Maboroshi Clan

It is safe to say, that the Maboroshi clan's loyalty lies with Amegakure no Sato, and while the clan do possess a contract with the intelligent owls, they are also known for their knowledge.
== Ideology ==
Ever since joining Amegakure no Sato, the clan has obviously put quite a lot of value in the well being of the village. Out of all the clans within Amegakure, the Maboroshi are argued to be one of its most loyal, if not the most loyal clan. Ever since it's creation they have always sent a steady stream of new students to the academy, and shinobi of the clan have often volunteered for some of the most dangerous missions.
The Maboroshi clan, has other interests however; which is only natural considering they were a clan before there was even an Amegakure. While like all clans, they valued protecting their own; the goal they truly placed their value upon was knowledge overall.
While many individuals might call them a clan of librarians jokingly, it is actually close to the truth. The Maboroshi, by and large, see themselves as scholars. While this viewpoint is usually restricted to the civilian portion of the clan, the shinobi often take this stance as well. It is actually because of the value the Maboroshi place on knowledge, that their clan emblem is a torch lighting the darkness.
Essentially, the Maboroshi see their emblem as being a light of reasoning and understanding in the darkness of the ignorance and superstition that shrouds the majority of the world. For all intents and purposes, they see themselves as a beacon of knowledge that others should seek out for answers.
== Clan History ==
While the Senju, Uchiha, Himishi or even the Yuki clans might be more famous around the world; the Maboroshi hold their own degree of fame and respect. While many in the world respect the Maboroshi for how long the clan has been around and the vast amount of knowledge they hold, the truth of the matter is that very few people realize just how old the Maboroshi really are.
While most educated people know that the Maboroshi have been around as long as the Uchiha and Senju, the reality of the Maboroshi is that they precede even the Rikkudo Sennin. Obviously they were not shinobi before the Rikkudo Sennin arrived, but the clan did exist before him and have managed to survive to this day.
While the Maboroshi have records of there clan having been around for at least two thousand years, there are fragments which suggest them to be even older than that. Many memoirs of clan members state their belief that the Maboroshi have existed as long as written language has existed, although it is unclear as to whether or not this is true.
What is true is that for at least the past two thousand years, the Maboroshi have gathered any and all information they have been able to get their hands on, preserving and protecting it with lethal force when necessary. For all intents and purposes, the Maboroshi could be called a clan of librarians or scholars much the same way the Rikkudo Sennin could be called a human; that, but so much more.
While the Maboroshi were originally spread out across the entirety of the world, as the age of warfare worsened they were forced to abandon the outposts they had set in other nations more and more often. Eventually they were reduced to a large caravan of roughly a thousand clan members.
It was during this time that the Maboroshi clan lost many of its oldest records, the oldest and therefore most easily damaged pieces of paper falling to ruin from weather and travel. As the Maboroshi lost some of their precious knowledge, they quickly realized they needed a new home. So, they studied hundreds of maps and eventually settled on a sparsely populated region.
This region was where the borders of today's Ishi no Kuni, Kaze no Kuni and Arashi no Kuni meet each other. This particular reason was chosen for a variety of reason: For one, the desert environment they actually used for their building site provided dry weather to prevent their many volumes of books & papers from getting moldy, the water sources in the nearby Arashi no Kuni ensured the clan members had adequate water for drinking and irrigation of crops and lastly, the stone quarries of Ishi no Kuni would provide stone for building their new home.
From there, hundreds of years passed as the Maboroshi built what was the most impressive human structure at the time, and could still be argued to be the most impressive even in modern days. Utilizing their vast knowledge of architecture, they created a massive compound in a valley between two large dunes. Furthermore, they cut the valley floor even further; going all the way to the bedrock enable them to have a solid building foundation as well as allowed them to cut rooms further down into the bedrock and eventually make aqueducts as well.
In the end the massive structure they created allowed them to house there entire collection of knowledge (which essentially encompassed the entirety of written works at that point) with ninety percent of the building still unfilled. The reason so much extra room had been made was fairly simple, the Maboroshi planned to live in the miniature city they had built until the end of times.
To protect their new building, the two dunes that had flanked their building site were flatted; the sand of the two dunes being moved to cover the building until only a single tower broke the surface (with there being hundreds of small air shafts and a dozen hidden passageways out) which could easily be defended by the clan members.
It was only a few years after completing their structure that the world seemed as if it would implode in on itself, leading to a legendary fruit to be eaten by Kaguya Otsutsuki in order to put an end to the warfare. While the Maboroshi were not aware, it was from one of their abandoned compounds that Otsutsuki found the story telling of the fruit. Unknowingly they had left behind the text that allowed her to find it. In this time the Maboroshi clan largely remained hidden away in their bunker of knowledge, only sending out warriors within the clan to bring back food and knowledge back to be recorded. 
