Latest revision as of 22:50, 4 February 2025

Clan: Crab

Family: Nezumi (Third Whisker)

School: Nezumi Shaman / Tomorrow Shaman

Description

5'5", female bodied, and built like a brick house, Minku wears an opal necklace to set off crab colored Shugenja robes, the blues of the opal matching their eyes (hairstyle to be determined). They carry a golden Shakujo staff, like a monk, with each ring being a mixture of a different material set. Apparently the symbolism wasn't shiny enough: green jade and iron ring for Earth, garnet and bronze for fire, silver and amethyst for Air, copper and turquoise for Water, and crystal for Void. No daisho, just a wakazashi and a scroll satchel. She seems friendly but also a bit strangely wary at times.

Summary Character Sheet

Rings

Skills

Techniques

True-Blood Nezumi

True-Blood Nezumi are immune to the Influence of other spiritual realms, including Jigoku.

Mark of Bal (cat)

You can understand cats' and their body language to a very deep level, as a matter of passive perception: there is little a cat could reasonably hide from you.

Witness the End (Inversion)

Activation: As a Scheme and Support action, you may make a Theology (Void) check targeting one character or one mundane, physical object at range 0–1. The TN of this check is equal to the character’s vigilance, or 2 if you are targeting an object.

Effects: If you succeed and your target is an object, you scry for the ways the target can be undone. The TN of your next check to damage, sabotage, or otherwise disable it is 1 (and cannot be increased). This effect persists until the end of your next turn.

If you succeed and your target is a character, you scry for the moves that will lead to their downfall. The TN of your next Attack or Scheme action targeting that character is 1 (and cannot be increased). This effect persists until the end of your next turn.

New Opportunities

+: Choose one additional target per spent this way.

Magnitude

Magnitude 1–3: This effect persists for a number of additional rounds equal to the magnitude.

Magnitude 2+: In addition to physical objects, you can choose metaphysical objects, such as the ongoing effects of invocations, mahō, kihō, or rituals (or other persistent mystical phenomena, at the GM’s discretion).

Magnitude 4+: This effect persists until the end of the scene instead.

Sight beyond Existence (Inversion)

Activation: Once per session, immediately after you or another character at range 0–3 performs an action or makes a choice of great consequence in a narrative scene, you may make a TN 2 Theology (Void) check targeting that character to peer beyond the lie of time and find another outcome.

Effects: If you succeed, you scry for another outcome and return to the moment before the action was performed. All effects and outcomes stemming from the action are undone, but only you and the target are aware of the reality that no longer is. If you are the target, you may choose the same or a different action or decision. If another character is the target, you may say up to five words to the target before they act or make a decision.

New Opportunities

: If you target another character and you succeed, you may perform an action immediately before the target performs their new action.

Magnitude

Magnitude 1+: You see one possible consequence of the original action or decision that would occur before the end of the scene.

Magnitude 2+: You see one additional possible consequence of the original action or decision that would occur in the next year.

Magnitude 3+: You see one additional possible consequence of the original action or decision that would occur in the next decades, or even further in the future

Threshold Barrier (Ritual)

Activation: As a downtime activity, you may make a TN 2 Theology check using Air, Earth, Fire, Water, or Void targeting a threshold, gate, or other entryway at range 0–1.

Effects: If you succeed, the threshold is barred against a particular type of entity, based on the ring you chose, for one hour, plus additional hours equal to your bonus successes. When an entity of this type attempts to enter, it must resist with a TN 3 Meditation (Void) check or be repelled by the spiritual barrier. Whether it succeeds or fails, you immediately become aware of its attempted entry. The particular type of being is based on the ring you chose, as follows:

• Air: Ethereal Otherworldly beings such as spirits and ghosts.
• Earth: Living Tainted beings.
• Fire: Undead beings with corporeal form.
• Water: Wild animals.
• Void: Humans.

New Opportunities

: Instead of protecting a threshold, you may protect the entirety of a sealed area that extends a number of range bands around you no greater than your bonus successes. : If any beings of the type you are attempting to seal the threshold against have passed through the threshold within the last twenty-four hours, you become aware of their passage.

