basilmemories (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
basilmemories) wrote2005-02-07 06:47 am
basilmemories) wrote2005-02-07 06:47 am
AND THE CHORUS SWELLS!
Got the first part of the W:TA game down. For those who don't know the Hengeyokai back story, you should read this. Hell you should read this anyway because the backstory is slightly diffrent then normal Hengeyokai.
As said by Ran thieving talons:
The story I’m going to tell you has a lot of variations. Some of our cousins like to paint themselves the heroes and such, other guys change things around so that they look like they know everything when they really don’t, and some versions are just plain WEIRD.
But I’m not going to tell you those versions; I’m going to tell you the one that’s considered the truth by the bay area hengeyokai.
In the beginning there were two forces, Wyld, a being with no clear shape or sex, and Weaver, a large spider.
Well… spider, tiger, ocean-dwelling _thing_... even here there’s a lot of speculation on what she looks like, proving that even us ‘enlightened’ ones don’t know as much as we like to think.
Back to the point, Wyld was change and creation, Weaver was preservation and improvement. And man did they have problems. Ever see an uptight person try and keep a sugar-hyped kid under control, yeah it was like that.
So this force called Wyrm came along, he was balance and destruction. Most think of him as a snake, but around the courts he’s a centipede… or at least now he is. I’ll get to that later.
Regardless of what he looked like, he kept _both_ of them in line, encircled all of creation within his coils and bit his tail to keep things from going too far. Or something like that. And pretty much things were fine after that.
Well that is until Weaver went a little insane. You see one day she looked up from everything and realized that all her grand work… her life’s goal… had no point. In the end it would all be changed by Wyld or destroyed by Wyrm.
Did I say a little insane? I meant total effing nuts. She went full-tilt at binding _everything_ in existence into her little design, and yes that very much included Wyrm and Wyld. Now ol’ snakey-‘pede wasn’t just going to let that happen, and nearly exhausted himself in the effort of containing Weaver. Finally in a moment of calm he decided to get a little catnap, because… well, _you_ try and keep the force of stasis in check for a few millennia and see how tired you get.
That was the moment Weaver struck, and bound the very force of balance into stasis.
Let me ask you a question now, what happens when justice isn’t so, or to put it simply, when fairness isn’t fair.
You got it: corruption. The Centipede went nuts too, wanting to destroy and corrupt everything it could. And so you have the situation today.
Okay not quite, I haven’t gone through the ages yet.
The Wheel:
All right, so there have been five ages, the first was the whole birth of the universe thing and the time when everything was ‘happy’. The spirit world and the material world had no barrier. Also for Gaia, (you know the spirit of the very stuff under your feet? No not the damn sidewalk! The friggin’ planet!) There was no need for the hengeyokai.
The second age was when Weaver and Wyrm took a dive off the deep end. Because of the Spider the spirit and material worlds were separated. Just about then Gaia decided to make some people to help her out. She took some stuff from animals, some stuff from humans, and some stuff from the spirits and slapped them together. In other words she cranked out the shape-shifters.
First she made the zhong Lung dragons to keep the memories of all that passed, and then she made the cats to pry the secrets from her enemies and give to the zhong Lung…
But that didn’t work too well, the cats were GREAT at gathering secrets… but actually dishing them out? Um no, not good at that whatsoever.
So then she made my kind, the Tengu. On the opposite side of the scale, we can’t shut up when it comes to giving out info, plus Gaia made us so that we got into trouble every ten seconds or so because of our curiosity. However there were some places we didn’t go, and in those places she made bats. They kacked back in the wars, along with the boars and the aurochs, I’m getting to that part also.
Next she made a LOAD of guardians. Wolves for most of the world, the Same-bito for the seas, you get the picture.
And since she was there and coming up with races to solve her problems, out plopped the Nezumi who controlled the humans’ population, and Nagah who made sure we all toed the line. She also made the coyotes, but I for one haven’t seen one around here. And somewhere along those times she created Okuma, who healed the land and her people…
-they were another casualty in the wars… and that time we couldn’t blame it on outsiders. …Right, moving on now.
The Kumo are said to be one of Weaver’s kids gone to the Centipede. They used to serve the original functions of the three forces, but now they just toady up to their surrogate insect daddy. Nasty ones, luckily there aren’t many of them in this area.
So after that exhausting bit, she told them to go do their duties, and promptly fell into a post-birth nap. That was the end of the second age.
Well the third age isn’t called the age of heroes for nothin’. All the shape shifters of the world, westerner Sunset people and eastern Hengeyokai alike, went out and did great deeds. There are more legends then I can tell you in a year that is set in this age. If you want to kill a few days you should check a few of them out sometime. We also culled our humans extensively during this time, which is why some hengeyokai freak the crap out of humans in their war-forms. They have racial memories of the nightmares that past generations endured. …Don’t worry though we stopped it… eventually.
