Morimin

*"They are rowdy like children, impulsive like teenagers and swear like adults but are wiser than any elder."*

**Morimin** (森民, Forest People) also commonly known as Beastfolk, Demi-Humans, Strays, and other such derogatory terms are a common yet often misunderstood race in the world of Fusō.

They are a people plagued with a curse of Zoomorphism but through ingenuity they have managed to make the best of it and generally try to look as normal as possible, but since it's impossible to remove the full "beastialization" effect from the curse they tend to look like people with a few extra animal parts tacked on.

## ***Overview***

The Morimin are defined by the **Crescent Curse** an ancient primeval curse cast on their kind in times immemorial by Duck, this curse primarily causes the Morimin to be born possessing a bestial appearance with the exact nature of this appearance shift varying from individual to individual, but the other aspects of the curse define a majority of their culture.

## ***Culture***

The culture of the Morimin is fundamentally shaped by the properties of the Crescent Curse, most obviously by the fact that the curse gives the Morimin an infant mortality rate much higher than that of other races and as such female Morimin end up being extremely active at child bearing as a necessity to keep their race and culture alive.

The morimin that do manage to survive the "filter" of childhood luckily then tend to be physically stronger than most races either as a result of an accidental beneficial effect from the curse or because they've managed to grasp **Kara** in time to keep the curse at bay or even shape it into a benefit for them. Because of this duality of high child mortality but extremely durable children that do survive the morimin ended up developing a culture philosophy that boils down to "live as if you'll die tomorrow."

This underlying philosophy that life is fleeting and short so it must be lived fully is what leads to a lot of the misunderstandings that other races have of the Morimin, which consider them to be as animal like as their appearances because they will so willingly reveal their emotions, engage in combat, put themselves in danger and do things without hesitation like they're unaware of the very existence of danger or embarrassment. The morimin of course are only this "reckless" because they see life very differently and know that they can take more of a beating than a majority of the other races and that every second wasted doubting themselves is a second wasted living one's life.

Because the very lives of the morimin are so linked to the moon, especially the full moon, their society seems to run on a different schedule than most, while not outright nocturnal the morimin tend to live "6 hours" ahead of most races, spending a considerable part of their time awake at night so as to teach the young ones Kara. The morimin also hold the night of the full moon as the most sacred day and so will always have an "holiday" during that day so that they can have the free time and resources to keep the curse at bay or even make it beneficial to them. During these holidays Morimin will often experiment with changing their appearances.

As a result of the morimin's mild shape-shifting ability during the full moon their "fashion" is incredibly different from other races, in that the morimin will put little focus on the clothing one wears and much more so on their animal mutation shaped by Kara, with certain trends such as small ears, big ears, claws and etc coming in and out of fashion in predictable cycles. With all this said the Morimin do not actually consider one's appearance to be an important part of them as a person since the curse and Kara makes it easy for them to reinvent themselves every couple of days.

## ***Perception & Relationships With Other Races***

The Morimin are often misunderstood as a race of barbarians, sluts, troublemakers and above all lazy people who only love to party. While this view may apply to a lot of the worst of the Morimin a lot of these stereotypes are actually a misunderstanding of the unique culture of the Morimin and how it evolved as a result of the Crescent Curse.

Similarly the Morimin do not actually tend to have a favorable view of other races, because their views tend to clash strongly with their philosophy of "live as if you'll die tomorrow". They particularly seem unable to understand humans who will judge everyone based on their appearance and will spend generations toiling away to build things for no reason other than to brag about having a pretty thing. While Morimin have settlements, political structures and family structures they tend to be very loose and not super in depth due to mostly consisting of collections of close hamlets, which makes cities extremely confusing for the morimin. They do however appreciate the fact that cities work 24/7 and have red light districts.

## ***Racial Abilities***

### **Crescent Curse and Kara**

The **Crescent Curse** is the result of a powerful **Void Ki Style** (空気流, Kūkiryu) cursing technique which is sustained by the yang ki that Morimin produce naturally and the yin ki of the moon, this means that every night the Crescent Curse intensifies in strength warping the Morimin ever so slightly in Lovecraftian manners, the strength of the curse is exacerbated during the full moon. Morimin which lack the knowledge of how to counteract the curse rarely live longer than 6 years before the curse deforms them into a state of certain death since as a physical creature Morimin have to obey the laws of biology.

Luckily for the Morimin the curse is not immune to alteration to it, unlike most curses the Crescent Curse is intertwined with the biology of the Morimin to such an extent that by utilizing Water Style Ki under the light of the full moon it seems that a Morimin is capable of not only counteracting the effect of the curse and slow it down tremendously but also make it beneficial to the Morimin in question. Morimin call this process **Kara** (殻 Shell/Husk), and it is a simple Water Style Ki technique that every Morimin knows culturally which allows them to manipulate the curse for their benefit.

Notably while Kara often grants the Morimin in question a **considerable** baseline passive benefit to their stats and senses in comparison to other races, because of the nature of the Crescent Curse and how it must be kept at bay **no** Morimin is able to use or be born with void style ki techniques. Luckily then, the amount of ki a Morimin is required to sustain the curse provides them a statistical benefit greater than them simply using that ki to perform Water Ki Style techniques, meaning that Morimin are disproportionately "better" at water style ki as a result of their curse provided they've performed Kara properly.

### **Individual Speciation**

While the effect of the curse is standardized across the entire race, the actual type of mutation that occurs is linked to the environment the Morimin is born in, what this mean is that the "animal half" of the morimin will coincide with some animal which inhabits the general area around a morimin's place of birth.

While it might appear at first glance that the Curse picks mammals and birds as the base a majority of the time the curse doesn't actually have any preference for the type of creature it picks, the half-reptiles, half-fishes and half-insects are simply too incompatible biology wise and often die too young causing this misunderstanding.

## ***Trivia***

* The image for the infobox is fanart from the game Arknights.