Tsuchinoko, The Iron Snake
Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2016 6:55 pm
Tsuchinoko, the Iron Snake.
Hair: Pine Green
Eyes Onyx Stones
Height: 6’ 4”
Weight: 450 pounds (mostly sand)
Distinguishing features: A raspy, cavernous voice that is no louder than a whisper (petrified vocal cords).
The story of Tsuchinoko begins with the story of his mother…
In the outreaches of the far eastern Kozakuran region a small clan known as the Arayashiki had made their home. In ages past the Arayashiki people had mixed their blood with that of Yousei (Fey) and they possessed beauty and power beyond that of the races that inhabited the area around them. As such they were regarded with both jealousy and fear. Yamauba was born to the Arayashiki and in time she grew into a young, fair, gentle and soft spoken woman.
While running some errands at a nearby river her gaze crossed with a man named Shirime and she was instantly smitten. He seemed to have fallen for her no less than she had for him. On account of her sudden and growing affections, Yamauba made every effort to volunteer for those chores that took her to the river in the hope of visiting with the man that had become the preoccupation of all her thoughts. Though the two grew close, Shirime was from a neighboring rival clan that was at war with hers. By necessity, they hid their association from their friends and elders. It was difficult for them to find much time alone as both were often accompanied on their trips, nor were they always able to ensure that such trips coincided with the others. When they could not meet they would leave secret letters in agreed upon hiding places by the river.
Happenstance is indeed a whimsical thing. Just as it led them to one another so also it brought out into the light that which they would keep secret. Attentive eyes discovered letters carelessly left about. Soft hidden steps followed them in the dark. Whispers in the ears of elders brought unwanted attention to their clandestine correspondences. Soon they were called to give account.
Duty and obligation were driven into Yamauba like a blade to the heart. She burned to visit with Shirime, her parents and clan elders insisted she stop. The warned her, pleaded with her, begged her, and command her to cast him aside. It was to no use though; as so many women before her, Yamauba chose wholeheartedly to place her faith in love. As so many young women before her, she paid the price for her naïve innocence in full.
Whether Shirime had been careful and shrewd in his seductions from the start or was forced by his clan to betray her remained an unanswered, aching mystery in Yamauba’s chest. After expectantly waiting for Shirime by the river one day, she returned from the river one day to find her village assailed. The deft and horrid attack had killed nearer two thirds of her clan: her family, those whom she loved, those who admonished her to cast Shirime aside, those who -she- had ultimately betrayed herself. The growing trust between her and Shirime had been used to obtain information she thought, at the time, was to allow them greater secrecy. The horror of the betrayal, the loss of so many dear to her, and the shame of her actions all reaved at her soul like flanking wraiths. .
Broken, scorned and alone, Yamauba forsook the ways of the world and took to a life of asceticism on a nearby mountain. She shaved her head and did away with all her feminine trappings and longings. Though she despised Shirime, it was not as much as she loathed her humanity and that her human longings had cost her. In her own eyes she was not even worthy of avenging those who she had lost, not she who had betrayed them, not she whose selfish lies cost them their lives. She lived out her self-loathing in solitude.
The mountain where she made her home was ruled over be a harsh and unforgiving spirit. All the clans and villages within a travelable distance knew the spirit of the mountain to be cold and merciless and so none dared trespass on his domain. This was worked out to Yamauba’s advantage as she had had her fill of the world and wished for nothing more than to be left alone.
When the spirit who gave his name only as ‘Lord of the Mountain’ discovered Yamauba living there, he set out to kill her without delay. As soon as he came upon her though she fell prostrate and humbly asked to be allowed to stay with a determination that swayed the spirit somewhat. She vowed to properly venerate him and obey his laws and to infringe in any way on his dominion. He found this agreeable and allowed her to stay.
For nearer half a century Yamauba lived atop the mountain. Yamauba’s blood gave her more years than those of lesser birth and the ascetic life she took up extended them even further she retained her youth despite time passing so The spirit visited her once a year for one day; He was not very fond of mortals, and ultimately she herself craved the solitude within which she her ascetic practices allowed her to become something far different from the woman she left behind.
The spirit of the mountain was a half-Dao named Rabb’al’jabal. Over a thousand years before Yamauba’s arrival he had been cast from his home in the elemental chaos on account of the weakness and impurity of his blood. After his banishment he took lordship over the mountain and, alone, ruled over his domain with only his eternal hatred of those who had cast him out for company. Trespassers were always slain.
