[D&D-5e] Empire of the Setting Sun

[Wyrom]

I would say the meat of my application is complete. I will be editing a bit I am sure but would love some feedback from both willing parties. Thanks guys!

[Noquarter19]

Withdrawn.

[Alemar]

Originally Posted by Menzo

I will be doing reviews this weekend. Please indicate whether you want your character reviewed (it's not compulsory), and whether you'd like it to be reviewed by me or Og or both of us.

I would love a review...doesn't really matter by who

[Sarge67]

Doesn't matter to me either.

[Thesandwichking]

Same here, any input is welcome

[Mindsiege]

@Menzo:
I have a character that I had conceptualized for a different game before this (where it didn't make the cut), but which I believe would fit perfectly into this setting.

Would it be all right if I throw my lot in after cleaning it up for your application requirements? Since it's never been used, I still feel that it is original. The part I worry about though is the different story hook in this game. Can I gather, that characters with motivations to join the civil war are preferred? I would want to change some backstory details anyways, but thought it would still be good to ask, what you are looking for.

[Ysolde]

My character is ready. If you have any input I would appreciate it but please don't put yourself out too much.

[O2CXt3]

Application Application is complete Art by Joseph Qiu Name: Yasui (安井) Race: Human Class: Fighter (Rōnin) Gender: Male Age: 45 Background: Haunted One Personality Traits: 1) I like to read and memorize poetry. It keeps me calm and brings me fleeting moments of happiness. 2) I don’t talk about the thing that torments me. I’d rather not burden others with my curse. Ideal: I try to help those in need, no matter what the personal cost. Bond: I would sacrifice my life and my soul to protect the innocent. Flaw: I talk to spirits that no one else can see. Personality: Yasui is reserved and tries to avoid trouble. Although he was once a samurai, it has been many years since he has adhered to the samurai code. For the last few years, he has wandered the countryside making money doing odd jobs, but recently he has grown tired of wandering and has begun to dream of settling down and retiring peacefully. However, he does not have the money or personal connections. Yasui has slowly grown more detached from society, but he still has a soft spot in his heart for the innocent, particularly small children. He has been known to stand lost in thought and watch children play, or to give a child who is hungry all of his food or money. He feels a deep anger towards those who harm children. He also tends to be kind-hearted towards young women, with whom he associates motherhood. Yasui can sometimes be seen talking to himself, or chanting poetry as he goes about his business. Although he is perceptive when he chooses to be, he is often lost in his own thoughts and seems not to notice his surroundings. Appearance: Yasui is aging and weather beaten. He wears an old drab kimono and worn waraji. If it wasn’t for the samurai sword he carries, people might easily mistake him for a poor, aging villager. People who look more closely might notice his toned muscles, strengthened from years of training, and the graceful way he makes even the smallest movements. Aside from his clothing and sword, he carries an old sack with a few days of food and a small book of poetry. Backstory: If asked about his sword, Yasui will admit that he was previously a samurai, but says that he no longer has a master. He politely avoids discussing the topic further. He carries a silver coin sewn into the inside of his kimono that he touches from time to time to ensure it is still there. It is his most prized possession.   Yasui was the youngest of three boys. His family had been samurai in the Ayano clan in northern Shikoku for as long as the family could remember. At a young age, Yasui became a strong fighter from the constant training with his brothers. His earliest memory was beating his older old brother with a bamboo sword and being proud for weeks afterward. His childhood, as all samurai’s were, was heavily regimented from morning till dawn, leaving little time for play. Although Yasui was a talented archer, and strong at Jujitsu, his passion was for kendo. As he grew older, he quickly became the best among his peers, even better than boys many years older. He treasured his katana and loved to sit alone oiling and wiping his sword, lost in thought, admiring it and dreaming of the battles he would someday fight with it. At 16, Yasui was married to Sena, the daughter of another samurai family in the Ayano clan. By this time, Yasui had grown quite handsome, his hair long and black and his body strong from years of training. And Sena, too, glowed with the beauty of youth. Yasui was unsure of himself when he first looked into her dark brown eyes. They fell in love immediately. The day after their marriage Yasui was unable to focus with his thoughts drifting to Sena. On his way home that evening, he paused in front of a flower seller, lost in a daydream of Sena, and his focus