Story of the Islands origin
The Fall of Inali
Born to a secluded valley, heavily forested so the only ways to leave and enter were through caves that only the villagers of the valley knew how to navigate by heart, where Familiars and Soquili are bonded as blood brothers and sisters at puberty, Inali the soquili and Isa the bobcat, their bond as spirit twins marking them as meant as a blessing for the tribe, were both brilliant shamans, and gifted with the subtle and instinctive skill of such acute observation and understanding of patterns that it seemed they could predict the future.
Unfortunately for them, however, no one can truly and purely predict the future.
One morning as they ventured from the cave to find a quiet place to meditate, the pair were ambushed by an invading herd, who wished to enter the valley and take it for their own, but could not find their way through the dangerous caves. The two were penned and, to keep him from escaping and to torture him to give up the directions or scare Isa into doing so, Inali was pinned down and his beautiful wings were tied tight with ropes until they burned for oxygen, then slowly cut into stumps, and burnt to stop the bleeding.
And yet, through it all, Inali and Isa stayed strong, Inali begging Isa to not tell, and Isa keeping his jaws clamped as tight as his eyes, not watching... But not speaking, either. After weeks of torment, the intruders then separated the pair by just a gate, and dosed Inali with corpse powder. They'd toss him a different familiar if Isa would speak.
Isa refused, and gave up his life to join his brother permanently as a single being. A skinwalker.
Planned to be set into the caves in the morning,as cursed walkers frequently go after familiar individuals for prey early on, an act that would harm the village and demoralize them at the same time, the invaders left them penned as they slumbered, with just a single guard.
A mistake that proved fatal as the skinwalker escaped, silently the invaders one by one in their sleep before venturing into the caves.
For home. His Territory.
However his hunt was cut short as his village found him early on, binding him once more in ropes and put into a pit used to trap herds of wild boars turned into a pen, horrified at what had happened, but unwilling to kill him for what he had been. They had to find help.
And so, they seek out a young domained angeni,still getting settled into the world of Kawani from having been a domained spirit just five years prior, a single stallion that lived to the southwest of their valley in the foothills circled by mountains.
A stallion by the name of Cuauhcoatl. After all -- who better to find a cure to their shaman's curse than The Angeni of Learning?
Rise of a reluctant HeroBeing Mortal is hard.
You actually have to sleep. You had to bathe. You have to eat and drink to live rather than just for fun. And then, as an unpleasant end to it, you had to get
rid of what you ate and drank. And being a Spirit turned mortal, people who understand what being a domained angeni means expect miracles from you.
Cuauhcoatl had just been given a doozy of a miracle to make, and was too ashamed, and too moved by how heartfelt the village's plea was to save this one damned soul, and too
Proud of the reputation he was starting to gain to say that he wouldn't do it.
However, There was known cure for being Cursed, so there was nothing for him to learn. And now he had a Bobcat walker with a feral form in a small cage he had to cart around as a ticking time bomb ready to go off at any moment. Looking at the walker, the shaman hissed at swore obscenities at him, cramped in his cage.
It was inhumane He had to do
something to improve his life while waiting for a cure. But he couldn't just Let him go: he knew how to get back to the village, and even if he got lost, Cuauhcoatl would lose him, and he'd go about killing people.
And so his plan was hatched.
Finding an island with an aquatic herd willing to sell this one island from their many favored grazing grounds, he dug a pit, reinforced the sides and made it so he couldn't jump out, and released Inali into it so he could stretch his legs.
It was a start. The cage was Still too small, and a tree could fall during a storm so he could climb out, or it could flood and drown him. Guilt niggled away at the Angeni, and so he continued planning.
---------
Half a year passed, and wall was built around a couple acres around the pit. Trees removed to make it, with smooth sides and nails pointing downward and in, making it impossible to climb. It'd make a good work area, and he could funnel the skinwalker back toward the pit.. Not the best though --- there was so much food in the form of Feral minded animals on the island, but if he was to leave the Island, Inali would starve.
And.. It broke Cuauhcoatl's heart seeing how much pain he had to put him through, testing different ways to heal him of his curse. He needed more subjects so he could space out the experiments without driving them deeper into insanity.
He was going to need more trees than this island had. And he was going to need help.
------
Three years later, with some hired help and wood from the jungle and familiars coming to help him build the structure, it was complete. The entire island was ringed with a Wall around it's jungle, with a special gate that let the river on the island flow through it but did not allow any soquili to get through it. It was an immense task, and took a good chunk of his collection. But he had closed the island off. He could release Inali into its heart and he could fend for himself.
And he could now try to save
more cursedwalkers.
A shameful secretA couple years after he finished the walls of the island, Cuauhcoatl fell in love with an Usdia mare by the name of Ikinya, started a family, formed a herd.
But he can't bring himself to reveal his dirty little secret Some may find it Noble, but to him it fills him with great shame and is one of his greatest failings.
Inali is Still cursed, his personality twisted and evil. And others have joined him on the island. And A few times a year, Cuauhcoatl experiments on them with new ideas he's thought up, desperate to find a cure. But he can't let his family find out about Cursedwalker island.
And he can't let anyone from Cursedwalker island find out about his family...
At least, not until he can find a cure.
