Han'ya/Swallow

Black Iron Swallow King

Concept: Live to Kill

Motivation: Find the reincarnation of his First Age love

Night Caste

Attributes

|| Strength 3 || Dexterity 3 || Stamina 3 || || Perception 3 || Intelligence 4 || Wits 4 || || Charisma 2 || Manipulation 2 || Appearance 3 ||

|| Essence 2 || Willpower 8 || || Personal Essence 15 || Peripheral Essence 33 ||

Abilities

|| Archery (F) 5 || Martial Arts (F) 5 || Melee (F) 3 || Thrown 1 || || || || || || Resistance (F) 4 || || || || Lore 1 || || Occult (F) 2 || || || Athletics 4 || Dodge 3 || Larceny 1 || Stealth 3 || || Bureaucracy 1 || Linguistics 1 || || || ||

Virtues

Compassion 1

Conviction 4

Temperance 2

Valor 3

Conviction Flaw "Heart of Flint"

Backgrounds

Artifact 2 (Orichalcum short powerbow "Black Mercy")

Artifact 2 (Orichalcum reaper daiklave "Lost Chances")

Artifact 1 (Orichalcum breastplate)

Resources 2 (He is a senior member of the Landslide Gang.)

Charms

First Martial Arts Excellency

First Melee Excellency

First Archery Excellency

There Is No Wind

Essence Arrow Attack (All 3 subcharms)

Call The Blade

Graceful Crane Stance

Monkey Leap Technique

Spirit-Detecting Glance

Spirit-Cutting Attack

Fluff

The man who went by Swallow was born quietly and without upset, and lived quietly and without upset. He always felt sad and distant, and could never figure out why. The only time he ever felt alive was when he was killing someone. And that, as we all know, is socially unacceptable. So, he lived a depressed life, not doing much, just hanging around with the only people who didn't make fun of him or treat him strangely (he almost never spoke). Namely, the Landslide Gang. They didn't treat him great, but they were a step above everybody else.

When he was Exalted, he remembered why he was so depressed. He remembered an emotion almost totally alien to him. He remembered love. And he remembered an emotion that had resonated with him forever. He remembered loss. He remembered one image, so powerfully charged with those two emotions that he sees it whenever he closes his eyes. He remembered the moment he saw his one and only true love stabbed through the heart on her throne. He decided that his only purpose in life would be to find her and protect her with his life. Because love was the only thing that took away the numbness.

So he accompanied Seven Stone Landslide and their compatriots to Nexus, because he remembered Hollow, the city it had once been.

He acquired his impressive collection of artifact weapons when the Gang chanced upon a battlefield on the road to Nexus. A young Solar samurai, riding to battle in service of his lord, sat among the knee-high bodies and wept. When Swallow asked why, the boy answered that he had just killed all these people. Swallow asked him why that made him sad. The boy answered that now they would never be happy or sad or hungry or sleepy or in love again. They were just gone. Swallow said that he thought that was really cool. The boy became enraged at this, and was about ready to disembowel his fellow Solar when he seemed struck by an idea. Right there, he threw down his weapons and armor, tore off his fine clothes, and walked out on his life. Being a pragmatic sort, Swallow took his stuff. He's put it to good use. It seems to like him. The only thing he really cares about is his half-brother, Dog of the Blue Sky Kingdom. They've been as close as a cynical, bitter, selfish paranoid gangster and a psychotic antisocial emo kid can be.

Physically, he's about six feet tall, with raven-black hair he's too lazy to get cut (it's waist-length at least) and dull blue eyes with no smile in them. His skin is pale and translucent, and he has cheekbones and a nose you could cut paper with. He shuns human contact, wearing long coats and gloves and having an annoying tendency to jump down from rooftops and interrupt your conversation. He firmly believes that he will know his true love when he sees her, and he will not hate her on sight (that's gonna be his major clue). Mentally, he's antisocial to the point of reclusiveness, but surrounds himself with crowds in the hope that he'll eventually find who he's looking for. He's almost suicidally gloomy and depressed, taking little joy in anything except violence, which drives him to orgasmic levels in mere moments.

He likes to stand on rooftops at night under full moons, and to watch the ocean. He hates lunar eclipses and seeing women in pain. No insanity is beyond him when he's in the midst of combat. Cannibalism? Old news. Killing innocents? Only on Mondays and Fridays. Failing to distinguish between friend and foe? Ah, they annoyed him anyway.

His anima banner is white-gold, and when iconic takes the form of a spectral peacock.