Mors

Name: Shin

Age: 19

Sex: Male

Race: Human

Bio:

The moon showers her face and Shin crouches, low to the ground. On the castle walls, on the high towers, a dozen pairs of eyes hunt the darkness of the slopes outside, but only the wind finds Shin, tugging at his robe, keening in his ears. He studies the battlements, the sheer expanse of the castle's stonework. When the time comes he'll be fast. But now he waits. Sinking the teeth of his patience into the problem, watching how the guards move, how they come and go, where they rest their eyes.

"Every good story tells at least one lie and holds a secret at its heart."

Taro kept his head so still as he spoke that Natsuko thought of the statues in her father's garden. She watched his lips form the words, her gaze drawn by their motion amid the stillness of his face. All part of the storyteller's art, no doubt.

"The secret of this story hides in darkness, trapped behind the eyes of an assassin."

Natsuko let her gaze stray from Taro's mouth to encompass the rest of him, slight within his traveler's tunic, buttoned to the top, his shamisen at his side, features fine, the light that had first lit her up still burning in those grey eyes. 

"Shin they called him. Perhaps it was his name. Assassins wear such things lightly. In any event, Shin had been his name since the brotherhood took him in."

"A brotherhood? Was he a holy monk?" Natsuko knew some temples kept assassins - the best that money could buy. Taro smiled, a true storyteller doesn't bridle at questions. When questions are not welcome the story will not allow its audience to speak. "A holy man? Of a kind...He offered absolution, dealt in peace. Steel forgives all sins."

When Taro smiled Natsuko's heart beat faster and the lingering worry retreated. If her father discovered she'd snuck a man into her rooms, a mere commoner at that, he would double the guard - though she doubted the walls could hold more soldiers - have the bars at her windows shackled together so no illicit key would open them, and worse, he would talk to her. He would summon her before the chair form which he spoke for all of the Nara District in Ishido and treat her not like a child but worse, like an adult in whom his trust had been misplaced. She would have to stand there, alone in that echoing expanse of jade, and explain the knotted bedsheets she'd lowered as a rope, the alarm she'd had Shiori raise to distract the samurai from their patrols.

"Shin took his work seriously. The taking of life is a -"

"Was he handsome, this Shin?" Natsuko stretched on the bed, a languid motion, hot and sultry as the night. She felt sure a storm was building, the sakura trees in the garden had been thrashing in a humid wind when she opened the window for Taro, rain lacing the breeze. It would break soon. The distant thunder would arrive and make good on its threats.

Natsuko half rolled to face the storyteller. He leaned forward on his small mat, close at hand, the story scroll unopened on his knee. About his wrist he wore her favor, a silk lace, embroidered with sakura flowers. "Was he handsome? Was he tall, this Shin?" she asked.

"Ordinary," Taro told her, "Unremarkable. The kind of face that might in the right light be anyone. Handsome in one instant, in the next forgettable. He stood shorter than most men, lacking the muscle of a warrior. His eyes though - they would chill you. Empty. As if he just saw bones and meat when he looked your way."

Natsuko shuddered, and Shin unrolled his scroll, fingertips floating above the characters set there, dark and numerous upon the paper, crowded with meaning. "To find out why Shin watched those walls we have to journey, first many miles to the west, and then back through the hours and days until we find him there." Taro raised his voice, though still soft for the samurai outside the door mustn't hear him, and as he lifted his hand from the scroll, the story bore her away.

Brother Shin waited, for that is what assassins do. First they wait for their task, then for opportunity. The brotherhood had made camp in the ruin of a small fortress, amid the wreckage and the stink of whatever recent battle had emptied it. Such places are common now, throughout Ishido. Shin sought out the highest tower, as was his wont, and sat upon the battlements, staring at the place where the road that brought them became compressed between sky and land and vanished into a point. His legs dangled above a long drop.

"A name has been given." The Head Priest spoke behind Shin. He'd climbed the stairs on quiet feet, as he always did.

"Which name?" Shin still watched the road, leading as it did back into the past. Sometimes he wondered about that. About how a man might retrace his steps and yet still not return to the place he'd come from. And the Head Priest spoke the name. He came to stand by the wall and set a heavy gold coin beside Shin. 

