Name: Taro Tachibana
Age: 20
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Significant Relations: None established - watch this space
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 138lbs
Abilities:
- Curse of Ill Omen: Taro can draw on Kuroakuma's powers of misfortune and chaos to afflict foes with dramatic bad luck, causing them to suffer absurd twists of fate that hinder them in every way. Stray gusts of wind, poor footing: anything that can go wrong for them, will, so long as Taro keeps this curse on them. He can afflict only a single person with this curse at once, and its intensity is greater the closer in proximity he is to the target.
- Curse of Paralysis: Taro can afflict a creature he strikes with Kuroakuma with paralysis, causing their body to lock up and freeze if they are unable to resist the effect. Like his curse of ill omen, he can only afflict a single creature with this curse at any one time.
- Darkness Manipulation: Taro can create areas of supernatural darkness, impenetrable by non-magical light sources. Even creatures adapted to darkness cannot see in the supernatural blackness of this magically created dark, although Taro's own sight can pierce it perfectly.
- Shadowsight: Taro can see perfectly in the dark. He can determine a shadowy or dark area from a bright area by subtle changes in tone, but otherwise is unhindered by a lack of light.
- Countermagic: Taro is able to drain and dispel magical energies created by other creatures, including disrupting spellcasting-in-process by discharging chaotic energies into the casting. This can cause the spell to backfire in the would-be caster's face.
- Black Wings: Taro can sprout a pair of shadowy wings, allowing him to fly.
- Shrouded Presence: Taro can use his magic to conceal his presence, both visually and spiritually. He fades from view, becoming invisible, whilst his energy, mind and soul become very difficult to detect even with supernatural senses.
- Shadow Step: Taro can teleport between areas of shadow, provided he can see his destination.
- Chaos Energies: Taro can unleash Kuroakuma's power in less directed, focused ways, lashing out with crackling black destructive energy that has the ability to disrupt and hinder foes as well as harming them with necrotic energy.
- Superior Physical Ability: Taro is more strong and agile than an average human thanks to his bond with Kuroakuma, which has magically enhanced his strength, resilience and dexterity to borderline superhuman levels.
Skills/Talents:
- Combat: Taro trained as a warrior before he gained his abilities, and his connection with his cursed blade has only enhanced these talents.
Equipment:
- Kuroakuma: The cursed katana Taro wields containing the spirit of a powerful yokai of darkness, chaos and misfortune. The blade itself is wreathed in shadows that assail creatures with necrotic energy on contact, and is capable of slicing through solid steel. Taro can unleash his power directly through the weapon as well, empowering its strikes with raw magic or even causing a shade of Kuroakuma itself to emerge from it to assail foes.
Beyond these capabilities, Kuroakuma is a yokai that feeds off of the darkness in humans and, in a reciprocal loop, influences them to become darker themselves. Taro currently has control of the spirit, tempering his own darker emotions to the point where the spirit is too weak to influence others, and strong enough of will to stop it influencing him.
Background: Taro was born the son of a Losenyu shrine priestess, at a shrine dedicated to protecting a cursed sword named Kuroakuma. His father was absent -- having left his mother before he was born, not wishing to be pinned to the simple shrine lifestyle by a child -- and he had no siblings, but there were other priests and priestesses at the shrine, and so he was part of what felt like a whole and happy family nonetheless.
Life was simple for a long time: Kuroakuma was not an especially famous blade despite its curse, and so they were not troubled overly by people seeking to study it, or to take the dangerous weapon for themselves.
The blade was named thus for the yokai that dwelled within it, a dark demon of shadow, chaos, and ill omen that had once tormented the nearby village, bringing about a rise in sickness and conflict by its mere presence. An exorcist named Saizo sought to banish the spirit, but it was tricksy and evasive, and avoided direct confrontation. In the end, Saizo tricked it by declaring loudly that he intended to seek an honourable duel with his rival using the blade he carried, which was a symbol of honour. Kuroakuma thought to interfere with the duel by possessing the sword and causing the exorcist to act dishonourably in the fight, but Saizo had anticipated this, and prepared a binding spell. Thusly, Kuroakuma was trapped within the sword, and the village built a shrine to guard it, so that the yokai might never escape.
Taro's life changed when he was sixteen, when bandits - having heard the legend of the sword in the village - sought to take it. They attacked the shrine, killing those priests that tried to oppose them, and burned it. In a desperate bid to protect his family, Taro took up the cursed blade himself and begged the yokai within for aid. Kuroakuma offered him a deal: 'Let me manifest through you and bring ill fortune and chaos to your enemies, and I will give you the power you need'.
Taro agreed, and the yokai bonded with him, entwining itself with his soul. In freeing the yokai, however, so too did Taro allow it to gain influence over him. In the immediate aftermath of the binding, Kuroakuma took control of his body. Although it killed the bandits, it also slew a number of the shrine priests, including Taro's mother and sister, before he was able to wrestle back control.
When he did regain control, Taro fled the shrine, devastated with what he'd done and fleeing the attempts of the priests to exact justice on him.
Soon after leaving home, Taro fell in with a group of mercenaries named the Black Orchid. Kuroakuma's presence in him had tilted his moral compass somewhat, so he turned a blind eye to the group's darker dealings, concerning himself only with earning the money he needed to survive. And in turn, this darkening fed Kuroakuma's strength, allowing the spirit to begin to influence this group to darker and darker acts.
This lasted for two years, until last year, the group came into conflict with a member of the Elysian Vanguard - after word had reached them of the mercenaries in possession of a powerful dark artefact. By this point, although Taro remained in Kuroakuma's grip, the young man had grown more and more guilty and regretful over the things he was doing, and the spirit's grip was weakening the more he fought back against it.
And so when Adriaan, the Vanguard member who had been sent to retrieve the sword, came into conflict with him and the other mercenaries, it was a battle fought on multiple fronts: Adriaan against Taro and the mercenaries, and Taro against Kuroakuma. Eventually, with Adriaan's coaching, Taro was able to wrest control of himself back in full - and in turn freeing the other mercenaries.
Realising that the sword's power hinged on the darkness of its wielder, and that it could not be separated from Taro easily, Adriaan brought Taro back to Nasazura's Rest, where it was decided that he would be allowed to join the Vanguard himself: to nurture the goodness in him and keep his darkness from becoming such that Kuroakuma could take back control.
Taro himself was grateful for a chance at redemption, still haunted by the things he'd done, and since then has been a loyal member of the Vanguard - albeit one with a dark sense of humour and a slightly unsettling fighting style, occasionally involving a dark spirit leaping from his blade to consume his foes.