The Millenary Nine-tailed Fox
rating: +117+x

The Millenary Nine-tailed Fox

SH-KO.png

SCP-953 (by Jailors),
KTE-1208-Green-Burrhus-Kewpie (by Bookburners),
"The Vixen" or "That Damned Vixen"

Conspectus

汝如余余弗如汝
汝不人余卽人也
不詐血性或者曰
余亦不人唯狐也
余問何使人爲人
余當證余爲人也
二百年之靭惡緣
余唯望是割斷也


Thou art like me, but I am not like thee
Because thou art not human, but I am.
Some people say that blood will never lie,
thus I am not human, only a fox like thee.
I ask, what makes human humane?
I will show my humaneness deservedly.
This ill-fated bloodline of two hundred years,
I only wait for the moment to sever it off.

Cho-hŭi Park in 17951

Illustration

gumiho.png

Knowledge

Traits: The true nature of this entity is basically a fox, but she looks like a black-haired Korean woman to others. The appearance can be perceived differently, as she has the ability to alter other people's perception of her. This is characteristic of the demon fox race.

Nature: The Millenary Nine-Tailed Fox is a notorious entity of demon fox. The demon fox is a subspecies of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes). The demon fox is biologically identical to the normal red fox, but they are actually demi-humans who can interbreed with humans.2 Demon foxes are a critically endangered species and very little of the population remains today. The traits of the demon fox are X-linked recessively inherited. A male baby never manifests these traits and instead becomes a carrier. If a male and female human, both of whom are carriers, have a baby between them, there is a 25% probability their daughter will be born a demon fox.3

The demon foxes passively create a mind-affecting field that makes others perceive them as human females. They manipulate this field to change the form they are perceived as by others, and this action is called "shapeshifting." As well as shapeshifting, they have strength greater than that of a normal human or fox, and a minor reality-altering ability. When they exhibit these other abilities, the ears or tails of a fox will emerge and the eyes will be red. This is because using other abilities disturbs the mind-affecting field, and the mind-altering effect became gradually negated from their terminal body.4

The most prominent ability of the demon fox is antipersonnel mind control to a certain entity who is within the range of mind-affecting field. This is called "bewitching". When a demon fox bewitches someone, her ability is focused into a victim, and they cannot see her fox-ears or tails. Meanwhile, a third person can witness her terminal body turning into that of the fox. This bewitching is very powerful mind control and the demon fox can compel the bewitched to do her bidding, and even fabricating memory is possible. A very mighty demon fox can drive the bewitched insane by breaking down one's mind.

The demon fox is a race of inborn magical talent, but can vary in how talented they are by how much training has been done. The easiest way to bypass this "training" is gathering "essence" from humans (male or female) by sexual intercourse. The essence is delivered from mouth to mouth, and condensed into a transparent amorphous orb, resembling a glass bead.5 This condensed orb is called "vulpine essence" or a "fox's marble." A demon fox holding a marble in her mouth can amplify her magical talent by five to ten times.

The lifespan of a demon fox is much longer than that of a human. The demon fox has one tail at birth, and the number of tails increases centennially. Thus a demon fox's age can be guessed roughly by counting her tails. The most frequently recorded stories of demon foxes are about nine-tailed foxes, thus they seem to live more than eight hundred years, and it is not known how many years they live until natural death. Nine is the maximum number of tails, and no more tail grows. In all recorded cases, the demon fox dies in combat or accidents, and there are no natural deaths on record.

Demon foxes prefer human liver over all other foods, but it seems to be entirely a matter of taste. They can prey on all animals for sustenance. Almost all of the encountered demon foxes were hostile. Thus, the demon fox and human were in a relationship of struggling for survival in premodern Eastern Asia, the natural habitat of the demon fox.

It is sad that the demon fox, a sis one of magical wonderness, became de facto extinct. However, we cannot deny that their extinction is glad to other intelligent beings living in Eastern Asia.6

History & Associated Parties: In 1515, the millenary nine-tailed fox was first encountered by Elder Woo-chi "Featherman" Jŏn,7 the spiritual founder of Korean Serpent's Hand.8 At that time, the fox called herself a millennium-aged fox. When she and Elder Jŏn met, she had nine tails, making her at least eight hundred years old in 1515. Since then, however much time passed, this nine-tailed fox has claimed that she is one thousand years old. Despite being older than one thousand years at this point, she is still known to us as the "millenary nine-tailed fox" or just "millenary fox".

After a bloody battle in 1568, Elder Jŏn managed to seal the nine-tailed fox in a pocket dimension called "Peach Blossom Land," and breathed his last before succumbing to his wounds. For two hundred years, the Vixen remained trapped in Peach Blossom Land, wreaking havoc upon it. During her imprisonment, anyone who unfortunately entered Peach Blossom Land was considered dead at the hands of the Vixen. In 1795, she escaped finally and provoked the Calamity of 1795.

The Vixen lost her marble to Elder Jŏn when they first met in 1515. Since then, her strength is one-fifth of what it was before 1515. It's best to not think of what would happen if she had her marble.

