The Highest of Native Gods
Suwako Moriya

Ability: Creating Kun (Earth)
Threat level: Low
Human friendship level: Medium
Main place of activity: Youkai Mountain, Geyser Center and so forth

A mysterious god residing in the Moriya shrine. In contrast with Kanako Yasaka, she rarely leaves the shrine.

Unlike Kanako, she is one of the myriad gods. Never having originally been a spirit, she consists of pure faith. Therefore, the one who would suffer upon losing all her faith is her, rather than Kanako.

However, Kanako and the Miko, Sanae Kochiya, carry out the duties of gathering faith, and she rarely comes out to actively represent the shrine. Whether it is because she is bad at managing the business or for some other inexplicable reason, that seems to be a mystery of the Moriya Shrine.

She has the power to control curse gods. When the Moriya shrine came from the outside world, the curse gods came along with it. It's troublesome but since manipulating curse gods is her blessing, there's nothing we can do. If you don't want to be cursed, you have no choice but to worship her.(*1)

Like most gods, she tends to take a human form. However, a characteristic of gods is that their form is mostly meaningless. When she is divided among several shrines, she often takes the form of a frog, and in those circumstances it seems she can grant blessings of safe travel (return safely), financial upturn (it'll get better), or prayers to change one's appearance (changed beyond recognition).

At first glance, her personality seems gentle, but it's difficult to tell what she's thinking. Unlike Kanako, I think the part of her that plays dumb is of poor quality.

1: This is faith through high-pressure salesmanship.

Ability

By cooperating with Kanako she can change the terrain and open sinkholes in the ground. Although I say cooperating, it seems that the terrain shifting is mainly Suwako's doing.

Rather than directly leveling the terrain, it seems she sends the curse gods under her control.

Not only can she change the terrain, she can also freely make the soil more fertile for growing grains, or curse the soil to prevent it from growing even grass.(*2)

2: And so she'll gather faith through threats. The one doing the threatening is Kanako.

Curse Gods

The true identity of the curse gods she took with her are native gods of the outside world called Mishaguchi-sama. Native gods are gods that are only worshiped in a narrow region. When they are separated from their land, they lose their faith, but because of this restriction it's not uncommon for them to have more power than wide-ranging (but not the highest class of) gods.

In addition to the curse gods being native gods, she is as well. It seems a little unnatural for a native god to abandon her homeland and come to Gensokyo, but compared to being forgotten in the outside world where faith is thin, it was surely better to recover through gathering faith in a new land.

Incidentally, the curse gods accompanying her are even more mysterious than her. Taking the form of serpents made of stone, wherever they pass sprouts up grains, but it is said that inside their mouths is a red radiance, and their breath turns the land barren.

Although they are called curse gods, in actuality they are dual-natured harvest gods, and as long as you don't forget your manners you won't be cursed.

Countermeasures

Because it is harder to tell what she's thinking than it is for Kanako, it would be best to be just a bit cautious.

However, it's not like she'll suddenly eat you.

Since she often takes the form of a frog it is easy to be mistaken, but since real frogs aren't accompanied by gods, special attention is required.

If you make a request like "the frogs in the fields are so noisy that I can't sleep, could you do something about it?", she might make your fields barren.

She simply loves frogs.




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