Taro Hikaru
Taro Hikaru
Character Name: Taro Hikaru
Gender: Male
Age: 37
Class: Seikishi (Holy Knight)
Weapon: Binding Redeemer- The last katana forged by Taro from holy steel given to him by the goddess Amaterasu (See History) He also carries a simple bow with a quiver of arrows.
Armor/Clothing: He wears the traditional large billowed pants and thonged sandals of a Samurai (they probably have names.) Shackled around his wrists are steel clamps connected together by a heavy steel chain. This irremovable reminder of his past can not be removed and the chain links and clamps are seamlessly forged by the goddess Amaterasu (See History.) This chain prevents Taro from wearing any form of shirt and thus he can only drape a heavy cloak about his shoulders to protect himself from cold. Otherwise, he wears nothing on his chest at all.
Commands:
ATTACK [Frostwraith Resurrected]
WHITE MAGIC (Cure, Protect)
DIVINE STRIKE - Through his services to Amaterasu, Taro wields the powers of heaven in various forms. (Energy beams, imbuing his sword, blinding enemies in a burst of light, etc.)
ITEM
Trance: Frostwraith Resurrected- As Taro’s hair and eyes turn white with holy force, every muscle within his being bulges with newfound strength and his binding shackles are broken, only to be morphed by some unknown force into Frostwraith, the deadliest foil Taro had ever made during his life (See History.) While tranced, he wields this blade with almost godlike speed and might but the blade immediately forms Taro’s binding chain and shackles after the Trance terminates.
Character Element: Holy
Strong With: Holy
Strong Against: Holy
Weak With: Dark
Weak Against: Dark
Eyes: Formerly a vibrant blue. In his current state they are a deep grey.
Hair: Dark black and brought back into a Samurai’s pony-tail
Description: A solemn samurai, burdened by the shadows of his past on a quest to restore himself in the light.
History: Taro was the first born to a relatively poor family living in a small agrarian village. His parents, of whom he has few memories, sent Taro away at the age of eight to be apprenticed to an older, yet still powerful Samurai, Shino Hikaru. Moving to Shino’s mountain palace and donning his master’s surname, Taro and a few other apprentices began to learn martial and scholastic arts alike from their master. Taro excelled in both areas; by the age of twelve, he could read, write, recite the Bushido, shoot a bow, and was surpassing the rest of his peers in Zanji Shinjinken-Ryo, the ancient art of Samurai swordsmanship. As the years of rigorous training progressed, Taro became an extremely refined scholar, skilled swordsman, and disciplined servant to his master. Outshining the rest of his class, Shino began to teach Taro at the age of 18 the art of sword making. Early mornings before scheduled training, Taro would work with Shino, hammering iron into steel, shaping and polishing blades, forming scabbards, and performing rituals. Sword making was Shino’s true mastery, and Taro quickly absorbed the wisdom of his master in this rite. At the age of 22 Taro was exempted from all other trainings than Sword making, as Taro had sufficiently mastered the teachings of those areas. He labored day and night forging these Katanas, each one made sharper and more balanced than the last, closer and closer to perfection.
When Taro was 27, Shino, nearing his death daily, professed he had nothing more to teach his apprentice. As Shino became feeble, many of his “loyal” students left the palace and abandoned their master in pursuit of their own selfish goals. Taro and a few others remained and took care of their dying master. Some months later in the bitter cold of Winter, Shino exhaled his last breaths and passed peacefully into the next world. Taro and the remaining students gave their master a proper burial near the base of a tranquil waterfall before parting their separate ways to greatness. Taro remained in the decaying palace of Shino for the Winter where he grieved for his master’s death. Through bitter days and sleepless nights, he labored to craft a masterpiece. A month passed, and on the first day the snow melted he had finished the katana known as Frostwraith. The sword’s sheath was black and adorned with the character “destiny” in blue calligraphy. It’s strangely blue tinted blade could hew tree trunks with single blows and it was perfectly balanced for Taro. Equipped with this deadly edge, Taro set off, taking the first steps of his own journey.
Within a few days travel, Taro reached a small village that had been hit by some disaster. Many of the houses had been razed to the ground and those few left were close to collapsing. The streets were littered with family possessions scattered as they had quickly fled some time before. As he walked through the desolate charred grass, he found the burnt remains of those that didn’t survive whatever had transpired. Some 20 bodies were lined up neatly in a row, their arms folded in peaceful death. Within one of the standing houses he encountered a small group of uniformed Samurai searching through the house for survivors. Seeing Taro, the soldiers explained that a substantially large group of Barbarians recently razed this village and a few others nearby. The Imperial Army was dispatched to put an end to the barbarians and these three were scouts of the army. Moved by the situation and in need of some means of employment, Taro volunteered his service in the Imperial Army.