His reasons for allowing Yamauba alone to live on his mountain remain a mystery to all but him. The spirit near entirely ignored her. Never did he regard her with warmth, not even so much as to share his name or origin with her.
The Kozakurans were a loyal, obedient, and hierarchical people and Yamauba was no exception. After nearer half a century the spirit came to Yamauba and commanded her to bare him an heir. She assented without hesitation. Yamauba’s heart was without need for love or company, she had cast any such inclinations aside when she took up life as an ascetic, nor did the spirit seek or hope for such a thing in her. For him it was simply a command and to the Koza, a command from their Lord was absolute.
So it came to pass that she gave birth to a son, whom she named Tsuchinoko. To Rabb’al’jabal’s displeasure the boy had not inherited either the power of the Dao blood in him or the Yousei blood in Yamauba. He was little more than a Genasai and far too mortal for his father’s pleasure. Yamauba and her son were dejected, disgracefully, from their home and Tsuchinoko was an unworthy of being considered his son.
Perhaps a mortal woman would have protested or been enraged, or begged and pleaded, but Yamauba’s heart had long gown as cold and hard as stone. She merely departed with a soft bow to the spirits command. She took nothing with her save the child strapped to her back. Her resolve was iron. To her the way forward was simple. The world was a harsh place where the strong and shrewd ruled over and manipulated the weak and simple minded; she would see that Tsuchinoko become mighty, or die trying.
It was not that she wished redemption in the spirit’s eyes. Yamauba had dedicated her life to culling the weakness within her in all forms. Power was indeed the only virtue she knew, and the inherent weakness of the mortal heart and body were something she utterly reviled. Her disgust was absolute and remorseless. The only kindness she would visit on her son was that he learn an utter hatred of weakness as the single and supreme tenet of life.
She began on a journey that would lead across continents, chasing after any rumor or myth she could find that might provide a clue as to how she could awaken the power she knew was dormant in her child. Chasing after tales of otherwise common folk who had surpassed the limitations of a mundane and worldly heritage, she would test those she found to measure their worth. None she found lived up to her expectations and failure… meant death. Dozens were slain in great disappointment as her dedicated search continued.
Just after Tsuchinoko had reached four years of age, in a far off land, she caught rumor on her travels of a fallen monk named Amanozako who was said to have achieved power beyond all the other monks of his order. At birth Amanozako was orphaned and left on the steps of a prestigious temple of the old order. He was heralded as a prodigy of the martial arts in his early years showing ability that far surpassed his peers. As he advanced and began to receive disciples of his own, his harrowing and grievous training regimen eventually killed all those entrusted to him, and so he was exiled. His obsession with the perfection of his style led him to develop ever more severe forms of training that it seemed only he could survive. After being cast out, he took up residence in a bewitched forest where he would test his techniques on anyone who was unlucky enough to happed upon him. There was no malice or hatred in the monk’s heart, he was simply possessed by a black dedicated to the refinement of his killing art.
Upon hearing of the monk, Yamauba sought him out. Amanozako sought to kill her on sight. To his surprise she was a more then competent foe. Her years of ascetic practice and Yousei blood made for more than Amanozako anticipated. He was impressed. After praising her skill, he curiously inquired as to how she had become so powerful. Yamauba was overjoyed, and not at his praise mind you. She had finally found someone that had seemed to push well beyond the corporeal limits of flesh and blood. In him, she was certain she could find some hint as to how she might proceed to awaken the hidden potential in her son.
Their fighting stopped abruptly as it had started and they began prodding at one another for information about the other’s power. Their curiosity was mutual and allowed for a collaboration of sorts. Yamauba took a part of the forest for herself to live in, and the two set out to a murderous study that involved many attempts on one another’s life. Amanozako had no concern but to further develop his art, and he welcomed a foe he could not yet kill with joy. To Yamauba, his fixation was a boon. Her quest was not the perfection of a killing method but the complete annihilation of all mortal frailty in both spirit and flesh.
Beyond those routines normal to life, they would seek her out one another regularly to test themselves in death matches that neither won, and to coerce and barter for information, while hiding as much as possible about their own methods and techniques. No kindness or warmth was between them, yet, as she was Kozakuran it was her custom to regard others with the highest courtesy, regardless of it was reciprocated or not.
Before Tsuchinoko’s fifth birthday Yamauba had uncovered the secret of Amanozako’s prowess and it vastly exceeded her highest hopes. Amanozako had found a way to awaken outsider blood that he wasn’t even aware beat through his veins. He had never questioned the source of his able handedness. He had assumed that his potency was the simple result of training and was without concern or question as to why all his students had died when forced to imitate his practices. Were it not for the fiendish blood that beat in his veins the barbaric torture he mistook for diligent exercise would have killed him many times over. While he knew nothing of and his own ancestry, his ever harsher regime was killing off his own mortal flesh and allowing the outsider in him to flourished in its place.
