game -- but by and large she was a good myobu.
In the mid 1800s, though, rapid industrialization and urbanization in Japan brought about social disruption and agricultural decline. And, while the change was interesting to Teishi — by then calling herself using the modern pronunciation, Sadako — she found poverty boring, and elected to travel across the Pacific to the United States like many other (mortal) Japanese at the time. She found work in San Francisco, California: sometimes as a housekeeper; sometimes as a shop worker; sometimes as a prostitute. Though the supernatural ease with which she picked up the language worked to her benefit, the rampant racism she and the other Japanese encountered provoked in her something that might even be called true dislike of Westerners. Still, the dislike combined with a perverse kind of fondness: because at last she had her chance to really cut loose with her games while staying true to her vows to Inari. In short, Teishi ruined a lot of lives in this time, not least by ending them. Yes, she realized, there were fun sorts of advantages to a land where her vows did not apply.
Teishi remained in the U.S. through the end of World War II. Though she was initially placed in an internment camp, she elected to repeat her faking suicide trick, and proceeded to spend the next several years disguised as an ordinary fox...though she occasionally made trouble by possessing the American soldiers guarding the camps. News of the bombs back home, though, was one of the only things to have ever truly terrified her: it was not natural for men to have such power. Such things made mockery of gods and kami alike.
Though "Sadako Aoki" would have gladly avoided that whole philosophical quandary, at this point the myobu kitsune located her once more, and demanded she return home: they felt that she had been following the letter of her vows, but not the spirit of them. Back in Japan, she found that, though there were far fewer people who were truly religious, shinto remained by and large an important part of Japanese culture, and so she returned to being a good little (well, not so "little" any longer, at over 1000 years old) guardian. Still, she remembers fondly what it was to be let off her leash.
Overall, Teishi's memories of her entire life are not 100% perfect, as she is prone to telling stories and believing her own fictions; the history shared here approximates her own opinion of her life's highlights. Plus, 1000+ years is a long time to remember.
Personality: At a glance, Teishi is perfectly lovely: a pretty face, delicate features; delicate charm; always eager to share a story or a poem; even more eager to be a quiet ear to listen to your stories and your troubles. Indeed, she demonstrates a genuine and thoughtful interest in those around her, coupled with a keen sensitivity for when this sort of personal attention is welcome, and when whoever she is speaking with would prefer their space. (And, once you are ready to talk, she will of course be waiting. Isn't that nice of her?) Based on her vocabulary, and on the sorts of references she makes, she seems as if she must be well educated — but perhaps an unconventional sort of education, since she will demonstrate a surprising depth of knowledge about a subject one moment, and an insouciant innocence the next. Overall, she is pleasant and engaging company — an ideal conversation partner and (it would seem) an entertaining friend.
All of the above is true, and all of it is false, because, while none of it is an act, the motivations that people ascribe to her (at least, those who don't know any better) are, more often than not, far off the mark. Because: Teishi is not human. It's a deceptively simple statement, but ultimately the single most important thing to take into account when considering her personality. Because she isn't human — indeed, she isn't even mortal — her concerns are largely alien to human thought and human morality. Most people judge their own actions against a basic moral framework of good and bad; even when they choose to act cruelly, or selfishly, or otherwise counter to this framework, they're at least aware that it exists to be acted against — like a young man sentenced for murder because the jury concludes that he is old enough to understand that what he did was wrong. For Teishi, though, when she considers any given course of action, not only do concerns of "good" and "evil" not play into it, she does not even truly comprehend them as concepts. Sure, she's been around human beings more than long enough to grasp what they consider to be "etiquette," but she has zero true internalization of the reason mortals have established this seemingly arbitrary collection of rules.
