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[temerate]

✖ PLAYER:
Name & DW Journal: Brig | wouldbeking@dreamwidth.org
Birthdate & Age: 12/25/1983 | 28
Characters played in Zodion: n/a

✖ CHARACTER:
Name: Eko Hoshunin
Canon: KARAS
PB/Image: http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r275/haneshinohara/Random%20Crap/Karas/145619_zps4748e191.jpg (unarmored)
http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r275/haneshinohara/Random%20Crap/Karas/PDVD_057.jpg (armored)
Info links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karas_%28anime%29
Canon Point: immediately post-series
Gender & Sex: male
Age: physically late 20s/early 30s, mentally about 400
Birthdate/Sign: October 21st (noncanon) | Libra. Eko is a product and symbolic of the Edo period, and the Battle of Sekigahara on Oct 21st is one of the most significant events of that particular era. He also exhibits nearly all of the Libra attributes mentioned, minus indecisive.
Tattoo: palm-size (3-4 inches) over his left hip
Suitability: n/a
Power: ability to summon the Karas armor, which grants a temporary boost in strength/speed/endurance/defense etc but drains a great deal of energy with each use. Eko's particular armor is a fusion of magic and technology that requires the 'fuel' of blood, since he destroyed its customary power source, and will not work properly unless fully juiced. With his defeat at the end of the series, his Karas sword will also go back to being chained closed and will only unseal itself if drawn in the defense of someone else. The sword is supernatural in that it can't be dulled or melted or otherwise subject to the weaknesses of ordinary metal, but can instead be damaged or stopped by the determination/will/fighting spirit of an opponent. For example, while the Karas sword would ordinarily be able to cut diamond, it will not easily slice through the completely earthly armor or weapons of a determined individual.

As for the strength of the armor, it should be on par with any suit of powered armor of a similar size. While conventional weapons such as guns or even rocket launchers are usually no consequence to the armor, it will take damage depending on the fighting will of the opponent, and also depending on whether Eko has properly fed recently. If he has gone too long without blood the armor may not respond to his summons at all or may disappear from him in the middle of battle. While it does have the ability to regenerate damage between battles (it requires no conventional mechanical upkeep, apparently), that will also depend on whether or not Eko has fed recently.



Setting: Present day Tokyo. People go on about their ordinary lives oblivious to the invisible supernatural world that surrounds them. All the myths and legends of youkai and "demonic" creatures from Japan's past are true, but modern skepticism is literally causing the youkai to become sick and fade away.

In this universe, cities are living entities and are only 'healthy' when there is a proper balance of energies between the human population and the supernatural population. In order to maintain this balance, the embodied will of each city, (a deity known as Yurine), chooses an agent called Karas to keep the peace between youkai and humans. Karas is a healer and ally to sick or weak youkai but also Yurine's implacable executioner, striking down any youkai or human that tries to tip the scales of power beyond the natural order. Karas is strictly under Yurine's command, and under ordinary circumstances cannot use his/her full powers without Yurine's approval. Every city has a Yurine and every Yurine has a Karas serving her. When a Karas is killed, Yurine chooses a new human for the role. If a Yurine is destroyed, the city will 'birth' another one.




History: The only known fact about Eko's early human history is that he lived during the Edo period, presumably as a samurai. At some point as a young man he was approached by the female spirit Yurine (who represents the living will of Tokyo), asking Eko to leave his mortal life behind and become her agent as the armored warrior Karas. Eko accepted, possibly due to the unexplained injury that took his left leg below the knee, wishing to avoid the life of a useless cripple.

Unfortunately, Eko's appointment as Karas came at a changing point in history. Modernization was beginning to creep up on Japan along with an ever increasing human and urban population. Humans no longer respected or observed old traditions and were beginning to lose all fear, reverence, and belief in the supernatural world, which in turn weakened the resident youkai. Eko watched the worst of human behavior occur as their numbers grew and modern technology like firearms proliferated. Crime rates in the cities increased. People were abandoning the cultural and spiritual traditions that Eko had grown up with and were instead embracing foreign ideas, technology, and science, and youkai were relegated to little more than the myths of uneducated peasants. Yurine, as an impartial guardian of Tokyo, never blamed its human inhabitants for their choices, even though their decline in belief would eventually mean her death as part of the spiritual world that humans were steadily erasing from their lives.