Yamauba had acquired the key she sought. She was certain her discovery was divinely ordained; with this discovery she could not only see Tsuchinoko inherit the power that was his birthright, but so also she could strengthen the power of her own bloodline. She had reasoned that if it could work with Abyssal blood why not Fey or Genie? Still, Yamauba needed to be certain. She took a leave from the forest and set about developing maniacal methods of repeatedly bringing herself to the brink of death, to mortify the woman in her and awaken the Fey. The Yousei in her survived the self-inflicted torment that would kill off everything else.
After a single month of dedicated hell, she returned to the woods to test her newfound puissance. Amanozako was dispatched quickly and easily, and much to his surprise. Yamauba was now beyond all doubt. Over the years she would come to subjected her son to a training regime even harsher than her own or Amazako’s. A brutal onslaught of tests and trials, each more deadly than the last, slowly saw that Tsuchinoko’s earthen blood grew stronger and stronger still. In her wisdom she hardened both his flesh and his heart, to protect him from the weakness she so despised.
Curiosity, if nothing else, led Yamauba to continue journeying west with Tsuchinoko. The rumors that followed Amanozako’s slaying never caught up with her, though in her wake a handful of broken men could be found who would swear that they were beset by a murderous wraith in a monk’s garbs, that rended flesh as though it were parchment, took all those they were traveling with to the grave. .
Yamauba ruthlessly trained her son over the years until a time when she began to see her presence as an obstacle to his growth. Her parting with her son was abrupt, silent and with no kind words or warm gestures. Tsuchinoko was no stranger to his mother’s ways and he had been taught to view mortal bonds as a weakness to be trounced. If perhaps, now then, he briefly wonders about his mother’s whereabouts and wellbeing, his thoughts quickly turn to the pursuit of power. Even in his weakest moments, her memory makes plainly clear the path forward: to cull one’s weakness at any cost.
Yamauba returned to a life of ascetic solitude and Tsu continued west, alone. After arriving at the sword coast he found the land abundant with the dangers and ordeals he needed to purify his blood and so he stayed for a time…
Hair: Pine Green
Eyes Onyx Stones
Height: 6’ 4”
Weight: 450 pounds (mostly sand)
Distinguishing features: A raspy, cavernous voice that is no louder than a whisper (petrified vocal cords).
The story of Tsuchinoko begins with the story of his mother…
In the outreaches of the far eastern Kozakuran region a small clan known as the Arayashiki had made their home. In ages past the Arayashiki people had mixed their blood with that of Yousei (Fey) and they possessed beauty and power beyond that of the races that inhabited the area around them. As such they were regarded with both jealousy and fear. Yamauba was born to the Arayashiki and in time she grew into a young, fair, gentle and soft spoken woman.
While running some errands at a nearby river her gaze crossed with a man named Shirime and she was instantly smitten. He seemed to have fallen for her no less than she had for him. On account of her sudden and growing affections, Yamauba made every effort to volunteer for those chores that took her to the river in the hope of visiting with the man that had become the preoccupation of all her thoughts. Though the two grew close, Shirime was from a neighboring rival clan that was at war with hers. By necessity, they hid their association from their friends and elders. It was difficult for them to find much time alone as both were often accompanied on their trips, nor were they always able to ensure that such trips coincided with the others. When they could not meet they would leave secret letters in agreed upon hiding places by the river.
Happenstance is indeed a whimsical thing. Just as it led them to one another so also it brought out into the light that which they would keep secret. Attentive eyes discovered letters carelessly left about. Soft hidden steps followed them in the dark. Whispers in the ears of elders brought unwanted attention to their clandestine correspondences. Soon they were called to give account.
Duty and obligation were driven into Yamauba like a blade to the heart. She burned to visit with Shirime, her parents and clan elders insisted she stop. The warned her, pleaded with her, begged her, and command her to cast him aside. It was to no use though; as so many women before her, Yamauba chose wholeheartedly to place her faith in love. As so many young women before her, she paid the price for her naïve innocence in full.
