In the Beginning, the Great Yokai Spirit created the Yokai Realm. From the Realm, she would give the inhabitants of Yokai Island her blessings each and every year. After so many years, the Great Yokai Spirit found it too difficult to continuously give out blessings, and realised that the task was too much for one spirit to bear. 

 

In order to ensure the blessings would continue to be bestowed, she decided to create twelve Spirits that would assist her in distributing her blessings, one for every Yokai year cycle. 

 

Naturally, she wanted the Spirits to resemble creatures that the people of Lore would recognise so she offered every creature of Lore a chance to become one of her Zodiac Spirits. 

 

The challenge would be a race, as the speedy delivery of the blessings was of the utmost importance, and the order of the winners would decide the order of who would give out the blessings each year. 

 

Once the race concluded, the winners all gathered around the Great Yokai Spirit, and were transformed into her Zodiac Spirits. With the Zodiac Spirits on the job, the Great Yokai Spirit chose to rest, but not before creating the Etokōun, a Yokai created from various parts of each of the Zodiac Spirits’ physical forms, a final celebration of the race. 

 

The Great Yokai Spirit gave the Etokōun a piece of her spirit and with it, her own personal blessings, for the Etokōun to give to any inhabitant of Lore that it deemed worthy. It is said that the Etokōun, in the spirit of the competition for which it was created, respects feats of speed and strength and, above all else, those who are able to best it and capture it!