fell on a luminous red glow, a basket of crimson peonies. That night he brought home the peonies to Sena, and the next morning she carefully arranged them, smiling at him as he stopped to admire her work. They had a happy marriage, full of small tendernesses. Yasui brought Sena flowers wherever he found them. A bough of cherry blossom in spring, a handful of delicate purple hagi in the fall. Their love was quiet but intense, private and separate from the outside world. Each year on the day after their anniversary Yasui would carry home a handful of crimson peonies, and each year, Sena lovingly arranged them. Although they tried, Yasui and Sena were unable to bear a child. As the years passed, one tragedy after another slowly befell Yasui. In his 21st year, his father and then his mother were taken by smallpox. In his 24th year, a war between the Ayano clan and neighboring Hinode clan broke out. Although Yasui fought bravely, both of his brothers were lost. The war eventually passed. But with the loss of his brothers, Yasui’s home became quiet. Yasui and Sena were alone now, and leaned more heavily on one another. One winter, after the war with the Hinode clan, there was a terrible blizzard. The roads and trees filled with snow, and the snow drifted to the tops of doorways. Inside the houses, it was warm and peaceful and everyone forgot their routines for a time. The snow eventually melted and spring came, and with it, they realized in wonder, that Sena was pregnant. As the months passed her stomach grew larger until, with excitement, they both knew that their child’s birth was drawing near. On a hot autumn day, Sena went into labor. A midwife was called. The labor was a difficult one, lasting many hours late into the night. Yasui sat up quietly, listening to the sounds of Sena’s labor, and the cries of his wife. He slowed his breathing, and tried to focus on the sounds of the night. Yasui heard Sena struggling, her cries growing more frequent, until near sunrise with the last of her last energy, she cried out like nothing Yasui had ever heard, followed by silence. With the scream still echoing in Yasui’s ears, the midwife emerged, blood up to her elbows, carrying a baby girl. Yasui looked at his daughter, and then up at the face of the midwife and saw that she was crying. He took the baby and held it in his arms, its small cry breaking the silence. The midwife took Yasui to see Sena, and the three of them held the child, Aiko, between them. The doctors were called, but nothing could be done. Sena died later that morning. Yasui was crushed by the loss of Sena and vowed never to marry again. He loved his daughter fiercely, more than anything else in his life. And as she grew older, and began to walk and to talk, Yasui could see the resemblance between Aiko and Sena. They had the same deep brown, smiling eyes. Aiko eventually became more curious about her mother, and loved to listen to the stories of her mother. Every year the day after their anniversary, Yasui brought home a handful of red peonies, smiling with Aiko as she tried to arrange them. When Aiko was five, another terrible snow storm came, and the drifts were up to the windows. Yasui, Aiko, and the young woman who helped with Aiko, all had terrible fevers and chills. Slowly they recovered, except for Aiko. As Yasui sat with Aiko one evening while she shivered in bed, she reached out to him and handed him a small silver coin. Where she got it, he never knew. In her small voice she told him, “In the springtime, buy some peonies for mother and me”. Yasui did not understand this and thought that Aiko was feverish. He put the coin away and went back to comforting her. Within a week her fever grew worse, and one night, the snow still covering the ground, Aiko passed away in the night. Yasui was doubly crushed by the loss of his daughter and was beside himself with grief for many weeks. He buried the child next to her mother. Afterwards, he carried on, going about his business, but without seeming to see what he was doing. A few months later, as he absent mindedly straightened Aiko’s room, Yasui came across the small silver coin. He held it gently in his hand, and in his mind’s eye saw Aiko’s smile, and felt her soft hair in his hand. He thought of her wish to buy peonies for “mother and me”, and he thought of their small gravestones next to one another, and of fresh crimson peonies resting on the ground. He put the coin back. He couldn’t bear the thought of the peonies, standing along on the graves, the peonies themselves wilting and dying in a few days. No, he would keep the coin. He would keep the coin to remind him of his wife and daughter for as long as he lived. Yasui was still a samurai then, and he still fought in a few more battles, but the people around him could see he was not the same. Yasui turned more and more towards poetry and meditation. He grew quieter, and the house was silent around him. He would sit up late into the night, reading Bozen poetry by candlelight, chanting quietly to himself. Yasui carried on like this for a few years until one summer evening, he was asked to collect a debt