The Yokai

The Yokai is a Kitsune goddess that predates the Haitoyuki Empire and by proxy the sister goddesses that forged it.

She was unknown to most of the region before the unification wars began, at which point worship of her blazed across the burgeoning empire as a patron goddess of those disturbed, and depressed by the war. Most of whom were Yokai survivors, hounded by the guilt of left behind family members and the trauma that discriminating tribes had inflicted onto them, as well as the pressure of accumulating to a new, shared cultural environment.

While the Daimyo and Shogun tended to the physical safety of these survivors, the Yokai and her clergy tended to their spirits with comedies, theater plays, gambling, drinking and any number of other methods to lighten the load of unification's weight. Some of her followers also taught both orphaned youths, and disenfranchised adults how to survive the streets and pilfer those that had managed to remain wealthy and stable in the face of war-time chaos.

While her rise was meteoric, it slowed as an empire came to be from the rubble of the Shogan and Daimyo's conquests, with most of the poor and destitute rising into the middle-class, while some of those that didn't turned to more conventional methods of support than thievery and gambling. Yet even so, the Yokai remained in a position of great fame; respected by the middle-class as a god of childish but pleasant humor, by the youth as a goddess of play and fun, and by the ambitious underbelly of society as a goddess of opportunity and activity.

In-truth the goddess IS more than happy to offer threads of opportunity to all, as she is eager to see and laugh at what occurs with those chances, even, and perhaps especially, if a follower uses it to tie a noose around their neck. She is casually worshipped by most of the peoples in the Haitoyuki Empire, but has few dedicated priests and clergymen as a consequence of competing with two other deities that are state-sponsored.

What she lacks in dedication, she makes up for with the fact that even those dedicated to worshipping one of the Sisters often pray to her as a household deity. This dynamic is flipped for her most dedicated worshippers, Kitsune and Cat-Folk, who were the first to bring her to the empire and hold onto her as a link to their untamed roots. Few Oni or Kami pay attention to her, as they are dedicated to the Daimyo and Shogun respectively.

Her most common form is that of a Kitsune or Fox, of varying characteristics which are sometimes unusual or impossible for the form she has taken. As a trickster goddess however, these forms are more often than not abstract rather than fully corporeal.

## Home

The Yokai prefers to avoid staying at one place for too long and the entrance to her realm seems to agree. It changes location every day though it always remains somewhere deep inside the Feywild, where the Yokai enjoys the company of numerous fae. Some of which opt to reside in her realm as subjects and worshippers.

When she decides to meet a deity, she often initiates a conversation with them through a messenger, or asks for access to their realm to talk. On particularly important occasions, such as parties or feasts, she invites friends and acquaintances of divine and mundane nature alike to a section of the Feywild that she has carved limited sovereignty over.

## Clergy

The Yokai’s followers do not tend to harness her divine magic, and neither does she show any particular attention to those that do so. Her divine favor is not earned by commitment and offering, though they do help, but through enacting grand plans that cause chaos which either fail spectacularly or succeed in unforeseen ways. She lacks stereotypical holy sites, with rural shrines being the closest to the common image that pops up when one thinks of a building central to a god’s faith. It is prefered for her worshippers to claim thieves' dens, inns, destitute buildings, theaters and other structures that concentrate the poor, ambitious, or foolish as a holy site, with the more populous ones being sanctified by a cleric or divine caster of hers.

Said followers take work proper to those buildings, with the seedier members rarely becoming a large drain on the local economy as an order of any sort is antithetical to the Goddess’s goals.  It is instead preferred to put pressure on the local government, poke holes in its systems both physical and not, mock its moral standards and engage in a sort of play with it that resembles a cat and mouse game where the mouse’s side deliberately avoids ambushing the cat side for the sake of a more exciting game. Settlements dominated by her faith are unstable, constantly on the edge of social upheaval on one side or the other, and have few moments of tranquility, but nonetheless maintain a surprising amount of productivity as anonymous donation to its infrastructure and institutions tend to flow in after a big event concludes in amazing displays of collateral damage.

She dislikes mindless murder, especially on bystanders, but enjoys murder performed with a good punchline or ironic strength to it. Larger criminal cults with powerful divine casters tend to revive pronounced investigators, office constables, and other agents that have hounded or brought the cult close to its knees if a member intentionally or accidentally kills them, free of charge. Smaller criminal cults avoid killing in-general unless pressed or thought to be particularly fitting. In either case, criminal cults of the Yokai do not enjoy others interrupting or stealing the thunder of their plans, often threatening or outright attacking other criminal elements that are competing against them.

They have been known to remove evidence incriminating one gang, only to add hints of their involvement, and there have been occasions of Cults reviving a favorite local law officers of theirs after said officer had been killed by a rival gang member, before pushing said gang out of the settlement.

Less resource-heavy cults instead perform minor pranks,  with small flamboyant heists and the occasional vandalization being their biggest events for the year.

Their much more wholesome counterparts, recognized as under the derogatory "light" cults  by their criminal counterparts; are the large gatherings of dedicated Yokai worshippers who turn a side eye to the criminal element's actions, instead performing in plays, and dances recited down the generations that have spurned off into so many versions that a popular folk competition is to name as many recognised variants of a single story as possible. A few fake versions of that story are added in that, while not mentioned in the rules, are culturally known by most Yokai. Organized events that support the community are performed on a monthly, or bi-monthly basis by these cults and conflict between them and "hard" cults occurs occasionally though escalation to violence is very rare.

## Divine Relationships/Providence

The Yokai is considered a thorn to the sides of both the sister goddesses of the empire. While neither she nor her followers go out of their way to mess with their plans, as the most worshipped deities of the Haitoyuki empire who both embody lawful nature it is natural that conflict occurs on a daily basis. Personally the goddess enjoys engaging in ploys that frustrate the two, especially when it involves accentuating their mistakes whether personal or those made by their empire. Though it isn’t reciprocated, the Yokai enjoy their company greatly and have practically no fear of repercussions from either, only not pushing on their nerves too hard for the sake of ensuring they don’t completely sever communications with her.  The Shogun and Daimyo themselves have complicated feelings on the matter, with the Shogun believing the Yokai's criminal cults to be dangerous but not any more dangerous than mundane criminal elements who pray to much less ambigiously malicious dieties

The Daimyo suffers the actions of criminal cults for the sake of addressing threats of more imminent danger, such as Protean and Demonic cults. How she will act towards the Yokai and her faith if ever said threats are minimized is unknown as of yet. But it is not hard to imagine the Daimyo spending her attention towards whatever chaotic influence is left in her empire.

Of outsider deities the Yokai cares little for, but she has begun to foster a friendship with The Reveler that is mirrored in the limited contact the two cults have had.