The fourth age is a mucky one to talk about. There were these immortals called the Wan Xian see? And there were about ten-thousand of them. And they all fell to the Centipede, don’t ask me how I’m _still_ trying to figure that one out. The hengeyokai? Didn’t get the memo. So when the Wan Xian came to the various courts around the middle kingdoms and said the other shape-shifter breeds were corrupt, everybody believed them. And it wasn’t that hard to believe, everyone has their biases, it doesn’t take much to push some hengeyokai into a kin-slaying fury.
Meanwhile on the other side of the globe the local Garou –er, the werewolves, had snapped and were claiming that they were the only ones fit to do, um _anything_. Much death followed, and three changing breeds fell to the defenders of Gaia. Everyone else was lucky; they only were driven _close_ to extinction, instead of getting there fully. On that note: don’t ask a sunset person about the “war of rage”. They get touchy.
_really_ touchy.
Oh so NOW you see the scar? Geez… observant as a Gondir aren’t ya?
…never mind. Moving on again.
“The war of shame”… now that’s a phrase that will stop conversation in its tracks. All the breeds waged a violent crusade on each other, save for the Okuma. They would not fight a fellow child of Gaia… and so they were murdered, one and all. I’m not going to say anything further of their passing, just if you ever see one of the sunset bear-folk, you _will_ be nice to that bear-folk.
Needless to say when we found out what had happened, we were _pissed_. Gaia supposedly cursed them, and the Wan Xian were turned into the Kuei-Jin, also known as blood drinking walking hell-corpses. They keep saying they’ve repented. I keep saying ‘tell it to the dead hengeyokai’. Okay I would if there were any left in the area… when we came into the bay area we ‘cleaned house’ as it were. Heh heh heh…
We still have to deal with the western vampires though, the “kin-jin”. Can you say pain-in-the-ass? I knew you could…
Next was the age of shadows. That hit around the turn of the century. I really don’t explain how the various events of the world, including environmental rape and atomic weapons are bad signs right? We’re still in the fifth age by the way, that scares me, if all this crap hasn’t caused the age of sorrows to occur, what just will?
Oh yeah, the sixth age, that’s one’s coming up fast. The sunset people think it’s the end of everything; we just think it’s the lowest point in the cycle of time called the wheel. I like our version better. There’s at least a chance things will be all right again… if any of us survive that is.
And on that, I’m tired, my throat is parched, and you kid are squirming like a monkey on crack. That’s my cue to hit the sack and for you to absorb what I told you.
Why am I smiling? Heh, because you get to meet your _real_ teacher in the morning.
…good luck kid. I don’t envy you.
As said by Ran thieving talons:
The story I’m going to tell you has a lot of variations. Some of our cousins like to paint themselves the heroes and such, other guys change things around so that they look like they know everything when they really don’t, and some versions are just plain WEIRD.
But I’m not going to tell you those versions; I’m going to tell you the one that’s considered the truth by the bay area hengeyokai.
In the beginning there were two forces, Wyld, a being with no clear shape or sex, and Weaver, a large spider.
Well… spider, tiger, ocean-dwelling _thing_... even here there’s a lot of speculation on what she looks like, proving that even us ‘enlightened’ ones don’t know as much as we like to think.
Back to the point, Wyld was change and creation, Weaver was preservation and improvement. And man did they have problems. Ever see an uptight person try and keep a sugar-hyped kid under control, yeah it was like that.
So this force called Wyrm came along, he was balance and destruction. Most think of him as a snake, but around the courts he’s a centipede… or at least now he is. I’ll get to that later.
Regardless of what he looked like, he kept _both_ of them in line, encircled all of creation within his coils and bit his tail to keep things from going too far. Or something like that. And pretty much things were fine after that.
Well that is until Weaver went a little insane. You see one day she looked up from everything and realized that all her grand work… her life’s goal… had no point. In the end it would all be changed by Wyld or destroyed by Wyrm.
Did I say a little insane? I meant total effing nuts. She went full-tilt at binding _everything_ in existence into her little design, and yes that very much included Wyrm and Wyld. Now ol’ snakey-‘pede wasn’t just going to let that happen, and nearly exhausted himself in the effort of containing Weaver. Finally in a moment of calm he decided to get a little catnap, because… well, _you_ try and keep the force of stasis in check for a few millennia and see how tired you get.
That was the moment Weaver struck, and bound the very force of balance into stasis.
Let me ask you a question now, what happens when justice isn’t so, or to put it simply, when fairness isn’t fair.
You got it: corruption. The Centipede went nuts too, wanting to destroy and corrupt everything it could. And so you have the situation today.
Okay not quite, I haven’t gone through the ages yet.
The Wheel:
All right, so there have been five ages, the first was the whole birth of the universe thing and the time when everything was ‘happy’. The spirit world and the material world had no barrier. Also for Gaia, (you know the spirit of the very stuff under your feet? No not the damn sidewalk! The friggin’ planet!) There was no need for the hengeyokai.