This is not to say, though, that Teishi, like other kami in general and kitsune in particular, does not have her own particular principles. Part of her duty as a myobu kitsune, after all, was/is to protect the virtuous and punish the sinful. So, even if the reasons a particular behavior is offensive to her are less "because it is selfish/evil/bad" and more "because it just is," she nevertheless has a certain instinct for a natural order to the universe that she will consult — if she is currently "on the job." (Of course, she'll be plenty pleased to discover that she's come to a place where her vows to Inari need not come into play.) Beyond that, Teishi's personal code is based around a sense of individual honor. Like other kitsune, her promises define her, and breaking them or having them broken easily spells her ruin; as such, though she considers half-truths and deliberate misrepresentations to be all part of the game, so to speak, she takes great offense to outright dishonesty. As an extension of the matter of individual honor, her pride is also quite important to her. Insults and disrespect — to her, and to anyone who she happens to consider, for one reason or another, to be under her protection — are far worse, in her consideration, than, say, murder. (Why is murder bad, again? If they were just going to die anyway, does it matter all that much when it happens? Humans sure are funny in their particulars, aren't they! Granted, killing someone she considers under her protection is another matter: that is rude; she was using that mortal, thank you very much.) In some ways, her immortal outlook can make her seem strangely immediate in her concerns, but that is only because of just how vast her outlook really is. The present is always relevant, and so always engaging, but something that affects the next month? the next year or years? These are fleeting and thus unimportant things.
It should be emphasized that Teishi is not only inhuman and immortal; she is also, specifically, a Reiko/Koryo, or "ghost fox" — that is, her abilities and appetites relate directly to the spirit world, and saying that she feeds on "spiritual energy" is a pretty way of saying that she quite literally eats life force. It is because of this that she is so especially callous on the subject of human life. When she realized the nature of her hunger, that sense of hers for the "natural order" recognized it as a "wrong" thing, but also as nevertheless an essential part of her own nature; she could no more deny it than deny she was a fox, so it would be pointless to waste energy wishing she could be otherwise. Likewise, when she killed for the first time, this was a simple matter of predator and prey. And besides, in her calculation of things, she had been quite good to her victim, spending all those months nursing him with herbal medicine, and providing him the pleasure of her company; surely it was a more than fair trade. Once, though, Teishi did very nearly succumb to the sin of regret: Teishi had loved Fujiwara no Masao, in her fashion — his cleverness and ambition so very like her own. It was when she lost control of her hunger and accidentally killed him that she truly had no choice but to come to terms with her own nature, and divorce herself from any empathy for mortals. She might play at being human and mortal, she concluded, but she was not — no more than a fox was a field mouse. The alternative would have been withering away with the burden of regret. While this does mean that Teishi has, somewhere in her, the emotional framework for empathy, it is over one thousand years since she abandoned it; by now, she is very set in her ways.
Ultimately, where the "standard" human morality exists on a scale between good and evil, Teishi's concept of "morality" has evolved to be more like a scale of "interesting" and "boring" — and based on that code, she's quite "moral" indeed! The things she does, she does because they entertain her in the moment that she does them. Even becoming a myobu kitsune, sworn to serve Inari, was a decision she made because she deemed that it was the less un-fun option versus losing her tails. The pursuit of the interesting is the one area in which Teishi shows the true patience of immortality: while spontaneous amusement is a worthwhile way to pass the time, she is also more than willing to play a long game, setting up rivalries, resentments, and betrayals to culminate —months, years, or generations later — in a punchline only she can appreciate. By weaving these webs around herself, she was able to, in the years before she vowed herself to Inari, foster the close relationships she needed in order to feed with ease; after her vows, she had the excuse of using the resultant discord as a kind of honeytrap for nogitsune. Indeed, it was not for nothing that she made such a personal project of her association with the Fujiwara clan's era of high art and higher political intrigue. Beyond the Heian period, that pursuit of the interesting continued to draw Teishi to humanity throughout her extremely long life. Thus, despite or even because of those times when humans are dishonest or disrespectful, she maintains a deep and abiding fondness for them — for their interestingness.
…That is to say, she finds them interesting in the same way that the child who uses a magnifying glass to burn ants can be said to find the ants interesting.
Does your character have any close ties to existing canon characters? Nope! She and the nogitsune will be able to recognize one another for what they are, but they are not personally acquainted.
Why do you think your character would work in this setting? This is where things get a bit interesting, because Teishi is something of a special case. The answer to "why do I think she would work" is I think she won't — and that's actually the point. It is my intention to play Teishi as a bright flame of a character — vivid and dangerous and inevitably meant to burn herself out or be snuffed, probably at the hands of other characters. She's essentially intended as a plot opportunity: a study in contrasts with the supernatural creatures in town in general, and the nogitsune in particular. While she is not a chaos/pain-eater as her "cousin" is, she is, in and of herself as an eater of life-force, a source of chaos and pain. I think dealing with her as a threat will force the other characters in New Dodge to reevaluate their perceptions of good, evil, and the supernatural.
