Yokai (Sakara)
| Rory Sakura (Scenesys ID: 37) | |||
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| Profile | |||
| Full Name: | Roark Sakara | ||
| Gender: | Male | ||
| Species: | Oni | ||
| Theme: | Original (OC) | ||
| Occupation: | Artist | ||
| Citizenship: | Japan / United States of America | ||
| Residence: | Under Manhattan | ||
| Education: | Bunsei Geijutsu Daigaku (BArt) | ||
| Status: | Shelved | ||
| Groups: | {{{Groups}}} | ||
| Other Information | |||
| Apparent Age: | 25 | Actual Age: | 25 |
| Date of Birth | 1 January 2001 | Actor: | |
| Height: | 203 cm | Weight: | 148 kg |
| Hair Color: | White | Eye Color: | Blue |
| Theme Song: | {{{Song}}} | ||
Profile
Rory is the son of an American woman who taught English in Japan, and a red Oni from the hills, one who looked human enough to "blend". He has his father's magic, his mother's love of art, and has come to New York to try to find one of his cousins. Looking more like a basketball player than an artist, he nonetheless makes an adequate income creating street art, mostly with coloured chalk.
Sheet
Description
There are two ways to see Rory Sakura: as a human and as an Oni.
Human, he's tall at about two hundred centimetres and has a lanky, muscular build like a wrestler or gymnast, and gives off that "reserved, elegant, too-pretty" aura common among male heroes in Japanese visual storytelling. He plays on this deliberately. A bit pale, with shoulder-length blond hair pulled back into a pony tail or worn loose, he wears cutting-edge fashions, including wearing kimono and hakama in public. When working, he often goes shirtless to keep from smearing coloured chalk on his nice clothing. It's part of a deliberate draw to the crowds; he knows he's striking. He usually has a tiger "tattoo" painted around his torso though it's clearly not permanent because it changes. He usually carries an artist's satchel.
History
(Cue romance-anime opening "I Married A Red Ogre!" with oddly perky pop-song sung by a girl-band.)
Mary O'Connell was an American woman working in Japan as an English teacher. During a September break before classes restarted, she visited a temple near Lake Hibara for a harvest festival. During a party, she took refuge from a sudden rainstorm in a side room of a disused temple, and fell asleep. She dreamed of a handsome ruddy-skinned man who seduced her over the course of a week. When she woke, it was morning of the next day, and she was somehow a month and a half pregnant. An old couple who maintained the temples took her in when she was informed she could not return to work while gravid. They explained that this was a thing that happened once every turn of the century, and that she would be well taken care of until the "Mountain Spirit" came to take his child. The old couple arranged for her to have a leave of absence from her job (without asking) while her pregnancy continued to advance with unnatural rapidity. They arranged repairs for the temple she had taken refuge in, and a somewhat flighty woman called Akaihebi (red snake, not a normal name) settled in as a housekeeper and cook while Mary found it nearly impossible to do anything but eat, sleep, and rest. Her dreams were vivid, with the red-skinned man showing up every night, continuing to make love with her, taking her for long hikes through mountains, introducing her to his friends and family, some rather strange people. It seemed to go on for a year or two, though in the waking world, time progressed normally.
When she gave birth on the start of the new century, Akaiehebi was the midwife and gave Mary a rather strong drink to help her cope. She had a waking dream that her lover and his mother came along, and when she had given birth, she suddenly realized that the man was actually a red Oni, and demanded to know his name. He finally said "Akuma" (demon). She then insisted on calling him "Akaikami" (red spirit) and asked to see her son. Akuma left the room (and the temple) and Akaihebi gave her the freshly-washed boy. He was born with a full head of blond hair and all his teeth, and didn't want to breast feed after the third day. The dreamlike fog of the accelerated pregnancy had ended, and she was starkly aware that she was in a remote town in the middle of winter with no job and possibly no prospects, since showing up in Kyoto with a sudden baby wouldn't be accepted for a single woman.