Eko served his mistress without question for many years, having developed an extremely strong attachment to her and forcing himself to abide by her judgment in all things. As time passed and the youkai continued to decline, however, Eko grew frustrated at the restraints placed on him. Enraged at human arrogance that was damaging the youkai population he had sworn to protect and also disrespecting Yurine, their mistress, Eko finally snapped, unable to bear Yurine's indifference to her own fate any longer. Acting against her wishes he plotted to restore the youkai as overlords of the city, reducing humans to their 'proper' subservient status and punishing them for having ever dared to forget about the youkai. Through sheer force of will he was able to overcome Yurine's control of his armor until she was made his prisoner, enslaved to him instead of the other way around, while he retained all his powers as Karas and continued to use her as a captive energy source.

When Eko's Yurine was compromised the city created another, and this new Yurine considered Eko as a rogue Karas a deadly threat to the city's health and harmony. Yurine chose a new Karas to oppose Eko, but Eko cheerfully slaughtered every single successor Karas that tried to stand up to him all the way up to the present day. As part of the laws that apparently govern these things, a Karas is not allowed to interfere with the affairs of another city, so Eko was only challenged by newborn, inexperienced Tokyo successors. The longer he stayed in power, the less likely it seemed that any newborn Karas would be able to defeat him. But the other cities remained silent and Eko was grimly vindicated that his challenging of the system was not, in fact, bringing down heavenly justice on his head. Without Yurine's support the only encouragement he had for his cause was his own self-righteousness and the fact that he had never lost a battle, which he believed validated his crusade. If he had the strength to make it happen, after all, there was no reason it shouldn't happen. Historical precedent had been in the favor of youkai dominating weaker humans for hundreds of years before the humans began to make their slow progress to dominance. Eko's belief was that he was setting things back to their natural order.

But humans and modernization persisted, and eventually Eko decided that the only way for the ever-weakening youkai to survive in a modern world would be for them to evolve. He developed some kind of horrible process that would turn intangible youkai into creatures called Mikura, cybernetic versions of themselves that could subsist on human blood like vampires. In this way youkai would become powerful, physical bodies able to affect the material world, and could force humans to fear and respect them. Eko turned himself into a Mikura, no longer powering his armor solely through Yurine but through consumption of blood. He also managed to convince five powerful elemental youkai (Nue, Tsuchigomo, Kamaitachi, Wanyudo, and Kappa) to do the same, all of whom became his generals. Although many youkai were initially appreciative of Eko taking a stand against humans, even they consider the Mikura terrifying and unnatural abominations. The youkai fear that Eko's long tenure as Karas, watching over a 'decaying' city, has driven him mad.

By the present day Eko has established himself as a prominent businessman, apparently by researching the Karas armor and converting some of its functions to human technology, and he more or less runs Shinjuku from the shadows with the mayor and chief of police both under his influence. Then the first episode starts and one of Eko's trusted Generals defects (Nue) and a new challenger Karas (Otoha) turns up. By the final episode, Eko kills his own Yurine just to prove he can and officially crosses the line from well-intentioned extremist to Completely Batshit. There is an epic final battle and a lot of stuff blows up and the entirety of Shinjuku gets badtouched by Eko's mecha-tentacles, but through the power of justice and being the protagonist, Otoha is able to defeat Eko.