That being said, all of that can still take place and be interesting and not end in Teishi's death if, by some extremely unlikely combination of circumstances, she starts forming her own messed up little skulk and characters somehow manage to find a safe way for her to feed and bind her into abiding by that safe way of feeding. If that's the case, she will essentially be forced to make good on the comment/threat she'd make as her first TC post: "This place seems interesting; I think I'll stay." —And playing that forced adaptation would be engaging!
Because of the sort of unusual plans I have in mind for her, I'm going to include a link to my draft of Teishi's permissions/plotting post so you guys can let me know if any of it needs changing: here!
What will your character do for work? On the off-chance that she lasts long enough for this to matter? There are a couple positions that would work for her.
She could teach history at the school, though she's only really invested in the history of Japan, and to a lesser extent China and Korea, so have fun with that. Creative writing might be a better fit. She could work as a librarian. (As Welcome To Night Vale has taught us, librarians should indeed be horrifying and eldritch, after all.) She could work in the theater, using her illusions for special affects. Or she would be the most knowledgeable tea shop employee you could ever ask for.
Inventory: Because she is fluxing in — absolutely nothing, except that which is already part of her.
—That is, she will have her hoshi no tama/star ball, which is the most vital part of her (perhaps the closest thing she has to a soul). And she will have the ability to manifest keiken knives (and thus to in theory use them to perform dark magic such as the sort used to control Oni) as embodiments of her nine tails. It is worth noting that, for both the hoshi no tama and the keiken knives, just because they're part of Teishi doesn't mean they can't, once she has chosen to manifest them, be taken from her and used by someone else.
Nevertheless, she won't have any truly separate items; even the clothes on her back are an illusion, just like her human form is.
Samples:
Third-Person Sample:
It begins as a feeling of dizziness, of disconnect. The sheer unfamiliarity of it might, by itself, be enough to make her half-relish the sensation (after all, there was always something to be said for uniqueness), except it is also unpleasant, and she is rather engaged at the moment with her latest prospect. (If there was anything to be said for the Western businessmen — the ones who came to Tokyo looking for some kind of half-baked Geisha fantasy to carry home inside them, each murmuring the same line about how they had always heard that the best way to learn a foreign language was in the bedroom, their folded shirts left smelling faintly of her perfume where they lay folded next to the knock-off maneki neko and paper fans that they brought back to their blonde fiancées — it was that they were convenient. Inari cared nothing for them, and so neither did she. And besides, she hardly ever killed them.)
But back to the feeling. How to describe it, exactly? —like being pulled out and away from herself? (A sharp-sudden thought, of what the myobu had threatened, so long ago: stripping her of her tails, casting her to the void. Was this what it felt like? But no, no, she had been good, as Inari measured things; she wouldn't let them—!)
"Sadako? Is something wrong?"
—Ah, how embarrassing: her alarm was evidently showing on her face. She schools her expression back to one of calm and sweet comfort.
"No, love, not in the least." And she brushes her finger lightly against the tip of his nose, and curves her lips into a playful smile. (It works every time.) "But it's true that I can't stay much longer… —No, no, don't pout; you're prettier when you smile."
Normally, she would make good on that line, but right now she has more important matters concerning her, because the feeling is intensifying, and she finds herself clutching her hand to her forehead to steady herself — a disconcertingly mortal-like necessity — and making her way to the businessman's (what was his name? did she even care?) hotel bathroom.
And then she is somewhere else entirely.
The air smells like dry earth, but the dry earth smell overlays a cleanness that is too precise to strike her as strictly natural. There are streets and buildings — some more tents than buildings, almost — with electric lights in the windows, though all of it is almost absurdly primitive compared to Tokyo. She stumbles a moment longer as the last of the dizziness fades, and realizes then, too, that her current form isn't wearing any clothes. That is easily enough fixed (another trivial layer to the illusion); determining where, in Inari's name, she is may prove more complex. But already she is sending a firefly-shaped bit of magic humming off the edges of her fingertips.
