.Welcome.
Time to wake that inner monster of yours and introduce them to the new boogieman.
.Links.
.Switch.
.Population.
Sentinels
Exorcists
Unawares
Red Shirts
Dirtbags
Furballs
Whatwhats
Psychos
Brims
Spooks
|
1
0
2
2
1
2
0
2
1
0
|
.Cbox.
Please do not spam the cbox!
.Directories.
Affilate Us
| |
 Skinwalkers
| [Admin] KT |
|
Administrator
Group: Admin
Posts: 90
Member No.: 1
Joined: 30-October 11
|
There are three accepted groups of shapeshifters: skin walkers, werebeasts, and shifters. ( we are open to different types outside of these normals as well. These are just the 'big three' if you will.) Skinwalkers?They are the rarest form of shifters, yet they are also the oldest. These monsters are true illusions: beasts living coiled beneath a mask of human flesh. Where did they come from?Most wereanimals stories start the same way: someone pissed someone stronger off and got themselves cursed for being such a dickhead.
Really, this isn't too far from the truth when it comes to shape shifters. There are three known types of shifters, each started at a different time over the millennia by different demonic curses, but all very similar in nature in that they cause a physical change in the body of the human cursed.
It is unknown, but heavily speculated on, just what the first human did to get a curse put on him. The accepted story of skin walkers is that they are descendants of an accused hybrid from a pair of humans who were possessed by demons at the time of their conception.
This may or may not be true, but it is a fact that skin walkers are much more powerful than other shifters and often display very demonic qualities in their appearance and behavior. How do they shift shapes?To transform into their animal form, they have to literally tear off their own skin to free the beast within. They have to take care when removing their human flesh, as they will have to put it back on later, so they often pull it off like clothing.
The process is very painful. And quite messy.
The human skin in actually the magical part of them: when it is connected it is able to hold inside it a form that is dramatically different than its human shape, yet it does so effortlessly.
It is also able to heal itself after being torn away, doing so in response to the broken ends being touched together. Once fused the monster is effectively trapped back under the skin and there is absolutely no evidence -- no smell, action, or aura -- that would give away their masterful disguise.
The downside to the change is it takes time: it may be easy to tear away, but each piece has to be put back on and they have to wait for the ends to clot and fuse before they get to the next part. And, the removed skin has to be hidden so nothing disturbs it. Will a skinwalker be unable to return to its human body if a part of it's skin is stolen?A skinwalker can still return to a human form using what is left of its skin. However, the part that is missing will stay disproportionately beastly. They will be forced to find a way to keep the malady hidden from sight.
In rare cases, they can seek the help of their family if the missing part is too obvious. By scrapping together parts from family (who donate scraps of skin from places they can easily hide) they can create a puzzle pieced skin that will look heavily scared but will still be quite usable.
In extreme cases, a skinwalker may remove the exposed limb just so they don't have to deal with the hassle. Do not forget they are animals first: if a body part is in the way they'd just chew the damn thing off before they let themselves die for it. So...are they human also?The human part is, pun intended, only skin deep. Their thinking and behaviors is very beastly. They are frightening creatures underneath, often misleadingly huge once outside of their shell. What do these monsters look like without their human disguise?Often described as wolves, skin walkers are not necessarily a known animal. Each is different, but are often large bodied beasts that hulk like bears, have long toothy muzzles, and are drab in color. Are they born with their human flesh or animal?Both.
They are naturally animals, but when they are formed inside their mother their human 'shell' also grows around their animal body. It is as much a part of them as their animal flesh, and when they come into the world you could easily mistake them for any other little kid in a maternity ward.
Well, as long as you over look the yelping, snarling, and the fact that they are born with their eyes closed. That some times gives them away. When do they 'transform' for the first time?A skinwalker can transform from the second it is born. All it takes is a well placed scratch and a baby skinwalker can easily peel off their own thin flesh by accident. Children are so irresponsible sometimes!
Luckily, it hurts like hades to take off your skin. So after they do it once or twice (some are harder headed than others), they stop hurting themselves needlessly. Can a skinwalker wear any skin? Human's or another shape-shifter's?No, and yes. A skinwalker cannot murder a human, skin them, and wear them like a new leather jacket and convince the world they are that person. The human skin does not have the innate ability to keep their animal form smashed inside of it. It would probably rip to shreds under the pressure.
They also cannot put on the skin of a were beast or a shifter, for the same reasons. They may all be shapechangers, but their magical abilities are quite different.
A skinwalker can, however, put on the skin of another Walker. These kind of 'switches' usually occur between family members. A mother may pass her skin on to her daughter, for example. Their genetic similarity makes it easy for their bodies to adapt to how their flesh works.
Unrelated Walkers can switch skin, but the lack of a bloodbond often results in a rejection of the skin after prolonged use. As a result, most skinwalkers will avoid putting themselves in danger of being ill by avoiding the wearing of skin that doesn't belong to their family.