"Find us at the Leafy Green Inn when this is done." He turned and descended the steps.

Assassination is murder with somebody else's purpose. Shin reached for the coin, held it in his palm, felt the weight. Coins hold purpose, they bear it like a cup. A murder should always carry a weight, even if it's only the weight of gold. He turned the coin over in his scarred fingers. The face upon it would lead him to his victim.

Shin rode from the fort, beneath the gutted gatehouse, his equipment stowed, his weapons strapped about his person. His brothers saw him go and made no comment. Assassination is lonely work.  They each feared him in their own way. Hard-bitten men, dangerous with a sharp edge or blunt instrument, but they feared him. Everyone sleeps after all. Every mortal is vulnerable.

Shin slowed his horse to a walk and set out along the trail that would bring him to a larger way, and thence to the Dragon Road that would lead him to Ishido. There was no haste in him, no eagerness. The assassin requires no passion - his work is not artistry, simply efficient. The very best assassin is no warrior, he doesn't achieve his ends through skill at arms. Instead he must know people, he must understand them, intimately. Sometimes it's the people who stand in his way whose skin he must inhabit, sometimes the victim themselves. 

Shin found a plum in his pocket, wizened but still sweet, and took a small bite, leaving a precise wound. The catch of course is that knowing the full depth of any human, knowing their hopes and frailties, the hurts of their past, the tremor with which they reach for the future...that knowledge is akin to love.

"Do you think that's true, Taro?" Natsuko asked the question into the pause the young man left. "Because who knows people better than a storyteller?" She drew herself upon the bed so she sat opposite him, their knees almost touching. "You make your living telling our tales. And so many of them are about princesses...you must know us very well."

They shared a knowing smile, close enough now that Natsuko could see the rain's moisture still clinging to his hair. Natsuko laid her hand upon his knee - should could guess how this night would end. She had invited him to her chamber for more than old tales. Taro set his fingers above the symbols on the scroll, and began to speak again, not looking down but holding her gaze, as if he could read the story by drawing the words up through his hand.

"Shin sat and waited and watched, as he had sat and waited and watched on each of ten previous nights, sometimes at the walls, sometimes in the city that washed up around the barren mount upon which the castle squatted. Always he listened, learning what could be learned, presenting a new face to each night, seeking his way in."

Natsuko frowned. "This Shin came to Nara to murder the man whose face was on the coin?" She shot Taro a sharp look. "My father-"

"Or some heir of his, my princess? Or perhaps just someone who might be found wherever the Lord might be? Or maybe the Shogun Gozo, that fearsome warlord who died in mysterious circumstances and whose brother, Matsuda, inherited the land centuries ago? Matusda proved somewhat inept in the business of armies and was Lord of this castle for just two months before your family disposed of him upon the battlefield...give the story space and it will tell itself."

Natsuko settled back, embarrassed at her outbrust. Had she spoiled the secret - was the story how her line came to reign in Nara?

"We were discussing love, Princess Natsuko. The perfect assassin, the one who can reach anyone, anywhere, needs to know his target intimately, and such knowledge breeds love. So there lies a dilemma. The perfect assassin needs to be able to kill the thing he loves - or rather to understand the emotion but not let it stay his hand.

Shin never stayed his hand - always seized his moment. When some alarm within the castle turned the guards from the battlements he advanced to the base of the wall, swift but smooth. He threw his padded grapple and the thin rope snaked out behind it. Within heartbeats he was climbing, drawing himself up along a line chosen after long inspection toward a section where he stood least chance of being observed. Arms burning he reached the battlement and crossed the parapet on all fours, quick as an eel, kicking free the grapple behind him and dropping into the sakura tree he knew stood close to the wall at that spot. Below him the gardens seethed in the new risen wind. The castle walls enclosed several acres of garden, set to trees, shrub and bush, in chaotic profusion, capturing a manicured hint of the Oni infested wild woods in which the nobility of Nara so loved to hunt.

Shin waited, high in the arms of the sakura, waited for whatever commotion had drawn the samurai's attention within the walls to die away. The wound on the heel of his palm had started to bleed again. He'd killed seasoned veterans without taking a scratch and somehow let a lorekeeper slice him with a quill. 

"Why was he there?" Natsuko slid from the bed to sit at Taro's feet. His sandals were streaked with mud from his journey through the gardens.

