Shifter's Mastery:
Prerequisites: Kitsune race, 'Shifter's Guise' Racial Trait
Effects: You may use Shifter's Guise to take on the appearance of another creature as a swift action instead of a standard action. You may take on the appearance of a humanoid, monstrous humanoid, or or animal creature that you have line of sight to instead of just humanoid.
An ability borne out of a need to rapidly escape those who would hunt them down and poach them in ancient times, the Kitsune power of shapeshifting can sometimes be taken to even further heights by those dedicated to the craft. In the ever-turbulent society of the Frozen Cabals of the Glacial Drift, many Kitsune often find the ability to quickly change forms highly advantageous to them, as it lets them sneak about and eavesdrop on the unsuspecting and rapidly escape once the job is done.
Sustain the Gate:
Prerequisites: Kitsune race, 'Throw Wide the Yawning Gate' Racial Trait, Character level 7th
Effects: A creature that you have returned to life as a minion cannot be resurrected so long as that minion remains intact and in your service. Once per combat, you may negate one instance of damage on a minion you have created using this ability, though you automatically take 1/2 the damage that you negated.
By meditating upon the mysteries of the Yokai and the techniques that allow them to summon them into corpses, many Kitsune can gain a greater degree of mastery over the Yawning Gate technique, though it frequently comes at the cost of their sanity as it requires a close brush with the evil spirits of the mysterious Yokai.
Prismatic Mastery:
Prerequisites: Kitsune race, 'Prismatic Blessing' Racial Trait, Character level 5th
Effects: You add Resistance 10 to one elemental resistance you have gained through the Prismatic Blessing trait.
Special: You may take this feat multiple times. Each time, it applies to a different elemental resistance gained through the Prismatic Blessing trait. You cannot choose elements you have not selected with the trait.
By underground brutal rituals that require them to be bathed in the destructive energies of the northern lights far in the Glacial Drift's most inhospitable reaches, a select few Kitsune can survive the trying ordeal and emerge all the stronger, their tails glowing with power as a result.
Unholy Timbre:
Prerequisites: Kitsune race, 'Yokai Singer' Alternate Racial Trait
Effects: Your speech and vocal components are no longer impeded by effects that silence or remove sound in an area unless you wish them to be. At your own discretion, you can choose to channel the power of the Yokai inhabiting your body to prevent a number of creatures equal to (1 + CHAMOD, Min 1) within your line of sight from understanding your spoken word - hearing either indecipherable gibberish or garbled static. Other creatures can still hear and understand your words normally.
Their voices unnerving and resonating in frequencies and timbres not meant for mortal ears to hear, some Kitsune who strive to master the strange vocal abilities of the Yokai find their voices changing as a result to produce incredible effects from beyond the pale.
Furtail Strangler:
Prerequisites: Kitsune race, “Tailstriker” Alternate Racial Trait, Character level 7th
Effects: You are treated as having the Strangle and Smother universal monster rules with grabs made using your tails. You also gain the “Constrict” Universal monster rule starting at one damage step lower than your tails plus 1x your STRMOD damage. The damage for the constrict goes up by one step for every 2 tails you have above 2 tails.
A technique first pioneered by Kitsune in service to the Cabals sent off into Civilization to deal with other societies for one reason or another, the Kitsune who follow in the steps of these elusive "stranglers" learn to hone their tails into even deadlier weapons to wrap others up and twist and pull their bodies with deadly precision. Though many wouldn't assume it from looking at their fluffy tails, Kitsune with enough tails can get frighteningly lethal.
Tailwitch's Apprentice:
Prerequisites: Kitsune race, 'Furtail Strangler' Racial Feat, Character level 9th
Effects: You gain the ability to shape your tails into piercing or slashing tendrils, allowing you to deal B/P/S with your tail attacks. Your tail attacks gain the benefits of the "Impaling Critical" feat, and may read the surface thoughts of creatures that begin their turns grappled in your tails as your tails latch onto their mouths and faces and begin absorbing their thoughts. You also gain a bonus on attack rolls and damage rolls with your 'Tailstriker' alternate racial trait tail attack equal to your number of tails -2(Minimum 1).
