Kitsune

Fox-eared and tailed, sometimes several times over, the Kitsune are the smallest Faerie race and the most consequential in proportion to their number. They differ from the Cait Sith in that they are not nearly as fox-like as the Cait Sith are cat-like — the resemblance is a suggestion rather than a fact, and a great deal of Kitsune humor turns on how much this bothers other people.

They are mischievous, cunning, calm, and closer to the Divine than any other race. They also hit extremely hard when provoked.

Appearance

Russet through white, with one to nine tails — the count is not a rank, whatever the court believes, and Kitsune have never corrected the misunderstanding because it is useful. Their wings are storm-grey and crackle audibly in the hour before rain.

Attuned Magic

Lightning. A nascent Kitsune draws sparks and reads the charge in the air. A powerful one calls down strikes, rides a storm front, and channels the raw current of the sky through their own body without harm. It is the only attuned magic that is dangerous to bystanders by default, and it makes the Kitsune's reputation for gentleness a matter of choice rather than incapacity.

Society

The Ninefold Shrine is a complex of nine gates ascending a mountainside, each marking a step toward whatever sits at the top. The Kitsune are the Kingdom's theologians, and their theology is a problem for it: they hold that the world was made whole, abundant, and unranked, and that the doctrine of advancement through service is something the Faeries invented and then mistook for revelation.

Relations

The Eternal City cannot suppress them, because the nobility desperately wants Kitsune blessings for legitimacy. Hakumei, Priest of the Ninth Gate, and his predecessors have accordingly become extremely skilled at giving blessings that sound like endorsements and parse, on close reading, as warnings. They correspond carefully with the Wisps, who have reached the same conclusion from the opposite direction.