what are you living for?

Kiriho was raised together with Akaposi and she is like a sister and a best friend to him, possibly more. As Akaposi’s kou (a person who is a ritual sacrifice and spiritual stand-in for her), Kiriho was sworn to her and may not form a bond with anyone else, physical or otherwise. At home he always felt that Akaposi’s soul and life force were a necessary part of him. Now, in a new world, he cannot feel that bond anymore. This is utterly terrifying.

Kiriho has spiritual abilities which may or may not work in his new setting, but he will certainly play it like they work in order to survive. As head seer and shaman, Kiriho gives readings and advice to his queen by using crystals and objects aligned to diagrams, rabbit divination bones, and the use of various plants especially one called shamanleaf. These plants are chewed or burned and the smoke inhaled to induce a trance-like state of consciousness in order to commune with the gods and spirits by singing and playing music. It is while being in this state of mind that Kiriho feels the most secure, safe, and whole. The main deity he prays to is Toumi, a god of renewal and destruction, death and rebirth, who is sometimes depicted as a hare. 

Most of the tribe followed, heading back to the rendezvous point where the rest of the tribe was in hiding. Some of the warriors with more experience hesitated to follow someone as young as Kiriho, who was 26 years old at the time. Others refused to retreat, thinking it cowardly. The Ki warriors who did not retreat with Kiriho were easily captured by the Chol soldiers. Soon after, the king and seer were brutally tortured and humiliated by the Chol people, along with any other prisoners that had been captured. They were tortured and publicly sacrificed in the Chol capital, the bodies mutilated and defiled, smashed, and then left out on the ramparts for the birds and rats to eat. Many of those who were close to the king and seer tried to attack the Chol’s walled city to free them, only to die trying. A large portion of the mature fighting forces of the Ki were lost due to these events, and the tribe was greatly weakened.

At the point in the story in which Kiriho is taken to Jikan, it is 1672 BCE. Akaposi and Kiriho are both 28 years of age. Akaposi has ruled as queen for two years. Many still question or challenge her authority and generally make things difficult for her. She is the first young person to take the place of ruler in a very long time. Akaposi's job is stressful and challenging and requires many complicated decisions to be made. There are factions which oppose her and careful political maneuvering and intrigue to handle. Kiriho serves as Akaposi’s head seer, shaman, trusted advisor, and sacrificial stand-in, or kou.

The role of kou
A kou in the Ki’s religion is a person who is used to trick gods who mean harm on an important person (called a shiki). When Akaposi was born, the young princess was hidden and infant Kiriho was placed in her crib as her kou. Any god or malevolent spirit (or human) who wished to harm Akri’s heir would be unable to and would instead harm or curse Kiriho. Kiriho performs sacrifices and ceremonies as kou to be considered by the gods as Akaposi herself and deal directly with the gods and spirits in order to protect her from harm. If the gods are to inflict the person with punishment or disease, as they often do, the kou receives any misfortunes onto their body instead. However, because of the sacrificial nature of the deep bond between souls which is formed between a kou and their shiki, Kiriho is bound to serve Akaposi for life. He can never be married or joined to anyone else. Any damage inflicted upon one body transfers to the other partner. If Kiriho is injured it may affect his queen, so he tries his utmost to avoid injury to the point of fearing accidents. If Akaposi dies first, according to custom Kiriho is to be ritually sacrificed, then beheaded, buried in a portable jar until the flesh has fully decayed. Then the bones are exhumed, painted red and they are sacrificed once more to the gods.

Leadership of the tribe
As a kou and seer, Kiriho is entrusted with an important position and because of this, he is granted a great deal of power in leading the tribe. He is required to have a high degree of mental intelligence, self-control, and spiritual strength, and he has worked himself to the bone to develop these.

Kiriho does not have an easy job, nor a safe one. As his people ride through the valleys and steppes in search of plunder, glory, and revenge against Chol, Kiriho is charged with advising their leader in her dealings with hostile surrounding tribes, an unforgiving natural world full of huge predators, and in managing their hot-headed, fractious, and boisterous people. Often, Kiriho feels he is just barely keeping them from the brink of ruin. In order to get the information he needs to keep the tribe together and alive, Kiriho divines the words of the gods by any means he can. In addition to this work, Kiriho is the keeper of written knowledge as his family line began to create a rudimentary writing system. He measures and makes maps, keeps and records the history of the Ki people, and leads the people in worship as well as delivers lectures or exhortation when necessary to guide his tribe.

So far, Kiriho and Akaposi have been fairly successful in their leadership of the Ki tribe, despite dangers in the wild, disease, war, and hardship. This is in part due to the steely nature of their resolve-- they have promised each other that they are a bond that can never be broken, an absolute team-- that they will behave as one soul joined, for the purpose of finding the perfect homeland for their people. The two compliment each other well as the face of their tribe. As long as the Ki and Akaposi have Kiriho, they’re going to be just fine, and there’s no need to worry about their people’s survival. Until... they don’t have him anymore. Unknown forces will bring Kiriho to a strange world, and his story begins all over again…

The basic spirit may become a “grand spirit” which can manifest itself visibly and which can influence events which happen to the living, especially cursing or blessing them with some power or attribute. The next level up is a “god spirit” which has the power to influence life, death, the weather, and fate. The most powerful gods can become “high gods” and can ascend to a different plane of existence. The god spirits in the Ki’s religion want very badly to accumulate enough power to become high gods and this is their main motivation for interacting with humans. It is a symbiotic relationship.

As seer, Kiriho’s job is to be the go-between messenger between his tribe’s leader and the spiritual world. He receives knowledge to inform his queen’s decisions and makes negotiations with the gods in order to get what the tribe needs or wants. Sometimes, this involves the skills of manipulation or trickery on the part of the human dealing with the god. He sometimes has premonitions or visions of a person’s nature or their future. He uses systems of divination to foretell what will happen and special crystals and objects aligned in a grid to call the right spirits to him to converse. Herbal medicine is ingested or inhaled by smoke in order to produce a trance, frenzied, or hallucinatory state in which Kiriho can communicate with the gods. Kiriho plays music on a stringed instrument and then sings out the words of the gods or spirits that come to him in his trance. When the altered state of mind passes, he helps his queen decide the tribe’s next moves.

Blood and sex are the major sources of power in the Ki’s belief system, they work like spiritual currency. These forces can be added to an object or sacrificed to a god to increase its power. Ritual sexual contact, human or animal sacrifice, and the use of one’s own blood or another’s to perform religious rituals is very common. Music and dance are used to address the spirits and to send them more energy. The use of blood in Kiriho’s duties as seer ranges from Kiriho slicing his thumb open whenever casting a spell, to bleeding out prisoners for a few hours, to human sacrifice.

Eventually, some groups carrying the DNA of Haplogroup O1b2 moved to settle in the Korean peninsula and much later on, migrated to the Japanese archipelago. It is possible that this group of travelers were some of the “Yamato peoples,” immigrants who brought Bronze Age technology and horse culture to Japan to stimulate the changes from hunter-gatherer culture to the Yamato period (circa 250 AD), which was characterized by shamanist and mystical religious practices and the rise of warrior culture.

The Ki's language eventually became what anthropologists call a "Japonic" language [I realize that this name is showing a problematic bias because it only expresses the relation of the language to Japanese and not to Korean, but I do not know a better name for it]-- a group of languages which later on contributed to Korean and Japanese dialects as some tribes/peoples migrated east in search of a homeland. Some of the names or words Kiriho uses are meant to show evidence of these connections, but I am not trying to appropriate anyone’s language.