SHUSSEBORA

Lore

The yokai’s name breaks down as “the shell that made it.” In modern Japanese, 出世 (shusse) means success or climbing the career ladder, while 螺 (bora) is an abbreviation of 法螺貝 (horagai), the giant sea snail Charonia tritonis. Built right into the name is the idea that an ordinary triton, after living an unimaginably long life, “gets promoted” to a higher rank.

Shussebora begins life as a normal giant triton, but over a lifespan measured in millennia its shell undergoes mineralization: the walls thicken until they form a stone-like carapace capable of withstanding both the weight of solid earth and the crushing pressure of the deep ocean. As the yokai grows, its body becomes coated in dense scales and mineralized skin; during its middle phase it looks like a massive armored creature slowly tunneling underground, leaving behind passages later mistaken for natural caves.

The life cycle of Shussebora is split into three equal segments of about three thousand years each. For the first three millennia it stays deep inside mountain ranges, grinding through bedrock and storing the energy of stone. Next comes its emergence at the surface: here the yokai travels across valleys, often triggering landslides and leaving hollowed-out caverns; this is when encounters with humans are most likely. The final three thousand years are spent on the ocean floor, where it buries itself in silt and gathers the power of water needed for its ultimate metamorphosis into a Mizuchi (water dragon).