Ancestry Unearthed (Shuji)

Activation: When you make a Scholar skill (Earth) or Social skill (Earth) check targeting a character, you may spend O as follows:

Earth : You know one sworn oath the character’s family took in the past, and whether or not they have broken or bent it.

Earth : You know one secret of the character’s family that they would prefer be forgotten, and have perhaps even worked to bury.

Earth : You know something the character does not even known about their own ancestry.

Jade Strike + (Invocation)

Activation: As an Attack action, you may make a TN 2 Theology (Earth) check targeting one character at range 0–3.

Effects: If you succeed and the target is an Otherworldly being, you smite and purify it with searing jade energy. It suffers a critical strike with severity equal to your Earth Ring plus your bonus successes. The creature may spend from its check to resist this critical strike to conceal that it has been affected, potentially concealing its Otherworldly nature (though it still suffers the effects that it successfully hid). If you succeed and your target is not a an Otherworldly being, it suffers no ill effects.

New Opportunities

Earth : If you succeed, each target that is an Otherworldly being suffers the Silenced condition and cannot use mahō techniques until the end of your next turn

Earth : The effect counts as crystal energy (as well as jade?)

Reflections of P'an-Ku (Blood Invocation)

Activation: As a Scheme action, you may make a TN 2 Theology (Water) check targeting one item at range 0–1.

Effects: If you succeed, you scry to uncover all properties an item possesses, including its name, maker, mundane qualities, magical properties, curses, and sealed techniques (see Nemuranai on page 307).

New Opportunities

Water : Gain knowledge of the item’s origin in broad strokes, such as where it was forged, the clan of the individual who has carried it the longest, or a similar piece of information.

Water : You may target a character instead of an object. If you succeed, you identify one invocation, kihō, mahō, or supernatural ability or item possessed by that person, along with its name and general qualities.

Name Friend (Inversion)

Activation: As a Scheme and Support action, Theology TN Vigilance, or TN 1 on a willing target. You connect your name with the name of a target animal or person.

Effects: Until the end of the scene, you can communicate normally through speech and understand each other, can sense when the other is in danger, and can sense the other's general distance and direction.

New Opportunities

+:  : For each spent, you may target another willing target, or unwilling target with vigilance no higher than the primary target.

Magnitude

Magnitude 1: The duration is 1 day.

Magnitude 2: The duration is 1 week.

Magnitude 3: The duration is 1 month.

Magnitude 4: The duration is 1 year.

Name Item (Inversion)

Activation: As a Support action, Theology TN 2.

Effects: Grant an item the Sacred quality until the end of the scene.

New Opportunities

: : You may grant an additional quality that makes sense for the item and is not overtly magical.

Magnitude

Magnitude 1+: The duration is a number of days equal to the magnitude.

Magnitude 4: The duration is permanent and non-dispellable.

Conjure Name (Inversion)

Activation: As a Support action, Theology TN 3, targeting a character or item you currently haved Name Item or Name Friend active on (or a person you've used an inversion on?)

Effects: The target teleports to your location, appearing within range 0-1 of you.

New Opportunities

+: : You may target an additional legal target.

+: : The targets may appear one additional range band away from you.

Magnitude

Magnitude 2+: Each target may take a single action immediately after appearing.

Path to Inner Peace (Water Invocation)

consult the book it's path to inner peace

Unweave (Inversion)

Activation: As an Attack and Scheme action, you may make a TN 4 Theology (Name) check targeting one character or object of silhouette 0–3 at range 0–2.

Effects: If you succeed and the target is a mundane object or Minion NPC, you bind it to unreality and it ceases to exist. You receive fatigue equal to its silhouette plus its conflict rank (or just its silhouette, if it is an object).

If you succeed and the target is a object with mystical properties, it gains the Damaged item quality, or the Destroyed item quality if it already has the Damaged item quality.

If you succeed and the target is an Adversary NPC or PC, they suffer supernatural damage equal to your ranks in Theology that ignores all resistances.