Whether Shirime had been careful and shrewd in his seductions from the start or was forced by his clan to betray her remained an unanswered, aching mystery in Yamauba’s chest. After expectantly waiting for Shirime by the river one day, she returned from the river one day to find her village assailed. The deft and horrid attack had killed nearer two thirds of her clan: her family, those whom she loved, those who admonished her to cast Shirime aside, those who -she- had ultimately betrayed herself. The growing trust between her and Shirime had been used to obtain information she thought, at the time, was to allow them greater secrecy. The horror of the betrayal, the loss of so many dear to her, and the shame of her actions all reaved at her soul like flanking wraiths. .
Broken, scorned and alone, Yamauba forsook the ways of the world and took to a life of asceticism on a nearby mountain. She shaved her head and did away with all her feminine trappings and longings. Though she despised Shirime, it was not as much as she loathed her humanity and that her human longings had cost her. In her own eyes she was not even worthy of avenging those who she had lost, not she who had betrayed them, not she whose selfish lies cost them their lives. She lived out her self-loathing in solitude.
The mountain where she made her home was ruled over be a harsh and unforgiving spirit. All the clans and villages within a travelable distance knew the spirit of the mountain to be cold and merciless and so none dared trespass on his domain. This was worked out to Yamauba’s advantage as she had had her fill of the world and wished for nothing more than to be left alone.
When the spirit who gave his name only as ‘Lord of the Mountain’ discovered Yamauba living there, he set out to kill her without delay. As soon as he came upon her though she fell prostrate and humbly asked to be allowed to stay with a determination that swayed the spirit somewhat. She vowed to properly venerate him and obey his laws and to infringe in any way on his dominion. He found this agreeable and allowed her to stay.
For nearer half a century Yamauba lived atop the mountain. Yamauba’s blood gave her more years than those of lesser birth and the ascetic life she took up extended them even further she retained her youth despite time passing so The spirit visited her once a year for one day; He was not very fond of mortals, and ultimately she herself craved the solitude within which she her ascetic practices allowed her to become something far different from the woman she left behind.
The spirit of the mountain was a half-Dao named Rabb’al’jabal. Over a thousand years before Yamauba’s arrival he had been cast from his home in the elemental chaos on account of the weakness and impurity of his blood. After his banishment he took lordship over the mountain and, alone, ruled over his domain with only his eternal hatred of those who had cast him out for company. Trespassers were always slain.
His reasons for allowing Yamauba alone to live on his mountain remain a mystery to all but him. The spirit near entirely ignored her. Never did he regard her with warmth, not even so much as to share his name or origin with her.
The Kozakurans were a loyal, obedient, and hierarchical people and Yamauba was no exception. After nearer half a century the spirit came to Yamauba and commanded her to bare him an heir. She assented without hesitation. Yamauba’s heart was without need for love or company, she had cast any such inclinations aside when she took up life as an ascetic, nor did the spirit seek or hope for such a thing in her. For him it was simply a command and to the Koza, a command from their Lord was absolute.
So it came to pass that she gave birth to a son, whom she named Tsuchinoko. To Rabb’al’jabal’s displeasure the boy had not inherited either the power of the Dao blood in him or the Yousei blood in Yamauba. He was little more than a Genasai and far too mortal for his father’s pleasure. Yamauba and her son were dejected, disgracefully, from their home and Tsuchinoko was an unworthy of being considered his son.
Perhaps a mortal woman would have protested or been enraged, or begged and pleaded, but Yamauba’s heart had long gown as cold and hard as stone. She merely departed with a soft bow to the spirits command. She took nothing with her save the child strapped to her back. Her resolve was iron. To her the way forward was simple. The world was a harsh place where the strong and shrewd ruled over and manipulated the weak and simple minded; she would see that Tsuchinoko become mighty, or die trying.
It was not that she wished redemption in the spirit’s eyes. Yamauba had dedicated her life to culling the weakness within her in all forms. Power was indeed the only virtue she knew, and the inherent weakness of the mortal heart and body were something she utterly reviled. Her disgust was absolute and remorseless. The only kindness she would visit on her son was that he learn an utter hatred of weakness as the single and supreme tenet of life.
She began on a journey that would lead across continents, chasing after any rumor or myth she could find that might provide a clue as to how she could awaken the power she knew was dormant in her child. Chasing after tales of otherwise common folk who had surpassed the limitations of a mundane and worldly heritage, she would test those she found to measure their worth. None she found lived up to her expectations and failure… meant death. Dozens were slain in great disappointment as her dedicated search continued.