Though the Prismatic Tailwitches who lead the Kitsune Cabals have tails more akin to tendrils and lethal spears than tails and are supposedly able to effortlessly shift their tails from fluff to lethal spear, they seldom teach their ways to others - only once in a great while do they take apprentices whom they deign to teach in their dangerous and lethal ways. For those who endure their attention and ministrations, the power they recieve is immense - able to impale their tails through others without much effort and attach their tendril-like tails to the mouths of others to slurp out their thoughts, these Kitsune are almost nightmarish with the skill they wield...and are seldom seen outside of the Cabals of the Glacial Drift.
The Gate of Healing:
Prerequisites: Kitsune Race, 'Open the Inner Gates' Alternate Racial Trait, Character level 7th
Effects: While in the enhanced combat state granted by the 'Open the Inner Gates' Alternate Racial Trait, you may choose to further empower yourself as a swift action by opening the Gate of Healing - allowing you to recover from either the Fatigued, Exhausted, Bleed, Sickened, or Shaken conditions(Only one per round) by doubling the unavoidable damage taken that round. Once opened, this effect persists until you drop the "Inner Gates" transformation. You may only have one additional "-Gate" feat in use at a time.
Though there are believed to be well over six gates involved in the "Inner Gates" technique of the Kitsune Islanders who have joined forces with the Yatsimoan Islanders of the glacial drift, less than half of those Gates are even known to Outsiders - among those that are is the Second Gate, the Gate of Healing; said to be based somewhere in the brain, this inner gate of life energy, once unlocked, allows for the wielder to revitalize themselves and their body at the expense of their bodily health in other ways.
The Gate of Pain:
Prerequisites: Kitsune Race, 'Open the Inner Gates' Alternate Racial Trait, Character level 11th
Effects: While in the enhanced combat state granted by the 'Open the Inner Gates' Alternate Racial Trait, you may choose to further empower yourself as a swift action by opening the Gate of Pain - allowing you to ignore all penalties inflicted upon your attacks and to increase the retaliatory damage dealt for attacking you by 5 for as long as the gate remains open. So long as the gate remains open, the unavoidable damage taken is tripled.
The feared fourth gate, the Gate of Pain is located along the spinal cord and deals primarily with speed and physical prowess - once opened, it allows for masterful combat prowess far in excess of the norm in exchange for an even greater toll upon the physical body. Famously used by the great Kitsune Islander Warriors in their battles against the forces of the Cabals in defense of the Yatsimoan Islanders, the Gate of Pain is hard to achieve but well worth the effort.
The Gate of Death:
Prerequisites: Kitsune Race, 'Open the Inner Gates' Alternate Racial Trait, Character level 15th
Effects: While in the enhanced combat state granted by the 'Open the Inner Gates' Alternate Racial Trait, you may choose to further empower yourself as a swift action by opening the Gate of Death - so long as you remain within this state, you gain a 30ft aura of raging blood mist that deals 1d6 points of untyped damage per 2HD you possess to hostile creatures who begin their turn within its radius(Fort Save based on CON for half). Additionally, your melee strikes bypass all DR and Hardness and hit off of touch instead of normal AC, and you gain Fast Healing 10. All melee attacks add double your ability score modifiers to attack and damage while the Gate of Death is open. However, after one minute has passed from the opening of the gate, you are consumed by the raging demonic energies flooding your body and perish, your body disintigrating and scattering into nothingness.
Though information is sparse on this fabled final gate, the Gate of Death is either the sixth or eighth of the Inner Gates - located in the heart, this final gate of the Inner Gate techniques is an invariably lethal one that requires the wielder to puncture their own chest to allow their life energy to flow outwards as their heartbeat quickens, allowing them a power hundred times greater than they would normally be capable of. Most famously used by Kitsune Mohala the Mighty to deliver a hypersonic Axe-Kick that cracked one of the largest ice shelves in the Glacial Drift into pieces, destroying one of the largest Kitsune Cabals at the expense of his own life. In exchange for absolute power, one must be prepared to pay the ultimate price - and the toll for the Gate of Death is nothing less than the incineration of one's own body as one's life force, heated to a boiling point, burns bright before eventually consuming the wielder wholesale.