Accepted into the army, Taro fought in the front against the barbarians which was entirely successful. After the operation, Taro decided to remain a soldier in the army. As he fought in more and more campaigns, he slowly ascended the ranks. Rumors spread of a swordsman that wielded a deadly blue blade with unmatched skill and ferocity. As one story went, those that encountered him and his deadly blade could not see any sign of Taro, but only a bright flash of blue light before their swift death. By the age of 31, Taro’s skill in battle as well as tactical cunning earned him his own army to command under the Emperor. His soldiers called him a god of war; his enemies, a scourge of hell. Within three years, Taro had led six successful campaigns against various foes, earning him great wealth, fame, as well as great life-long enemies.
During the winter of his 1st year as a warlord, when no army in their right mind would meet on the icy field of battle, Taro was introduced to a woman that would change his life; Aya Haruko, the Princess of a small forested province near Taro’s homeland. She was divinely beautiful and extremely well-learned. Taro (of course) fell instantly in love and confessed his love for her one day after presenting her with a gift of a solid gold fan which he had fashioned himself and adorned with love poems in black calligraphy. They immersed themselves in each other’s love, and it was not long before Taro asked her hand in marriage. After her fathers consent and ceremonious marriage, the newlyweds took to restoring and living in Shino Hikaru’s former palace. Taro hired many servants and kept some of his most loyal lieutenants within the palace for protection and soon the palace was in perfect condition. When the snow melted, Taro was called upon once again to lead his division and leave his wife until the following winter or time of peace. As they parted, Aya, now pregnant with Taro’s son, untied a white silk ribbon from her hair and placed it in Taro’s keeping to remember her by. He wrapped the ribbon tightly around his left bicep where it would remain, unmoved, for years to come.
He returned from the battlefield nine months later to witness the birth of his son, which they named Nibori. Taro’s pride and joy became his wife and child. Days formerly spent enacting hypothetical battles within the context of his mind were now spent helping Aya raise Nibori. He took a few months leave from his command before he was called back to duty. He left again with tears in his eyes to face an opponent unlike any other he had fought before: the army of the dark wizard, Nobunaga.
Taro led his army towards Nobunaga’s remote palace far to the south. One day after months of travel, while marching along at a steady pace, the imperial forces were ambushed. An army of skeletons rose quickly from the ground, surrounding Taro in a pincer-attack. Atop a hill stood the necromancer Nobunaga, dressed in black and laughing maniacally as his army closed in. Taro rallied his frightened troops against their undead adversaries and fought valiantly against them. Taro, upon horseback, led a charge to break out from the pincer, but the skeletal legion was overwhelming. Wave after wave came forward and Taro’s army was soon overrun, casualties were mounting, and there seemed no end to the limitless supply of undead. In desperation, Taro drove forward with his remaining soldiers and swathed a path to break out of the closing death-trap. Only his cavalry could manage to escape the bony grasp of the necromancer’s ambush,; the rest were mercilessly trampled as they faced an inexhaustible force. Taro ordered his cavalry to retreat, while he himself made one last attack. His blood curdled to the screams of his dying companions as his heart filled with rage. The soldiers that saw their general’s eyes that day and lived to tell the tale believed that he had been possessed by the devil himself, and that heaven and hell fell silent as he charged forth. Letting nothing slow his charge, he raced up the hill where the puppet-master, Nobunaga, stood commanding his forces. Nobunaga smiled as held up his wrinkled hands, closed his eyes, and began muttering in some frightful arcane language. As Taro approached, the wizard’s dark litany was completed, and a bolt of pestilent-green light shot out of his hands and towards the mounted warrior. Leaping from his steed, he dodged the blast and held Frostwraith high into the sky now lit only by a blood-red moon. Nobunaga’s smirk now turned to terror as the deadly blue blade came swiftly down, striking the dark sorcerer squarely on his left shoulder and smashing through his collar and ribs before slicing into his heart. In a spray of blood, both the sorcerer and his army fell instantly to the ground. Taro, breathing rapidly now and overcome by emotion, placed Frostwraith into the ground, fell to his knees, and began to weep. His mourning was interrupted by the sound of Nobunaga’s cackle ringing out through the crisp air. The sorcerer was somehow managing to hold onto his life for a few moments longer, and spoke again in the frightful arcane language of his magic, though now gurgled with the blood pouring from his mouth and nose. As the last words of his quickly spoken incantation were completed, two thin streams of white light shot forth from his fingers and struck directly the eyes of Taro. Strangely, Taro felt nothing. Ringing out again into the air came Nobunaga’s cackle, but was interrupted by the fall of Frostrwaith, hewing off the wizard’s head. For several minutes, Taro sat upon the hill overlooking the red stained battlefield and cried into his hands. Victorious, at the cost of massive casualties, Taro began the somber journey home in complete silence.