Magnitude

Magnitude 1+: Each target suffers additional damage equal to the magnitude.

Magnitude 2+: The terrain within a number of range bands equal to the magnitude loses all terrain qualities.

Magnitude 2+: If a target suffers a critical strike as a result of this damage (or the Destroyed item quality, if it is an object), it ceases to exist.

Magnitude 3+: Each character in the scene with vigilance lower than or equal to the magnitude becomes a target

Twist Name (Inversion)

Activation: Scheme action, Theology (Name) TN Vigilance, targeting a character within 0-4.

Effects: The target loses a Social or Spiritual Disadvantage, or gains a Disadvantage (of any type) of your choice until the end of the scene. This takes effect immediately, and everyone who knows the target knows they have the disadvantage, or have lost a disadvantage, and behaves appropriately, though after the inversion elapses, they will not know precisely why, only that they did.

Magnitude

Magnitude 1: The duration is 1 day.

Magnitude 2: The duration is 1 week.

Magnitude 3: The duration is 1 month.

Magnitude 4: The duration is 1 year.

Nametaking (Inversion)

Activation: Support or Scheme action, Theology (Name) TN Vigilance, or 3 for a willing target.

Effects: You momentarily take the target's Name, leaving them invisible to the world. All ongoing magical effects on them, no matter the source, end.

Magnitude

Magnitude 1: The target is also immune to new magical effects, as well as the influence of spirit realms to which it is not native, for rounds equal to the magnitude (1 round)

Magnitude 2: The Magnitude 1 effect lasts for days equal to the magnitude instead (2 days)

Magnitude 3: The Magnitude 1 effect lasts for weeks equal to the magnitude instead (3 weeks)

Magnitude 4: The name removal is permanent. The target no longer has a name. The magnitude 1 effect becomes permanent. Everyone who knew about the target now attributes everything they knew to another suitable target, though they may note odd discrepancies in their memories. Any new actions taken by the target are attributed to them only by direct witnesses, and only so long as the target remains in view, the deeds will be misattributed afterward. Permanently increase the Magnitude required for you to activate this effect by 1.

Shattering Caress (Inversion, Book ONLY)

Activation: As an attack action using a readied weapon, make an [Melee or Unarmed] check targeting one character or mundane, physical object in range of your weapon.

Effects: If you succeed and your target is a mundane object, you smite it, and it gains the Destroyed item quality as it falls to pieces. If you succeed and your target is a character, you smite your target, inflicting supernatural damage equal to your weapon’s base damage. If this damage causes your target to become Incapacitated, they suffer the Dying [three rounds] condition.

Magnitude

Magnitude 1–2: Reduce the duration of the Dying condition the target character suffers by the magnitude.

Magnitude 3+: Instead of suffering the Dying condi-tion, the target character is killed outright.

School Ability

The Words of Creation

You have Name instead of Void, though it functions identically. When you make a check using your Name, you may receive a number of fatigue up to your school rank. If you do, you may pull or push:

If you pull, choose a number of dice with non-blank results equal to the fatigue you received, and alter each to a blank result.

If you push, choose a number of dice with blank results equal to the fatigue you received, and alter each to a non-blank result of your choice.

Distinctions

Sixth Sense

Types: Spiritual

Effects: The following apply to a character with the Sixth Sense distinction:

• You have an instinctive sense of supernatural beings, and you can feel the presence of spirits and similar entities even when they have not chosen to reveal themselves. This feeling is ominous in the presence of beings with evil intentions and neutral when the beings are simply going about their business as usual.
• When performing a check for which you need to follow your hunches (such as a Meditation [Void] check to generate initiative during a duel or a Theology [Void] check to detect a snarl in the invisible threads of the universe), you may reroll up to two dice.

Indomitable Will

Types: Mental, Interpersonal

Effects: The following apply to a character with the Indomitable Will distinction:

• You can always choose to stand your ground, even when faced with untenable odds, super-natural terrors, or sorcerous powers that bend the minds of lesser souls.
• When performing a check for which you need to keep your cool when dealing with danger (such as a Command [Earth] check to give orders under pressure or a Meditation [Earth] check to resist the effects of fear), you may reroll up to two dice.