"That's the secret, princess."

"You will tell me though?" She looked up at him, arching her brows.

Taro met her gaze. "Of course. Before the end. Nobody's story should end with thh secret untold." He returned his eyes to the scroll before him. The low rumble of thunder reached then, vibrating in Natsuko's chest.

Shin waited in the sakura tree, ripe with a purpose that was not his own. Many years before, his mother had tied all his purpose to a single coin, a lifetime ago, back when he'd been too young to know he was being sold. The brothel had taken him and held him until that day the brotherhood came with blood and fire and, seeing in him a different value, took the boy into their number. He'd been twelve when they gave him a new life, and in the years since he'd come to accept a leader's direction to replace his own spinning compass.  Though for each death he took a coin, perhaps hoping in some deep and unspeaking recess of his mind that the coin his mother once accepted would find its way to his hand, and give him back to himself.

When Shin's moment came he dropped, cloak fluttering behind him, two feet striking the back of the samurai's neck. The man fell nerveless into a bush while Shin launched himself onto the second guard, dagger in hand. In a heartbeat only Shin remained upright. He dragged the second man into the bush that received the first and, while all around him the pink leaves seethed beneath the wind, Shin whispered the secret to the men as their last moments came and went. Beneath the shelter of the tree, Shin changed into his disguise. By the time he'd done up the last button a cold rain had begun to fall and the dark gardens bent and dripped. He advanced on the tall towers, pausing only to set in place his equipment within the shrubs that marked the gardens' perimeter.

"You didn't just come here to tell stories did you, Taro?" Natsuko moved her hand upon the young man's knee, feeling the firmness of his thigh. A flicker of lightning lit the room, mocking the candles' illumination for a second, and burning in the storyteller's eyes.

"That's true, princess. I came for more than stories. Besides, I think the story's over." Taro returned to her, easing the tension in her shoulders with an expert touch.

"But you never told me the secret," Natsuko said, craning her neck to look back at him.

Taro shook his head, a sad smile on his lips. When he passed the cord beneath her chin she thought for a moment that it was a necklace, a gift.

"I'm the secret." A moment later the silk lace tightened choking the question off her lips. Her hands went to her neck and all thought narrowed to a single aim, a single goal, to draw another breath. And into that moment of silent, terminal, panic Shin whispered the secret. Shin crouched behind the bed, safe from any clawing hands, hauling on the cord until Natsuko's struggles ceased. Even then he kepet the pressure, rising with the cord knotted between his straining hands. He knew how long it takes to kill someone in such a manner. A knife would have been quicker, but bloody, and his escape would be safer if he kept clean. In any case a knife seemed wrong for so royal a throat. Silk seemed...apt...for nobility.

Eventually Shin let the lace go, allowing the princess's corpse to flop forward, hiding her purple face, blood-filled eyes, protruding tongue. He took from his bag a copy of the royal servants' robes, changing into ti quickly but without haste. He removed Natsuko's favor and hid the wound on his wrist beneath the cuff os his new uniform instead. A long brown wig and a touch of powder delicately applied with the help of a mirror to achieve the desired effect, and Shin looked every bit the serving girl. Disguise had always come easy to him. His childhood served him well - when your sense of self is taken it grows easier to become someone else, when you sell affection it becomes easier to both understand love and be unmoved by it. The brotherhood had seen the killer in him at twelve - he wondered how people less used to murder managed not to see it until it was far too late.

Half an hour later, on a dark and rain-swept road with a good horse beneath him, Shin made his decision, pulling the reins once more towards the Dragon Road that would bear him east and south towards the Tower of Ishido, towards his brothers, towards another coin, another duty. In his wake, torn and flapping in the mud, the story scroll, its inked symbols smeared by the rain, words and meaning running together, soaking away.

Inventory: Various disguises, poisons, hidden weapons, and his shamisen. 

Name: Shin

Age: 19

Sex: Male

Race: Human

Bio:

The moon showers her face and Shin crouches, low to the ground. On the castle walls, on the high towers, a dozen pairs of eyes hunt the darkness of the slopes outside, but only the wind finds Shin, tugging at his robe, keening in his ears. He studies the battlements, the sheer expanse of the castle's stonework. When the time comes he'll be fast. But now he waits. Sinking the teeth of his patience into the problem, watching how the guards move, how they come and go, where they rest their eyes.

