Pretty much, any chance my imagination gets to insert a story into something, it'll do it. I just love the story. So do you think I wouldn't have a story behind Kitsune? Well you thought wrong (right?). I've had the backstory rolling around in my head for a while, but with things near fruition, I'll put it down.
The organization currently known as Kitsune started out in 14th C. Japan as a small sect of yamabushi (ascetic warrior monks). The group dedicated itself to the protection of rural peasant farmers from powerful warlords and raiders. The sect considered itself to be servants to the goddess Inari (deity of fertility, agriculture, and industry; often supported by foxes and fox spirits, i.e. kitsune). Kitsune played into its role as the servants of Inari in battle by wearing fox masks and large red scarves with the ends split into 9 strips (a la the 9 tales of the kitsune). Kitsune was formidable but highly secretive. The group used subterfuge and guerrilla tactics to defend those it had sworn to protect.
As time passed, Kitsune's power spread. At its height during the Sengoku period (the 15th to 17th centuries), Kitsune began to interweave with many small rural groups of Bakuto (gamblers who eventually became the modern Yakuza). The Kitsune members taught, trained, and indoctrinated the often rowdy Bakuto into cells of zealous guerrilla fighters.
Kitsune's aim was to pick apart the ruling classes with guerrilla warfare to create a new era in which the farmers ruled themselves. However, on the eve of this war, out of fear many of the peasant villagers who were aware of Kitsune's plans reported the group to the ruling samurai warlords. Destruction of the conspiracy was swift and harsh and very few of the Kitsune or their Bakuto cells survived. From this day, the surviving members swore vengeance on a cowardly weak humanity. The survivors quietly merged back into other Bakuto groups or disappeared back into the mountains and rural areas. They continued to meet in secret, carrying their plans for vengeance across generations into the modern era.
By the 20th century, the few survivng descendants of Kitsune remembered the plot and betrayal of their ancestors as little more than a folktale. Only one man, an assassin of Japanese descent who worked throughout Asia, truly kept the mission of Kitsune in his heart. Aging and childless, he began to seek a successor to his mission of vengeance. He found this in a young man who went by the moniker, Ibn Doom (so sue me, I made my character a major part of the story).
Ibn was orphaned at birth and he was raised by a group of semi-revolutionary mercenaries. His youth was spent in military conflicts in South America, Africa, and the Middle East. However, his group was all but wiped out in an operation in the opening years of the 21st century. This left a skilled, but already mentally unstable man alone in the world. He spent the next few years wandering through Asia in a drug fueled haze of assassination contracts and debauchery until he was picked up by the Kitsune survivor. The combination of skill, ruthlessness, and madness seemed perfect for Kitsune's mission.
The final aging Kitsune descendant was later killed by a rival assassin, but not before he was able to pass on the mission to Ibn which the man adopted with fanaticism. Hearing of the madness and the chaos in the city of San Paro, Ibn set out to begin his mission of vengeance. He reached out to contacts from around the globe and Kitsune was reborn. (I'm not sure how everyone would quite fit together with this seeing as I am sure that a handful of your characters wouldn't fit with this chaos/vengeance thing... Maybe some of the characters just view it as a good chance to make a name for themselves or make money, and maybe there are some other reasons... Who knows, its all up to you all :D )
Ok that's it. As par usual, there is no particular reason for this, I'm just having a little fun putting my thoughts on paper. I have no plans for penning this into an actual story, but if anyone wants to add in how their character falls into things, I'd be super excited to see it *nods a little too excitedly while repeatedly nudging you*. Anyway, in closing, since I don't think I wrote these words enough: vengeance, vengeance, mission, assassin, Kistune.