Stealthy Rat

Types: Fame, Interpersonal

Effects: The following apply to a character with the Stealthy Rat distinction

• Other people have heard of you for your impossible achievements in stealth, even above most scouts, and they believe you can do something, or could have done it, by default unless given evidence to the contrary.
• When performing a check for which you need to leverage your reputation in stealthiness, you may reroll up to two dice.

Adversities

Tomorrow Shaman (Name)

Tomorrow Shaman (Name)

Types: Spiritual

You are touched by the force attempting to return the world to the dream from which it arose.

• <Unknown to Minku> Each time you spend your final Name point, a piece of the world is Unmade.
• When you make a check to create or alter a name, you must choose and reroll two dice, etc etc. If you are attempting to destroy a name or manipulate raw dream, this adversity inverts for free.

Tomorrow Shaman (Fire)

Tomorrow Shaman (Fire)

Types: Spiritual

You are touched by the force attempting to return the world to the dream from which it arose.

• You have difficulty understanding how to incite emotions in others, mainly because you find yourself not really considering what they think of you important anymore, compared to the infinite possibilities of the future.
• When you make a check to incite emotion or reaction in another character, you must choose and reroll two dice, etc, etc. If you attempt to divine the future or theorize about something on a large scale that does not directly involve the emotions and reactions of intelligent beings, this disadvantage automatically inverts for free.

Tomorrow Shaman (Air)

Tomorrow Shaman (Air)

Types: Spiritual

You are becoming a force of endings, returning the world to the dream from which it arose. The deeper names of the universe call to you, begging to be returned to their proper form.

• You have difficulty understanding emotions in others, because you no longer really see them as on your level, as people whose concerns are worthy of consideration.
• When you make a check to understand emotions in another character, you must choose and reroll two dice, etc, etc. When attempting to understand connections on a Name level, or on a universal level, this disadvantage automatically inverts for free.

Passions

Stories

Types: Mental, Interpersonal

Effects: The following apply to a character with the Stories passion:

• You can recall any story you have been told, including the details that others would gloss over or forget.
• After performing a check to recall or tell a story (such as a Performance [Earth] check to spin a tale to hearten comrades or a Theology [Earth] check to recite a passage from the Tao of Shinsei or Akodo’s Leadership that is applicable to your situation), you remove 3 strife

Anxieties

Glory Hound

They have been conditioned to seek name from the beginning, and it has set deep into their bones. They will pursue name at cost to themselves, because a shaman’s name is all that they are. At least to the clan. Time spent not pursuing glory is, to some degree, wasted.

'Anxiety to do things without attracting attention, doing things in secret, things that will never be recognized.'

Outfit

3 koku

Sanctified Robes (Physical 1, Supernatural 3, Ceremonial), wakizashi (short sword), knife, scroll satchel, travelling pack (Blanket,bowl, chopsticks, 4 days of travel rations, flint and tinder, ‘keeping shiny things okay’ set, Boon of Bishamon (Omamori), sake cup.) Chewing stick tip (Aquamarine set in silver with a clamp to set on the end of a chewing stick) Go Set (shiny, goes with the name)

Opal Necklace (it’ll draw your eye if you know what I mean)

Scroll Satchel: 'Holder of Kami Stories' (name item 4 magnituded)

Weapons

Shakujo+: gold base shakujo (as per Celestial Realms), with a (fake) green jade and iron ring for Earth, garnet and bronze for fire, silver and amethyst for Air, copper and turquoise for Water, and crystal for Void.

