Foxside: The Temple of Inari 56 - Rice, Wine, and Spell Slots

[Recaiden]

You have entered the temple of Inari, in her capacity as the Goddess of Foxes.

You walk down an elegant white gravel pathway between full-grown pines. Stone lanterns provide a pure white light to the path, while casting elegant shadows among the trees.

At the end of the pathway, a bright red gate stands. A large fox carved from white alabaster gleams at each side of the gate. As you pass between the foxes and through the gate, you feel the presence of the goddess. Gentle and caring, but mischievous and lighthearted, you are never quite certain what will happen.

Past the exquisite formal gardens, you finally step into the pagoda itself. There, at the end of chamber is a raised dais. There rests a statue of a beautiful vulpine woman, flanked by two snow-white celestial foxes. Offerings of rice and incense stand before the statue.

In a niche off to the right side of the door sits a Fox-Cola vending machine. Next to the coin slot, the sign reads "10 cp".
To the left side of the door is a magic mirror, a portal to Trog's Tavern.

Profile for Inari

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Alignment Chaotic Good
Primary Domains Good, Plant, Chaos, Healing
Secondary Domains Magic, Sun, Animal, Trickery, Knowledge, Water
Forbidden Domains Evil, Law, War, Death, Destruction
Priest Granted Powers
Rice Paddy Once per day. As Entangle, but the ground changes to knee-deep mud, and mature rice plants twist and writhe to grapple anything in the area.
Sushi Bar Once per day. You create rice, fish, and sake. For each priestly rank, you can create enough to feed one person.
Summon Celestial Fox Special. You summon an image of Myobi (if you are a priestess) or Myobu (if you are a priest), the original foxes. The wiser the summoner, the more powerful the Messengers can make their image.

Inari is the goddess of rice: The plant itself. The cultivation of it. The products made from it. She has countless billions of worshipers spread across the various planes of existence. Foxes are her children. Inari created foxes to watch over the grain and eat the birds and rodents that would destroy the sacred plant. Kitsune are her especial messengers: sacred foxes endowed with the ability to take on human or elvish form. Inari is an agricultural and racial goddess. She is concerned predominantly with nurturing and growth. She is good, but it is the quiet good of the countryside rather than the formalized good of high society. We don't go on crusades. We don't try to win converts or convince people to change their beliefs. We don't really feel a conflict with "evil" beings at all, unless they threaten us directly. Finally, since rice is a critical component in many economies across the multiverse, she is revered as a goddess of wealth and prosperity as well.

The worship of Inari is mostly personal. The sanctuary is open for prayer and meditation as you feel led. There is a small ceremony at dawn every day, where the main sacred fires are lit. There is a celebration at the full of the moon each month, and a quiet time of prayer at the dark of the moon. There are major ceremonies and holidays at the times of rice planting, transplanting, and harvest. The fox festival is held at the time when the wild cousins give birth. We feed them a special treat made with rice wrapped in fried bean curds. Otherwise, the temple does not hold regular formal services.

Inari is not overly fond of ceremony: for it is not ceremony that will lead you to enlightenment.

All things have a spirit, and the spirit is in all things. But this perception is dulled by the impurities of physical life, and you fail to reach your true potential due to this. It is therefore in your best interest that you seek for purity in your emotions and your mind; for through that purity, your spirit may shine through. Ceremony is of limited value because the quest for purity begins and ends with your inner self. This is why the main temple generally houses a mirror, not a statue, on the altar.

The state of purity is difficult to explain, because it does not mean the same thing to everyone. Only by meditating on your spiritual state can you learn what things hinder you personally. An earnest, honest, open heart is needed for this. The goddess, who can read your very being, can help with this: but it is a private matter between you and her. Therefore we provide a quiet setting: a peaceful sanctuary free from distracting clutter, a quiet garden where you can relax your mind, a serene place where it is easier to distance your true self from your physical self and focus on what needs to be. One more thing: purity is not merely a matter of eliminating that which is "bad". It is also a task of strengthening which is "good". Your task may be to grow in an area of yourself that you have neglected, or imperfectly developed. Regardless of the details, when you know what needs to be done we provide the support, council, and assistance to help you do it.

As night falls, a different set of clergy take over, blue turns to red, and the Temple's aspect shifts to Inari's subordinate, the ninetails Tamamo, Goddess of Wild Foxes and Shadows.

