Hudson Quaking-Sage
Hudson Quaking-Sage is a coyote bakemono from the American southwest. A skilled outdoorsman, gunslinger, and student of the spiritual arts, Hudson roams the new west righting wrongs and rescuing travellers who get in over their heads.
Physical Description
Special abilities
Aside from being able to take human, coyote, or a hybrid form as appropriate for his species, Hudson Quaking-Sage has learned to tap into the latent spiritual energies of his body to further distort his corporeal form. He can stretch and contort his body to give himself more reach (i.e. stretched limbs), gain additional modes of attack (i.e. a scorpion's stinger), close any wounds he might sustain, and protect his vitals from the strikes of foes. Though not fully fluid, like Tau, Hudson is difficult to to contain or face in close-quarters combat because of his highly malleable form. This ability is exhausting and off-putting to his human compatriots, however, so Hudson generally avoids using it unless circumstances are sufficiently dire.
Specialized Equipment
Hudson fights with weapons in both hands, whether with a hatchet and combat knife or a pair of matched magnum revolvers. He typically carries a length of hemp rope, a pack of dried foodstuffs, a canteen, and one change of clothing, but little else. Most of the things Hudson needs in life can be acquired in the wilderness, so he prefers to travel light.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Hudson comes from a world where the spiritual and physical realms are overlaid upon one another, creating yokai wherever the realms draw close - specifically, where the psychic energies of living beings are densely concentrated. Thought the creatures that arise from these regions are recognizably yokai, the forms they take and certain aspects of the spiritual realms which they can access are tinged with aspects of whatever the prevailing sentient (usually human) mythology is in the region.
Because Hudson achieved sentience and his ability to take a humanoid form in the four corners region of the American southwest, his part of the spiritual realm was organized in a way resembling Navajo creation myths; in a more Shinto-inspired part of the cosmology, he would be recognized as a a form of inugami. He took the surname Quaking-Sage because, as he emerged into the 'Fourth World' - structured reality as humans understand it - he startled a group of settlers by stepping out from the patch of sagebrush in which his coyote form had been bedded down.
Education
Literate but not formally educated, Hudson has learned most of what he knows through experience and observation. Hudson has stuck close to human settlements for as long as he can remember, observing their arts and technologies (and foibles) from a distance before trying to interact with them more directly. His decades of time as a literal creature of the wilderness has given him extensive insight into survival techniques.
In more recent times, the self-knowledge Hudson has attained through years of solitary contemplation under the desert sky have allowed him to gain a degree of control over his own shapeshifting abilities, unlocking new and grotesque forms for use in exigent circumstances (see special abilities). He augments this knowledge with tidbits about the spiritual arts gleaned through lengthy conversation with any religious figures or fellow yokai he might encounter in his travels. Hudson has an avid interest in the lore of the spiritual realm and would like to pursue this inquiry more closely if given the opportunity.
Morality & Philosophy
Like other coyote bakemono, Hudson has a wry wit and delights in a good prank. He prefers good-natured jokes and pranks that contain the seeds of a greater lesson, often about survival or other important affairs. His easy humor conceals a broader disappointment with the greed, ingratitude, and short-sightedness he sees in some humans; in his own terms, he "'laugh(s) because it beats cryin' over it." Hudson has decided that his role in the material realm is to help guide humans away from these vices, and that often means intervening in human affairs.
Hudson has a strong sense of justice, but not necessarily a sense of deferrence to social conventions or authority. This tendency to seek the right moral path has gotten him into more than a few troublesome situations where it is at cross-purposes with the desires of others.
Alignment
Chaotic Good
Species
Age
25 (sentience)
Date of Birth
10/8/1795 (animal form), 3/3/1845 (human form)
Children
Sex
Male
Eyes
Light Brown
Hair
Dirty blonde
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Tan, some grayish streak birthmarks
Height
5'8"
Weight
170
Belief/Deity
Dine Cosmology
Other Affiliations
CG Male Dog Hengeyokai Ranger/Totemist/Warshaper
sdEpa, Transmute/Track/Reinforce/Craft
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