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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jian" data-source="post: 9801305" data-attributes="member: 78087">Another favourite of mine is that East Asian creature who really needs a definitive D&D adaptation, the nine-tailed fox (gumiho in Korea, kitsune in Japan, huli jing in China).The folklore surrounding these creatures is quite variable. To take the Korean version (gumiho literally means “nine tail fox” in Korean) they are generally normal foxes who have obtained sapience and the ability to enter the wheel of reincarnation by centuries of meditation and qi cultivation (a common enough origin for folkloric shapeshifters in Korean myth - rats, bears, tigers and other animals can achieve sapience and magical power this way). This process also gives them magical powers (often contained in a pearl they keep in their mouths) and nine tails. Some are essential benign but hunted by magicians for their pearls; others, possibly because of some sort of qi imbalance through their cultivation, are savage monsters who hunt humans and eat their livers. Gumiho are very common in Korean dramas (My Girlfriend is a Gumiho, My Roommate is a Gumiho, etc.).The Japanese version is a bit more ambiguous - they don’t have to have originated as normal foxes, they don’t have to have pearls, they can have any number of tails (nine indicates great age and power, though) and they’re more likely to be generic supernatural spirits, more like vampires or fae. Huli jing are also more variable; the most famous version is an evil spirit sent by Heaven to seduce a king in Investiture of the Gods.D&D has some versions of the gumiho - the werefox, the foxwere, and the foxwoman (note that gumiho can be of any gender) in various editions come close.</blockquote>

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