Reaching the familiar hills of his homeland, he left his report with one of his trusted lieutenants and sped to his own palace, wishing nothing more than to see his wife and child. Upon his arrival, he embraced them both tenderly, spent the day with them, but refused to speak about the events that had taken place on his campaign. That night, he dreamt terrible nightmares about the slaughter of his army and awoke covered in sweat next to his beloved wife. He couldn’t get back to sleep if he had wanted to. Drawn by the whispering of the summer’s wind, he rose from bed and stared over a balcony into the night’s sky. He noticed as he gazed that there were no guards stationed and no torches burning. Becoming worried, he grabbed Frostwraith from where it hung on his wall and glanced at his wife and child that lay asleep in the bed, before setting for the Treasury with thoughts in mind that some brigands had dispatched his guards in the night. He found the treasury was undisturbed and nothing missing, but continued to search the palace for an explanation to this anomaly. Suddenly, a crash rung out into the crisp air. With no doubt in his mind that the noise had originated from his bedchamber, he dashed violently up the palace steps and into the bedchamber. Clearly before his eyes Taro Hikaru saw the necromancer Nobunaga, cackling vehemently as he lay in Taro’s own bed. The images of his murdered compatriots became flooding back to Taro. Pure rage coursed through his veins as he threw aside Frostwraith’s scabbard and charged towards the one who had caused him so much pain. Leaping onto the bed, he plunged the shimmering blade repeatedly into his opponent. The smell of blood filled his senses and invigorated his bloodlust. Strangely, the fierce opponent Taro knew put up no defense as the steel blade plunged repeatedly into his flesh. It was as though he was no more a sorcerer, but a docile woman… or a helpless child… Suddenly Nobunaga’s cackle faded into the tortured dying screams of Taro’s own wife, Aya. As the illusion lifted from Taro’s eyes, he entered the twisted and macabre nightmare of reality. The walls and bed of the chamber were now soaked in the blood of Taro’s beloved wife and child. Blinded by his rage and cursed by Nobunaga, he had savagely murdered the joy of his world. Overwhelmed by a flood of despair, Taro fell as though he had been stricken by lightning. He twisted sporadically on the floor of the bedchamber and let out the sobs of a child. He lay there in agony for some time, praying to awaken from the nightmare; but he did not. Regaining again the control of his limbs, he staggered to his feet. Viewing the scene once more, he fell to his knees as his heart was torn apart in anguish. He grabbed a bottle of saké lying on a table nearby and searched for an escape in that. He found none. Poetry flowed through his mind, but he realized no amount of regret could undo his actions. Thus, he could bear pain no longer and grappled clumsily for the instrument that had wrought such carnage. His life could be nothing but dishonor from this point forward and thus he slipped down his kimono to his girdle, brought the blade to his hands and, after collecting his thoughts, drove the blade deeply in below the left side of his waist. Steadily, he brought the blade over to the right of his waist. Overwhelmed by pain, he fell backwards and leant his head against the foot of his bed and cried out towards the heavens for redemption. As he slowly faded into his painful death, the sun rose in the starless night and his cry was answered.
When Taro awoke, he found himself dazzled in an array of shimmering white light, and before him stood the goddess Ameretsu. She held a serene visage as she walked forward and removed Frostwraith from Taro’s disemboweled body. As she did, the wounds of Taro Hikaru were instantly healed, but the scars of the event were left as a reminder to him. Frostwraith hovered in the air before Ameretsu, and the blade underwent a sudden transformation. The steel that once ran battlefields red was now shaped into a seamlessly linked chain and two bracers. Taro, helpless to resist the will of The Goddess of Light, remained motionless as the bracers of the shackles closed around his wrists. Ameretsu lent a hand to Taro, and brought him to his feet once more. She softly kissed him on the cheek and smiled warmly before the revelation vanished and Taro found himself next to the grave of his former master and now two new graves. Taro stared sadly at the graves of his family and entered a deep meditation listening to the sounds of the waterfall nearby. He awoke filled with a temporary feeling of tranquility and as he rose he found before him a bar of steel that shimmered in the sunlight. A piece of parchment read “Redemption can be found in service to the light.” Taro used this gift from Ameretsu to forge the only sword he would be able to wield for the rest of his life, “Binding Redeemer.” The holy blade rested in a scabbard of white and was adorned in the calligraphic character “Illumination.” Equipped with this instrument of his redemption, yet burdened forever by the heavy shackles of his sins, Taro Hikaru set forth on a quest to destroy evil of all forms and to serve the light of Ameretsu in the hopes that he would someday find redemption for the darkness of his past.