The Vixen went into hiding after causing the Calamity of 1795. No trace of her had been found until 1945 when the Jailors encountered her for the first time, while landing on the Korean Peninsula. The Jailors managed to imprison her once again after suffering heavy casualties. However, The Vixen has managed to escape six times since her first incarceration. Nobody knows when she will try to escape again.

We are tracing her history after 1795, but this work is not completed yet, although we could discover some episodes she was involved in. One of them shows us her personality quite well. In 1969, before she was transferred to the U.S., she killed an old woman living in Chŏngsong County and pretended to be her victim. One day, the young grandson of the killed grandmother visited her homestead. For the next week, the Vixen took good care of her "grandson"; she frolicked with him in the stream and mountain in the daytime and put him to sleep by telling him "old fairy tales" in the night. On the seventh day, the Vixen revealed her true color by bewitching him. On the evening of that day, his parents came to pick him up. The young boy crouched within the house filled with darkness and stabbed his own parents instantly they entered the house. The boy was arrested for three cases of parricide. When our agent interviewed him in the juvenile hall, he seemed not to resent the Vixen.

Approach: The demon foxes regard other intelligent beings, including humans, as "other species" which can be mere food or toys. So with our millennium-aged lady, the best thing for us to do is leave the devilish, cannibalistic serial killer in the care of the Jailors. Better we never meet her.

If she escapes the Jailors, we must avoid her at all costs. Without proper provision for mind control, anybody can be bewitched by her quickly. And if you are not strong enough to defend yourself, retreat is the only thing you can and must do.

Observations & Stories

I didn't really want to write this part by myself and wanted to make others write, just like other parts. But I end up writing reluctantly.

The millenary fox, called by the number nine-five-three by the Jailors, and called "that damned Vixen" by somebody is… Shit. She is my mother. I am a daughter born in 1516, between Elder Jŏn and the Vixen.910

When a human and a demon fox have a child, if the human male is not a carrier, then their child will be born as a carrier. If the human male is a carrier, their son will be born as a carrier and their daughter will be born as a demon fox.

I am a special case. My father, Elder Jŏn was not a carrier most certainly. However, I was nonetheless born as a demon fox. I think this is because my father swallowed the marble of my mother in 1515. The marble developed my father's magical talents, and maybe changed his body somehow on the genetic level. Nothing else I can imagine can explain my existence.

Father absorbed the marble and opened his sight to vulpine magic; maybe becoming an entity closer to the foxes, rather than a human. As none of his body remains, not even bones, we cannot verify this hypothesis. I suspect my father became the first male demon fox.

This is only my personal hypothesis. However, this hypothesis secures my view of life. I hate to mention it, but my mother is a monster. She slaughtered and ate countless people over (according to her) thousands of years. She is a true sadist, who enjoys bewitching people and ruining their lives for nothing but her personal amusement. But she may say all of those inhumanities are justified because she and humans are not the same species. She may argue that humans are meat to her, just as other beasts are to humans. Nahh, not may. She must.

However, my father lived as a human being and died as a human being even after he became… … something else. He was never a good father to me, but I respect the way he lived, I think.

“Which way will you follow, the mother's or the father's?” That was a question Master Flowery Pond11 asked me. I was too young to answer him then. I didn't even know the meaning of “the way of my mother's” and “father's.” But I have lived as a human being (correctly speaking, human beings) for five hundred years, and I'm still trying to live as a human. Once some humans persecuted me so horribly (that damn incident of 1795) and furthermore, I witnessed so many atrocities by humans. However, it was also humans who sustained me to prevent me from being against humanity and remain one of them.

Yes. Though I was born with the blood and abilities of the demon fox, I think I am a human. This is different from wanting to be a human, as I know I am a human being already. And I love the humaneness I can have through being a human. I love the fact that I can feel the sublime of the possibility of other humans. That's my view of life. It's also why I beat up anyone who calls me fox. Sorry, not sorry.

~ Hx12

Doubt

  1. Are the Jailers jailing the Vixen effectively? Can we believe them?
    • She has escaped and been recaptured six times already, each time causing a bloodbath. However, the Jailer's efforts to contain the Vixen haven't changed drastically since the second half of the 2000s.
    • If the Jailers keep jailing her so well that she can be permanently contained, then we will be pleased. However, their ability to successfully "contain" her is questionable.
    • We need to discuss the necessity of our intervention in case she escapes again.
  2. If we intervene should the Vixen escape from the Jailors, what level should we take in that intervention?
    • This is linked to the Hand's perennial philosophical argument about malicious intelligent entities.
    • Currently, Hoya is stoutly asserting that we must aim for complete termination of the Vixen.
  3. Isn't there any other surviving demon fox except for the Vixen and our Captain?
    • We are running a searching program for newborn demon foxes. However, there is no advance as far.
    • As states above, the manifestation agent is a recessive trait on the X sex chromosome. There should be many carriers and other instances of demon fox babies born between them in Eastern Asia. However, there have been no reports of other demon foxes that were sighted in modern times, except for Hoya and the Vixen.
    • We have a few hypotheses about this issue. The most reasonable of them is that there are newborn demon foxes out in the world, but they do not know their true identity and live as humans. The searching program is an attempt to verify this hypothesis. And if this is true, what should we behave?
    • Hoya is highly skeptical of this program. But she does not oppose it strongly as for now.13
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License