| Silverbeard | |
|---|---|
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| Details | |
| Race | Kami (Kirin Spirit) |
| Birthplace | Kamigawa |
Silverbeard, also known as the Celestial Kirin, is one of the five legendary kirin kami from Kamigawa that are known to meet with each other every 1,000 years.
History[ | ]
Silverbeard is one of the five legendary kirin kami of Kamigawa representing white. He can appear both as a white-skinned kirin and as a human with a long silver beard.
As the Kami War began, the five kirin met up as they do every 1,000 years. They met in a small teahouse inside a painting in Minamo. Silverbeard was one of the first to show up along with Pipe both playing a strange chess-like game while awaiting the others. Silverbeard was the first to speak up and discuss his knowledge concerning the mortals' potential for enlightenment. He claimed to have seen a mortal man find enlightenment and ascend upon his death.
He then told the story of a samurai whom Silverbeard served as an advisor. He was lord of a small keep near the ruins they now call Reito, though in the past it was a lively city, a center of commerce and learning. The lord kept a small retinue of loyal men well provisioned and he played the political games of the samurai well, but a corrupt merchant brought about his ruin. Learning of the lord's weakness in ventures, the merchant whispered in his ear, proposing many lucrative and outlandish schemes.
With a silvery tongue, he promised that the lord's gold would take root and grow tenfold. Silverbeard advised against each of these ventures, but his powers of persuasion were not enough to save the lord from his base greed, and he was determined not to break role and use his real powers. In time, the lord became destitute. He took to spending his days in his private chambers in a fever, counting his remaining silvers. One morning, Silverbeard caught him sneaking out of the keep warehouse with a sack held under one arm. It held a great helm with the crest of the crane, a valuable family heirloom. The lord went off to pawn it to a moneylender to either pay off one of his many debts or get more money for one of the merchant's schemes. Seeing that he had dropped as low as he could get, Silverbeard resolved to make a test case of the man. He posed the question “Could someone utterly without honor be saved? Could he achieve enlightenment and ascend to join the kami?”
Silverbeard stopped him outside the rear gate of the keep and told him there was another way. The lord would not listen to him at first, but he reminded him of how poor his fortunes had become since he stopped heeding his advice, and he agreed to join me to pray at the keep's single shrine for salvation, if only on the hope that the kami's blessing might improve his chances with this latest planned investment.
The lord knelt at the shrine and rang the bell to get the kami's attention, placing the helm upon the altar as an offering. It was then that the Kirin first used his real powers, and in such a way that the lord would not realize that it was Silverbeard who had done it. He transformed the helm into a tiny kami of light that rang like a silver chime as it flitted up into the rafters of the shrine and disappeared.
The samurai lord was shocked, and for a time, he cursed Silverbeard and wailed at the loss of this treasure. However he saw that kami in his dreams that night, and the next day he came back to me and begged that Silverbeard take him to the shrine again. Every morning, they repeated the ritual. The lord would bring another treasured object to the shrine and Silverbeard would transform it into a wonderous kami as he prayed until he had nothing left to offer.
In the end, the samurai lord then discarded his title and land and joined a monastery to better serve the kami. He lived a full life, and on his 88th birthday, he passed away an enlightened man. Silverbeard stood at his bedside and watched. As the last breath left his lips, there was the sound of a gong, and with a puff of rose-scented smoke his body dissipated and he became a kami.
Due to this experience, Silverbeard believes mortal enlightenment is a preferable alternative to the extermination suggested by some of their Kami brethren. Scale mocked this, however, saying it took 50 years with his intervention and that it would have been just as easy to end his life at the shrine. He also joked that the Kami the lord become ended up getting caught in some kannushi's gohei and was used to clean maps which isn’t much of an ascension. Despite this after the others shared their experiences, Silverbeard petitioned a Scale to remember the time before the Kami War and how they can all share glory with the mortal, even if it was just by service or worship. In the end, as the group was splitting he still had hope for Scale.[1]
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