The Seishi's World

Okay, seeing as how in my previous sixteen tries to upload all the websites, I've come to the conclusion that ff.net simply won't let me do that. Grrr. So, I erased everything up here that had to do with webnames and, hopefully, I'll be able to get the rest of the stuff up. In case anyone is interested in getting the websites for information about totem animals or finding one, just e-mail me directly and I'll be glad to share them with you.

Faerie_X asked me if there's a way to find your totem animal, and my answer is yes, it's very possible to find your totem animal. However, it's not as simple as just taking an Internet test and getting the answer of, "You are a/n "--ohhhh no! That would be just too easy, wouldn't it? --;;;

The process of finding your totem animal/power animal/etc. involves a lot of introspection about oneself. You have to sit down, take some time, and figure out which animals have spoken or continue to speak to you. This can be done a couple of ways, either by answering reflective questions, looking and reading up on the different animals, or through meditation. Understandably, the process of finding one can take a long time; not just because you have to do a lot of critical thinking about yourself, but also because you may not come up with an animal when you first start doing this. But keep in mind that it's also possible to have more than one totem, because there are actually many different kinds of totems, so everyone has at least one.

I know this sounds really New Age-y--it is. I mean, when was the last time you talked with someone about how their shadow animal was affecting their productivity at work or school? However, this isn't an idea that someone came up with only 20 years ago that is now becoming popular. People have been fascinated with the notion of holding certain "preferred characteristics" of animals for a while, and this idea goes almost as far back as spirituality itself. Almost all religions imbue this idea of animal symbolism into its dogma--Christianity, for example, uses the fish, lamb, and dove; Shamanism is completely structured around the idea of animals that guide and teach us important life lessons; and in ancient China they used the dragon, tiger, phoenix, and turtle/snake to represent their gods (sound familiar?).

I'm not an expert on this subject, and I need to give credit where credit is due. I'd really like to be able to do that, but as I mentioned above, ff.net is slightly mad at me for trying to make direct links. So again, if you'd like the actual websites, just e-mail me and I'll give you all the things I have.

The Discipline Center for Seishi is where they live, learn, and train for their future jobs--think of it as college, complete with dorms and wild animals (and feel free to translate that as you wish). The Centers are the same in all four countries with small discrepancies on the details of classes and teaching methods. But they are set up so that a Byakko Seishi can be trained at Kutou's Discipline Center if the child's family lives in Kutou and cannot make the journey to Sairou. It is required when a girl or boy is first bonded to a ketsu that they go to the Center and become enlisted as a Seishi. Again, if the child cannot make it to their god's country they can sign up with a different Center but must eventually go to their "home country" for permanent enlistment. For children under 15, they are not required to live on the Center's grounds, but they still must somehow become enrolled as a Seishi so that can receive tutoring from a traveling Seishi, then come to the Center for more advanced training.

Each Center is connected to the Palace for two reasons: one is so that the Emperor of can be close to the Headmaster of the Center, combining the highest and second-highest powers of the country in one place, creating the very earliest version of democracy. Reason Number Two: most emperors want the Seishi nearby to watch over them and prevent the possibility of overthrow; the Headmasters want to be close by because they can receive all the funding necessary to teach younger Seishi.

When a child and ketsu first arrive at the Center, they go through the basic steps Kishuku went through--meet the Headmaster for initial write-up, visit the Cardinal Judge for classes and housing, and after they become settled in they have a day or so to learn the lay of the land. I'm not gonna bore you with details on what the Seishi have to take, but everyone becomes acquainted with all parts of the Center. They are at the Center for four years straight. After that, they can choose between three classes of Seishi: Judge, Warrior, and Priest. The titles encompass a broad job range and Seishi students can pick what they want to specifically do--again, I base most of this on being in college and picking a major. Here are some of the jobs that I think fell under certain headings, and I used some modern titles because I couldn't think of what they would have been called in ancient China:

Judge: All the teachers in the Center are Judges that chose to specialize in one subject or another. Some other jobs would be that of financial advisor, politician, lawmaker, business owner, or diplomat. They are also the heads of the men and women's dorms to keep peace and safety.

Warrior: About a third of any country's military are made up of Warriors and the same goes for personal guards of the emperors. They are law enforcers, explorers, fire-fighters and those involved with dangerous working conditions, and masters in martial arts dojos.