One of the buildings has what appears to be some sort of computer mounted into its side, almost like some sort of ATM. She is still experimenting with the controls when the firefly returns to her, and whispers in her ear a single most wonderful word: nothing. No shrines here – not to Inari, or to any spirit or god or ancestor. Nothing.
This place is interesting, she types into the computer — for that was what it was, wasn't it? A computer, connected to some kind of network? I think I'll stay.
First-Person Sample: dear-player post
Are you over 16? yes
Characters Played Here: Anna Demirovna
Character: Aoki no Teishi a.k.a. Sadako (Green Leaves Turn Red)
World Description: Rather than being based purely in Japanese and shinto mythology, Teishi comes specifically from the world of Teen Wolf. (Yes, that's a tvtropes link, because I feel like tvtropes generally goes more thoroughly into the setting than, say, Wikipedia.)
This means that what being a kitsune means for Teishi is taken from a combination of the show itself, actual Japanese folklore, and the (admittedly probably inaccurate, or at least unverifiable) version of the kitsune mythos that has percolated online. This last becomes relevant because there are indications in the show itself — namely, Noshiko referring to Kira as a "thunder kitsune" — that suggest that the show's writers employed these unverified online sources in their research (maybe they thought it seemed cool?). Thus, though Foxtrot's defining collection of lore only may or may not have any basis in actual Japanese myth, it is, for Teishi's purposes as specifically a Teen Wolf kitsune, true. While, in the original mythology, kitsune and foxes are one and the same, for the purposes of Teen Wolf's universe and this application, "kitsune" will be used as meaning a fox who, due to either age or birth, is a supernatural creature of the spirit world.
One quality of kitsune that is wholly Teen Wolf's own is the nature of a kitsune's tails. While Teen Wolf employs the popular conception that a kitsune gains a tail for every 100 years of life, it adds an additional element: kitsune may have their tails taken from them if they become nogitsune; that is, if they do not serve the god/dess Inari. Because of the ample references in myth to nogitsune/wild foxes with more than one tail (or, at least, the legendary nine-tailed Tamamo-no-Mae), my take on this is that the tail loss isn't an automatic thing upon "becoming" a nogitsune, but rather something that is sometimes done to nogitsune by the myobu kitsune who do serve Inari, as a way of curtailing (no pun intended) that nogitsune's power. One reason that it is important to limit a nogitsune's power in this way is that Teen Wolf kitsune have the ability to manifest their tails in the form of keiken knives, which are objects of great power (the older the tail, the stronger the knife), which are potent sorcerous reagents — as seen with the dark magic Noshiko channeled by breaking her keiken knives to summon and control Oni.
It bears emphasizing that Teen Wolf's kitsune put an especial importance on promises and vows. The sin of regret can kill, and a kitsune who makes a promise opens herself up to dire consequences should the promise be broken — including by the other party. For some kitsune (such as the show's nogitsune) this could be an intensifying/worsening of the kitsune's appetites, but without a clear statement from the show of the hows or whys of this, it is possible that it could vary by kitsune; possibly others simply wither away from the burden of the mistake. Regardless, kitsune are — true to their trickster natures — exceedingly fastidious about their agreements, preferring to avoid them whenever it is possible, and (if they are wise) doing their best to be clever in their wording when it is not.
History: Green Leaves Turn Red was born in a fox's den in a great forest in Japan in the year 785 C.E., give or take. The exact year is not important, and Green Leaves Turn Red — or Aoki no Teishi, as she usually prefers to be called (but more on this later) — does not know it. She does not know it, because she is a fox, and when she was born she was a simple field fox, with nothing to recommend her except cleverness (although she was very clever), and so had no knowledge of the great expanse of time. But it is of no matter: Teishi does not concern herself with the years that came before her (except, perhaps, as they pertain to the worship of Inari, or the Fujiwara clan, who were for many years her special favorites). What are more important are those years that followed. Listen and you will hear.
...Alright, so I realized that writing this entire history like it was a folktale would take entirely too long, but here is the early, character-defining moment where she sacrificed a child's life in order to fool death, managed to catch a bit of Life and Death in her mouth, and learned her true name. —Or, well, she probably did all that; it could be her own tall tale. But if it is, it's a tale she believes.