"Every good story tells at least one lie and holds a secret at its heart."

Taro kept his head so still as he spoke that Natsuko thought of the statues in her father's garden. She watched his lips form the words, her gaze drawn by their motion amid the stillness of his face. All part of the storyteller's art, no doubt.

"The secret of this story hides in darkness, trapped behind the eyes of an assassin."

Natsuko let her gaze stray from Taro's mouth to encompass the rest of him, slight within his traveler's tunic, buttoned to the top, his shamisen at his side, features fine, the light that had first lit her up still burning in those grey eyes. 

"Shin they called him. Perhaps it was his name. Assassins wear such things lightly. In any event, Shin had been his name since the brotherhood took him in."

"A brotherhood? Was he a holy monk?" Natsuko knew some temples kept assassins - the best that money could buy. Taro smiled, a true storyteller doesn't bridle at questions. When questions are not welcome the story will not allow its audience to speak. "A holy man? Of a kind...He offered absolution, dealt in peace. Steel forgives all sins."

When Taro smiled Natsuko's heart beat faster and the lingering worry retreated. If her father discovered she'd snuck a man into her rooms, a mere commoner at that, he would double the guard - though she doubted the walls could hold more soldiers - have the bars at her windows shackled together so no illicit key would open them, and worse, he would talk to her. He would summon her before the chair form which he spoke for all of the Nara District in Ishido and treat her not like a child but worse, like an adult in whom his trust had been misplaced. She would have to stand there, alone in that echoing expanse of jade, and explain the knotted bedsheets she'd lowered as a rope, the alarm she'd had Shiori raise to distract the samurai from their patrols.

"Shin took his work seriously. The taking of life is a -"

"Was he handsome, this Shin?" Natsuko stretched on the bed, a languid motion, hot and sultry as the night. She felt sure a storm was building, the sakura trees in the garden had been thrashing in a humid wind when she opened the window for Taro, rain lacing the breeze. It would break soon. The distant thunder would arrive and make good on its threats.

Natsuko half rolled to face the storyteller. He leaned forward on his small mat, close at hand, the story scroll unopened on his knee. About his wrist he wore her favor, a silk lace, embroidered with sakura flowers. "Was he handsome? Was he tall, this Shin?" she asked.

"Ordinary," Taro told her, "Unremarkable. The kind of face that might in the right light be anyone. Handsome in one instant, in the next forgettable. He stood shorter than most men, lacking the muscle of a warrior. His eyes though - they would chill you. Empty. As if he just saw bones and meat when he looked your way."

Natsuko shuddered, and Shin unrolled his scroll, fingertips floating above the characters set there, dark and numerous upon the paper, crowded with meaning. "To find out why Shin watched those walls we have to journey, first many miles to the west, and then back through the hours and days until we find him there." Taro raised his voice, though still soft for the samurai outside the door mustn't hear him, and as he lifted his hand from the scroll, the story bore her away.

Brother Shin waited, for that is what assassins do. First they wait for their task, then for opportunity. The brotherhood had made camp in the ruin of a small fortress, amid the wreckage and the stink of whatever recent battle had emptied it. Such places are common now, throughout Ishido. Shin sought out the highest tower, as was his wont, and sat upon the battlements, staring at the place where the road that brought them became compressed between sky and land and vanished into a point. His legs dangled above a long drop.

"A name has been given." The Head Priest spoke behind Shin. He'd climbed the stairs on quiet feet, as he always did.

"Which name?" Shin still watched the road, leading as it did back into the past. Sometimes he wondered about that. About how a man might retrace his steps and yet still not return to the place he'd come from. And the Head Priest spoke the name. He came to stand by the wall and set a heavy gold coin beside Shin. 

"Find us at the Leafy Green Inn when this is done." He turned and descended the steps.

Assassination is murder with somebody else's purpose. Shin reached for the coin, held it in his palm, felt the weight. Coins hold purpose, they bear it like a cup. A murder should always carry a weight, even if it's only the weight of gold. He turned the coin over in his scarred fingers. The face upon it would lead him to his victim.

