#celestial order

Aoife is the guild leader, so she’s the raid leader. Her main function in the story is a sort of bodyguard role to the commander, but during downtime she’ll go off and raid with the guild. Whether it’s for bringing in intel, or good old fashioned spelunking and discovery, the raid group will raid pretty much anything.

Reyna’s with the raid guild as Oxia thought she needed better social skills and interaction with people outside of the warband. Yes, she’s like a feral cat who needs to be socialised. She reluctantly went along for the adventures as long as she didn’t need to play support.

Orathali learned that not one but TWO Ulvstrom sisters were looking for a 10th for their raiding adventures and she begged and pleaded to be let in.

Viianna knew Aoife from the Priory and Aoife asked her along.

Siobhan - Vigil representative for raiding fun times and gets to help out her sister.

Aloreca - Viianna dragged her along, insisting she get out of the lab once in a while.

Kaidalis - Went to keep Amarilis company. Also needed something to focus on after pact decimation.

Kensi - Keeping an eye on all the allies of the Fae family.

Calixae - Since her mother wouldn’t let her go on adventures with the commander, she pestered auntie Kensi into tagging along with her adventures. Not the most experienced fighter but wants to learn.

1325: Personal Story start. Aoife forms Celestial Order to aid the Commander. Guild consists of herself + Serenity

1326: Aoife tells Siobhan of the guild, she joins up. Ridley learns Serenity has a guild so joins up via Ruby. Aisling and Roisin join up via Aoife but stay mostly hands off, got their own thing going on. Ruby brings Natalia + Sienna into the guild while they're still in hiding. Ruby connects with Mist being friend (Xunlai) to help with logistics of supplies.

1327: Khorren joins aboard prior to the Summit, and tells Aoife she has other sylvari friends who would join the cause. Amarilis, Faebrynn, Teaghann.

1328: Kensi comes back to Tyria, Ruby brings her aboard. Siobhan recruits Aesa + Fia via Vigil ties.

1329: Khorren looks after Nierithi after coming out of her pod, brings her into the guild. Aesa tells Astrid of the guild and she joins up.

1130: Alexis + Madison are both running around Elona. Ruby introduces self and says "Hey, come join this guild. No scary evil cousins here."

1331: Prior to going to Rata Primus, Amarilis reaches out to asura krewe she knows. Krewe joins up with guild. Aloreca, Vii, Yhalea, Nokomai, and Blixxie. Fia meets up with estranged daughter, tells her of the guild and protection/allies are there to welcome her.

1332: Kyra returns to Tyria (oh no). Learns Madison + Alexis are part of CO and decides she's going to swing the name around. She's not actually a member but tells everyone she is. Aoife is now commander and she befriends the Ember Warband as they lose faith in their Imperator. She snatches them up immediately and Oxia, Reyna, and Prima are now part of the guild.

The Tokugawa Period is the specific era I use for historical references  — but let’s be real, Naruto is a Frankenstein’s monster of different time periods. (Don’t even get me started on the timeline.) Go wild.

The specifics of the fantastical elements is, hmm, vague. There’s a realm where all the spirits live and there’s a realm where the humans and shinobi and everything else lives. There’s other stuff, but that’s the only thing really set in place. I’ll get around to it eventually. Probably. This is an authorial hand wave, is what I’m getting at.

So, in practice, a weird arbitrary amalgamation of Eastern and Western fantasy tropes. I take very heavy inspiration from Shinto, and to a lesser extent Buddhism. There’s Japanese folk tales all over the place here.

In general, “spirits” is a catch-all term for magical stuff: kami, Buddhist deities, elementals (in the Western, D&D style, kinda), etc. etc. “Demons” are just a ruder word for the same concept.

I have. Opinions about how the tailed beasts show up in canon, and also here. I’ll get into that later, but suffice to say, I found the Part One concept of the Nine-Tailed Fox and Shukaku (i.e. actual demons that have nothing to do with each other except for the fact that they get stuffed into human children containers) interesting and fun to play around with, but for obvious reasons, I don’t see a whole lot of that version of the concept in fic.

But then also ... it’s a little weird to take a creature that canon says is a full person with thoughts and feelings and just be like, nah. It’s a chakra monster. End of story. IDK, I’m still wrestling with that.

Anyway let’s get into the juicy stuff.

Shinobi

In fancy words:

Spirit-borne, yet too earthly to reside in the realm of your ancestors. Alas, you are too mortal — you require air and food and drink and warmth.

Essentially, the offspring of ~magic~ people and regular old humans. Can’t fully reside in the spirit realm, but are also conspicuously magical. Like, generally humanoid, but the closer you look, the more monstrous they seem to be ... There’s some of this in canon, too, obvi (Kisame comes to mind), but I dial it up. It’s not all Sasori levels of body horror, but, y’know, also that.

(Is this AU an excuse to make all my favorite characters look kind of feral? Who can say.

God, I can’t wait to get to the character designs.)

Relationship with Humans

Attitudes

Shinobi attitudes toward humans vary wildly, from benevolence, to indifference, to disdain. Love and outright hatred are equally rare; most shinobi can only muster middling emotions when faced with humans or human problems. Occasionally, contempt, pity, or admiration may move a shinobi to target or aid a specific human.

For their part, the vast majority of humans are intimidated, disdainful, and resentful of shinobi. Those who deal directly with shinobi — typically as clients or suppliers — have gentler opinions. In general, the most open-minded and accepting humans are at best indifferent toward shinobi. There is something of a taboo or social stigma around interacting with and/or hiring shinobi, so those humans who do business with them tend to do so illicitly.

Standard disclaimer about how all of these people are, y’know, child soldiers raised in like a mercenary cult? Their sense of morality is kinda fucked, even in canon.