After her little encounter with Death, Green Leaves Turn Red lived on, eventually earning her second tail and the ability to use her illusion magic to truly shapeshift. At this point in her life, she remained a nogitsune — not in the sense of belonging to the void, but because she was wild, serving no one. By then she had learned from other nogitsune of the great fun there was to be had in the seduction of mortal men and women. And she had begun to notice a growing hunger in herself for something she could not yet place. So she changed herself into a delicately beautiful young woman, and gave herself a noblewoman's name (in the sense of having both a surname and a given name): Aoki-no-Teishi. "Aoki" for the tree with blue-green leaves where she sat and waited for Death, and "Teishi" because the kanji's meaning of "chaste child" appealed to her sense of irony. (At the time, the Chinese pronunciation of kanji was standard; in the modern era, "Teishi" would come to be pronounced "Sadako.") Once disguised, Teishi traveled to the nearest town, where her beauty quickly attracted the attention of a traveling samurai. (I am taking some cues from this story.) In sleeping with him, she discovered that she could draw his life force from him to feed her hunger. When the samurai discovered his subsequent weakness, she made a great show of concern, and insisted on using her knowledge of herbal medicine to nurse him back to health — not so much because she was genuinely concerned for his well-being, but because she wanted to accompany him on his travels. In this way, the newly dubbed Aoki no Teishi journeyed to the capital city of Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto).
Of course it was only a matter of time before she really did kill the samurai, but by then Teishi had found a new benefactor-slash-personal project: a young bureaucrat in the Fujiwara clan, only recently risen to power. Fujiwara no Masao thought only that his new concubine had beauty enough to make all of his rivals flush with envy. For her part, Teishi flourished in the imperial court: by ensuring that new emperors took their wives from the Fujiwara family, the clan effectively controlled succession; the kitsune's connections served her well. The Fujiwara's centuries of power would come to be known as the Heian period, a time of great poetry and literature, and Teishi came to be immensely fond of poetry in particular. Meanwhile, she amused herself by making trouble for Masao's rivals — not least by feeding from them — and urging Masao himself towards acts of vindictive cruelty against those who aroused her own jealousy. Or just because. This continued until one day Masao broke a promise to her. Just a little thing — he had sworn he would bring her a gift, and he did not — but it was enough, and that night, in her hunger, she killed him. Rather than be discovered, she faked her own death by suicide.
She could not afford to mourn Masao's death, much less her own role in it; it was simply how things were — her nature. Instead, she waited a generation, and then returned and attached herself to another promising young Fujiwara, and began again. And though she learned greater subtlety with her promises, her appetites remained unchanged.
By then, the other kitsune had named her for what she was: a Reiko — the ghost fox; a Koryo — the haunting fox that feeds on life. It was perhaps only a matter of time before she came to the attention of the myobu kitsune: the benevolent foxes who vowed to serve Inari, god of rice and mother goddess of foxes. In around the year 1100, the myobu kitsune came for Green Leaves Turn Red, and captured her. But the myobu kitsune are not unreasonable; they do not pass up the opportunity to reform. And so they told Green Leaves Turn Red that she had a choice: she could join them, vowing to serve Inari and to act as a guardian to those mortals who honored the goddess... or she could be made a true nogitsune, cast into the void, with her tails taken from her. Green Leaves Turn Red had worked hard for her tails, and wasn't about to give them up; she took the myobu kitsunes' offer, and vowed to serve Inari.
All things considered, it was not so bad. She was not expressly forbidden from using her powers, so long as she exclusively used them to punish the sinful. And following her vows to Inari kept her hunger in check...though she did find herself missing the fun of the games she used to play.
And so it was for centuries. Teishi grew more adept at learning when it was acceptable to bend the rules — her vows bade her protect those who followed Inari, which generally meant practitioners of shinto, but foreign travelers and converts to other religions were fair game -- but by and large she was a good myobu.