from a farmer who was unable to pay his taxes. He and five other samurai were sent to check on this farmer. Although debt collection troubled Yasui, he understood that this was required of him. The evening, when they arrived at the farm, they found the farmer with his wife and children having dinner. Yasui stood to the side as another samurai, Etsu, slowly explained the situation to the farmer. The farmer stood up, then sat back down, and said with his voice quivering that he could not pay, and that all they had was a few bags of rice that they needed for themselves, and the rice was not worth anything anyway. Etsu, the debt collector grew impatient, and as the farmer spoke, he scanned the room looking for anything of value. His gaze rested on a small girl, 7 or 8, huddled behind a chair. “Then we will take her”, he said pointing at the girl. Yasui turned to look at the girl and saw the look of shock on the child’s face, and as he stood looking at the girl, he briefly saw Aiko in her eyes. And at that same moment, a terrible scream filled the room, a scream like one Yasui had not heard for many years. The last thing he remembered was the sound of his katana being unsheathed. A moment later he was standing by the girl holding her in his arms, five dead samurai around him, blood covering the dirt floor and walls. To his own surprise, as Yasui looked around the room, he was not ashamed of what he had done. He knew in that moment that the person he had been was gone forever, and that in his place, a new man, strange even to himself, had been born. As the farmer’s family looked on in horror, Yasui slowly wiped the blade of his katana, sheathed it, and told them to stay inside, and that he would be back momentarily. Glancing at the girl, who was now crying in her mother’s arms, he made up his mind what he must do. He returned to his house and collected all of the money he could find. As he gathered his money, he noticed the small silver coin he had set aside. His hand rested on the coin, and he thought back to the day his daughter had given it to him, a beautiful sick child. He saw her face again, her smile. And in that moment, the thought of his daughter, his wife, and the farmer’s daughter mixed together in his mind, and he began to sob. Eventually, he stood up, put the silver coin into a pocket in his kimono, collected the rest of his money and left. Yasui returned to the farmer’s family, and told them they must leave. He gave them all of his money and told them he would take them far to the south where they would need to begin new lives. The family refused at first, but there was no other choice. After helping them flee to the south, Yasui thought it best to leave them to avoid drawing attention to them. Unsure where to go, he continued on to the south, now in lands far from his home. The first few weeks were difficult as he did not know how to find food or make money, but hunger and instinct drove him on. He sold his wakizashi to carry him through until he was able to make money on his own. As the days passed, the memory of what happened slowly faded, and Yasui found a peaceful rhythm in his life. He was able to find work when needed, doing a variety of jobs, working with a carpenter, helping him cut wood, working with a potter, helping collect clay, and so on. People seemed to naturally trust him, although they feared him. They sensed that he was a good man who needed help, and they helped him how they could. With nothing left to Yasui, he turned more to his poetry and to mediation. When he didn’t have work, he would find a sunny spot and meditate or quietly chant poetry to himself. One merchant who hired him noticed this and offered to give him a book of poetry - a good bargain considering the book was more valuable than the services Yasui had performed. Yasui agreed, and he carried the book with him and slowly memorized the poems within it. Yasui drifted to the south, exploring villages and meeting new people, but also slowly growing tired of his life and the need to always find a new way to put food in his stomach. He stopped in Moru, a small village in western Izu, and as he walked through the market, a splash of crimson caught his eye. He stopped in front of a flower seller, lost in thought, his eyes resting on drooping crimson heads in the afternoon sunlight. He put his hand to his komono and felt the coin, where he had sewn it long ago, and felt tears come to his eyes. He did not have money for peonies now. He continued through the market and sat for a long while under a large cherry tree in full bloom. He closed his eyes, turning his life over in his mind. He sat among the fallen blossoms surrounding him on the ground, and he knew that he couldn’t continue like this. Eyes closed, he gently chanted poetry amidst the blanket of cherry blossoms. And again, he began to feel something inside him changing, beginning to grow. He did not understand it, but he knew that his days as a drifter were coming to an end. Why are you interested in this game?: Great setting! I’m a fan of both fantasy and japanese culture and folklore (movies, tv, woodblock prints).

