Kitsune
Kitsune are a relatively uncommon race found all across the world, albeit primarilly in the Phoenix Empire and its neighboring regions. They are shapeshifters, most notable for their ability to transform into foxes and members of other races.
Basic Information
Anatomy
Kitsune appear largely similar to humans, but are generally rather short, frequently being under five feet tall. Their most distinguishing features in their true forms are their tails and ears, both of vulpine nature. These share the same colors as their hair, and are most commonly black or red and white, although on occassion white is seen, and gold is even rarer. Their tails multiply as they age, although it is a myth that a Kitsune has 1 tail for every hundred years it has lived; rather, the number of tails a kitsune has is proportional to their spiritual power. Kitsune are born with one tail, and can have up to nine.
Genetics and Reproduction
New Kitsune come into existence in two ways. The first is the rarest, but does happen on occassion; a fox reaches the age of one hundred, and suddenly finds its form shifting and sapience thrust upon it. This is a very disconcerting event, and most have some degree of trauma from their awakening, although few would wish to go back to their former minds and forms. Servants of the goddess Fushimi make great effort to find foxes who are nearing their one hundredth birthday in order to help them cope with their newly-expanded minds.
This isn't entirely correct, however. While it is simpler to say that foxes who reach one hundred turn into kitsune, in truth they have always been kitsune. Foxes, as a species, are inseperable from their humanoid counterparts. Once they turn a hundred, the curse put upon them by the Aldlords is broken, and they can once more frolic as they did in ancient days, as fully sentient creatures unmarred by the wrath of fey gods.
The more common way for kitsune to come into being is through sex. Unfortunately, kitsune are disproportionately female owing to their origins, with men accounting for just one out of every twenty-seven births. However, the children of kitsune are always kitsune themselves, and so many kitsune women take men of other races to be their husbands. Given their long life-spans, however, the wife will frequently outlive her husband. The average female kitsune is thus something of a serial monogamist, moving from one partner to the next but never having more than one.
Additional Information
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
Kitsune possess highly attuned senses, particularly scent, hearing, and sight. Their scent is normally only slightly more sensitive than that of a human, but in fox form they are able to smell as keenly as the creature whose shape they wear. Their eyes are able to pierce the darkness of night without issue, and their hearing is very sensitive thanks to their large ears.
Civilization and Culture
History
In the beginning of the Feywild, there were the Aldlords, fey beings of great power equivalent to the gods of the mortal realm. They ruled over the nascent feywild from their courts of leaves and shadows, and the fairest of their number were the sisters Fushimi and Nihori. These two, while formless like all Aldlords, took forms similar to modern kitsune. Fushimi was a being of great benevolence, caring for all things that grow and swell and flow. She spent her days tending to vast gardens, the first farms in the universe, where she first cultivated rice. When she was not working upon her gardens, she basked in the glow of the Uncreated Light that permeated and still permeates the feywild. Nihori was a creature of shadows, whose time was spent less in work and more in the hunt of the primordial creatures that inhabited the realm, and in the playing of countless tricks upon the other Aldlords. While she caused much chaos, she was always able to set that chaos right better than it had been before.
What happened next is not disputed, but why and at whose insistence is greatly debated by the eldest den-mothers. Some say thatFushimi and Nihori were both unfulfilled, for while the other Aldlords made countless beings, Nihori was indecisive, forming creatures of this sort and that before fickly destroying them and starting anew on another short-lived project. Fushimi, tired of solitude with only her sister and the Aldlords, seduced her. Others say that Nihori seduced her sister as a prank, and the kitsune race was an uwanted or merely unexpected result. Regardless, from their union came 78 daughters and 3 sons, whose golden fur shone radiantly in the Uncreated Light. These were the first kitsune, and were dear to their mothers, taking after them in all ways. From them do Kitsune inherit their dual nature.
Lifespan
300 (there is a great deal of variance however; some are even immortal and unaging)
Average Height
4'11"
Geographic Distribution
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