Species Guide

Fox Shifters

Max Age: 250

Often called kitsunes, fox shifters are one of the lesser known shifters of their kind.

Even though their shifted forms are significantly larger than the largest of normal foxes, they're much smaller than their werewolf, bear, and werecat counterparts. The physical strength is also noticeably different, even though they are still much stronger than humans. However, what they lack in physical size and brute strength, they make up for in speed, agility and endurance. They are the fastest of the shifters, except for the cheetah werecat shifters, and are only out sped by vampires by a small margin.

Goddess: Inari Ōkami (Japanese: 稲荷大神), also called Ō-Inari (大稲荷), is the Japanese kami of foxes, fertility, rice, tea and sake, of agriculture and industry, of general prosperity and worldly success, and one of the principal kami of Shinto. In earlier Japan, Inari was also the patron of swordsmiths and merchants.

Even though their goddess is Japanese in origin, only a third of the world's fox shifters have Japanese, or any other Asian decent. Different family groups believe in different fox goddesses of different origins.

Terms

Todd- an adult male fox shifter

Vixen- an adult female

Kits- fox shifter children until they have shifted

Group Dynamics

Fox shifters, unlike their counterparts, don't live in large groups. They stay in small groups called Family's, Community's, or occasionally Den's, almost all groups will consist of born family members and mates, and it isn't uncommon for multiple groups to live near each other, and common for small neighborhoods to consist entirely of fox shifters. These groups don't have the same hierarchy as their counterparts, and the leaders are typically the oldest relatives and their mates.

They're also more naturally nomadic shifters, being in smaller groups allows easier travel for all members if need be, even though it doesn't happen as often as it used to.

Also unlike their counterparts, foxes have had a more open policy to mates far longer. Humans and magic users especially, and while their acceptance of other shifters and vampire mates came later in history, they still opened up faster than other shifters did. This is mostly attributed to the fact that since they are smaller in number, and had more concerns about their kind going extinct than keeping the bloodline pure. As well as noticing that the kits of fox and magic using parents were significantly powerful, especially in the times where they struggled to maintain their homes in the conflicts with vampires and other shifters.

Unfortunately, despite their acceptance of other species, they've been resistant to same sex mates. Stemming mostly from the idea that preserving their species requires mates that can naturally have children. Changes in this belief have been slow, but they are changing.

Mates

Fox shifters have the same ways of finding and marking their mates as other shifters. Scent, Sparks and their inner beast speaking.

Laws

While fox shifters don't have enough of a population to have a Royalty, they have the same laws about exposure to humans, marking and mating, and overall violence just like the other shifters do. They are enforced by the elders of their group, and they work with other leaders in cases of inter-species conflicts.

Weakness

Silver- burns the skin, slows down healing (especially blood clotting), can cause severe infection if left in body called silver poisoning, and blocks shifting when worn as cuffs.

Synthetic Wolfsbane- can block the ability to shift, weaken the body, and prevent blood clotting. Inhibits communication with inner beast.

Vampire Venom- leaves them immobilized and in extreme pain, causes death if left in body too long.