[Menzo]

Originally Posted by Mindsiege

@Menzo:
I have a character that I had conceptualized for a different game before this (where it didn't make the cut), but which I believe would fit perfectly into this setting.

Would it be all right if I throw my lot in after cleaning it up for your application requirements? Since it's never been used, I still feel that it is original. The part I worry about though is the different story hook in this game. Can I gather, that characters with motivations to join the civil war are preferred? I would want to change some backstory details anyways, but thought it would still be good to ask, what you are looking for.

@Mindsiege Feel free to submit your character. I have not settled on the plot. I am inclined to pick the best players/characters first, then based on those characters work out the character hooks and plot premise. Ultimately, I don't think it will matter whether your character is motivated to join the civil war or not. It's going to roll across Shikoku like the proverbial tsunami. Remaining uninvolved will be hard.

Just create a character that you like, and that fits within the feudal Japanese-themed setting, and if you're selected we can work out character hooks in a Session 0.

[Noquarter19]

Withdrawn.

[Mindsiege]

Status: Ready for review!

Yashiro - Completed Name: 驎祥恩 矢城 - Rinshōon Yashiro Race: Aasimar (Protector)天人 - Tennin Class: Monk (Kensei)僧兵 - Sohei Gender: male Age: 62 Background: Noble Personality Trait 1: I am considered eccentric, but in turn I look down on those who can't appreciate my sense of beauty. Personality Trait 2: I take pride in conforming to my visual ideals and go to great lengths to hone my appearance. Bond: As lord I have responsibility to take care of the lands entrusted to me beyond selfsatisfaction. Ideal: It is my duty to respect the authority of those above me, just as those below me must respect mine. Flaw: Aside from my clan duties, compassion and consideration for others is irrelevant before my sublime philosophy. Personality: Yashiro, after his title of lord, considers himself first and foremost a collector, as much as a purveyor of beauty. He is quick to be enamored with things appealing to his own concepts of beauty, which include concepts like martial prowess, quickness of wit, adhesion to hierarchy and feminine youth. He is seen as an eccentric by the standards of his people, but beyond his effeminate bearings and a habit of speaking tenderly he should by no means be mistaken as a softhearted person. Since he was raised with barely anybody of equal standing in his life, he is very prideful at his core and despite his cosseted upbringing, Yashiro has gained a strong will accompanied by a meticulous mind that makes him seek for the order of things. While he has a tendency of presenting a calming smile to the people in his presence, covered by his conscientious fulfilment of his responsibility to his clan he also hides a streak of cruelty or rather a distinct lack of compassion for others. With his age having surpassed half a dozen decades, Yashiro has achieved a sort of balance between himself and the rest of the world, that tends to see things differently than he does himself. As such he possesses the wisdom not to overindulge himself and to moderate his behaviour to stave off having to be at odds with his fellow countrymen. He knows, when to keep his more questionable inclinations more privately. Appearance: Yashiro's ideal of beauty is a concept, where spiritual and physical superiority are interwoven as one, and as such he places high value in adhering to these ideals and maintaining his own appearance. Despite Yashiro's age, his hallowed blood has granted him with youthful features that stand in contrast to his very deliberate demeanour. True to his own philosophy he nurtures his long, silky black hair and also takes care to keep a fair and unblemished skin, which he reinforces by also wearing makeup. He tends to garb himself primarily in feminie clothing, where he prefers to wear colour rich Hikizuri compared to more traditional Kimonos, at least when indoors. But not only in his choice of wear does Yashiro draw from his infatuation with the female form. Many of his mannerisms are affected with effeminate bearings, but in actuality this does not mean that Yashiro wants to become a woman in mind and body truly. Rather than that, his behaviour can be understood as creedence to his ideology, which seeks beauty