Profile for Tamamo

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Alignment Chaotic Good
Primary Domains Good, Plant, Chaos, Healing, Darkness
Secondary Domains Magic, Sun, Animal, Trickery, Knowledge, Water
Forbidden Domains Evil, Law, War, Death, Destruction
Priest Granted Powers
Darkness Once per day, you can cause nearby lights to dim and go out.
Speak with Shadows You can speak with creatures from the Plane of Shadows.
Sushi Bar Once per day. You create rice, fish, and sake. For each priestly rank, you can create enough to feed one person.
Summon Celestial Fox Special. You summon an image of one of the lesser Ninetails: Noriko, Hoshiko, Tsukiko, or Yumiko. The wiser the summoner, the more powerful the Messengers can make their image.

<Work in Progress... please stand by>

On certain midnights, stranger people yet gather in a sanctuary left in shadow, beneath a certain sign. Their beliefs are mysterious, their cause - you're better off not knowing.

Temple Facilities
Map

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Interior wide-angle shot

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- Sanctuary: the main sanctuary has the altar. This is where you must pray to speak to the goddess directly. There is a general magic circle in the center of the room.

- Meditation Gardens: accessed through a door at the far end of the sanctuary. This is a standard zen garden with raked gravel, shady nooks, picturesque pines, stone lanterns, and small intricate bridges. An artificial stream hosts large koi, and a grand cherry tree resides on a picturesque island in the middle of a good sized pond.

- Priest's Quarters: accessed by going down the stairs "halfway down the sanctuary, to the right".

- Pokemon Center: Behind the temple proper is a small pokemon gym, which provides the Fox badge to trainers. Despite what you might think, it's not all Vulpixes and Fennekin.

- Hospital: Over the bridge and down the way from the sanctuary is a medical center where healers both mundane and magical stand ready to help those in need.

- Summoning Chamber: You enter small building set apart from the others with solid stone walls, a sturdy roof, and a thick adamantine door. Inside; the obsidian ceiling, walls and floors are crawling with glowing silvery magical sigils. Literally crawling, the magic writing moves even as you look at it. In the very center of the room is a summoning circle of gold, platinum, and gemstones. The design is intricate beyond belief and it is worth wondering if even living creatures might find themselves bound inside should the priests wish it.

- Catacombs: Past the stage and the playground, in the corner of the temple lot, stand a sealed entryway to a buried ruins of an ancient temple that once stood on these grounds. Surely you have no reason to go there.


Everything but the Sanctuary and Garden has Dimensional Lock. Every building is warded against fire and cannot burn so long as any full priest is within the temple grounds.
The entire facility is Hallowed ground, making the plants grow faster and stronger and everything run a little more smoothly. Even though Inari does not specifically disapprove of them, some supernatural beings might be troubled by this.

Priestly Ranks

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The relative power and abilities of priests are driven by their talent, learning, experience, and gifts. The rank of a priest can be recognized most quickly by looking at their robes: the combination of main color and trim uniquely identifies each rank. The following chart summarizes the current ranks and their rough mapping to RPG "levels":

Current Staff
Arlem Merisanne (Recaiden)
Steven Linde Primerra (LordDeathkeeper)
Bloom (*)

Spoiler: Previous Threads

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Foxside: The Temple of Inari 55 - So many ships, you'd think it was on the ocean.
Foxside: The Temple of Inari 54 - Ten Years of Foxes
Foxside: The Temple of Inari 53 - The New Fluffy Overlords
Foxside: The Temple of Inari 52 - Nine Years of Foxes
Foxside: The Temple of Inari 51
The Temple of Inari 50: Foxside
The Temple of Inari Returns
The Temple of Inari XLIX
The Temple of Inari XLVIII
The Temple of Inari XLVII
The Temple of Inari XLVI
The Temple of Inari XLV
The Temple of Inari XLIV
The Temple of Inari XLIII
The Temple of Inari XLII
The Temple of Inari XLI
The Temple of Inari XL
The Temple of Inari XLIX
The Temple of Inari XXXVIII
The Temple of Inari XXXVII
The Temple of Inari XXXVI
The Temple of Inari XXXV
The Temple of Inari XXXIV
The Temple of Inari XXXIII
Threads 1-32 seem lost from the archives.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/archi.../f-32-p-1.html
The Shadow Temple of Inari
The Summoning Chamber

Spoiler: Non-exhaustive List of Inactive Former Staff Who Once Served at this Temple

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Caroline Primerra (Fenric)
Felina (Fenric)
Marie (Fenric)
Kinari (C'nor)
Helen Avery (firedaemon33)
Genji Ikari (deleteman900)
Urias Starsailor (Baeleck)
Exachix NorZilliar(Exachix)
Atreyu, The Masked Llama (Atreyu)
Valathe (Hoseki)
Hachiro (NPC)
Anna ( seftsirag)
Aramir (Kyrian/Ares)
Rain (Fenric)
Voxendi (Gezina)
Ilias (Fenric)
Aikidu (Fenric)
Conrad (Kyrian)
Karsen (Exachix)
Mi Su (Fenric)

((Thread originated by Fenric))

[Deathkeeper]

[Sanctuary]

Steven Primerra goes looking for Arlem, dressed in his less fancy, more practical robes with his rank marks and his katana, Eclipse. He seems to be looking to make a request.

