Sharilar

Sharilar is a kitsune of great potential power, should she be able to bring it to full fruition. With her very essence bound to the dark tapestry of space itself, her sense of self nearly torn apart and only pulled back together by sheer force of will, she is slowly transforming into something more; a cosmic eldritch being, much like the Great Old Ones that the cultists had once tried to summon in the ritual that had changed her very nature. Gradually, her mortality is being replaced as her magical power grows, and though she knows what is happening, she also refuses to give up or give in and lose herself to the darkness of the void. Hope was the one thing that allowed herself to remain herself when the slow transformation first started, and even if she herself has no hope for her own final fate, she has promised herself that she will become that final hope for everyone else. She will be the light in the abyss, the glimmer in the dark when all else fails. It is that which strengthens her resolve as she deals with ancient ruins, insane cultists, and hidden magics, using her remaining time on the mortal plane to make a difference.

Sharilar was born to kitsune parents who had found a place with human caravaners after escaping their homeland for reasons she never found out. With her white fur and hair however, she had all the signs of becoming a kitsune oracle, though her parents kept this hidden from her for many years. When she first turned thirteen however, they explained what her unique coloration met, and introduced her properly to the Harrow decks to focus her abilities. She had played with them as nothing but cards before with the other children of the caravan, but had not known of their actual fortune-telling potential before then, thinking her mother's fortune-reading was merely an act, like many of the other caravaners' performances when they would roll into a new town. She ultimately proved a quick study under her mother's tutelage, and started to do the readings for their customers instead.

Her 18th birthday, however, was when everything changed. She happened to imbibe a bit too deeply of certain spirits during the celebrations, and was talked by one of the locals into spending some private time with him. What she did not know however was that he was secretly the leader of a band of cultists who worshiped one of the deities in the Great Beyond - she never did learn which one. After leading her to his "room" she passed out, only to awake hours later and find herself tied up in the farm fields at the center of some massive ritual. Everything after that is a vague blur - chanting and cries to the heavens, a tearing within herself, cried of fear and alarm, and a vast, endless void before her. She could feel herself literally being torn apart, as if many beings at once were playing tug of war with her very soul, and with all her willpower she simply declared "No. More." Suddenly, the tension released like a rubber band, and she felt as if she was falling, deeper and deeper into that abyss, an unending well of black, filled with stars... and she passed out once more.

When she came to, she found that the caravaners had come looking for her when she didn't return after her little tryst, and found the ritual site. While the cultist leader wasn't present any longer at that time, the ground around her had been littered with the dead and the broken, as if a great beast had torn them apart, then painted a star with their blood. Carefully making their way through or around the former cultists, they cut her free and brought her back to the wagons, but she would not wake. For the next three days she had lain unconscious, muttering words in an unfamiliar language, before she had finally awoken. It was then they brought her a mirror, and explained they had only known it was her because of her clothing and build, as her fur and hair had turned from the pure white of the moon, to black as the darkest night. Not only that, but she now had two tails, a thing only thought to happen to her kind in legends. Only her eyes remained the same, though even they showed signs of her new power, glowing slightly in the candlelight. She nearly threw away the mirror in that moment, but her father caught her hand and reassured her that she was still his daughter.

It took weeks before she was mentally fully recovered from her ordeal. Her connection to the heavens that she had relied on for her fortunetelling was gone, or perhaps more accurately, changed. Rather than a slight comforting warmth, the cold endless void now yawned before her whenever she tried to re-open her mind. She could sense things out there, just beyond her perception. It was during one of those attempts to reach out that she accidentally discovered her power over others minds; whether to dominate them in whole or in part, or to grant them a brief glimpse of the endless void, as she later found out once when she responded in anger to a criminal who had tried to make off with part of the caravan's supplies.

Strangely, her fortune-telling became even more accurate, if anything. After her second discovery though, she felt it prudent to leave on her own, and try to learn more about what she had become, and ultimately what she was becoming, as she could still feel the well of power within her growing each time she tapped into the magic of that dark abyss between the worlds. While she could hide the extra tail, or simply assume her human guise that was the birthright of all kitsune, if the legends were true that second tail would be joined by a third, then a fourth, until she reached the peak of her power with the ninth. She couldn't not use her magic either... she had tried avoid all contact with anything mystical for about a week before the whispers began, and strange accidents started to happen. Better that she control whatever was happening, than whatever else that had tried to reach out through her. And in the meantime, perhaps she could ensure that what happened to her would not ever happen again...

Suit of Tails - Sharilar's Journey

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Sharilar had her start in 2014-2015 under a different name, Naiya. At the time, I had a regular TTRPG group in a local game store, and I teased the GM with the idea of a kitsune fortuneteller. Looking into my options in Pathfinder on how to work in the Harrow(PF's version of Tarot) I came across the Oracle class, and that it had as one of its options the Dark tapestry, aka space and eldritch beings as a power source. I was also a fan of playing around with Lovecraftian things in unexpected ways thanks to Demonbane, an playing a worgen Shadow Priest in World of Warcraft, which felt similar in concept. Then I also came across mention of ktisune oracles typically having white fur as a sign of their destiny, suggesting it to be an actual thing, and her backstory practically wrote itself. (I also cribbed a bit from Kamen Rider Wizard, who had a similar backstory to what I envisioned for her.)

At first I didn't get to play her until I joined in a later campaign, as our original group broke up and a few of us put together a new one at one of the player's houses. I joined in partway through, near the end, and to put it succinctly, all the old gods had died and our charaters were to bind with special dragons and ascend to replace them. We got close to doing this, but after the penultimate session it was placed on hold while a remote player was moving in locally, and it never resumed due to relationship issues between a couple of our players - but this is where the idea of her ascending to become a Great Old One herself first started.

By the time another suitable campaign had started, I had settled on her current name of Sharilar. It was one I had used multiple times for vixen characters in the past, and it just felt right this time for this multi-tailed vixen to finally claim it permanently. This campaign was using the Rise of the Rune Lords rules, and originally I was running a different character - effectively a Maximal alchemist using a homebrewed race from Pathfinder's rules on how to create races. The GM then decided to add in the recently released Mythic rules, which were Pathfinder's equivalent of D&D's epic level rules, but overlaid on top of normal leveling, instead of adding on after, and I looked through the options to decide what to do. As soon as I saw one of the mythic path options was ascension to godhood, I realized this would finally be the chance to make up for that previously unfinished campaign and give Sharilar the ending she truly deserved. (And to be fair, I had been getting bored of my Maximal character anyways.) So I brought her in and retired my previous character, and we continued onward. Since there were 10 ranks, it lined up perfectly to have her gain a tail at each new mythic rank, as she slowly lost her mortality and became more and more something Other. This culminated in her ascension as we beat the final boss, becoming an eldritch goddess of hope and forbidden knowledge.

With her story finally complete, in my eyes at least, I haven't done a lot with her since, though that may change in the future. More to come, you could say!