#sneekidraw

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A couple of my fav bosses and enemies from Rebirth

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A little while after we fixed the village, I thought I'd drop in and see how the NPCs were doing now that they were able to reproduce.

I may have made a mistake

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The Longest Walk of All Time

I frickin love Vernon I don't care what those other way rude kids say

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richad's POV. Good excuse to use the crayon heh (the end)

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One of my favorite abilities in Psychonauts is Clairvoyance, which lets you look through another character's eyes, usually to see how they view Raz. I sorta did a similar thing, but it's always from the same character's point of view.

The first is of Inkla, occasionallyeldritch's jackal gal, from the POV of one of my older OCs (Egyptian god kind of dude). The rest are Hikiki's, FOR NOW

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Opened up Word and vomited a whole bunch of stuff about Boshishi's past into the document. I'd been kinda meaning to get what I had in mind written down at some point...NOW I'M FREEEE HAHA

Spoiler'd so as not to burden your dashboards...

[Post contains a lot of AUage/artistic license. Yokai on Keron? What??]

Boshishi is a yokai whose family's job (not an actual "job" though more like just a thing they do) is to guide the souls of the deceased to the afterlife, and to help earthbound spirits overcome  their troubles and cross over. They also occasionally act as a medium so the dead can communicate with the living. Boshishi inherited these obligations when he entered adulthood, as well as the triangular forehead band that signifies his newfound understanding and acceptance of death.

(In Japanese culture the dead were traditionally buried wearing the hitaikakushi and their kimono folded right over left. So, the way the members of Boshishi's family dress has a slightly different meaning than in Japan. In Boshishi's case it simply means that he is pretty much literally ready for death, not that he is actually already dead.)

He grew up with his family on the planet Keron, in a small shrine that sat at the edge of a forest bordering a crop field. The shrine had been built for them out of gratitude by the Keronians from a nearby village. According to the family custom, once Boshishi officially became a MAN his parents left him to carry out his duties on his own, stressing the importance of accepting the grim inevitable by encouraging him to think of them as having simply passed on and out of his life. He understood that he would never see them again, and that in their departure he was supposed to learn for the first time something about what it meant to lose someone dear.

In the decades that followed, Boshishi lived a pretty leisurely life where his days consisted of lounging around the shrine, sharing a few words with passersby and taking long afternoon naps, then going out into the forest at night to raise a ruckus with his yokai pals. That was what he tended to do on his downtime, anyway. If there wasn't a new soul for him to help comfort in his goofy yet kind of endearing way, there was an old soul bored to tears waiting for a conversation partner in the cemetery, or a grandparent wishing to impart a few pearls of wisdom to a grandchild they never knew. He was certainly able to keep busy, but it was not what one might be tempted to call "work."

Boshishi never went out of his way to chat with a Keronian whose heart still beat in his chest, but neither did he turn away those who sought him out for the help he could provide. Unlike some yokai who enjoyed playing tricks on Keronians or others who reviled or even preyed upon them, Boshishi viewed the Keronian race with a neutral eye in much the same way as Death impartially views every living creature on the planet. On the other hand, the dead had a certain quality about them that Boshishi found he preferred in his company, and the children would whisper urban legends about a creature with glowing yellow eyes who stalked the graveyard on foggy moonlit nights.

There was nothing legendary about him, though, for he made his presence very well known amongst the villagers once a year, also in accordance with a long-standing tradition. There would come a knocking on the door accompanied by the sing-song question, "Any naughty children in there?" And Boshishi would burst into their home with a flourish and the intent to scare the shit out of not only the kids but the entire family, for the purpose was not just to encourage the young ones to behave properly but to sustain the presence of fear (specifically that of the supernatural) in the hearts of the Keronians. The parents dissuaded him from making off with and devouring their children by offering food and drink, which he was more than happy to take after leaving them  with the promise that if their kids didn't shape up he would be back for them the next year.

So it was that Boshishi, as well as every other yokai in the region, went both feared and respected by Keronians for centuries.

However, times change, and people with it. The process of modernization was a slow but unrelenting one that brought with it new ways of thinking about the world and new ways of physically manipulating it. Irrationality gave way to rationality, belief to skepticism, soft soil to backhoes. People started questioning the ways of old and discarding outdated ideals that couldn't be incorporated into the blueprint of their fresh, contemporary lives.

In response the yokai began to disappear, some without so much as a goodbye to the solitary bushy haired shrine-dweller who remained. With them faded their memory in the minds of the Keronians as the last members of the eldest generation succumbed to age, and researchers wrote off the creatures of the night as creatures of mere myth.