Here, I make it more explicit how little shinobi care about humans who aren’t currently aiding them in some way. This is a story about shinobi. This is a story where none of the characters would bother criticizing the idea of founding your society on murdering random nobles or rioting farmers or whatever, because it wouldn’t occur to them to give that much of a fuck about the people they’re killing.

This attitude rightfully scares the shit out of humans. ... Which in turn leads to retaliation against shinobi communities (often ... not the actual perpetrators of the crime in question, because it turns out if you’re not in a group it’s kindaaaa hard to figure out their internal politics and identities, if you even care to try), leading to more disdain-fear-contempt from shinobi, etc etc, cycle of violence, stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

But again, we’re not (or at least, I’m definitely not) here to talk about shinobi conflicts with humans. I want to talk about infighting — which intra-shinobi conflicts both are and are not. I’m getting there.

TLDR I make no narrative promises about anyone realizing they should be nicer to humans. Not even one promise. No.

Practicalities

However, shinobi live on a knife's edge. Though they are spirit-borne, they are ultimately spirit-made-flesh, and therefore too earthly to reside long term in the spirit realm. As such, they must make do in the material realm — a realm in which humans dominate, and in which humans vastly outnumber them.

Some shinobi communities have attempted or even succeeded in becoming completely self-sufficient and avoiding the human world entirely.

Most other communities have bowed to necessity and carved themselves a niche in human society.

The name of their kind, "shinobi", refers both to the former — who hide away from the human world — and the latter — who endure the human world.

Those who endure have mostly positioned themselves as mercenaries. Their mastery of chakra makes them especially suited to carrying out assassinations, infiltration, and sabotage. More rarely, (generally groups) of humans will pool their resources and ask for community assistance, such as eliminating bandits, large-scale work altering the environment, or even healing. By and large, however, the humans with the means to hire shinobi are nobles, gang leaders, businessmen, or government officials.

Ok, so it’s not all bad. Sure, the general tone of inter-species interaction is bleak, to say the least, but there’s variation! Neither side is a monolith! Shit’s complicated!

Also, I play some word games, big surprise.

To be more explicit, this is how I explain the use of the term “hidden village”. We’re gonna be focusing on “those who endure” (because. that’s where are all of our cast is.), but even the shinobi communities who have decided to tough it out with humans have a tendency to keep themselves separate, veiled away.

Even with weird magic nonsense, I imagine it’s hard to be entirely self-sufficient (in a relatively small area, and only so long as it stays completely secluded) that you never have to interact with the outside world or venture outside your territory for any reason. Otherwise, the majority shinobi would absolutely leave for the woods and never return.

More importantly, let’s talk Shinto.

There’s basically this concept in Shinto that every kami has their own place, their own function. The kami, by and large, don’t seem to give a shit about humans, and in fact range from ‘will brutally kill you’ to ‘will moderately annoy you’ to ‘is helpful, actually’ — but they have roles to play. If you know what to do, what to say, how to act, you won’t see any trouble from them. That would be against the rules.

(There’s a real fey vibe, if that’s a reference you’re more familiar with.)

Why do shinobi serve humans, even though they’re indifferent to human suffering and much more powerful?

Because they have a role to play. And though they may roll their eyes or scoff, if a human has the right things (e.g. money, and a job, and the sense to pay them afterward) ... they will perform that role. There’s a balance to be kept with humans at large. There are rules that no shinobi will break — for fear of reprisal from their fellows, or for some dark magic that would break them in turn ... who can say?

Some Historical Context

In the Warring Clans era, some shinobi clans in minor countries were able to wrest control of their territory away from whatever human power (e.g. shogun) was in the area and rule over a human population directly. Generally, this worsened local attitudes toward shinobi. Though there was at least one case in the Land of Rain of humans and shinobi more or less successfully cooperating and living peacefully alongside each other, if not co-mingling.

In major countries, the existing influence and power base of the local daimyo rendered this impossible. Shinobi, faced with inter-clan warfare and competition for jobs, found it unwise to attempt to start a second front of conflict with their local lords. This usually precipitated an alliance between the local lord and their shinobi enemies against them.

Instead, shinobi clans in major countries sought to ingratiate themselves with their daimyo. The daimyo's patronage — especially towards clans of 'noble' status — was useful socio-economic leverage, as it signaled a social acceptability around offering that clan work.

Indeed, the Warring Clans era greatly benefited the human lords. Kept relatively vulnerable from fierce, unending inter-clan warfare, shinobi clans were easy for the daimyo to play off each other while they built their own power bases — an ease only checked by the knowledge that, pushed too far, their employed assassins might turn on the hand that used to feed.

My answer to “why tf don’t they just kill the daimyo and take over the country”. Because it would be risky, and if it failed, you would die.

There are many, many, many examples of one subsection of a larger ‘group’ sides with people whose interests seem to be directly contrary to those of their group in hindsight. Group identities form when confronted with outsiders. Before new people show up and threaten the status quo, there’s no real reason to think you (and your kin group) and your neighbor (and their kin group) are somehow part of some broader socio-political organization.

In the Warring Clans era, shinobi get that they’re a distinct species from humans — but ultimately that doesn’t matter as much as local rivalries and alliances. Oh, you’re a shinobi clan that’s robbing the human traders that bring supplies to my clan? Yeah, we’re gonna fight now.

The “noble” status thing is just another ploy (intentional or not) to pit shinobi against each other instead of letting them all decide to overthrow the daimyo.

Is this part of the impetus for Hashirama’s goal to unite the clans of Fire and build a village? Why, yes. Indeed that will come up.

(JC this got long)