TheSevenUnspeakableRonin/TheShadow

The Shadow, Fifth of the Seven Unspeakable Ronin

Background and Information

In the Scavenger Lands there were once two noble merchant houses, the Yatsu and the Ghotsu, who were, perhaps, descended of one family line, distantly in the past. These houses were a feuding pair, who battled over trade and rulership of a region of five valleys somewhere between Lookshy and Nexus. Long and bloody was this feud, until, eventually, the Yatsu and the Ghotsu forgot what it was that they fought for. It had become a pointless battle of attrition between petulant families of fools.

Then were born a pair of children to these families, a Ghotsu boy and a Yatsu girl, and in time, as one may predict, between these two was love. Every day, every night, they met, and were lovers for a tender time. They would meet under a peach tree between the territories of the Yatsu and the Ghotsu, or in the little hut of the Yatsu girl's handmaiden (who was an accomplice to their trysts), who dwelt in the village beneath the Yatsu stronghold.

But it was not to be. For the Ghotsu boy was not true- he had only used the Yatsu girl, to get into the Yatsu territories, to spy on the family, to gather information. On a fateful night, as the Ghotsu boy and the Yatsu girl met for the last time underneath the blossoming peach tree. There, the Ghotsu boy pointed towards the road which stretched from Ghotsu to Yatsu gate, and showed the Yatsu girl the Ghotsu warriors who were marching down that road, bearing flame and steel for the Yatsu girl's family, house, and friends.

And then, in an act of mad cruelty, the Ghotsu boy fell upon the Yatsu girl and stabbed out her eyes with his dagger, laughing with vile humor. The Yatsu girl, though fought back, grasping the Ghotsu boy's throat. They struggled through the night, and as the darkness between moonset and sunrise came, the Yatsu girl, still with her hands around her treacherous lover's throat, heard softly spoken words from behind the peach tree, a voice of gothic allure, and she was turned to the Neverborn, and became Abyssal Exalted. And with her new-found dark power, she finally strangled the life from the Ghotsu boy and sang his funeral hymn, the tattered ruins of her eyesockets weeping tears of blood upon his face. Then, she stood, and walked around the peach tree to join her new life as one of the Seven Unspeakable Ronin.

For many years, the Seven Unspeakable Ronin were dormant, as it were, while the Shadow studied the dark secrets of Necromancy in a secret place in the Labyrinth. When they finally became active again, it was to the weeping of many who knew their dark reputation.

The Shadow regards the other Ronin as her surrogate family. The Blade and the Rat are "brother" and "younger sister", while the Wasp is "elder sister". The Mirror is "uncle". She regards the Faceless as a father. The Hatamoto she regards as a trusted slave and pet. The Mirror and Rat regard the Shadow with a certain amount of pity, thinking her more mad than they (patently untrue), while the Blade desires the loveliness of her body. The Faceless seems to do his best to fill her perception of a father figure, in his own terse, emotionally-distant way.

Description

The first thing that many people notice about the Shadow is her skin- skin so pale that it is luminescent, so white that it makes lilies seem grey. Pale veins are noticeably sky-blue in the thin flesh of her wrists, neck, and breasts. Her face is beautiful, and would be like that of a goddess were it not for the gaping emptiness of her eyesockets, staring blankly like the Mouth of Oblivion, a shocking crime against the remaining peerless loveliness.

Most of the time, the Shadow wears a blindfold of black silk over her empty eyesockets. She is usually dressed in a silk kimono of black trimmed in silver, with the symbol of her vanished house worked in golden thread on the sleeves. This she belts with an elegant red silk cord. Around her slim white throat, the Shadow wears a choker whose central link is the knucklebone of her treacherous former lover. On her wrists she wears bracelets of prayer beads carved with tiny glyphs spelling out prayers to the Neverborn. Her delicate feet are always bare. Her entire body is miraculously clean in even the filthiest of conditions.

The Shadow's movements and mannerisms are graceful and slow, with great poise and dignity, and no small store of noble training. When she is not busy with them, she keeps her hands palms-together in a prayer-like pose. When she speaks, she often emphasizes her words with gentle squeezings of her fists and curlings of her fingers which seem somewhat suggestive, disturbingly, of a delicate attempt to strangle some phantom victim. When agitated, her hands reach up to her blindfold to probe the vacant sockets beneath.

The Shadow's voice is, like the rest of her, graceful and full of poised, with all the rich and practiced tone and wide vocabulary of one trained in a noble finishing school. Her voice is high and lovely, like her face, and contains hints of infinite sadness and boundless gulfs of sorrow and depression. She has a slight Imperial accent due to her training in a school of the Realm. She is an excellent, classically-trained singer. In battle, the Shadow tears away her blindfold, and her sightless eye-sockets weep tears of blood as she attacks gracefully with her daiklave and unleashes black Necromancy upon her foes.

She carries her long, curved reaper daiklave, Syutsuoma, in a sheath of crimson lacquer hung from a silk rope tied to her belt. She keeps a pair of chakram hanging from the belt as well. Finally, she keeps the book which contains all of her necromantic notes in a black leather case hanging from this belt.

Stats

The Shadow

• Concept: One of the Seven Unspeakable Ronin (cultured blind sorceress)
• Nature: Caregiver (in that she wishes to give everyone the gift of Oblivion)
• Caste: Midnight

• Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 4, Stamina 2, Charisma 3, Manipulation 3, Appearance 5, Perception 2, Intelligence 4, Wits 3

• Virtues: Compassion 4, Conviction 4, Temperance 3, Valor 2

• Abilities: Melee 3, Thrown 2, Performance 3 (Singing +1), Athletics 3, Awareness 4, Dodge 4, Bureaucracy 2, Linguistics (Native: Rivertongue; High Realm, Forest-tongue, Firetongue) 3, Socialize 4, Lore (Realm History) 3, Medicine 3, Occult 5

• Backgrounds: Artifacts 2

• Charms: The Shadow posseses Charms which boost her Dodge and Soak, a selection of Occult and Lore Charms, and she is a practitioner of Labyrinth Circle Necromancy, which she uses to great affect when she fights.

• Base Initiative: 7

• Attacks:
• Soulsteel Reaper Daiklave: Speed 5, Accuracy 3, Damage 4L, Defense 3
• Chakram: Accuracy 0, Damage 1L, Rate 3, Range 20

• Willpower: 8
• Health Levels: -0/ -0/ -1/ -1/ -2/ -2/ -4/ Incap
• Dodge Pool: 8
• Soak: 2 Bashing, 1 Lethal

• Essence: 3
• Personal: 17
• Peripheral: 38 (49 - 5 {committed essence})
• Committed: 5

Notes

The Shadow wears the necromantic equivalent of the Collar of Dawn's Cleansing Light, which is the reason she is always so strangely clean.

Pristine Funerist's Choker? I havn't ever thought about the name for the soulsteel one yet. -- Darloth