[Recaiden]

Arlem is beside the altar. His robe isn't any fancier, but it is the uniquely drab grey outfit of a high priest. His six tails are fanned out behind him, and he looks rather tired. He always looks rather tired these days, since over next to the altar (playing with one of the fox statues) is Ziselle, a little apparently vulpan kit with snow-white fur. The dagger Dorothy is at his side like always.
"Steven! Good day. You need my help. Or is it on Eclipse's behalf?"

[Deathkeeper]

[Sanctuary]

Steven smiles. Has Arlem always worn his tail as a sextuplet set? Steven can't remember when the shapeshifter started doing that. They look heavy. And a constant need of brushing.
"Hello, Arlem. Well, uh, you see. You might know that my position with Inari and Tamamo I am given the abilities of most if not all her creations. I've been meaning to get better at utilizing them, and as the nogitsune aren't always forthcoming, I thought I might as you about using their powers. The changing ones, at least." Steven hopes that Arlem's fluid form is similar enough that he can help. As he doesn't really know what Arlem is it doesn't seem like it would hurt to ask.

[Recaiden]

Well no. It used to be a quintuplet-set until he was promoted. It's not so heavy; they're mostly fluff.
"If the nogitsune are being coy-" Arlem pauses for a bit as his fur changes color to shadowy-black. "-maybe you're supposed to discover it on your own."

"Yeah, I'll help. What can you do so far?" He wonders if explaining how he does it will even help. Although he should be able to borrow kitsune powers, useless as that normally would be...

Ziselle notices the shadow-priest and looks over to him with a shocked smile. "'teven!"

[Deathkeeper]

[Sanctuary]

Steven smiles and waves at the child. Very cute, as always.
"Um, I've turned into a mouse once or twice. I can often get into what I want with enough time. But I can't stay as anything because I expect my limbs to be a certain size, or my tail to be there, and the second I think of that they pop back into place." he explains. It was quite embarrassing, when he tried to be human for his family.

[Recaiden]

"You can't detach from your old body plan." Arlem rephrases the explanation.
"I think I can help with that. Meet me out in the gardens; I've someone on the way to watch the sanctuary."

He steps over and scoops up Ziselle, who is far too young to gain anything from a shapechanging lesson, and so is to be taken home.

[Deathkeeper]

[Sanctuary->Garden]

Steven nods and goes to wait in the gardens. Unless Arlem gets there first Steven will be found cross-legged on the ground, trying to meditate.

[Recaiden]

It would be quite difficult for Arlem to be there first.
But eventually he sweeps into the garden.
"Ah, Steven, I think you're trying a bit too hard with the meditation there."
"Relax."

[Deathkeeper]

[Gardens]

Steven takes a deep breath and stands up. He's fine! He's fine. Though perhaps he ought to have decided on what exactly he should be trying to turn into today. Perhaps he should just try for a nogitsune, as they're not terribly different save for being more fox-like than human, and he might wind up with some extra tails. Or a more minor change, alter his proportions, size, gender. He feels like one of his problems with learning this skill is not knowing where to start.
"I am relaxed, don't you worry, Arlem. Now, what's our order of business?" he asks cheerily.

[Recaiden]

Arlem smiles. He knows better.
"First, you are going to close your eyes. Then, you're going to change what color you are."
"Easy, right? But I don't want you getting surprised and cancelling it too quickly."

[Deathkeeper]

[Gardens]

Steven smiles, but does as he's told. Seems like a reasonable start. He closes his eyes, and after a few moments successfully changes his coat to the orange color of Caroline's. Nothing hard there.
"Did I at least get that right?" he asks.

[Recaiden]

"You did. Perfect red vulpan. Now, open your eyes, try not to be surprised. This could have been you just as easily."

[Deathkeeper]

[Gardens]

"Surprised? By changing color? It's not that big a change..." Steven mumbles as he opens his eyes. Or is Arlem referring to something else?

[Recaiden]

When he does so, Arlem has transformed into a copy of Steven, Caroline-coloring and all.
"Some people would say not having a tail isn't much of a change either. But it troubles you. And lots of other kitsune, actually."

[Deathkeeper]

[Gardens]

Steven blinks. But not entirely surprised. When you spend time with Arlem you kind of come to expect that he could become anything at any time.
"Did you take a poll from them while dropping off your child?" he asks genially, as Arlem hadn't brought this up earlier. Though he is joking; he wouldn't question Arlem's advice.