Putting on a skin that isn't your is the highest form of taboo in skinwalker society. Why is it taboo?Legend once told of a skinwalker named Naveen that would steal the skins of his descendents every hundred years and switch them out for his own use. As a result of his heinous ways this skinwalker lived a thousand years, gained a name for himself as a god among those that slithered in the darkest of the shadows, and reign terror against the world by controlling political figure heads and killing innocent children and driving off livestock so entire villages would starve.
Just for the hell of it.
Normally, such a beast would be a hero in the eyes of skinwalkers. But the heart of the story that makes them quiver was the thought of having their skins stolen from their grasps. There is absolutely no proof that a skinwalker could live a thousand+ years just by taking refreshed skins every millennium. And no skinwalker today would attempt turning against their family members to even try such an atrocity....they are raised purposely to respect their fragile blood relationships.
To a skinwalker, Naveen is their boogieman.
(Ahem* we do welcome character creations with evil twists, however, than be feed off their legend. As far as we know you ain't immortal; we just won't ask your true age. lol.). What do skinwalkers eat?Children. And puppies. Yeah. Children and puppies mostly.
Seriously, they don't have a specialized diet. They can eat a grease burger with fries as easily as they can put down a Cesar salad. They are also not adverse to going out and hunting down prey with their own claws: deer liver is always in season. Most will swallow it rare, some will stop to cook it before they dine.
Their only feeding quirk is that they like to eat in extreme excess: unlike werebeasts that seem to ALWAYS be eating, a skinwalker will eat an entire thanksgiving dinner every single time they sit down to eat.
As a result of this extreme binging, it is not unheard of for a skinwalker to go two or three days without eating anything at all. They build up their reserves, get their work done, and then go back and recharge after their work is handled. Can they breed?Skinwalker traits are hard to come by. There has been no formal study on why it is so rare, as no skinwalker will submit to a trial. Case studying suggests that the skinwalker abilities may be sex linked on their X-chromosomes.
This means only females can pass on the skinwalker gene.
A male born to a full bloodied skinwalker mother has a fifty percent chance of being a skinwalker, and a fifty percent chance of being completely human.
This then means that females born to a full blooded skinwalker mother have a fifty percent chance of being born a skinwalker, and the other fifty percent chance is that they will be a human but will carry the gene unexpressed in them to create (male) skinwalker children of their own.
Male skinwalkers cannot produce skinwalker children. If they marry a human, all their children will be born human. If he wants to carry on his skinwalker ways he will have to marry another skinwalker (and produce all skinwalker children). Do skinwalkers have magical powers?Jeeze, ripping their bloody flesh off and exposing a monstrous beast hidden underneath isn't enough to make them the most badass animals on the forum?
No. Skinwalkers do not have special powers. But don't let that fool you; they could snap a powerful magic throwing demon in half without breaking a sweat. They don't need no stinking powers to be the scariest driving force in the neighborhood. Do skinwalkers have a society of their own?Skinwalkers do not have a secret society or order that keeps their species together. They do have strong family bonds, however; which makes perfect sense considering it is probably hard to come by another person who understands and can help you when you have to rip your very skin off your body. A good support group never hurts in that kind of situation.
These family bonds are often looked at like a pack, just without an intense infighting and need to dominate to prove themselves. The parents are clearly the head of their 'pack' and the children move up the line just like any normal family.
This doesn't mean some families aren't prone to dishing out their own rural justice against their own. They have their own honor codes and rules, and they will enforce their own laws within the family.
In a way, the 'family' is almost yakuza/mafia, just in a little bit more 'we really are all related by blood' kind of way. And we all know the hardest people to put hits out on are our own kin.
Well, sometimes it can be. How long do skinwalkers live?The oldest skinwalker ever was recorded at about three hundred (300) years of age. They are not immortal, they just age reeeeeallly slowly.
To simplify things, we like to think that they age one year for every three that normal humans do. So...say your character is ninety (90) years old; they'd look like they were thirty (30). Give or take, of course. This is not an exact science. Just like people they all age differently, so it is not abnormal for a ninety (90) year old to look like they are twenty-four (24). It happens. We can't all age gracefully.
So, to figure out your age appearance; determine how old your skinwalker is and divide by three. That will give you a base to build from. ....Silver ? Element of Death?The idea that werewolves and other shape changing beasts can be fatally harmed by silver seems to be as common as ants at picnics; they appear to make sense on the surface, but you never really see either one pan out in the end.
For silver, the element and substance itself, to react negatively with a shifter it would have to have a substantial amount of sulfur in its body; thatfs what silver reacts against.
This would also mean that all beasts funk of BO 24/7, which would make them stand out in a dinning hall like a wart on a nose. And while were animals can be silent but deadly, we do hope it is in another sense of this phrase.
But having a weakness, even while implausible, can be entertaining. So we like to think shifters just have an allergic intolerance to things made of silver. After all, even normal humans can be allergic to silver (the writer of this article being one of them!) .
Skinwalkers, being a bit more fire and brimstone in their sulfuric souls, may go into anaphylactic shock after contact which can ultimately lead to death: so we recommend they stay clear of the shiny stuff. What exactly can kill them?Pretty much anything that can kill a human or regular animal can take out a skinwalker: it just takes a lot more work on the part of the killer to get the job done since skinwalkers do not go down like punks. With all legs but one ripped off, they will find a way to bounce over to you like Monty python's black knight and will spit blood in your eyes if that is the only thing they can find the strength to do.