The Maboroshi maintained this semi-isolationist policy for years to come, remaining hidden from the tyrannical ways of Kaguya Otsutsuki. While they may have been able to help in some way, their only priority then and to this day, was the preservation of their collected knowledge. It would not be until Otsutsuki's son, more commonly referred to as the Rikudo Sennin in some ancient histories came into his own power and beat Otsutsuki that the Maboroshi resurfaced to some degree.
While a large majority of the Maboroshi clan stayed in their compound, many of their warriors were ordered out to go learn the new techniques the Rikkudo was teaching his disciples. This was not only for the ability to protect themselves and better their lives as the Rikuddo stated, but also just for the sake or recording this new knowledge in their archives.
After the Rikkudo Sennin passed away, the Maboroshi broke away from his two sons who soon after began to fight amongst themselves. They were not interested in taking sides, they were only interested in understanding the world more. Whether that was through philosophy, mathematics or by studying the various types of jutsu did not matter. All they knew was that war would not help them to understand the world more.
Still, the Maboroshi were no fools either. They knew that while war would not help them to understand the world better, but they also knew that would not stop war from finding them. So, to this extent they would send some of their clan to live outside of their subterranean home believing that if the world saw some of them in the open, they would believe that was all that was left.
It was with this model that the clan continued on for hundreds of years, all the way up until the villages began to form. It was with this that the Maboroshi on the surface were asked to join Amegakure no Sato. Naturally, being so close to the lands of Kaze no Kuni, the Maboroshi clan felt that they should have some type of alliance to help protect their hidden home in the case that it was ever discovered; so they agreed and had the various Maboroshi clan members above ground join with the minor shinobi village. This in turn lending a rather prestigious name to Ame's cause which is argued to have brought some of the other clans to join.
Since joining Amegakure no Sato, the Maboroshi have maintained the secrecy of their true clan compound. At any one time there are roughly five hundred clan members within the great library, with one hundred of these being shinobi trained in secret by the clan for the sole purpose of protecting the clan's subterranean home. The additional four hundred serve as librarians, researchers, teachers, farmers (for the compounds underground greenhouses) and all the other minor jobs needed to keep their compound independent.
Any clan members born that tilt this balance too far are sent to live in the clan compound within Amegakure no Sato. It should be noted that the Maboroshi do bring in some individuals who marry into the clan to the compound, but it is extremely rare. More often it is usually the outsider's children who are brought into the compound in order to keep the bloodline diverse. Apart from these select few clan members, generally the only Maboroshi from the surface that are brought in would be the Head of the Clan should he dwell on the surface and occasionally clan members that have shown themselves to be truly dedicated will be brought to the compound as well.
== Clan Hierarchy ==
The clan has a very simple hierarchy, but it is also quite different from the hierarchy of many other clans through out the world. Like many other clans in the world, the Maboroshi have a single head of the clan. This head of the clan is responsible for making any major decisions on the clan's behalf.
These decisions range from stating the clan's official stance on a particular matter such as the clan's original decision to join Amegakure no Sato, to how the funds of the clan are used. While there are many other decisions the head of the clan may be responsible for, these are just a few examples.
The aspect of the Maboroshi clan's head that is different from many other clans in the world is how the clan leader is chosen. Where many clans choose their heads through raw power or might commonly have a hereditary position; the Maboroshi clan head is chosen for their wisdom or to be more precise for their experience.
Generally, the head of the clan is the oldest living member of the clan. In a situation where there are two clan members of the same age, the one with more combat experience, or since joining Amegakure with the higher rank is chosen. It is due to this that Maboroshi Masao is the current head of the Maboroshi clan as the oldest member of the clan. When Masao eventually passes away, the next oldest Maboroshi clan member with shinobi training will be chosen.
== Contract ==
=== Owl Summons ===
While the Maboroshi do not have any specialized techniques, they do hold a summoning contract with the powerful and wise owls. It was due to the mutual desire to acquire knowledge that led to the owls partnering with the Maboroshi. It should be noted that unlike most summons who maintain their own residence far away from the homes of humans, the owls have instead decided to live at the true Maboroshi compound hidden in the far south west of Arashi no Kuni where their own desert terrain lies. There are a variety of owls capable of being summoned, and many are quite old and extremely intelligent.
Category:Clans
Category:Amegakure Clans
Category:Arashi no Kuni