Professional Masseuse:
Prerequisites: Kitsune Race, “Tail Masseuse” Alternate Racial Trait, Character level 5th
Effects: All dice are doubled for the effects of “Tail Masseuse”, and you may heal lethal damage when using the 'heal nonlethal damage' at 1/2 effectiveness. You now only need to spend 5 minutes with the chosen creature instead of the typical 10.
Seeing as how immensely popular and well-renowned the fluffiness and softness of their tails are, it comes as little surprise to many that Kitsune are beloved and highly sought out for the chance to experience the right to be embraced, held, or simple massaged by their tails. To some enterprising Kitsune who particularly enjoy playing the role of masseuse(Be it for business or pleasure or otherwise), they in time develop their craft and become even better and relieving the worries and stress of their clients or customers, such that they become capable of massaging damaged muscles, fractured tendons, and even damaged minds back to full health like miracle workers.
Vestiges of Service:
Prerequisites: Kitsune Race, “Tail Masseuse” Alternate Racial Trait, Character level 5th
Effects: A number of times per day equal to ½ the number of tails you have(rounding down), you may remove one condition from a creature within 60ft of you that you have used “Tail Masseuse” on within the past 24 hours. Using this ability is a standard action that does not provoke AoO.
Special: For the purposes of all Racial Feats, this feat is treated as having “-Masseuse” in its name.
For the truly masterful Kitsune Masseusers, the art of the massage becomes a thing that does not end once the simple act of physically relaxing their client...so long as the memory of the experience remains fresh in the minds of those they serve, they learn how to ease harmful conditions from their former client by evoking the memory of that pleasant massage. It is a highly prized technique for many reasons, mainly because it utilizes an odd form of hypnosis and psychology to use the memories of the service to elicit very real change in the body.
Saintly Masseuse:
Prerequisites: Kitsune Race, “Tail Masseuse” Alternate Racial Trait, Character level 9th
Effects: You may now heal 1d6 Ability drain OR 1 Negative level when using the “Tail Masseuse” Alternate Racial Trait, determined each time you use it.
Special: If you have the “Professional Masseuse” Racial Feat, the ability drain dice are doubled as well.
The secret art of those Kitsune who truly enjoy relaxing the worries of others away, these Kitsune "Saints" are veritable grandmasters of their craft, capable of returning lost memories, removing decayed and even vanished muscle mass, and returning the near-dead to life and vigor. For this reason, these Kitsune are highly sought after for their prowess, and often run highly exclusive massage parlors where they generally serve only the most elite customers or, as is their right as grandmasters, sometimes serve entirely only those who they wish to depending on their whims. Even royalty from far distant lands often travel in search of these masseurs, it is said.
Revivifying Ride:
Prerequisites: Kitsune Race, Two or more “-Masseuse” Racial Feats, Character level 13th
Effects: Once a day, you may replicate a breath of life spell on a creature whose remains you massage for the normal duration required to activate the "Tail Masseuse" ability, so long as you began in the round immediately following their death. Additionally, you may replicate a resurrection effect on a creature so long as you have any part of their remains in your tails and massage them for the required duration so long as they've died in the past 10 days - you must provide the material cost to use this spell effect, though the resurrection works only once per creature.
A truly mighty secret of the Kitsune masseuse craft and a technique considered the pinnacle of the artform, the Revivifying Ride is a technique that fuses the nigh-mythical skill of Kitsune Masseurs with the strange power of the Yokai, allowing these rare and highly skilled Kistune to quite literally return the recently dead back to life by merely embracing the body in their tails and paying the appropriate monetary cost...
Master Conduit:
Prerequisites: Kitsune Race, 'Yokai Conduit' Alternate Racial Trait, Character level 9th
Effects: You may regain a spell slot of up to 4th level instead of up to 2nd when using the 'Yokai Conduit' Alternate Racial Trait.
Special: You may take this feat up to two more times. Each time raises the max spell level you can regain by 1, to a maximum of 6th.