On the 21st of February (Chinese New Year) Akuma returned in person, undisguised, an two hundred and forty-five centimetres tall ogre with red skin wearing a tiger-skin loin cloth. She should have been terrified or embarrassed, but she just thought "he's beautiful." Then he offered to "take the brat off her hands and pay her back with gold" and she refused indignantly. She told him that he couldn't introduce her to his family and then just send her away, and that she was going to stay and make sure he ate properly and he was going to help her raise their son.
(Cue romantic end credits music sung by romantic male singer, with epilogue vignettes around credits.)
(Cue opening credits and absurd girl-band pop music for "My Dad Is A Red Ogre!" - season 2, Purple Oni!)
They couldn't marry traditionally but they did register their marriage through the government, and she relocated to the town to teach English at the local school. She lived in the temple, which was close enough to the school to walk even in winter, but Akuma couldn't sleep in a temple, even disused, so moved to a nearby cave in the mountain. They raised the child together. Rory Sakura was born at one minute after midnight on 1 January 2001, in Kitashiobara, Fukushima, Japan. His mother was an American teacher of English. His father was a Yokai!
For his first thirteen years, Rory was a small, quiet human-looking lad, shy though he couldn't be bullied. He had a few friends, and most of them weren't humans. He lived a somewhat rural life, only attending school for eight hours a day, and spending time with his (Giant Red-Oni) father in the woods as well as living in his mother's house, a disused temple converted into a home -- Mary couldn't live in the woods and still work, and Akuma couldn't live in her house without terrifying the neighbours, so they kept two homes. Among humans, Rory was well-liked as a kid. He seemed to be smart and athletic enough to be more than an average kid, but he spent most of his spare time drawing which kept him from excelling in his teachers' eyes. Despite his early start, he hadn't grown unnaturally fast, and when he reached the age of 13, he was the average 155 centimeters, 45.3 kilograms.
His Yokai heritage kicked in then, and he started to slowly grow taller and stronger, and his body began changing in ways that aren't found in "the What's Happening to My Body Book for Boys" even in the references. Two days after he turned 13, his skin turned a lovely violet shade, his teeth grew fangy, small horns sprouted from his forehead, his nails changed to claws, and he grew a prehensile tail. (His father doesn't have a tail. He says it comes from the mother's side.) He began to be unnaturally strong for his size. His adolescent growth spurt started slowly and never stopped. He grew 4.08 cm and 8.56 kg (though only 2/3 of it "showed" because he was becoming physically denser and more rock-like) every year. That progression continues through the present day. His father is 250 centimetres and much, much heavier than Rory, who has much catching up to do. When he changed, his father taught him special Yokai meditation techniques that let him shape shift, so his Oni features could be hidden. He was also required to study other kinds of magic from his Yokai relatives, mostly to unlock his own talents. Oni with strong magic have to find their own way and can only be guided, not trained.
When he finished high school, he went to the Bunsei Geijutsu Daigaku, in Utsonomiya (an art university near, but not part of Tokyo). He was mostly drawn to go there rather than other places because of the gyoza. They have the world's best gyoza there. Despite that, Rory completed his education in art, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration, and after spending a year with his father's family, he had enough money to go to America to study art in New York.
(Cue End Credits: not-so romantic, actiony-rock male singer doing ballad about future, montage of vignettes showing over credits.)
Personality
Focus on Art: Rory is somewhat obsessed with art, and artwork is one of his primary methods for magic. He has a strong mastery of representational and traditional Japanese ink-painting, some sculpture, and a love for chalk and pastels. He finds it extremely satisfying when he can create a mural or sidewalk piece that's photo-realistic, especially if it's mistaken for real. He will sometimes fall into "art fugue" where he can't bother with things that aren't related to what he's suddenly inspired to draw, and if he gets interrupted he'll sometimes fly into a rage.