Crysteel Naginata: Naginata + Sacred + Crystal, un-nameable

Crystal Monocle: 'Raniya's Lens' can shed crystal light when sunlight is available, 3 contact damage, 6 beam damage on a shadow (name item 4 magnitude). a little out of fashion for scorpion lands

Twenty Questions

1. What clan are you part of?

   Crab (+1 Earth, +1 Fitness, 30 Status)

2. What kind of upbringing did you have?

   True-Blood Nezumi. Child of a Third Whisker Shaman and a Squeaky Eyeball Shaman. (+1 Name, Skill None, Glory: 44)

3. What is your school?

   Nezumi Shaman (+1 Name, +1 Any, 3 of +1 Fitness, +1 Medicine, +1 Meditation, +1 Sentiment, +1 Survival, +1 Theology, 30 honor, Inversions, Rituals, Shuji, Witness the End, Threshold Barrier, Ancestry Unearthed, The Words of Creation)

4. How do you stand out within your school?

   Earth: They say they have the stability of a rememberer, not necessarily the most impassioned sort, but the kind that will remember the nezumi as appropriate. High name and high earth makes for a very robust ratling, if perhaps a little unseasoned, but that seasoning comes after the games.

5. How do you stand out that got you one of your clan's coveted spots at the Rainbow Games?

   She and the shamans of her clan ascribe to the old ways of Name: your contributions to your family, your clan, and now the empire, in glory, increase your true Name’s power. Since they all have to marry (or at least child produce) into themselves to maintain the pure shaman lines, the Rainbow Games provide a strong way to give a young shaman a boost. The elders have chosen a skulduggery route, as their attunement to the Namespace makes them good at disappearing, and their strong, logical frameworks make them good at understanding the logistics and structure of a criminal enterprise.(+3 Skullduggery)

6. What do you long for, in both short and long term?

   Minku does want to increase their name, absolutely, and that’s a deep-seated part of them, but their true passion was always in stories. The fragments of a rememberer run deep in them, or so she thinks, and some of her stories of the nezumi may not have been told to her by another. It would be truly amazing to find more stories, lost stories, of the nezumi, and maybe even resolve the great uncertainty of the fall (which would, of course, be the capstone of any nezumi historian, along with anything bout the before times.) A little of the rokugani bleeding in there, in the desire to make it certain, but they’re 200 years rokugani, and the glory… hoo.

7. What is your character's relationship with their clan?

   The Crab do what the nezumi always have, and if there’s some tension because of the nezumi obsession with sparkly things, or the crab’s unwillingness to crack loose, that’s all in the life. Their own immunity to the shadowlands certainly puts a bit of a damper on their drive to murder all shadowlands monsters, and the visceralness of that in the crab, but there is glory in that too. As someone intended to travel, a base courtly skill was always appropriate, and Games makes the cut in a way that is unironically appropriate. (+1 Games)

8. What do you think about bushido?

   It’s… fine? Like, the commitment to your family and society, ratlings are all about that. The details… well, the details aren’t horrible, but why would you not sneak, or scavenge, or do menial labor to benefit the clan or yourself? (+1 Skullduggery rolled over into Courtesy)

9. What is your character’s greatest accomplishment so far?

   Minku’s connection to the rememberers is blended with their ability to detect spirits, in the minds of the shamans: the ability to perceive the spirits of other realms explains some of that pesky storytelling whimsy, but nonetheless is a great gift, if they can just keep it a little more inside the bounds of respectability. (Sixth Sense)

10. What holds your character back the most in life?

    The connection to the rememberers makes Minku… nervous around non-Crab (or non-familiar?) Rokugani. The nezumi history is filled with centuries of distrust of humans, and vice versa: treating nezumi as plague carriers and thieves, and the rumored stories of the green green white tribe being massacred amongst the phoenix are not comforting either. (Suspicious)

11. What activity most makes your character feel at peace?

    In another life, maybe they would be a rememberer instead of a shaman. Now, the rememberer traditions have become oral storytelling traditions, and Minku has taken to them in spades. (Stories)

12. What concern, fear, or foible troubles your character the most?

    They have been conditioned to seek name from the beginning, and it has set deep into their bones. They will pursue name at cost to themselves, because a shaman’s name is all that they are. At least to the clan. Time spent not pursuing glory is, to some degree, wasted. (Glory Hound)

13. Who has your character learned the most from during their life?

    The shamans of the Whisker, of course, her direct family and trainers, but their close connection to Shiro Kaiu has created a pair of enablers: Kaiu Chisen ('thousand foundation', honorable logistics/construction person) and Hida Nariko ('thunder', she big, she takes up space, and she lets you know it), who not only reinforced the search for glory, but pushed them in their pursuit of growth, and in doing so, found a truly exceptional will. Among the crab the immunity to the shadowlands of a purebread means that the shadowlands combat training that has been done, while their killing power wasn’t great, their unflinching nature certainly made a good impression on them. (Indomitable Will)

14. What do people notice first upon encountering your character?

    See description. The staff and opal are eyecatching, as can be the stick-ender.