in the sublimity of female youth. On the same note, underneath his clothing Yashiro has developed a prominently muscular body, fit for even the most capable of warriors. He spends many long hours of training to realize this particular aspect from his idea of beauty and equally takes pride in his strength, as he does in his emulation of feminity. Backstory:   The Rinshōon clan, of which Yashiro had been born as the first son, has by now a long and mythical history. It is many an old wives tale, that their ancestors had risen to power because of their superior wisdom, and some said as much as them being derived from actual Tennin. The reasons that those rumors have been imparted over centuries amongst the common folk, is that as with many a tale, at its core there lies part of a much larger truth. In the case of the Rinshōon clan, Yashiro had been taught since he could understand, that the origin of his familiy's name - Rinshōon (驎祥恩) - has deep meaning in relation to a female kirin (騏驎), a mythical beast that has been assumed to be the clans patron since multiple generations ago. In fact, in times of old one of Yashiro's ancestors was supposed to have saved said kirin by striking a clever bargain with the Kami, and since then the Kirin had given the man and his descendants its blessing and guidance. Yashiro was told many times as a kid, that the wisdom of the clan had been initially the wisdom of the kirin's teachings, but Yashiro himself had never gotten any such directions himself, in all his lifetime. For all that it was worth though, Yashiro always believed, that his bloodline must have been touched by the spark of the devine. He himself was undoubtedly blessed by a devine spark, as he could conjure wings of radiant light, which in his eyes made being a Tennin ever so likely, albeit he much rather wished to be likened to a Tenshi. Still, with the gifts of a superior body and mind, the young Yashiro never met anything more celestial than himself. But that was all the same to him, for he had many of capable teachers in many different arts and with his own, clear mind he felt no need for additional, otherworldly guidance. He had always been raised as the next lord of his clan, to rule the people and lands gifted to his bloodline by the emperor himself generations ago, in acknowledgment of his family's foresight and loyalty. Now, in the domain under the Rinshōon clan, only the emperor wielded more authority in these lands, but an era of peace had made close associations and supervision unnecessary and as such Yashiro grew up with only few his equal. But this did not serve to let him grow entirely unworldly, since his father took hierachy and duty rather seriously and made great efforts to impart the same values upon his son. Though diligent in following his parents teachings, young Yashiro had always sought to finding meaning beyond his obligations. Over the years he developed his own philosophy, which likened beauty as the amalgamation of several aspects of a humanoid on the path to perfection. Being an honest and capable successor in all manners of his duties as the clan head, Yashiro's parents tended to overlook any seeds of their sons eccentricities in his growing years. Over the years, it was an amazing thing to witness, that the divine spark of Yashiro's progenitor seemed to have stayed especially strong in his blood especially, which became clear as Yashiro seemed to age slower than any of his servants or even his other family members. When Yashrio finally toke the place of his father at the age of 36, he still looked like a youthful man in his early twenties and this was then the appearance he stayed with in the following few decades. As a Tennin, Yashiro was glad that he didn't seem to bear the burden of aging, because youth represented one of the facets of his desired ideal. Over the years, as Yashiro outlived his parents and then finally all of his younger siblings and even some cousins, the youthful lord spent most of his time on either his obligations or else on his path to develop himself into the image of his idealistic philosophy. The aspects that Yashiro valued were martial prowess, quickness of wit, adhesion to hierarchy and feminine youth, none of these favoured in any particular order. In his decades as lord, Yashiro grew many of things which he considered beautiful, ranging from his gardens to his harem or even his ever growing retinue of capable retainers, to a point where he could