The Foxglades
The island's centre: rolling meadows and sun-warmed valleys of terraced rice paddy, wild grain and towering foxglove. The Kumiho farm it and fight over it, in a white-against-black war that has been running longer than anyone can document and has never once become a battle.
The Land
Soft loamy alluvium terraces and low weathered slate outcrops divided by lazily winding canals. Far less forested than the sanctuaries above, given over instead to tall wild grain, terraced paddies and sweeping stands of foxglove whose purple and speckled bells chime faintly in the coastal breeze.
Domesticated giant isopods and harness-beetles till the soil in the sunlit clearings while iridescent damselflies work the irrigation sluices. The wilder fringes are stalked by sharp-eyed mink, hunting weasels and great horned owls that treat the open fields as nocturnal killing grounds.
Lowmist sits at the foot of the terraces and handles every piece of business the Shrine would rather not conduct at a shrine. Rota Hall keeps the terraces watered and, in practice, holds more power than anyone above it.
The Kumiho
Intensely physical and fiercely ambitious, cultivating mystical fox marbles in which they store power and wisdom. Divided by a bitter, permanent struggle between white and black factions: the white-furred hold the sunlit riverbanks and present themselves as elegant protectors of the harvest, while the black-furred work from copse-hidden farmsteads and specialise in illusion, tactical deception and spiritual subterfuge.
They rarely engage in slaughter, which would ruin the crops they are fighting over. The war is prosecuted instead through poisonings, broken contracts, competitive shapeshifting and late-night skirmishes under the moon — and both sides show up to the same festivals.
Encounters
Roll d100. Terraced farmland fought over by two factions who will not damage the crop. The wildlife has no such restraint. CR is scaled to Faerie size — see Challenge by Size.
| d100 | Encounter | CR |
|---|---|---|
| 01–09 | 1d4 white-furred Kumiho on the riverbank, elegant, armed, and asking your business | 6 |
| 10–16 | 1d4 black-furred Kumiho who have been in your camp for some time already | 6 |
| 17–23 | 2d6 harness-beetles and giant isopods tilling a sunlit terrace, with 1d4 farmhands | — |
| 24–30 | a poisoning at Rota Hall, and both factions certain the other did it | — |
| 31–36 | 2d8 thrips working a foxglove bell | ¼ |
| 37–42 | 1d6 iridescent damselflies on the irrigation sluices, carrying messages both ways | 2 |
| 43–48 | 1d4 crickets in the paddy margins | ¼ |
| 49–54 | 1d3 jumping spiders on the foxglove stems | 1 |
| 55–60 | 1d4 ground beetles in the terrace walls at night | 2 |
| 61–66 | 2d4 wolf spiders in the wild grain | 3 |
| 67–72 | 1d3 hornets at a split fruit on a terrace edge | 4 |
| 73–77 | 1 mantis nymph in the grain, waiting | 4 |
| 78–82 | 1d2 frogs in a flooded paddy, devout and enormous | 9 |
| 83–87 | 1 praying mantis on a canal bank, entirely polite about it | 8 |
| 88–91 | 1d2 hummingbirds contesting a foxglove stand past all sense | 7 |
| 92–94 | 1 sharp-eyed mink at the terrace fringe, with all the weasel's habits | 18 |
| 95–96 | 1 hunting weasel in the wild grain, killing far past hunger | 15 |
| 97–98 | 1 songbird over the open paddies | 11 |
| 99 | 1 jay on a terrace post, calling in a Kumiho's voice | 13 |
| 00 | 1 great horned owl over the open fields — its nocturnal killing ground, and yours | 23 |