15. How does your character react to stressful situations?

    Stress along the glory axis makes them restless and anxious, like they are wasting time. Cracking with a lot of that in the bucket might well make them impulsive and engage in what would otherwise be a bit more risktaking behavior than a balanced Name shugenja should. Other stress could raise the suspicion factor for sure. They’re not gonna run away, but they might confront, appearing neurotic.

16. What are your character’s preexisting relationships with other clans, families, organizations, and traditions?

    Constant anxiety across all the clans, peasant and samurai alike. The belief that glory and being useful is the only way to make the ratlings be recognized, and themselves be recognized.

    Why didn’t the phoenix protect their ratlings. The crab can protect theirs.

17. How would your character’s parents describe them?

    Her father was a shaman from another clan, a more rememberer historically clan. While the shamans of the Whisker focused on shamanism, their father taught them how to wind a story and, while not as noble as shaman pursuits, the nezumi still respected it enough to let it happen. As long as they kept up with their other studies. To wind a story to sooth and change the mind. (+1 Perform)

18. What legacy have your ancestors left you?

    Ratlings literally used their blood for magic back in the before times. Now that is gone, but the language of mortality sliding in meshes well with name magic: it is the fundamental nature of the realm, after all. (Reflections of Pan Ku as a blood magic spell)

19. What haunts your nightmares?

    Tomorrow is always a terror of the nezumi. Flashes of previous stories, or maybe just imagined dreams of previous stories, that end in death for the nezumi, as it always does. The nezumi have a history of just barely surviving, and a lot of not surviving, and the connection to the rememberers plays out in the worst way here. Personal fear dreams revolve around disappointment or probably, as they gain ‘friends’ outside the clan, betrayal is likely to enter the picture.

20. What dreams leave you disappointed and sad when you wake because they're just a dream?

    Dreams of future glory, dreams of success, dreams of having a name with so many apostrophes you wouldn’t believe it, dreams of being a true ratling with a ratling’s body, dreams of storytelling and dreams of having a story to tell.

More Background NPCs

Ch'ko (Chiko) - Younger Nezumi being trained with Hiruma, not past Gempukku

Nezumi H'rck (Haruka - Distance) - Nezumi, gempukkued before Minku, trained with Hiruma

Hiruma Mayumni (Great archer) - Hiruma, gempukkued ~same as Minku, trained with Hiruma, on training rotation

Hiruma Tatsuya (Dragon-assertive) - head Hiruma trainer, unflinching, cuts nezumi no slack for their nezumi traits, meant to press on Nezumi to fit in from the leadership pov

Kaiu Chisen ('thousand foundation', honorable logistics/construction person) - Enabler/Mentor of Minku (Learned the most from question) Hida Nariko ('thunder', she big, she takes up space, and she lets you know it) - Enabler/Mentor if Minku (Learned the most from question)

Nezumi Temprt'tek (Temoparutteko) (?) - conucil leader, female, shaman, a matriarch through and through, strong ties to crab history in this place (not just purebred, but purebred third whisker)

Nezumi K'Mee'Chkir (Kamichikuro) (?) - council member, female, shaman, Minku's mother, dedicated to Nezumi race and power (not as much of a crab lover)

Nezumi Z'kak'thrr (Zekakuthroro) (?) - council member, female, shaman, finding purebred remnants out in the world, mostly physically, a little in terms of relics/stories but mostly practical

Nezumi Y'tchee (Itachi?) - Scout, suitor for Minku, seems quick to jealousy, a bit loud

Not listed: Father, other incidentals