Among the already rare "Yokai Conduits" that are sometimes born into Kitsune families, there are those among them who inherit several shards of the power of the Yokai Realm, their tails often taking on a blinding radiance as they become capable of tapping into the power of the Yokai Realm directly to restore their own sorcerous might. Even moreso than their lesser conduit brethren, these Kitsune almost exlusively exist as the right hands of the mighty Prismatic Tailwitches that run the Kitsune Cabals of the Glacial Drift.
Propelling Tail:
Prerequisites: Kitsune Race, Character level 5th
Effects: You gain a fly speed of 20ft, which increases by 5ft for every tail you possess above the third.
Able to use their tails to generate actual lift and thrust by spinning them at blinding speeds, many Kitsune can learn to fly through the skies with only a bit a effort.
Magical Tail:
Prerequisites: Kitsune Race
Effects: You gain one more tail on the Kitsune Tail Table. You still cannot ascend beyond eight tails this way using this feat.
Special: You can take this feat more than once.
With their number of tails directly correlating to societal, magical, and even physical power, some Kitsune spontaneously sprout new tails as they grow in power, growing them practically overnight.
Black-blooded:
Prerequisites: Kitsune race, Character level 3th
Effects: When you are hit with a slashing or piercing weapon, all creatures adjacent to you must make a Reflex Save (DC 10 + ½ HD + CONMOD) or take 1d6 acid damage OR 1d6 cold damage(Chosen at the beginning of each day), taking half as much on a successful save. This ability does not trigger on self-inflicted hits. For every four HD above 4 you gain, you gain an additional die to the damage of this feat.
Considered a curse, 'the curse of black blood' is a trait that generally only manifests in Male Kitsune, though it has been seen in female kitsune on occasion. Believed to be a curse passed down through the Kitsune species from a great Kitsune ancestor of old, the legendary warlord whose name has been lost to time(or forgotten intentionally)...he is said to have fallen into savagery during a long-forgotten war and embraced the slaughter and death that reigned supreme during such a time that he became an unstoppable engine of destruction, and ascended into a mighty Asura who had to be sealed away forever. Those that bear this curse are considered to have received his "blessing", and his blood that was said to be as black as tar and turned as deadly as acid, stained and corrupted as evidence of his infinite crimes.
Ancestral Shard:
Prerequisites: Kitsune Race
Effects: You are treated as if you had the “Bardic Knowledge” class ability as a bard of your level. You also gain +2 to resist all mind-affecting effects.
Rarely, a Kitsune is born who finds themselves capable of tapping into the knowledge of those who have come before them...much like the odd Ghoran or the Elves, these Kitsune access a sort of "Genetic Memory" that contains knowledge from all the past lives they have lived, granting them a vast store of knowledge from which to draw on.
Secluded Cryptkeeper:
Prerequisites: Kitsune Race, Character level 5th
Effects: By wrapping a corpse in your tails for 1 minute, you may cast Speak with Dead on it as a caster of your level +2. The save for the corpse to resist the spell is increased by +2, though this bonus goes down to +1 if the creature was immune to charm effects during its lifetime(or unlife, if it was a sentient undead immediately prior to dying). You may also cast Sanctify Corpse as an at-will spell-like ability, though your tail(s) must be in contact with the corpse to do so.
Special: This feat counts as having “-Masseuse” in its name for the purposes of all feats that require one or more “-Masseuse” feats as Prerequisites.
A trait that manifests exclusively in those rare Kitsune chosen to serve as keepers for the crypts built by the various Cabals of the Glacial Drift to be utilized by Kitsune of all kinds, where the honored Kitsune dead are said to be entombed when they shuffle off their mortal coil and return their soul to the spirit realm from whence they came to be reincarnated anew. Here their bodies lay, ever-unrotting, ever-preserved, so that all may remember them...buried especially deep within the sprawling catacombs is said to be the rare Kitsune who have finally forgone the cycle and gone to their final death...those that spend their time in this hallowed place guarding their honored dead become so in-tune with the dead and spirits that they become capable of talking to them as they wrap them in their tails, giving their body a semblance of life to converse with them once more. These Keepers are greatly revered and highly honored by their kin, Islander and Cabal-born alike.
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