It is not recommended for anyone to even try and kill a skinwalker. You will probably fail horribly and be in their lower GI tract hours before you know what hit you. Plus, if you do actually kill one all the other skinwalkers in the area will see you as a threat...and skinwalkers don't respond to danger by moving to safer ground. They will cross the road and rip your heart out in front of their grandchildren without a second thought if they assumed you could somehow endanger their lives.
Maybe they were wrong and you just wanted to kill that one Walker. Their mistake. But, hey...better safe than sorry, right?
Most skinwalkers are either killed by sentinels....or die of natural causes after long, hearty, terrifying lives. When they die, what happens to their bodies?When a Skinwalker dies, they often self cremate their flesh and revert to a bone like state. If they are in human form, the skin melts away from their dead form over the course of a few weeks until only the bones are left. The bones, by the way, are always their beast form bones.
To protect their secrets, Skinwalkers will scatter the remains of any Walker they come across. No need to have nosy human asking about some freaky bear bones they found in the woods that one day….*ahem* Considering they have demon souls does this mean an exorcist can 'control' them?Skinwalkers do not have demon 'souls'....I don't think even real demons have those. The 'legend' of their creation suggests that a lot of really heavy and dark energy was used by two obviously bored and lonely demons to create the first skinwalkers.
Their souls are all their own. A few even attend church happily every week and are quite assured that their going to their promise land after everything ends.
That being said: Yeah. Exorcists can really mess up a skinwalker's afternoon.
The demonic energy that created their skin peeling ability still inhabits their human flesh. Surprisingly, the animal within is uniquely their own monster. It is the HUMAN SKIN part that is the source of their demonic power. It is in the skin that all the magic happens.
And exorcists were born knowing how to make anything demonic dance to their tune. To the horror of skinwalkers, and the glee of many exorcists strong enough to force their hand, they can be controlled by exorcists.
The horror of this is that, unlike a demon whose entire purpose is overwritten during its control and practically looses its will to resist so that it performs its task readily, a skinwalker will remain aware that it is being made to do things against its own will.
They do not enjoy the feeling of not being in control. And it is terrifying for them to think that they may be forced to harm people they consider their friends and family. Their skin, trapping their conscious monster beneath, will do whatever the exorcists wants them to do.
If they can get their skin off, they can break loose of the spell. The problem is they just have no way to get it off without help: they cannot free themselves if their body is not under their own control. Another skinwalker may want to help, but few will put their own life at risk in such a dangerous way. And...well, no one else really likes skinwalkers enough to try and help them out at such a time. They are such scary beasts they don't make many friends outside of their own species.
An exorcist controlled skinwalker is practically doomed.
After they are used: the skinwalker will almost always die. This is not because the control was too much for them to comprehend: it is because the second they are freed they are way too dangerous for the exorcist. The skinwalker will spend every waking moment after its possession hunting down and slowly destroying the very exorcist that DARED do that to them.
For this reason: the last order an exorcist will give their skinwaker tool is that it kill itself. It not, the released skinwalker is going to rip their little fleshy body apart the moment it is released.
Once the exorcist is killed, the skinwalker has always killed themselves. Perhaps what they were forced to do was too horrible, or their pride was too badly destroyed. Either way: a possessed skinwalker is nothing more than a dead animal walking. Knowing this, why would an Exorcist bother taking control of a Skinwalker? Isn't it too dangerous?The biggest and baddest way to prove you are the top of the exorcist food chain is to take control of one of the scariest monsters on the map. It makes for great bragging rights if you can actually do it and get away with it.
Dumb ( young ) exorcists often try and take control of skinwalkers in an attempt to prove their worth.
But don't be too upset. Skinwalker children often play a game called "Run and Skin the Exorcist", a funny little get together that youngsters play that boasts a very cops-and-robbers feel mixed with a good round of hide-and-seek. And it always humorously ends with them scenting out the homes of exorcists, inviting their kids out to play one day, and killing them in bloody masses.
Did you forget that skinwalkers are some scary motherF-ers?! Stop doing that.
Skinwalkers, even young ones, are thoughtful and patient hunters. They learn early exorcists are dangerous, and a skinwalker does not know when to back down. It probably isn't far fetched to think their own parents taught them such games: take out the exorcist while it is too young to see you as a threat so you are safe later.
Makes perfect sense, right? There is an old saying that you know a skinwalker is near you if you see a black coyote run across your path. Is this true?That is an old American Indian superstition and we find it amusingly freaky. Can my character be born human but turn into a skinwalker?Nope. You gotta be born with the madness. This curse ain't contagious.
You should really feel blessed that it isn't. |
|
|
1 User(s) are reading this topic (1 Guests and 0 Anonymous Users)
0 Members:
Track this topic
Receive email notification when a reply has been made to this topic and you are not active on the board.
Subscribe to this forum
Receive email notification when a new topic is posted in this forum and you are not active on the board.
Download / Print this Topic
Download this topic in different formats or view a printer friendly version.
|
