What are shapeshifters? Shapeshifters are members of the royal family of Chanti. They’re also called blue-fingers, or simply the Vodianovas. Shapeshifters can be divided into young and old. Young ones can turn back into their humanoid form, and are somewhat sentient when they’re in a non-humanoid form. Old ones can no longer turn back. They behave more animalistic and act on instinct.
Old ones neither eat, sleep nor age. And yet, they still kill and consume animals and humans sporadically. They never deliberately attack chanta - who do not consider themselves human, by the way - although accidents have happened. However, they absolutely kill and consume other humanoids such as homo sapiens (like islanders and mainlanders). In fact, they seem to hunt humans specifically. old shapeshifters have been observed to stalk their prey for days, weeks and even months. As a shapshifter grows older, the hangovers after turning back gets more and more intense. Around the age of 60, they lose the ability to turn back altogether.
If they are immortal, why aren’t there a bazillion of them? Mostly because of the ascension. The ascension makes each generation of young shapeshifters fight each other to the death. The sole remaining shapeshifter from each cohort will live on to attain god status in the eyes of the chanta. shapeshifters are considered extremely difficult to kill. records do exist of assassination attempts by mainlanders, however exceedingly few have been successful.
What are the chanta’s relationship to shapeshifters Chanta consider shapeshifters holy. In fact, they are referred to as Gods in everyday speech. For example, “that God just ate my pidgin”, “there’s a God over there” or “that God knocked my mother’s ashes down from the shelf”. young shapeshifters are not granted the same status, however an important rule of the ascension is that no one is to interfere. Thus Only young shapeshifters are allowed to kill other shapeshifters. The punishment for killing a blue-finger otherwise is dire.
Fun fact! jochi and chani will call old shapeshifters uncle, although some of them might be their grand-grand-grand-father, etc.