Shin rode from the fort, beneath the gutted gatehouse, his equipment stowed, his weapons strapped about his person. His brothers saw him go and made no comment. Assassination is lonely work.  They each feared him in their own way. Hard-bitten men, dangerous with a sharp edge or blunt instrument, but they feared him. Everyone sleeps after all. Every mortal is vulnerable.

Shin slowed his horse to a walk and set out along the trail that would bring him to a larger way, and thence to the Dragon Road that would lead him to Ishido. There was no haste in him, no eagerness. The assassin requires no passion - his work is not artistry, simply efficient. The very best assassin is no warrior, he doesn't achieve his ends through skill at arms. Instead he must know people, he must understand them, intimately. Sometimes it's the people who stand in his way whose skin he must inhabit, sometimes the victim themselves. 

Shin found a plum in his pocket, wizened but still sweet, and took a small bite, leaving a precise wound. The catch of course is that knowing the full depth of any human, knowing their hopes and frailties, the hurts of their past, the tremor with which they reach for the future...that knowledge is akin to love.

"Do you think that's true, Taro?" Natsuko asked the question into the pause the young man left. "Because who knows people better than a storyteller?" She drew herself upon the bed so she sat opposite him, their knees almost touching. "You make your living telling our tales. And so many of them are about princesses...you must know us very well."

They shared a knowing smile, close enough now that Natsuko could see the rain's moisture still clinging to his hair. Natsuko laid her hand upon his knee - should could guess how this night would end. She had invited him to her chamber for more than old tales. Taro set his fingers above the symbols on the scroll, and began to speak again, not looking down but holding her gaze, as if he could read the story by drawing the words up through his hand.

"Shin sat and waited and watched, as he had sat and waited and watched on each of ten previous nights, sometimes at the walls, sometimes in the city that washed up around the barren mount upon which the castle squatted. Always he listened, learning what could be learned, presenting a new face to each night, seeking his way in."

Natsuko frowned. "This Shin came to Nara to murder the man whose face was on the coin?" She shot Taro a sharp look. "My father-"

"Or some heir of his, my princess? Or perhaps just someone who might be found wherever the Lord might be? Or maybe the Shogun Gozo, that fearsome warlord who died in mysterious circumstances and whose brother, Matsuda, inherited the land centuries ago? Matusda proved somewhat inept in the business of armies and was Lord of this castle for just two months before your family disposed of him upon the battlefield...give the story space and it will tell itself."

Natsuko settled back, embarrassed at her outbrust. Had she spoiled the secret - was the story how her line came to reign in Nara?

"We were discussing love, Princess Natsuko. The perfect assassin, the one who can reach anyone, anywhere, needs to know his target intimately, and such knowledge breeds love. So there lies a dilemma. The perfect assassin needs to be able to kill the thing he loves - or rather to understand the emotion but not let it stay his hand.

Shin never stayed his hand - always seized his moment. When some alarm within the castle turned the guards from the battlements he advanced to the base of the wall, swift but smooth. He threw his padded grapple and the thin rope snaked out behind it. Within heartbeats he was climbing, drawing himself up along a line chosen after long inspection toward a section where he stood least chance of being observed. Arms burning he reached the battlement and crossed the parapet on all fours, quick as an eel, kicking free the grapple behind him and dropping into the sakura tree he knew stood close to the wall at that spot. Below him the gardens seethed in the new risen wind. The castle walls enclosed several acres of garden, set to trees, shrub and bush, in chaotic profusion, capturing a manicured hint of the Oni infested wild woods in which the nobility of Nara so loved to hunt.

Shin waited, high in the arms of the sakura, waited for whatever commotion had drawn the samurai's attention within the walls to die away. The wound on the heel of his palm had started to bleed again. He'd killed seasoned veterans without taking a scratch and somehow let a lorekeeper slice him with a quill. 

"Why was he there?" Natsuko slid from the bed to sit at Taro's feet. His sandals were streaked with mud from his journey through the gardens.

"That's the secret, princess."

"You will tell me though?" She looked up at him, arching her brows.

Taro met her gaze. "Of course. Before the end. Nobody's story should end with thh secret untold." He returned his eyes to the scroll before him. The low rumble of thunder reached then, vibrating in Natsuko's chest.