Priests: Priests are obviously the ones that communicate to the gods but they're also the artisans and scientists of the group. They are also doctors, veterinarians, musicians, dancers, storytellers, agriculturists, and other religiously involved personnel.

Mikos: Mikos are different than Seishi because their title is already given to them. They are the priestesses and the ones who seem to have a natural inherent talent for speaking with the gods. Through training, they learn how to focus their ki so that it can reach the gods and they learn, hopefully, how to perform "miracles." After they're through with their four years instruction, they can branch off and choose any field of work they'd like. For instance, a Genbu no Miko can decide to work as a teacher along with holding her regular duties of a Miko.

I didn't want to get overly complicated with the details of the classes of Seishi and Miko, which is why I chose to have only three main ones and let everything else shoot off of that.

Because the Seishi only spend four years at the Center, part of the payment to the Center for training them is to find a mentor as soon as possible to give them hands-on work. For example, Doukun is learning under Lau-san and will most likely keep learning and training from her to become a well-respected Judge. When Juan was learning at the Center, he was taken under the wing of another healer-Priest that lived near his hometown and studied under him for three years.

No one is really certain how the Seishi (and Mikos) are chosen in the FY world--I myself haven't taken a particularly strong stance on the matter because (for the life of me) I can't decide. --;;;; Sorry if noted indecisiveness has just made your respect for me plummet like a rock, but of the ideas I had, I found that I seriously couldn't choose which one I wanted to use. Here are the three different ideas I was toying with:

--The gods have all of this stuff predestined, so that when a child has come of age they are immediately called by their ketsu. Everyone has their part to play and the gods know even before a child is born that s/he will become a Seishi.

--The gods give the ketsus complete control over everything--they find, call, and bond to the child without the gods' interference. There is no "set fate" because it's by the will of the ketsus that children are chosen to become Seishi.

--Or something in between: the gods do have children chosen at birth to become Seishi, but if something goes wrong (such as untimely death or other problems that would make them an ineffective Seishi) then the gods allow the ketsu to find another child worthy of being a Seishi.

Myself, I lean somewhere between 1 and 3; I believe the gods know when a child is too potentially dangerous to become bonded, but they can't see everything possible in the future so sometimes people that shouldn't be Seishi end up as them. Plus, #2 doesn't really answer how Mikos are chosen, but I leave everything up to personal interpretation for everyone. Along with that idea is why certain people, who don't seem to deserve the gift of being a Seishi, are chosen and others, who are equally or better suited to be Seishi, aren't? Simply put--no one knows. It's like asking why the gods allow good people to die and bad people to succeed--it's just the way things happen.

However, everything below this point is set in stone (for me) so I can give you straight answers. I couldn't do [choosing of Seishi] by astrology mostly because it doesn't even completely fit the canon Seishi--Kishuku himself doesn't fit into the birth-time of the Suzakus. Besides, if it were that easy, women would just be having conceiving 8 or 9 months before a certain time and there would be more Seishi than the gods want.

There is no evidence in the FY world that there's a particular pattern to being a Seishi. It doesn't seem to run in families except that siblings are usually Seishi--if you're a Seishi, the chance of your little sister being a Seishi or Miko is upped a little. But if two Seishi were to wind up having a kid together, that doesn't necessarily mean the baby is gonna be a Seishi when they're older.

Following that train of thought, I'm going to quickly go into how a person knows they're a Seishi. When a girl has her first mense (her first period), three days later she will be called by her ketsu. If she is a Miko, when she turns fifteen the god she will be "miko-ing" under will call to her. For boys, they can be called anytime between the ages of twelve and eighteen--pretty much the time when they reach manhood. Thus, in this alternative universe, the kids don't grow up knowing that they're Seishi or Mikos--they literally get the symbol dropped on them without warning.

I treat the four countries like four separate different countries instead of being lumped together to form what we think of as modern-day China. Each one is "racially" different from the other (which sparks an interesting debate that I won't touch here...). Being Konan-jin (a person of Konan heritage) isn't the same as being Sairou-jin, just as being Austrian isn't the same as being German and being Mexican isn't the same as bring Puerto Rican. Using the case of Yui, she is Kutou-jin; she and her parents are native to Kutou but moved to Konan for their own reasons. That's why she's a Seiryuu no Miko instead of a Suzaku no Miko--she may live in Konan and even worship Suzaku but blood-wise she's of Kutou descent. This is how all the Seishi and Miko are chosen for their gods--their bloodlines pick which one they are called under (sorry Roku, I know you wanted this answered in the story itself...).