In the mid 1800s, though, rapid industrialization and urbanization in Japan brought about social disruption and agricultural decline. And, while the change was interesting to Teishi — by then calling herself using the modern pronunciation, Sadako — she found poverty boring, and elected to travel across the Pacific to the United States like many other (mortal) Japanese at the time. She found work in San Francisco, California: sometimes as a housekeeper; sometimes as a shop worker; sometimes as a prostitute. Though the supernatural ease with which she picked up the language worked to her benefit, the rampant racism she and the other Japanese encountered provoked in her something that might even be called true dislike of Westerners. Still, the dislike combined with a perverse kind of fondness: because at last she had her chance to really cut loose with her games while staying true to her vows to Inari. In short, Teishi ruined a lot of lives in this time, not least by ending them. Yes, she realized, there were fun sorts of advantages to a land where her vows did not apply.
Teishi remained in the U.S. through the end of World War II. Though she was initially placed in an internment camp, she elected to repeat her faking suicide trick, and proceeded to spend the next several years disguised as an ordinary fox...though she occasionally made trouble by possessing the American soldiers guarding the camps. News of the bombs back home, though, was one of the only things to have ever truly terrified her: it was not natural for men to have such power. Such things made mockery of gods and kami alike.
Though "Sadako Aoki" would have gladly avoided that whole philosophical quandary, at this point the myobu kitsune located her once more, and demanded she return home: they felt that she had been following the letter of her vows, but not the spirit of them. Back in Japan, she found that, though there were far fewer people who were truly religious, shinto remained by and large an important part of Japanese culture, and so she returned to being a good little (well, not so "little" any longer, at over 1000 years old) guardian. Still, she remembers fondly what it was to be let off her leash.
Overall, Teishi's memories of her entire life are not 100% perfect, as she is prone to telling stories and believing her own fictions; the history shared here approximates her own opinion of her life's highlights. Plus, 1000+ years is a long time to remember.
Personality: At a glance, Teishi is perfectly lovely: a pretty face, delicate features; delicate charm; always eager to share a story or a poem; even more eager to be a quiet ear to listen to your stories and your troubles. Indeed, she demonstrates a genuine and thoughtful interest in those around her, coupled with a keen sensitivity for when this sort of personal attention is welcome, and when whoever she is speaking with would prefer their space. (And, once you are ready to talk, she will of course be waiting. Isn't that nice of her?) Based on her vocabulary, and on the sorts of references she makes, she seems as if she must be well educated — but perhaps an unconventional sort of education, since she will demonstrate a surprising depth of knowledge about a subject one moment, and an insouciant innocence the next. Overall, she is pleasant and engaging company — an ideal conversation partner and (it would seem) an entertaining friend.
All of the above is true, and all of it is false, because, while none of it is an act, the motivations that people ascribe to her (at least, those who don't know any better) are, more often than not, far off the mark. Because: Teishi is not human. It's a deceptively simple statement, but ultimately the single most important thing to take into account when considering her personality. Because she isn't human — indeed, she isn't even mortal — her concerns are largely alien to human thought and human morality. Most people judge their own actions against a basic moral framework of good and bad; even when they choose to act cruelly, or selfishly, or otherwise counter to this framework, they're at least aware that it exists to be acted against — like a young man sentenced for murder because the jury concludes that he is old enough to understand that what he did was wrong. For Teishi, though, when she considers any given course of action, not only do concerns of "good" and "evil" not play into it, she does not even truly comprehend them as concepts. Sure, she's been around human beings more than long enough to grasp what they consider to be "etiquette," but she has zero true internalization of the reason mortals have established this seemingly arbitrary collection of rules.
This is not to say, though, that Teishi, like other kami in general and kitsune in particular, does not have her own particular principles. Part of her duty as a myobu kitsune, after all, was/is to protect the virtuous and punish the sinful. So, even if the reasons a particular behavior is offensive to her are less "because it is selfish/evil/bad" and more "because it just is," she nevertheless has a certain instinct for a natural order to the universe that she will consult — if she is currently "on the job." (Of course, she'll be plenty pleased to discover that she's come to a place where her vows to Inari need not come into play.) Beyond that, Teishi's personal code is based around a sense of individual honor. Like other kitsune, her promises define her, and breaking them or having them broken easily spells her ruin; as such, though she considers half-truths and deliberate misrepresentations to be all part of the game, so to speak, she takes great offense to outright dishonesty. As an extension of the matter of individual honor, her pride is also quite important to her. Insults and disrespect — to her, and to anyone who she happens to consider, for one reason or another, to be under her protection — are far worse, in her consideration, than, say, murder. (Why is murder bad, again? If they were just going to die anyway, does it matter all that much when it happens? Humans sure are funny in their particulars, aren't they! Granted, killing someone she considers under her protection is another matter: that is rude; she was using that mortal, thank you very much.) In some ways, her immortal outlook can make her seem strangely immediate in her concerns, but that is only because of just how vast her outlook really is. The present is always relevant, and so always engaging, but something that affects the next month? the next year or years? These are fleeting and thus unimportant things.