Just after Tsuchinoko had reached four years of age, in a far off land, she caught rumor on her travels of a fallen monk named Amanozako who was said to have achieved power beyond all the other monks of his order. At birth Amanozako was orphaned and left on the steps of a prestigious temple of the old order. He was heralded as a prodigy of the martial arts in his early years showing ability that far surpassed his peers. As he advanced and began to receive disciples of his own, his harrowing and grievous training regimen eventually killed all those entrusted to him, and so he was exiled. His obsession with the perfection of his style led him to develop ever more severe forms of training that it seemed only he could survive. After being cast out, he took up residence in a bewitched forest where he would test his techniques on anyone who was unlucky enough to happed upon him. There was no malice or hatred in the monk’s heart, he was simply possessed by a black dedicated to the refinement of his killing art.
Upon hearing of the monk, Yamauba sought him out. Amanozako sought to kill her on sight. To his surprise she was a more then competent foe. Her years of ascetic practice and Yousei blood made for more than Amanozako anticipated. He was impressed. After praising her skill, he curiously inquired as to how she had become so powerful. Yamauba was overjoyed, and not at his praise mind you. She had finally found someone that had seemed to push well beyond the corporeal limits of flesh and blood. In him, she was certain she could find some hint as to how she might proceed to awaken the hidden potential in her son.
Their fighting stopped abruptly as it had started and they began prodding at one another for information about the other’s power. Their curiosity was mutual and allowed for a collaboration of sorts. Yamauba took a part of the forest for herself to live in, and the two set out to a murderous study that involved many attempts on one another’s life. Amanozako had no concern but to further develop his art, and he welcomed a foe he could not yet kill with joy. To Yamauba, his fixation was a boon. Her quest was not the perfection of a killing method but the complete annihilation of all mortal frailty in both spirit and flesh.
Beyond those routines normal to life, they would seek her out one another regularly to test themselves in death matches that neither won, and to coerce and barter for information, while hiding as much as possible about their own methods and techniques. No kindness or warmth was between them, yet, as she was Kozakuran it was her custom to regard others with the highest courtesy, regardless of it was reciprocated or not.
Before Tsuchinoko’s fifth birthday Yamauba had uncovered the secret of Amanozako’s prowess and it vastly exceeded her highest hopes. Amanozako had found a way to awaken outsider blood that he wasn’t even aware beat through his veins. He had never questioned the source of his able handedness. He had assumed that his potency was the simple result of training and was without concern or question as to why all his students had died when forced to imitate his practices. Were it not for the fiendish blood that beat in his veins the barbaric torture he mistook for diligent exercise would have killed him many times over. While he knew nothing of and his own ancestry, his ever harsher regime was killing off his own mortal flesh and allowing the outsider in him to flourished in its place.
Yamauba had acquired the key she sought. She was certain her discovery was divinely ordained; with this discovery she could not only see Tsuchinoko inherit the power that was his birthright, but so also she could strengthen the power of her own bloodline. She had reasoned that if it could work with Abyssal blood why not Fey or Genie? Still, Yamauba needed to be certain. She took a leave from the forest and set about developing maniacal methods of repeatedly bringing herself to the brink of death, to mortify the woman in her and awaken the Fey. The Yousei in her survived the self-inflicted torment that would kill off everything else.
After a single month of dedicated hell, she returned to the woods to test her newfound puissance. Amanozako was dispatched quickly and easily, and much to his surprise. Yamauba was now beyond all doubt. Over the years she would come to subjected her son to a training regime even harsher than her own or Amazako’s. A brutal onslaught of tests and trials, each more deadly than the last, slowly saw that Tsuchinoko’s earthen blood grew stronger and stronger still. In her wisdom she hardened both his flesh and his heart, to protect him from the weakness she so despised.
Curiosity, if nothing else, led Yamauba to continue journeying west with Tsuchinoko. The rumors that followed Amanozako’s slaying never caught up with her, though in her wake a handful of broken men could be found who would swear that they were beset by a murderous wraith in a monk’s garbs, that rended flesh as though it were parchment, took all those they were traveling with to the grave. .
Yamauba ruthlessly trained her son over the years until a time when she began to see her presence as an obstacle to his growth. Her parting with her son was abrupt, silent and with no kind words or warm gestures. Tsuchinoko was no stranger to his mother’s ways and he had been taught to view mortal bonds as a weakness to be trounced. If perhaps, now then, he briefly wonders about his mother’s whereabouts and wellbeing, his thoughts quickly turn to the pursuit of power. Even in his weakest moments, her memory makes plainly clear the path forward: to cull one’s weakness at any cost.
Yamauba returned to a life of ascetic solitude and Tsu continued west, alone. After arriving at the sword coast he found the land abundant with the dangers and ordeals he needed to purify his blood and so he stayed for a time…