For the longest time Boshishi sat idly by, bewilderedly watching the world change around him. He failed to comprehend why the Keronians no longer visited him with solemn questions, tearful requests or even ignorant demands. He could not fathom how the affluent townsfolk in their suits and dresses got off sneering and looking down their noses at his unruly appearance. He did not understand the offense Keronians took when in a desperate attempt to associate with them he brought up how happy their deceased relatives were to see them thriving. But bit by bit, slowly but surely he began to piece it all together, and with each day that passed his heart grew a little colder and his thoughts a little darker.

The day he became an adult Boshishi had sworn never to take a life unless it was at the owner's behest. He possessed the ability to do so, quickly and under normal circumstances painlessly, with almost literally the wave of a hand. He could remove a person's soul and he could just as easily return it to their body, but these were not powers he frequently utilized, for Boshishi knew well it was not up to him to decide whether someone lived or died or when their time had come.

His thoughts on the matter changed drastically in light of the cruel hand life had dealt him.

Having been pushed over the edge by betrayal, neglect and the disrespect shown to him by Keronians over decades upon decades of spiritual decline, Boshishi went on a vicious, long, drawn out rampage through the town. Moving only at night he stole into the homes of innocent families rich and poor alike, refrigerator and pantries remaining untouched but the yokai leaving with a full stomach just the same.  Entire households disappeared. Some the authorities would find the next day all members accounted for but no discernible cause of their deaths. No one had an explanation for the phenomenon, save for "serial killer/kidnapper," but even then investigators could draw no parallels between victims. All they could do was scratch their heads as the bodies piled up around them.

Eventually enough of a fuss was raised to catch the attention of someone with actual authority but precious little interest in the matters of concerned citizens from a small backwater town nestled in the region's armpit. To the pleasure of the lazy bureaucrat, one of his assistants volunteered to personally see the burgeoning city's security reestablished and was en route to his destination within the hour.

Boshishi's midnight sojourn into town was intercepted by the assistant, who was dressed in hat and robe befitting only the highest class of onmyouji. Like yokai, onmyoudou no longer had a place in the current time period but there were nevertheless those who studied day and night to keep the traditions practiced by their ancestors alive, even if only in secret. The man who confronted Boshishi knew a thing or two about the ways of evil spirits, how to recognize signs of their presence, and most importantly how to deal with them. Boshishi, however, didn't even know a thing like onmyouji existed, and was easily bested by the talisman-toting Keronian.

The closet onmyouji's spell sealed Boshishi away inside the yokai's lantern, which he deposited in a mountain cave still sectioned off from the mortal world by a twisted rope and paper streamers.  Many years later a pair of children exploring the area would stumble upon the cavern, explore it and loot it of its only "treasure," which one of them would keep as a trophy for his enviable ability to steal ancient lighting apparatus from old caves like a boss. He would eventually move to Pekopon with his family and one day decide to peel the weird stickers off the paper sphere and remove the  lid to see what was inside. The predictable happened, and new planet be damned, Boshishi was off again, free to exact revenge as he saw fit.

Technically he had no beef with humans, but there is little room for reason in a mind consumed by bloodlust. Unlike his stampede down the warpath on Keron, however, Boshishi's one-man campaign of death and destruction on Earth was arrested in its early stages before too many lives were lost. This time he found himself on the wrong end of a shakujo, wielded by a young monk with an awfully personal grudge against supernatural creatures both malevolent and benign. Maybe a yokai had accosted a loved one, maybe he was raised by folks who hated them, but who knew; Boshishi didn't ask and the young man didn't explain.

Although he had the physical strength of ten Keronians and the fortitude to match, Boshishi proved to be just as hopeless in combat against the monk as he had been against the onmyouji - not that power mattered much when his enemies possessed spell tags specifically tailored to weaken his kind at a safe distance. Fear gripped him, utterly at the mercy of the young man - he would much rather embrace the familiarity of death than be bound to an object and subjected to an eternity of utter nothingness. His luck held out, because the monk intended to wipe Boshishi's existence from the planet entirely.

And it really held out, through the yokai's eleventh hour, as the forces that be led a wizened man wearing a paddy hat and carrying a ringed staff of his own to the graveyard in which Boshishi had been cornered. His softly spoken words halted the actions of his apprentice, who deferred to the older man and grudgingly departed the scene to "return to the temple and think carefully over his actions" as instructed.

Deep down Boshishi did not want any of this, the anger in his heart that drove him to spurn the world and seek such vicious retribution against a people who didn't even realized they had wronged him. Without his speaking a word the old monk must have understood something, and that night took the ailing yokai under his wing, for he was of the belief that any creature with a mind that could think also possessed a heart that could love.

The Buddhist priest's act of compassion was enough to stir up feelings of remorse within Boshishi, and after expressing as much, he found his animosity diminish under the patient man's guidance. If he truly did seek to change his ways, his savior said, he could - anyone could. Touched by this assurance, Boshishi vowed to shed his hatred and lead an altruistic life by helping people as he had in his days back on Keron.