Personality: Once upon a time Eko was a model samurai; loyal, capable, and fiercely devoted to the youkai under his protection and the goddess that rescued him from life as a crippled human. His devotion was his downfall, however, as he grew to love his mistress more than the duty she represented but never knew if she felt anything for him in return, or if a being like her was even capable of that kind of emotion. Like Lancelot, Eko pined for the woman he was forbidden from until he finally snapped, so furious with their situation that he deliberately threw away thousands of years of tradition and forced Yurine to become his captive. Even then, she continued to defy his will and it drove him to the edge





Eko is a traditionalist. If he were European he would be one of those aristocratic vampires that behaves a couple centuries out of date and comes across as sophisticated, rigidly formal, self-righteous, superior and utterly confident. He speaks in archaic formal style and surrounds himself with opulence and elegance, looking down on the city from his Panraiga, tallest of the Shinjuku skyscrapers. Rarely raising his voice in anger, he demands a certain elegance and professionalism of his followers and prefers to let his minions do gruntwork for him, expecting those around him to adhere as rigidly to their proper roles as he does to his. Though claiming to despise humans he's spent 400 years not simply burning the city to the ground in pure disgust, and it would have taken a great deal of charm, grace and intelligence to build the kind of fortune he apparently has at his disposal. He's not above making deals with humans to get his own way, whether he secretly despises them or no, and welcomes humans into his fold who also believe the city has become a cesspool of corruption that needs to be cleansed through revolution. Eko describes himself as a reformer, the only person willing to go to the necessary lengths to 'save' the youkai from their own degradation, and wishes to be supported by others who share his ideals. The defiance of his Yurine and the youkai of the city are terrible wounds to him, especially Yurine, who he regards as his goddess.

It's possible, given the character design that gave him an unexplained prosthetic leg and the fact that all Karas are chosen because they are "human souls that know sorrow," that Eko was injured while still human (and a loss of limb would have been debilitating during that time period) and that Yurine offered him, a doomed cripple, a second chance at an honorable life. On some level all of Eko's efforts have been for her sake, in hopes that she would chose him over her duty to the city that is killing her and become his empress. If there had been any way for Eko to take Yurine away from Tokyo and simply live quietly with her somewhere he would have seized it, but Yurine's existence is defined by the city itself and she is as bound to it as he is bound to her. He loves and hates her as he loves and hates Tokyo itself, desperate for her approval and and continually injured by her rejection, and considers every victory over a successor Karas or youkai-turned-Mikura as a gift to lay before her to try and change her mind.

Eko's fall from grace was a long one filled with despair and personal anguish, watching two world wars and especially Japan's incredibly rapid modernization destroy all semblance of the world that he had lived in. Like all samurai, Eko was faced with the decision to either change or become extinct in a modern world that no longer seemed to respect traditional values. Karas is also a frozen, impartial traditional role that cannot change and Eko, after a lifetime of constraining himself to his proper role like any dutiful samurai, could take no more. The concept of the Mikura was a desperation move upon Eko's eventual realization that there was simply no way to force Tokyo back to its former state. No matter how powerful Eko was as Karas or city magnate, the youkai were still dying in droves around him. The Mikura might be called abominations by both humans and youkai and even Yurine, but if they were strong enough to accomplish his ultimate goal and save the remaining youkai, they would have been the right choice.

Eko does not often make snap decisions, mostly because of his self-assurance in his own power. For example, he's perfectly okay with letting an opponent live because he feels that opponent can be easily dealt with at a later time. He casually allowed all of his generals to die in combat against Otoha before raising a finger himself to intervene. To him, their willingness to die for the cause is a testament to their moral character, and it would have been wrong of him to order them not to fight.

At some point Eko probably realized that he had crossed the line from righteous crusader to tyrant, alienating even the youkai he was trying to remake the city for, but by then it was too late. There was nothing left for him to do except go forward and take what he wanted from his city by force. By the end of his reign he is not particularly kind to the Mikura he once seduced, or even to the weaker youkai who are the hardest hit by the imbalance of power caused by a city having two Yurines and two opposing Karas.

His final act while dying is to reach out to Yurine, perhaps for forgiveness, although he tells the successor Karas Otoha that someday he will feel the same bitterness for Yurine and the corrupt city and wish for the same vengeance.

Also he speaks in archaic formal japanese and the english sub/dub decided to translate that as Shakespeare style old english. I'm sorry in advance. And he thinks cities are alive and that's totally normal and he likes to make long rambly speeches to anyone who will listen, and has it out for redheads.


✖ SAMPLES:
"Zodion" First-Person Network Entry:

"Zodionlogs" Third-Person Prose Entry: (200 word min)