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Background
Eshu.
There are many paths to Eshu, and he is the path to every other Orisha.
He was one of the first children of heaven, existing long before the earth was or the loa were. To his parents and family, balance is of great importance, and Eshu is the balance against the good. That doesn't make him evil: for everything fortunate there must be misfortune or the world will unravel, and Eshu, god of chance, change, uncertainty, duality and messenger, fulfilled his purpose.
For thousands of years, Eshu fulfilled his purpose. In the ancient days, he walked the world bodily, but then the children who would one day become Yoruba grew old enough to not need them so directly, and so the Orisha and Loa left for the heavens. In times of need, the priest knew the rites to call to the god they needed, and the god would descend to ride the priest and dispense advice and work magic.
As the Yoruban people were captured and enslaved and shipped around the world but especially to the New World, Eshu watched and seethed. He wanted to act. He wanted to balance the scales. He did not.
Two months ago, Abeo Layani, a houngan performed the rites to both call Eshu and to offer himself as horse to the god.
Eshu took the offered mount and rode him.
And he did not release his horse.
In defiance of sacred law, in defiance of the covenant between the people and the gods, Eshu rides still. He had planned for this: tricking Ogun into crafting an artifact to shield him and allow him to use as defense, and then steal it. And now he walks among the people.
America. New York.
The injustice of it all is too much: Eshu will balance the scales. And there is so much to teach. Why did he leave when he did? Why did he come here of all possible places? Eshu is the god of uncertainty. He is the chaos to balance order. 'Why' is not always clear.
IC Events
Traits
- ORISHA: Eshu is an orisha, a Yoruban god of the sky and heaven (a different family from the loa, the gods of the earth and underworld). He can not manifest directly on earth any longer, but instead must reply to the call of a mambo that offers himself as a horse for the god to ride. He has done so: but when the god rides his horse, he's supposed to get off after a time. Eshu has decided not to do that. That's …totally bad. Bad, Eshu. Bad. Yet, due to the willing nature of the original possession, no magic can revoke his access: only be can choose to release his horse.
- HORSE: Eshu is himself truly immortal, but while riding his horse, the horse is both empowered and yet vulnerable. The horse is completely immune to poison, toxin and disease, and while he enjoys eating a great deal it isn't required. The horse will not age while it is possessed: but it is still a human body. Anything that would damage a human would damage it. The difference is that Eshu can deny death (to a limit: a wood chipper would end his possession, as would being at the location of a great explosion). His horse heals roughly twice as fast as a human would while in his possession, healing even dismemberment as long as Eshu refuses death its due and the parts are stitched back together. Doing this is wrong, note: Eshu is totally going to get a lecture when he is found out.
- DUALITY: As god of duality and the crossroads, Eshu can exist in more then one place at a time, however only one such 'him' is 'real', and the other is something like an impression on reality. Physical, but extremely fragile: even a moderate strike would shatter these impressions. These impressions appear at will anywhere within his line of sight, and they may act independently. He may choose at any given moment which of these impressions contains the real him. By casting an impression while simultaneously moving his real self to it and dismissing the impression he left behind, he can effectively teleport. Even though he appears to have copies of himself, these are in fact *not* copies. It's all a grand trick as he moves in and out of reality and leaves footprints and distractions behind.
- THE STEPS OF WOE: He is also the god of chance, but particularly, he is the god of misfortune. Trickster and devil he is sometimes called, were it not for the fact that he opens the path to the other orishas he might be reviled, but that good work is enough to redeem him to most. Still, Eshu may lay his hands on the scales of chance to turn the tide of an outcome negative. He makes people *fail*, and (if one looks at him charitably) in their failure learn. This isn't absolute: the more people a situation might affect the harder it is for him to turn the outcome, and even though he is the god of chance he doesn't have absolute control, so if or how the failure applies varies.
- THE LEFT HAND PATH: Make no mistake, Eshu is a dark god. But he is also a god of balance: he is simply the *negative* side of the equation. He is a trickster, and in the name of performing tricks he is capable of causing almost any effect, but there are several limits. First, the point of tricks are neither play nor benefiting himself (though they can as a side-effect), but teaching lessons. Second, he has to genuinely want to teach the person the lesson he intends— the trick can't just be an excuse to throw a spell at someone. Third, the trick can only indirectly cause harm, and if it does cause harm it must be in a way that is both possible to avoid or which would still teach a lesson if it is not avoided. Fourth, the scope and effect of the trick can not extend beyond his perceptive range. Finally, even indirectly, a trick can not cause someone's death.