The second age was when Weaver and Wyrm took a dive off the deep end. Because of the Spider the spirit and material worlds were separated. Just about then Gaia decided to make some people to help her out. She took some stuff from animals, some stuff from humans, and some stuff from the spirits and slapped them together. In other words she cranked out the shape-shifters.
First she made the zhong Lung dragons to keep the memories of all that passed, and then she made the cats to pry the secrets from her enemies and give to the zhong Lung…
But that didn’t work too well, the cats were GREAT at gathering secrets… but actually dishing them out? Um no, not good at that whatsoever.
So then she made my kind, the Tengu. On the opposite side of the scale, we can’t shut up when it comes to giving out info, plus Gaia made us so that we got into trouble every ten seconds or so because of our curiosity. However there were some places we didn’t go, and in those places she made bats. They kacked back in the wars, along with the boars and the aurochs, I’m getting to that part also.
Next she made a LOAD of guardians. Wolves for most of the world, the Same-bito for the seas, you get the picture.
And since she was there and coming up with races to solve her problems, out plopped the Nezumi who controlled the humans’ population, and Nagah who made sure we all toed the line. She also made the coyotes, but I for one haven’t seen one around here. And somewhere along those times she created Okuma, who healed the land and her people…
-they were another casualty in the wars… and that time we couldn’t blame it on outsiders. …Right, moving on now.
The Kumo are said to be one of Weaver’s kids gone to the Centipede. They used to serve the original functions of the three forces, but now they just toady up to their surrogate insect daddy. Nasty ones, luckily there aren’t many of them in this area.
So after that exhausting bit, she told them to go do their duties, and promptly fell into a post-birth nap. That was the end of the second age.
Well the third age isn’t called the age of heroes for nothin’. All the shape shifters of the world, westerner Sunset people and eastern Hengeyokai alike, went out and did great deeds. There are more legends then I can tell you in a year that is set in this age. If you want to kill a few days you should check a few of them out sometime. We also culled our humans extensively during this time, which is why some hengeyokai freak the crap out of humans in their war-forms. They have racial memories of the nightmares that past generations endured. …Don’t worry though we stopped it… eventually.
The fourth age is a mucky one to talk about. There were these immortals called the Wan Xian see? And there were about ten-thousand of them. And they all fell to the Centipede, don’t ask me how I’m _still_ trying to figure that one out. The hengeyokai? Didn’t get the memo. So when the Wan Xian came to the various courts around the middle kingdoms and said the other shape-shifter breeds were corrupt, everybody believed them. And it wasn’t that hard to believe, everyone has their biases, it doesn’t take much to push some hengeyokai into a kin-slaying fury.
Meanwhile on the other side of the globe the local Garou –er, the werewolves, had snapped and were claiming that they were the only ones fit to do, um _anything_. Much death followed, and three changing breeds fell to the defenders of Gaia. Everyone else was lucky; they only were driven _close_ to extinction, instead of getting there fully. On that note: don’t ask a sunset person about the “war of rage”. They get touchy.
_really_ touchy.
Oh so NOW you see the scar? Geez… observant as a Gondir aren’t ya?
…never mind. Moving on again.
“The war of shame”… now that’s a phrase that will stop conversation in its tracks. All the breeds waged a violent crusade on each other, save for the Okuma. They would not fight a fellow child of Gaia… and so they were murdered, one and all. I’m not going to say anything further of their passing, just if you ever see one of the sunset bear-folk, you _will_ be nice to that bear-folk.
Needless to say when we found out what had happened, we were _pissed_. Gaia supposedly cursed them, and the Wan Xian were turned into the Kuei-Jin, also known as blood drinking walking hell-corpses. They keep saying they’ve repented. I keep saying ‘tell it to the dead hengeyokai’. Okay I would if there were any left in the area… when we came into the bay area we ‘cleaned house’ as it were. Heh heh heh…
We still have to deal with the western vampires though, the “kin-jin”. Can you say pain-in-the-ass? I knew you could…
Next was the age of shadows. That hit around the turn of the century. I really don’t explain how the various events of the world, including environmental rape and atomic weapons are bad signs right? We’re still in the fifth age by the way, that scares me, if all this crap hasn’t caused the age of sorrows to occur, what just will?
Oh yeah, the sixth age, that’s one’s coming up fast. The sunset people think it’s the end of everything; we just think it’s the lowest point in the cycle of time called the wheel. I like our version better. There’s at least a chance things will be all right again… if any of us survive that is.
And on that, I’m tired, my throat is parched, and you kid are squirming like a monkey on crack. That’s my cue to hit the sack and for you to absorb what I told you.
Why am I smiling? Heh, because you get to meet your _real_ teacher in the morning.
…good luck kid. I don’t envy you.