[Recaiden]

Arlem smiles; that's not a bad joke. Not quite good enough to laugh at, but... "It just so happens I already knew a thing or two about shapeshifting. Now, you don't seem, to have trouble with the very basics. How about something complexly different? A tree, or a spider?"
He turns into a giant celestial spider to demonstrate.
"I think it will be informative to see how far you get." He says. Steven is doomed to fail at such a task...or can he prove otherwise?

[Deathkeeper]

[Gardens]

"Uh, I don't know if I know where to start on those." Steven doesn't even have an idea of what being a tree is like, or having an exoskeleton. Spiders don't even have lungs. He can get as far as getting his hair the right color and bristly, and his mass starting to redistribute into his head and abdomen, but soon flops over without gaining anything but a tear in his robes.
"Ow. Yeah, I don't have much on that."

[Recaiden]

Arlem goes back to being Steven-shaped and shakes his head.
"You're focusing too much on the surface details."

"Be whole." He reaches over to tap the torn bit of robe, and it should sew itself together. Sure, Steven could have performed such trivial magic himself, but the Messenger-in-training needs to stay focused on shape.

"Time for a bit of a digression. Now, try cycling your fur color while we talk, but tell me, how do you get from place to place?"

[Deathkeeper]

[Gardens]

Steven's glad that Arlem didn't seriously expect him to succeed. Seemingly.
"I didn't ever say I knew what I was doing. But uh, sure." he gets up and starts shifting between black and red, occasionally white. It's not at a constant rate and almost seems to flicker as he tries to do two things at once.
"I walk, mostly. I own a bike, but I never bothered to get a car here. And teleportation is more of an arcane thing, so we don't really practice it much. And that's besides the fact that I don't travel much."

[Recaiden]

Because that means Steven isn't a disappointment. On the other hand, he missed a chance to show off.
"Tell me about the bike. I know what you mean; I spend almost all of my time here at the temple, or near-certainly in the city. But, theoretically. You're supposed to never forget how to ride, isn't that right?"
Arlem does not, personally, know how to ride a bike. They hadn't been invented in his world, and once he was in the Nexus, there were cars and teleporters.

[Deathkeeper]

[Gardens]

Why ride a bike when you can be the bike?
"It's old. I got it in high school. Then I had to get the pedals replaced once Tsukiko had my species changed and my legs were a different shape. But overall it's still the same principle. I've had to get it re-painted a few times to keep the rust at bay. But it's still mostly a bicycle like any other." And if Arlem checks, Steven indeed has not forgotten how to ride it.

[Recaiden]

Exactly! Although also, why drive a car when you are the car?
"Is there a difference, or has there ever been, between your bicycle and your shoes?"
Obviously the answer is yes. Shoes are almost nothing like bicycles. But how Steven answers is important.

[Deathkeeper]

[Garden]

Steven is confused by the question, but he figures that it's supposed to be leading into something.
"Well originally the difference was that one was a vehicle and the other was an article of clothing. But now they're pretty alike: I don't really use them." he says, looking down at his bare feet. Yeah, he hasn't really gotten shoes since the species change either.

[Recaiden]

Arlem bursts out laughing. What a very fox-like way to miss the point.

"What I'm saying is something like this:"
"If I said one's feet were an extension of one's body, that would be a bit odd. Feet are the body."
"But if I said shoes were an extension of the legs, would you know what I meant?"

[Deathkeeper]

[Gardens]

Steven nods. He doesn't mind being laughed. Lots of people find different things funny. Though he hadn't really been making a joke.
"I suppose I would? That would make sense. Usually they're encasing part of the leg so it's much easier to make that point."

[Recaiden]

Arlem does not apologize, although it's a shame that Steven doesn't understand how funny it was. At least he's understanding.
"Well, the same is true of bicycles, cars, many other pilotable contrivances. Once you have practice, you no longer operate them in order to get around. You simply will, and the machine moves, as easily as the fibers of your body do."
"Do you follow?" he asks, brows raised hopefully.

[Deathkeeper]

[Gardens]

"I suppose you can think of it that way, once you're in the right state of mind." Steven decides. He can totally believe that expert pilots and drivers can reach that point even with complex vehicles. It's a lot easier to achieve with a bike.

[Recaiden]

Arlem nods.
"That's the state of mind you want for shapechanging. To put on a new body as easily as getting on a new bike. A moment of adjustment, and then you realize: this is you, just how you meant to be."
"Go on, try a human or something."

[Deathkeeper]

[Gardens]

Steven considers this. He gets the concept. He just isn't sure if he'll be able to put it into practice. Still, he agreed to listen to everything Arlem has to say, so he must try it.
With a moment of closed eyes and concentration, Steven is back to the shape he was born in. He stays very, very still, as that's usually what makes him mess up.