It should be emphasized that Teishi is not only inhuman and immortal; she is also, specifically, a Reiko/Koryo, or "ghost fox" — that is, her abilities and appetites relate directly to the spirit world, and saying that she feeds on "spiritual energy" is a pretty way of saying that she quite literally eats life force. It is because of this that she is so especially callous on the subject of human life. When she realized the nature of her hunger, that sense of hers for the "natural order" recognized it as a "wrong" thing, but also as nevertheless an essential part of her own nature; she could no more deny it than deny she was a fox, so it would be pointless to waste energy wishing she could be otherwise. Likewise, when she killed for the first time, this was a simple matter of predator and prey. And besides, in her calculation of things, she had been quite good to her victim, spending all those months nursing him with herbal medicine, and providing him the pleasure of her company; surely it was a more than fair trade. Once, though, Teishi did very nearly succumb to the sin of regret: Teishi had loved Fujiwara no Masao, in her fashion — his cleverness and ambition so very like her own. It was when she lost control of her hunger and accidentally killed him that she truly had no choice but to come to terms with her own nature, and divorce herself from any empathy for mortals. She might play at being human and mortal, she concluded, but she was not — no more than a fox was a field mouse. The alternative would have been withering away with the burden of regret. While this does mean that Teishi has, somewhere in her, the emotional framework for empathy, it is over one thousand years since she abandoned it; by now, she is very set in her ways.
Ultimately, where the "standard" human morality exists on a scale between good and evil, Teishi's concept of "morality" has evolved to be more like a scale of "interesting" and "boring" — and based on that code, she's quite "moral" indeed! The things she does, she does because they entertain her in the moment that she does them. Even becoming a myobu kitsune, sworn to serve Inari, was a decision she made because she deemed that it was the less un-fun option versus losing her tails. The pursuit of the interesting is the one area in which Teishi shows the true patience of immortality: while spontaneous amusement is a worthwhile way to pass the time, she is also more than willing to play a long game, setting up rivalries, resentments, and betrayals to culminate —months, years, or generations later — in a punchline only she can appreciate. By weaving these webs around herself, she was able to, in the years before she vowed herself to Inari, foster the close relationships she needed in order to feed with ease; after her vows, she had the excuse of using the resultant discord as a kind of honeytrap for nogitsune. Indeed, it was not for nothing that she made such a personal project of her association with the Fujiwara clan's era of high art and higher political intrigue. Beyond the Heian period, that pursuit of the interesting continued to draw Teishi to humanity throughout her extremely long life. Thus, despite or even because of those times when humans are dishonest or disrespectful, she maintains a deep and abiding fondness for them — for their interestingness.
…That is to say, she finds them interesting in the same way that the child who uses a magnifying glass to burn ants can be said to find the ants interesting.
Does your character have any close ties to existing canon characters? Nope! She and the nogitsune will be able to recognize one another for what they are, but they are not personally acquainted.
Why do you think your character would work in this setting? This is where things get a bit interesting, because Teishi is something of a special case. The answer to "why do I think she would work" is I think she won't — and that's actually the point. It is my intention to play Teishi as a bright flame of a character — vivid and dangerous and inevitably meant to burn herself out or be snuffed, probably at the hands of other characters. She's essentially intended as a plot opportunity: a study in contrasts with the supernatural creatures in town in general, and the nogitsune in particular. While she is not a chaos/pain-eater as her "cousin" is, she is, in and of herself as an eater of life-force, a source of chaos and pain. I think dealing with her as a threat will force the other characters in New Dodge to reevaluate their perceptions of good, evil, and the supernatural.
