Character Sketch: Makoto

      Today’s snippet, titled “Makoto”, is a piece I wrote about my PC in Mark’s new (Good) Pathfinder Campaign.
      Be forewarned, there are mature themes and naughty language below.
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Name: Makoto Yu
Age: 15
DoB: Kuthona 12th
Height: 4’7”
Weight: 88 lbs.
Hair: Brown-black, arrow straight
Eye: Black
Features: Small, Tian-Shu female
Build: 24b-22-28
Clothes: Cropped shirt, miniscule shorts; hide armor-stylized. A thick, rune-etched chain encircles her thin waist and is connected to a heavy rune-etched torque which sits around her neck.
Favorite Color: Blood.
Hobbies: Climbing trees, gathering herbs, meditation to keep the demons at bay.

Note: Image from http://cghub.com/images/view/761982/


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      Makoto Yu was born in Tian-Shu, in a tiny, nameless hovel to a pair of simpletons who could scarcely care for themselves and who were utterly unprepared for the challenge of raising a child.
      Their lives were small and dirty and mean; there was never enough food, never enough wood for the fire, never enough skins and cloth to keep a growing girl warm and decently clothed. From these early days, Makoto learned to endure almost any weather with almost any garb and – generally speaking – preferred to be in insufficient clothing.
      Malnourished and isolated, Makoto Yu grew into a child who was alternately pathetic & helpless, or fierce and feral. Her parents, being simple, did not read or write and thus, she never learned. In fact, despite her perfectly capable brain, Makoto never had any formal learning at all – everything she knows, she learned from experience, from trial and error, from her extremely limited contact with other people.
      At the tender age of eleven, something changed within her tiny body. She began to have horrific nightmares from which she would wake drenched in sweat, her limbs tangled in her blanket. Her screams were so piercing that they woke both parents and all the wildlife for half a mile around their hut.
      By the time she was twelve, her parents were convinced their child was possessed by some great devil, and they began imprisoning her each night (bound and gagged in the shallow cellar that served as cold storage) for her own safety as well as their own. Her nocturnal fits became violent and twice she beat her father bloody as he tried to soothe her nightmares away.
      It took months of waiting and praying, but eventually, a nearby hamlet was visited by an itinerant priest and the Widow Shumaiyata directed him to the Yu family’s hut.
      Friar Wakata diagnosed the girl immediately – she was possessed by an Oni and the beast’s grip on her spirit was such that it could not be dispossessed. There was no earthly way to separate the wicked fiend from the innocent girl, so decreed Friar Wakata, and so believed the Yu family, for they put their trust in a man of learning and wisdom.
      To save her, we must bind the evil within, so it cannot escape and control her body, Friar Wakata said, reasonably. We will lock it between her belly and her throat and she will be safe.
      Unfortunately, the cost of the materials, let lone the enchantments, was far beyond the meagre reach of the Yu family’s finances. Friar Wakata insisted that Makoto be trussed at all times, lest the Oni’s rage catch her unawares and she do real damage to someone. Her parents – freshly filled with fear of the Oni locked within the frail body of their young daughter – agreed.
      The first six months of utter captivity were the worst days Makoto ever knew. Sometimes, her parents would simply forget about her for days at a time and it was not until the Oni came roaring to the surface and she fought her bonds and screamed herself hoarse, that they recalled and came to feed, wash, or tend her.
      When she was thirteen, Makoto Yu had spent most of two years shunted off into the cellar “for her own protection”, and grew more wild with each week that passed. It had gotten so bad, that her parents feared to get within arm’s reach of their daughter and they merely tossed food, wet rags, and waterskins down to her.
      Two weeks into the first moon of her thirteenth year, the Oni gained full control of Makoto’s waifish body and despite damaging her fists and feet, it broke free of the cellar and in a furious rage that seemed impossible for a girl of thirteen, Makoto’s Oni killed both of her parents.
      Friar Wakata found her some hours, or days later, curled up like a kitten at the foot of her parents’ bed. The evidence of her wrath remained in blood splatters and shattered furniture, yet somehow she had dragged their broken bodies back to their bed and laid them in state, lovingly posed despite the violence done them. The girl had cried herself nearly to death was difficult to wake. Her knuckles and toes were all fractured and in her weakened state, Friar Wakata was able to bind her wounds.
      He took her from the hovel that day, she would never return.
      Drifting in and out of consciousness, Makoto wept the entire first week she was free of the cellar. Friar Wakata had tried her to a travois and dragged her behind his horse. At some point during those first seven days, Friar Wakata met with his mentor, Vicar Akiko Honda, a beautiful priestess from the wealthy Honda family in the nearby city-state, Kashuyana. She had heard of the girl’s plight from the Friar’s own lips, and traveled deep into the wilderness to lend her aid.
      They bound the girl around the throat and waist with an enchanted length of steel chain, prayed rituals over her for hours, and fed her broth and honey to get her strength back. More accurately, to gain strength she had never been well-fed enough to possess.
      “You must’n’t blame yourself, Mako-chan,” the Vicar told her, stroking her long, dark hair with a boar’s bristle brush. “The Oni that lives within you is responsible for- the tragedy. One day, you will learn to control it and once you have mastered it, you will move mountains. You are a very special and yes, though I know it does not seem so now, a lucky girl. Time will tell, Mako-chan, but you have been touched by Our Lord in Iron and you will do great things.”
      Makoto could only nod agreement and pray that the Vicar and the Friar knew where of they spoke.
      For her fourteenth birthday, after months of travelling the countryside testing the bonds and finding that the Oni could no longer break free, Friar Wakata and Vicar Honda gifted her with a greatsword, plain dark steel with a utilitarian grip and a unadorned scabbard. She learned to wear it on her back, though it was as tall as she, and in the weeks and months that followed, she learned to bear its weight and wield it with some skill.
      Further and further, in the deep North, they travelled; the Vicar, the Friar, and the Oni-girl. No one told her where they were going or why, but just before her fifteenth birthday, Vicar Honda paused on the road and looked over at her curiously.
      “We have arrived, Mako-chan.”
      “What do you mean, Honda-sama?” the girl looked around skeptically. There was nothing around but sere hills and dun scrubgrass as far as the eye could see.
      “Your destiny begins just there,” she pointed. “I dreamt of you before Friar Wakata ever came to me for help, and it has been a long road, but we have arrived.”
      Makoto frowned staring out over the landscape. “What is that?”
      Her finger found a smudge on the horizon, a black gash in the brown land. It was ragged and gaping – a wound. She felt a strange pull deep within her, one she had not felt since the day her parents died. Fear filled her heart and she turned to the Vicar, desperation on her thin face.
      “That is the Worldwound, my little one, it is where you will live or die – it is where you will conquer the Oni, or be consumed by him. It is where you will find your destiny.”
      “I don’t want to die,” she cried, her voice cracking. “I don’t want to die, Honda-sama!”
      Two hands, calloused by years of swordplay, gripped the sides of her face with surprising gentleness. “Then, my sweet child, you must fight.”

– – – – – – – – – – –
Signed, Josie
Note: Image is “King Jagiello Statue Central” by (Mulligand) from SXC.hu; edited by me

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