Obsession: While Rory is normally unnaturally calm and level-headed, he will sometimes become a bit weird for specific things. For instance, he has a near-mania for good gyoza which has never left him. On the other hand, he had a crush on a two-tail Kitsune who toyed with him then rejected him, and he is no longer obsessed. He is both impulsive and a bit strange about his obsessions. He will talk about them in an annoying way, become a bit stalkery, and so on, but he never lets them interrupt his art or meditation.
Meditation: Being an Oni -- despite stories, there's no such thing as a half-Oni, one either is or is not -- means that Rory has extremely strong physical impulses, sometimes almost reflexive. These include drives for the four Oni drives: food, affection, sex, fighting. His father taught him methods of meditation that let him keep his emotional responses under control, so he seems to be coldly logical and distant much of the time, but then when his obsession with art or with a specific person or thing will kick in and he becomes a bit too animated, even a bit unnerving, until he notices and then meditates for a minute to calm himself.
Abilities
OGRE MAGE
Rory is one of a clade of Japanese monsters who started out as "spirits" and "ghosts" and over time, metamorphosed into a sort of guardian ogre potentially having powerful magic on top of terrifying fighting powers. Fortunately Oni are usually solitary unless recruited into an organization of some sort.
Rory has shape shifting magic, which allows him to change from his purple Oni form into various disguises. The one he's most familiar with is his human "normal" guise, but he can also turn into an ox, a tiger, and a child (his form at age 9) as well as becoming invisible (because apparently invisible is a 'shape' to Oni.) He can use it to turn intangible, as well, but it feels really creepy when someone walks through him so he mainly uses this power to sneak into places. (His father turns into a gas cloud instead, but Rory doesn't do that.) He also shape shifts to tweak his appearance in minor ways including becoming shorter, less physically threatening, have short hair, be homely, etc. He has to practice the shape of someone else if he wants to turn into them specifically and he's never bothered to take a month or two to learn one.
Rory can create an illusion by drawing a realistic picture and charging it with Void magic. If it's a picture of a place, he can step into the image or bring others into it, and if it's an actual place, the picture can be a portal to that place. If it's the picture of a thing he can "activate" it and bring it into reality. For instance, drawing a door where a blank wall is, or a blank wall where a door should be. A door in midair can open to other places, etc. (Toon Logic may apply.) He can draw a plant or animal and make it temporarily real, like his "tiger tattoo". He can create edible food (and it isn't nutritious) or a refrigerator containing edible food (and it is nutritious.)
He can also make illusions that are emotions or feelings or temporary mind-sets, though he can't touch core beliefs. Some illusions can acquire more reality if he draws them more often. Such illusions tend to become a new Yokai when drawn too often, generally a few years of repetition. Illusions are works of art and take him from 5 minutes for a quick sketch, to an hour or more for a complex image. He can make one magic-imbued "ink on skin" illusion per day at most, on other people, or up to four regular tattoos. Ink on his own body is time consuming but not exhausting like inking other people. (see '+res Rory/Ink on Skin'.)
Rory has "meta-magic" of the type that lets him see the structure of other Yokai magic, attempt to disrupt other magic (Yokai or otherwise, including priest-barriers) and sense and attempt to dominate and manipulate diffuse spiritual entities (called Miasma in Japanese mythos). His teachers can create barriers with various qualities, including concealment, selective obstruction, disabling of magic, tech, armour, etc. of various kinds, and so on. Rory is only good enough to do concealment and limited obstruction. His barriers normally fade after a day, unless reinforced or a "drawing ritual" is used to create them. This meta-magic also may allow him to tame some kinds of animal-intelligence-level Yokai and command them.
He has limited element magic, which is to say, he can "manipulate" the elements of Fire, Water, Earth, Air, and Void. For this purpose, Void is spiritual energy, a.k.a. magical energy. The element has to be present in a fairly pure form. He can increase, decrease, shape, move, and imbue the element, which is to say, make it work to a specific purpose. This method is so brute-force that he can't do it more than two or three times or it exhausts his strength and he can't do magic for an hour or so (including shape shift)... but folding it into an illusion makes it less difficult as it's slower, so he can add it for free into an illusion.
