Nature -
The strongest force the world has ever known...and ever will...Time -
An unstoppable force; indifferent and unyielding...When these two entities combine, the world itself can be crafted anew. When these entities combine, they form the Shizenrin. With time, nature can destroy all that is created. Mountains erode, empires crumble, and life grows...ages...die. This is the legend once taught among the Shizenrin, but even they could not last against time, and so they took to nature to protect themselves.
It was once said among the members of the Shizenrin, during a time in which the clan thrived from the land and their own fruits, that the strength behind the clan had been granted by divine intervention. Whereas much of the rest of the world believed the deity Inari, the
Kami of fertility and agriculture, was male in nature, the Shizenrin knew the truth. To the Megami, Inari is the quintessential Mother Earth. It is from the goddess, the queen of things that grow, that the Shizenrin take not only their abilities, but also their name itself, for Megami literally means
'Goddess'. The goddess Inari had granted her followers control over nature, and her blessed light would shine with them forever, or so they had thought.
Nestled within the forest of Morigakure, once renowned for its lush environment of floral and fauna, the Shizenrin settled. They had lived as one with the land, never building houses by chopping down the forests. Instead, they used their clan skills to grow homes within the treetops and forest floors, becoming synonymous with nature. It was during these days, in the centuries of old, that the Shizenrin began to enhance their abilities. The gardens within which they planted their roots ranged the distances of forests, filled with plant life unseen anywhere else within the world, life that would never again appear so multiple save for these olden days.
As the Shizenrin grew, their experiments did as well. Using the force of nature they developed better flora, and more deadly poisons. The Megami began to perform volatile experiments in the name of Inari. Even as they lived in isolation, they grew to despise the outside world, which they saw as savage and destructive to the natural order. These powerful, though be it twisted, thoughts would lead to their own destruction. Through their experimentations, which at their highest and most classified levels had been aimed at the mass destruction of the outside world, the Shizenrin unleashed a plague upon themselves that began to destroy their blessed clan and all they had created. It was a viral disease, shown by signs of flu-like symptoms combined with black veins showing on their greenish pail skin.
Their medics yielded no salvation from these affliction, nor even had time to respond. It was only short time after infection that all infected would die, and the infection was the totality of the clan. Every member of the Shizenrin had been summoned back to their main village. Even without it, the explosion that had erupted from the Great Tree when infection started to spread crossed, unnoticed to all by the Shizenrin , the entire globe, only infecting those who Inari herself had touched. The
Plague, as it would come to be called among the survivors, had only ones means of escape. In the chaos that came with it, a small fraction of the clan took to
nature and time to protect themselves.
Thus began the hibernation of the clan, or at least what was left of it. Only a handful of survivors made it to what safety they could find.They took to their plants, and withdrew into the bosom of nature. The surviving Shizenrin were absorbed into mutated plants crafted into sleeper pods to outlast the Plague in slumber, waiting for the day they could blossom again.
The Shizenrin survived by retreating into specially designed sleeper pods. They were meant to only sleep for a few decades at most, long enough for the Plague to run its course and disperse into history. However, something went wrong, and the pods never unlatched themselves, and the Shizenrin could not awake. As retribution for their sins, the Shizenrin would suffer even in hiding. During the time of sleep, it was like an everlasting dream, though for most it quickly turned to a guilt-ridden nightmare. The mind is not meant to be kept dreaming for that long, and many would fall victim to mental disparities even as their bodies lay motionless and unchanged.
The Great Sleep lasted for nearly two centuries before the first of the pods awoke, revealing a boy into this world,
Osiris. He was one of few who had, by the work of his mother, been
inoculated with an experimental Cure prior to his sleep. Not only that, but it was by product of his father that the pods themselves were created. The inoculation he received had left Osiris capable of using his Kekkei Genkai. However, he was not strong enough awaken his sisters and brothers. Alone and desperate, he set out into the world, traveling to far away places to make himself stronger.
As he grew stronger, Osiris increased his knowledge as well. In search for a solution, he studied plants, and when he became desperate, he studied other forms of life. At his darkest hours, he took to dissecting humans for his experiments. After increasing his strength and abilities, he returned to the birthplace of his clan. Using his knowledge, Osiris placed specialized buds onto the sleeper pods. With luck, the Shizenrin would awaken naturally overtime.