conscientiously leave most of the domain's governance in the hands of his handpicked followers, who despite their masters eccentricities returned his favour and trust with duty and loyalty. Apart from amassing collections of people and things though, one particular point of pride for Yashiro had always been another aspect of his striving for beauty: The nurturing of his own martial prowess. For decades the lord spent training, from the viewpoint of his family and retainers to the point of obsession. With the help of several masters, Yashiro had gown beyond the basic, noble teachings of his parents in the arts of Kyudo and several other martial weapons. Aligned with his philosophy, Yashiro longed to transform his very own body into a natural weapon, which culminated in a remarkably built musculature and techniques to even kill with his own bare hands. The martial artist never forgot to keep pratice with the arms of his father, but his ideal went beyond using any sort of weapons. Before he had become head of his clan, Yashiro had loved the rush of the hunt, when he was still not fully bound by responsibility, but it was only at the age of 54, that he again saw the freedom of being able to remove himself from his seat of power in the domain's captiol. With enough capable retainers to entrust his domain for prolonged amounts of time, from then on Yashiro allowed himself to indulge his desire to prove the culmination of all his work in actual battle. Though he would have liked to venture forth for months of fight and adventure, for the time being Yashiro contented himself with rousing local bandits or dueling the odd, unruly beast that endagered the life of his citizens. Not that these lives held special value beyond his reponsibilty to these people as the lord, but taking this duty from his lessers proved itself as a workable excuse to put his capabilities to the test in a meaningful way. Living like this to the age of 62, the commonfolk and some of his retinue of course wondered if there was truth to Yashiro being an actual Tennin, but Yashiro always kept his real capabilities outside the eye of the public. In fact, even some of his remaining relatives had begun to wonder if they weren't confused towards Yashiro's actual age. Over the years, the head of the family had become more and more of an insular recluse and anyways, many of them didn't place the same stake into the stories of their clan's divine origin like Yashiro did. Still, beyond all his achievements in his life so far, Yashiro's desire for perfection was never sated. If he was honest, in recent time he had even come to resent his status as lord and stable life, which kept him from rising to new, unbested challenges and would forever leave him uncertain, if there wasn't still room for improvement or to conform even more to his ideal beauty. If it wasn't simply distasteful and averse to his upbringing, in the dark hours and in the privates of his mind Yashiro sometimes felt like the age of peace could use some upsetting, if not just for the reason of giving him an excuse to justifiably follow a cause with higher urgency than the duty of his birthright. Game Interest: Of course I had been drawn towards this game because of the setting and because I have kept looking for a home for this character. But after I read your outlook at games and the preference of character interaction and charater development, that was the moment, when I knew that I had to apply, because that's what I consider my main motivation for RP. I think, that despite how the concept of Yashiro reads, that I will not have a hard time working together with the other players or that I would be likely to become a hindrance to story advancement. As a player I like to know that everybody is on board with what I'm having my character do and I would also say, that my character is more eccentric than selfish anyways. In the end he shouldn't have character drives, that would motivate him to go against the party, just don't expect actual heartfelt compassion from him.

[Menzo]

Starting reviews...


If you don't find a review of your application here, it could be because I haven't got around to it yet, or because you haven't explicitly requested one. Either way, if a couple of days passes and nothing appears, feel free to give me an e-boot up the backside.

[InMemoriam]

Thank you for the feedback!

[Menzo]

[Schroedingerdude]

Roberto Greenskin's character application is ready for review!