To emphasize his sincerity he plucked the hairs from his head one by one until he was as baldheaded as the disciples around him, filed his terrible fangs away, and abandoned his twilight blue yukata to don the simple black shawl his mentor had made for him. Stitched into the front in white thread was the Japanese character for "death", while the back bore the symbol meaning "life." The rosary he received, while long and a little awkward to hang around his neck, found an equally awkward spot hanging behind his head from the hitaikakushi (not that he personally minded).

These were admirable sacrifices to make for what Boshishi convinced himself to be for the better. But in altering his image and discarding that which reminded him of the past he was ultimately doing himself a disservice by ignoring the real problem that compassion alone couldn't solve. He earnestly believed that what he was learning from the monk - to treat life with newfound respect and care for the well-being of the planet and its people - would fill the hole in his heart. In a way, it did. But time would test the strength of Boshishi's faith, and his fear for the future of him and his fellow yokai on Earth would quietly stew until that fear eventually became a reality.

After the monk's passing, Boshishi found a home for himself in an abandoned shrine in the woods on the far outskirts of Edo. There he spent several centuries keeping the wandering spirits of the nearby cemetery company while maintaining a careful watch on the flowering city beyond. On occasion he would venture into the city limits much as he did back on Keron when curiosity got the better of him. Boshishi reveled in the nostalgic atmosphere of old Edo, but fate is a fickle mistress, and much to the yokai's chagrin over time the city would grow more than just a new moniker. It seemed to him that Earth was going the same way as his old planet, and though he seldom showed it the realization greatly distressed him.

This brings us more or less to present day:

Boshishi's encounter with Dai Tomomo served to remove the lid on the boiling pot of raw negative emotions that had been unwittingly left on the burner since his days on Keron. Unsuppressed, they overwhelmed all thoughts of sympathy and benevolence, overrode the pitiful cosmetic changes he had made, and clad in a once-reviled yukata Boshishi took to the streets to cause havoc yet again.

One month later, on New Year's Eve at the 108th chime of the temple bells, Boshishi regained his senses. Horrified by what he had done, he stumbled off to the only place where he knew to turn - the Buddhist temple was no longer there, but he could find just as much solace in the Shinto shrine that had been erected in its place. There he met a young miko implied to be the distant descendant of the monk he once knew, and in desperation he related to her the story of why he had come to the shrine that night. Reluctantly she agreed to help the yokai and exorcised the souls he had consumed over the last several weeks from the empty void Boshishi had unknowingly sentenced them to - just as the old monk had after Boshishi revealed to him his past and the countless innocent people whose lives he had taken.

From that point on, with anxiety hanging over his head like a heavy cloud Boshishi pressed on, riding out the dreary months of winter, watching with somberness as the cherry tree beside the shrine once again failed to blossom in the spring, and in spite of the celebratory mood of late summer dancing at the local Obon festival with a marked lethargy in his steps. He began sleeping more and more, even at night, and his dreams were plagued by visions of a hardwired future in which electronics drowned a city that scraped the sky in color, light and sound, while people milled about the streets staring with blank faces into the portable technology they held in their hands.

Boshishi never spoke a word of his troubles to the local yokai, not even his friends - this was his problem to deal with. The issue was just that he didn't know how to do so. He had lived hundreds of years, yet for all he knew about the inevitable, he could not seem to understand the fact that change was inevitable too, and that change, like death, is something that ultimately must be accepted.

misc. stuff I couldn’t cram anywhere else:

- Boshishi has adopted a much quieter and gentler manner of speech since his time with the Buddhist priest. Back in the day though his natural voice was deep, rough and usually pretty loud – especially when he laughed, think Bowser and you’ve basically got it haha – and his syntax and overall manner of speaking a bit country bumpkinish.

- Throughout that period of time Boshishi learned a lot from the old monk, not just about Buddhism and Shintoism but about a pretty broad range of topics including Japan, its people, its history, the natural world and the world in general. He never had an actual education, so everything he knows he’s picked up from other people. Apart from what hard facts the monk taught him Boshishi possess very little actual knowledge, but even his doofier former self displayed a certain kind of wisdom regarding life and the mysterious ways in which it works.

- While he is fond of rice, he only really treats himself to it on rare occasions. Mostly he eats the unclaimed bodies of the dead who have no one to bury them, or cremate them as per the Japanese custom. Flesh makes his stomach turn (bad memories) so he is far more content when chewing up bones, but he doesn’t discriminate when it comes to a listless soul needing to be put to rest by properly disposing of its earthly vessel.

- Being a sort of “master” of all matters concerning the soul, Boshishi has excellent command of his own and is capable of maintaining equilibrium with an additional soul inhabiting his body, for example when behaving as a medium and allowing the spirit to speak through him but NOT run off and cause all sorts of chaos by taking his body for a test drive. Not that that wouldn’t be an impossibility, since there are of course limits to what Boshishi can accomplish.