As for Seishi powers, each person has their own gift regardless of the sei they are under. Riyu is a Nuriko Seishi with empathy powers; Donai is a Mitsukake Seishi that can create earthquakes, Tatsuko is a Tasuki Seishi that can create ki-like dragons, and so forth and so on. Sometimes powers overlap--telepathy and flying are two of the more general talents--but they're not so common that every third Seishi can fly or read minds. The same goes for the ketsus themselves; wolves, bears, and cats are prevalent but there are enough animals in the world to keep things unique.

Being a Seishi also enhances your life span--you're basically sharing your energy with an animal whose ki is equal to or stronger than your own. A lot of animals don't live a lot longer than 10 years on their own in the wild, but when they're ketsu the doubling of ki allows them to live as long as their Seishi. The same happens to a Seishi--the oldest Seishi in the world survived to be 132 years old when she died of natural causes. The bodies of both Seishi and ketsu age much slower, so that a 48-year-old man may still have the physique of a 27-year-old. However, there really isn't a direct way to measure age of years against the age of health, so the above example was simply an estimate on my part. Having so much ki also helps Seishi and ketsu heal and recover from injury quicker than a normal human or animal. A Miko's life span and body is enhanced in the same fashion because she is able to share and borrow ki from all the ketsu.

The last thing I want to quickly discuss is the business of shapeshifting. In this Fushigi Yuugi universe, shapeshifting is both a physical and metaphysical event--confusing, ne? Let me elaborate first with the physical change. Using Doukun for example, when he shifts, he is physically changing his body to be that of an owl's. In that form he is, for all intents and truths, an owl. His senses and his mind become more owlish, making his eyesight good enough to see a candle thousands of feet away. The instincts of an owl will rise up that allow him to understand air currents and the flight mechanics of feathers. And, as Roku had so politely questioned, he is able to eat field mice because he has the internal organs of an owl. The Seishi's own genetics also affect how they look as an animal, so that Juan is quite bigger than Tama in his cat-form and Shun'u's fur is much redder than Genrou's.

The more supernatural part has to do with two things: the melding of spirits between ketsu and Seishi, and the Seishi's ability to keep their own mind alongside that of the animals. Because the ki of the ketsu and Seishi are mixed, the Seishi are able to tap the animalistic ki and thus combine it with theirs. Thus, when Kishuku shifts he holds the essence of a leopard alongside his human spirit.

Seishi and Mikos can hold the body of an animal for a long period of time, up to a week, before the animalistic tendencies start to take over. Still, they must be mentally and willfully exerting their own humanity upon their animal form to keep from losing themselves in it. If they practice often, the change isn't so hard and the ability to dominate their animal wills is becomes very easy. However, if they do not shift out of their form their bestiality will start to take over and, even after changing back to a human, still act in very animal-like ways for an unknown period of time.

I think that's pretty much all I wanted to say. I know this was really long--I tried to be succinct (::waves to Aikido-chan, who's grumbling in the background about this being too wordy::) but I like to thoroughly explain everything and not leaving anyone with only half an answer. Anyway, thanks for your time and patience and I'll catch ya later!

Chapter 1: Welcome to the Center--Life In A Northern Town by The Dream Academy
--This song could fit pretty much anywhere in the chapter--just a nice little piece that I thought had a good melody line to it.

Chapter 4: Pride of the Warrior--Ojos Asi Dance Remix by Shakira
--This is specifically for the fight scene between the Suzaku and Seiryuu Seishi, starting with the ketsus screaming 'Seishi!' and ending with the trio defeating the tigers.

Chapter 7: Breaking Point--Song Of Solomon by Celtic Visions -
-This is played anytime after Chie is hit with the arrow and Doukun is anguishing over her.

Chapter 10: Separation and Resurrection--Here I Am (Instrumental) by Bryan Adams
--This goes best with the beginning scene where the six Seishi are gathered and about to ride to the point when they stop to discuss the plan.

Chapter 11: Fall From Grace, Carry Me Away--Tell Me A Fable by Robert Miles
--Another fight scene song! This one starts when Houjun and Kishuku run to find the miko and ends with them riding down towards Paifu.

Chapter 14: I Will Not Go Gentle--The Laughing Forest by Jeff Victor, Lifescapes Duets: Flute/Harp CD