Shin waited in the sakura tree, ripe with a purpose that was not his own. Many years before, his mother had tied all his purpose to a single coin, a lifetime ago, back when he'd been too young to know he was being sold. The brothel had taken him and held him until that day the brotherhood came with blood and fire and, seeing in him a different value, took the boy into their number. He'd been twelve when they gave him a new life, and in the years since he'd come to accept a leader's direction to replace his own spinning compass.  Though for each death he took a coin, perhaps hoping in some deep and unspeaking recess of his mind that the coin his mother once accepted would find its way to his hand, and give him back to himself.

When Shin's moment came he dropped, cloak fluttering behind him, two feet striking the back of the samurai's neck. The man fell nerveless into a bush while Shin launched himself onto the second guard, dagger in hand. In a heartbeat only Shin remained upright. He dragged the second man into the bush that received the first and, while all around him the pink leaves seethed beneath the wind, Shin whispered the secret to the men as their last moments came and went. Beneath the shelter of the tree, Shin changed into his disguise. By the time he'd done up the last button a cold rain had begun to fall and the dark gardens bent and dripped. He advanced on the tall towers, pausing only to set in place his equipment within the shrubs that marked the gardens' perimeter.

"You didn't just come here to tell stories did you, Taro?" Natsuko moved her hand upon the young man's knee, feeling the firmness of his thigh. A flicker of lightning lit the room, mocking the candles' illumination for a second, and burning in the storyteller's eyes.

"That's true, princess. I came for more than stories. Besides, I think the story's over." Taro returned to her, easing the tension in her shoulders with an expert touch.

"But you never told me the secret," Natsuko said, craning her neck to look back at him.

Taro shook his head, a sad smile on his lips. When he passed the cord beneath her chin she thought for a moment that it was a necklace, a gift.

"I'm the secret." A moment later the silk lace tightened choking the question off her lips. Her hands went to her neck and all thought narrowed to a single aim, a single goal, to draw another breath. And into that moment of silent, terminal, panic Shin whispered the secret. Shin crouched behind the bed, safe from any clawing hands, hauling on the cord until Natsuko's struggles ceased. Even then he kepet the pressure, rising with the cord knotted between his straining hands. He knew how long it takes to kill someone in such a manner. A knife would have been quicker, but bloody, and his escape would be safer if he kept clean. In any case a knife seemed wrong for so royal a throat. Silk seemed...apt...for nobility.

Eventually Shin let the lace go, allowing the princess's corpse to flop forward, hiding her purple face, blood-filled eyes, protruding tongue. He took from his bag a copy of the royal servants' robes, changing into ti quickly but without haste. He removed Natsuko's favor and hid the wound on his wrist beneath the cuff os his new uniform instead. A long brown wig and a touch of powder delicately applied with the help of a mirror to achieve the desired effect, and Shin looked every bit the serving girl. Disguise had always come easy to him. His childhood served him well - when your sense of self is taken it grows easier to become someone else, when you sell affection it becomes easier to both understand love and be unmoved by it. The brotherhood had seen the killer in him at twelve - he wondered how people less used to murder managed not to see it until it was far too late.

Half an hour later, on a dark and rain-swept road with a good horse beneath him, Shin made his decision, pulling the reins once more towards the Dragon Road that would bear him east and south towards the Tower of Ishido, towards his brothers, towards another coin, another duty. In his wake, torn and flapping in the mud, the story scroll, its inked symbols smeared by the rain, words and meaning running together, soaking away.

Inventory: Various disguises, poisons, hidden weapons, and his shamisen. 

Shooting Star

"Feelin lucky, punk?"

Required Level: 1

Type: Pistol 

Range: 25 ft.

Attack: 2 - 8

Description: This finely made six shooter is named after the sound it makes when firing.

Rapier

"I will gut you like a cornish game hen."

Required Level: 1

Type: Piercing, One-handed

Range: Melee

Attack: 6-7

Description: Lighter and more elegant than the short sword, this weapon is used by those who favor finesse over force.

Revenge

"Best served cold."

Required Level: 1

Type: Slashing, Two-handed, Water

Range: Melee

Attack: 5-10 

Description: This large greatsword has a blade made of everlasting ice. It deals 20% bonus damage to the last enemy to damage you.