That being said, all of that can still take place and be interesting and not end in Teishi's death if, by some extremely unlikely combination of circumstances, she starts forming her own messed up little skulk and characters somehow manage to find a safe way for her to feed and bind her into abiding by that safe way of feeding. If that's the case, she will essentially be forced to make good on the comment/threat she'd make as her first TC post: "This place seems interesting; I think I'll stay." —And playing that forced adaptation would be engaging!
Because of the sort of unusual plans I have in mind for her, I'm going to include a link to my draft of Teishi's permissions/plotting post so you guys can let me know if any of it needs changing: here!
What will your character do for work? On the off-chance that she lasts long enough for this to matter? There are a couple positions that would work for her.
She could teach history at the school, though she's only really invested in the history of Japan, and to a lesser extent China and Korea, so have fun with that. Creative writing might be a better fit. She could work as a librarian. (As Welcome To Night Vale has taught us, librarians should indeed be horrifying and eldritch, after all.) She could work in the theater, using her illusions for special affects. Or she would be the most knowledgeable tea shop employee you could ever ask for.
Inventory: Because she is fluxing in — absolutely nothing, except that which is already part of her.
—That is, she will have her hoshi no tama/star ball, which is the most vital part of her (perhaps the closest thing she has to a soul). And she will have the ability to manifest keiken knives (and thus to in theory use them to perform dark magic such as the sort used to control Oni) as embodiments of her nine tails. It is worth noting that, for both the hoshi no tama and the keiken knives, just because they're part of Teishi doesn't mean they can't, once she has chosen to manifest them, be taken from her and used by someone else.
Nevertheless, she won't have any truly separate items; even the clothes on her back are an illusion, just like her human form is.
Samples:
Third-Person Sample:
It begins as a feeling of dizziness, of disconnect. The sheer unfamiliarity of it might, by itself, be enough to make her half-relish the sensation (after all, there was always something to be said for uniqueness), except it is also unpleasant, and she is rather engaged at the moment with her latest prospect. (If there was anything to be said for the Western businessmen — the ones who came to Tokyo looking for some kind of half-baked Geisha fantasy to carry home inside them, each murmuring the same line about how they had always heard that the best way to learn a foreign language was in the bedroom, their folded shirts left smelling faintly of her perfume where they lay folded next to the knock-off maneki neko and paper fans that they brought back to their blonde fiancées — it was that they were convenient. Inari cared nothing for them, and so neither did she. And besides, she hardly ever killed them.)
But back to the feeling. How to describe it, exactly? —like being pulled out and away from herself? (A sharp-sudden thought, of what the myobu had threatened, so long ago: stripping her of her tails, casting her to the void. Was this what it felt like? But no, no, she had been good, as Inari measured things; she wouldn't let them—!)
"Sadako? Is something wrong?"
—Ah, how embarrassing: her alarm was evidently showing on her face. She schools her expression back to one of calm and sweet comfort.
"No, love, not in the least." And she brushes her finger lightly against the tip of his nose, and curves her lips into a playful smile. (It works every time.) "But it's true that I can't stay much longer… —No, no, don't pout; you're prettier when you smile."
Normally, she would make good on that line, but right now she has more important matters concerning her, because the feeling is intensifying, and she finds herself clutching her hand to her forehead to steady herself — a disconcertingly mortal-like necessity — and making her way to the businessman's (what was his name? did she even care?) hotel bathroom.
And then she is somewhere else entirely.
The air smells like dry earth, but the dry earth smell overlays a cleanness that is too precise to strike her as strictly natural. There are streets and buildings — some more tents than buildings, almost — with electric lights in the windows, though all of it is almost absurdly primitive compared to Tokyo. She stumbles a moment longer as the last of the dizziness fades, and realizes then, too, that her current form isn't wearing any clothes. That is easily enough fixed (another trivial layer to the illusion); determining where, in Inari's name, she is may prove more complex. But already she is sending a firefly-shaped bit of magic humming off the edges of her fingertips.
One of the buildings has what appears to be some sort of computer mounted into its side, almost like some sort of ATM. She is still experimenting with the controls when the firefly returns to her, and whispers in her ear a single most wonderful word: nothing. No shrines here – not to Inari, or to any spirit or god or ancestor. Nothing.
This place is interesting, she types into the computer — for that was what it was, wasn't it? A computer, connected to some kind of network? I think I'll stay.
First-Person Sample: dear-player post