The Stone Throwers

The origins of The Stone Throwers are muddy, but the bulk of the Hokkaido-based death cult come from one of three places: displaced Ainu natives with an axe to grind against the Wajin (Japanese), low-caste eta who view a short life as the terrors of the mountains as preferable to a long life in the mud, and ronin and exiles from society with nowhere else to turn.

The Stone Throwers run a simple game - kidnapping villagers, traveling merchants, and other vulnerable individuals and then offering them up for ransom. Those not ransomed are sacrificed to the rock demons of the mountains - typically by being thrown from specially consecrated precipices, with high-profile or particularly difficult individuals receiving a death by stoning.

Stone Throwers pick up powers as they advance in experience - throwing stones by hand with the force of a sling or greater, causing rock to explode through mental exertion, and wielding living rock as a blade.

The Stone Throwers are rumored to have a central cavern complex deep in the mountain, where long-term prisoners are kept and particularly important or famous prisoners are put to death by the method of being lowered feet-first into a pool of hot lava.

Many Stone Throwers have secret tattoos, often on the small of their backs, of the Triple Mountains of Hokkaido: Asahi, Yubari, and Tokachi.