Kitsune

Content note. This entry describes soul-feeding in detail, including its use during sexual contact, and non-consensual mind control and possession. The Feeding and Foxfire, illusion and possession sections are the ones to skip.

Overview

Kitsune are fox shapeshifters, and power is the axis the species runs along. It is counted in tails.

There is no such thing as a kitsune’s true form. Fox, human, and every point in between are all equally true, and a kitsune moving between them is genuinely shifting rather than casting an illusion over themselves. Shapeshifting gets easier with age; mastering a full human form usually takes a century or two.

Heritage

A long time ago kitsune bloodlines crossed with others, and the magic that came out of those crossings still defines the species.

Those who mixed with the Seelie fae came away with light magic and are called light touched. Those who mixed with demons came away with dark magic and are called dark touched. The bloodlines have not crossed in a very long time, but the inheritance stayed, and being one or the other remains essential to what a kitsune is.

Light and dark are two of the four pure magics, and the distinction between them is about where power is drawn from. It is not specific to kitsune; what is specific to kitsune is that theirs is settled by bloodline rather than chosen.

For most people the two are not exclusive; someone can hold more than one pure magic. Kitsune are the apparent exception, and only because theirs is tied to bloodline rather than to the individual. Even that is not absolute — rare halfbreeds carrying both do exist.

The kitsune’s own original magic is neither light nor dark. The shapeshifting and the soul-stealing are an extra force, older than the inheritance and sitting outside the ordinary structure of magic entirely.

Tails

Tail count measures power, and power arrives by more than one route: through age, through performing magic difficult enough to stretch a kitsune many times past their capacity and surviving the attempt, or through a great deed — which may be a good deed or an evil one.

Once a kitsune’s general nature is set, the road tends to follow it. A broadly good kitsune grows in power through good deeds; a cruel one grows through cruel ones.

Nine is the usual maximum, but it is a soft ceiling rather than a hard one. Most kitsune simply have no need for more power once they reach it and stop there. A rare few keep going, and become exceptional magic wielders for it.

Tails cannot be permanently lost. Cutting one will dampen a kitsune’s power for a while, but it grows back suddenly and almost instantly.

Power does not change a kitsune’s colouring. Some shift in colour across their lifetime, but it has nothing to do with tails and settles into no particular state — there is no white or gold at nine.

Feeding

Kitsune survive by feeding on souls. That does not mean consuming a whole one. Most take only small pieces, which return and replenish over time in whoever they were taken from. The need lessens as a kitsune ages.

Anything with a soul can be fed on, other kitsune included.

The person being fed on can always tell, and what they feel depends entirely on how it is done. A kitsune who is gentle — licking the soul before biting, taking only a little at a time — makes it a pleasant and even relaxing experience. A kitsune who simply tears into it makes it excruciating.

That licking is also often used during sexual contact. A kitsune may take the soul into themselves during sex without breaking its connection to its owner, which prevents them consuming it and produces immense pleasure for both of them.

Some kitsune choose to consume a soul entirely, which kills its owner. Whether a given kitsune does that depends on the kitsune, and on whose soul it is.

Kitsune have nothing like the settled cultural structure syntheon have, so there is no norm to point at. A decent kitsune asks first. A nasty one is under no obligation to, and may well not.

Foxfire, illusion and possession

Foxfire is real and serves two purposes: as a magical heatless light, and as a hypnotic tool for controlling minds — influence rather than full possession. It can be used with consent or without, and it is unfailingly pleasant either way.

What foxfire channels is magical hypnosis, an extra force born out of thought and will together. It is very difficult to resist unless the person resisting is exceptionally strong-willed. The same force reaches a lamia as a hypnotic gaze instead; only the channel differs.

Illusion is part of the trickster magic and is otherwise unrestricted. It is far more effective when the kitsune has gained access to the target’s mind somehow; without that, an illusion reaches sight and sound only, and smell and touch give it away.

Possession belongs to the dark touched alone. Done consensually and with care it can be a pleasant thing. Done without consent it crushes the mind completely and the victim is unlikely to survive — though that is much harder for a kitsune to accomplish.

Magic

The species fixes the heritage — every kitsune is light touched or dark touched, and that determines where their magic draws power from. It fixes the shapeshifting, the illusions, the foxfire and the soul-feeding. Possession is fixed to the dark touched.

Everything else is individual.

Shared instincts

Kitsune share the trickster nature. What any of them chooses to do with it is entirely their own, and so is whether they lean toward guardianship the way the zenko of folklore do.

They are not divided into a benevolent camp and a wicked one. They are their own people, and the tradition’s two classes are a description of stories rather than of kitsune.

Where the name comes from

Kitsune is simply the Japanese word for fox; the supernatural reading is contextual rather than a separate term. The folklore divides them into zenko (善狐), benevolent and celestial and associated with Inari Ōkami, and yako or nogitsune (野狐), the wild tricksters responsible for the possession called kitsunetsuki. We take the trickster nature from the yako reading and leave the two-camp division behind entirely.

Counting tails remains the practical way to tell a kitsune from a fox, which carries one.

Field notes

Individual heritage, tail count, colouring and chosen magic belong on each member’s own page.