#I'm listening to Mechina as these thoughts rattle around my head

[mosswild]

Moon Tribe headcanons nobody asked for because I went digging through my old blog for my 10-year-old posts and I can't stop thinking about them!!

First, I think they are related to the Celestials at least by a common ancestor. Their relationship is never explained, but it doesn't seem like coincidence that both of them have gold hair and pointy ears and live in space.

Personally I like to think that the Moon Tribe are the descendants of Celestials who were exiled ages ago. This plays on the exile of Tsukuyomi to the night and of Wu Gang/Katsuura Otoko to the moon as a punishment in their respective legends. I also think a lot how "A Resolute Person", one of Waka's themes, is also a dark, tense version of the Celestials' Theme...

Since then, distanced from Takamagahara, they lost much of their divine power, but maintained their longevity and some magic. They became obsessed with developing mechanical technology, and missing their lush homeland, used it to reform the barren Moon into something more habitable. Then they turned their gaze to the earth/Nippon.

AFAIK the timelime on anything the Moon Tribe did was never established. But here's how I imagine it. Before the calamity, the Moon Tribe came to Nippon and birthed the civilization we now see the ruins of. They learned how to harness lightning, built things like Tsuta Ruins and the Daidarabotchi. The aesthetic of the dogu and Clay Dolls is consistent with other stuff we see from the moon--and also the missiles Yami launches in its fourth phase.

Which brings me to the next part: the Moon Tribe at least partly created Yami and other bosses/demons. The art book describes the interior of the Ark of Yamato as a sort of lab where these beings were being raised. To what end? To wage war, perhaps--against the Celestials, either as an act of revenge, or for some reason that resulted in their exile to begin with--or perhaps against the faction down in Nippon. The demons were either created or found, and then augmented with the Moon Tribe's technology. Eventually war broke out. Yami, bound to the Ark, and the augmented demons take over the machines and wipe everyone out. The Moon Tribe can't stand up to their own creations. Orochi escapes in the chaos. Only the four known Lunarians survived--Sugawara had already been sent to Nippon in exile by a corrupted lunar government. Baby Kaguya was sent away Superman-style to save her. Kurow is... doing something. And Waka (unknowingly, somehow?) escapes on the Ark. Orochi, grown stronger, finds the Celestial Plain via the pull of the Ark and the power it shares with the demons.

Whatever was done to create Yami was brutal. It resents the Moon Tribe, the gods, those who can create, for it cannot. It only knows destruction, death with no divine respite. With all others dead, it knows Waka escaped, and its priority is the extinction of the Moon Tribe.

When Kaguya returns to the Moon, she finds a desolate waste, littered with strange metal and stone. The machines that helped maintain life on the Moon are broken, the silver gardens turned to dust. Only her rocket still glows. Sugawara never had a chance to meet her, to tell her what she is and what she would find. But in the ruins, an unimaginable story reveals itself to her. Maybe she finds her new life as its keeper and chronicler.