PURPLE ONI
Rory is a purple Oni, a member of a Japanese monster species called "Ox Tiger Demons" or "Ogre-Mages" and having a reputation for violence, rapine, pillaging, and singing off-key to annoy priests. Rory's father is a red Oni. Rory has strong physical and predatory urges, but special meditation techniques keep this controlled. His Oni nature gives him immense strength and durability by human measures: he can lift objects up to 25,000 kilograms, carry them around, or throw them up to 100 meters from him. As this is his current "max" it would be somewhat exhausting to do that. He has Oni Senses, so he can see in the dark, see ghosts, demons, invisible, and astral things, see auras (though he's only moderately skilled at interpreting them), sense "miasma" and can hear a whisper a kilometre away (in a forest; In a city, not as good.) His other senses are similarly boosted. As an Oni, he can thrive in nearly any conditions to be found on Earth, though they won't always be comfortable. He can swim in lava, breathe underwater, stand on top of Everest without climbing gear (in a tiger-skin loincloth for selfie purposes) et cetera. As a human, if he tries to do these things it "breaks" his shape shift and he returns to Oni Form (aka Beast Mode.) His special weaknesses are to extremely high-tech items and to specifically target holy items -- the latter only when he's in "beast mode" rather than his human mode.
TRAVEL
Skills
ARTIST
Since childhood, Rory has been drawing, painting with ink and watercolour, sketching, and creating representational, abstract, and traditional artwork. He's able to easily and accurately sketch, do calligraphy (Japanese using all the alphabets) as well as photo-realistic chalk and pastel work. He has a bachelor of fine arts degree to slap people with who tell him that he's not a real artist.
FIGHT CLUB
Since he was six years old, his father has been training him in the Oni fighting style, which relies on ridiculous strength and the use of a heavy, iron clad spiked club. Since he's reached his Young Adult stage as an Oni, he's not been using his iron-bound club, in order to improve his evasiveness, quickness, and ability to strike accurately. Without entering a rage, he is essentially a very well trained martial artist, who would be considered a black belt except that Oni don't teach their fighting techniques to outsiders. Most Oni techniques are actually ways to control and focus simultaneous physical and "ki" strikes to be able to make precise strikes that are extremely devastating and a bit show-offy. For example, he can break every other board in a stack of many. In combat, he can safely fight up to four adequately trained knife fighters, and if he's transformed to Beast Mode, he's unlikely to take even cuts and scratches. Add in a fifth, or someone who is comparable in skill with at least one Dirty Trick, and he's slightly more likely to lose than to win -- and it gets worse from there. Note, he is still learning and may improve.
LANGUAGES
Resources
INK ON SKIN
In order to acquire American money that isn't in a highly questionable format, Rory uses his artistic skills to apply tattoos. He doesn't use a needle. Rory can use coloured ink to paint onto his skin (or others') an illusion that can be triggered into action under specific circumstances. (On other people, this requires adding Void element.) The ink remains intact until some specific condition is met, or until it's been expended. He works a pick-up shift at two tattoo parlours, and makes about 200 dollars per tattoo at 2-4 per day, as needed, under the table, and ten times that amount per tattoo when magic is imbued to a purpose.
MONSTERS
Weaknesses
IDENTITY
Rory is a dual-citizenship person... in theory. However, recent homeland security oxymoronic decisions have made it difficult to get proper proof. His paperwork is still in progress in Japan, because the American Embassy has his Mother's request for nationalization, and the Japanese Government is sensitive about Yokai as citizens, so there's a gridlock. Rory has an American passport and appropriate paperwork but he cannot run for public office in the United States, and he cannot vote until they finish the paperwork. He has a New York state identification card, based on the passport, but it has notes on it.
ILLUSION AND REALITY
Rory's illusions are partly real; his shape shifts are partly real, until he runs into someone who can resist illusion through magic or other ability. Certain kinds of magic, certain kinds of "priest work", can weaken or disrupt his powers, keep him out of an area, even pin him in place and render him temporarily helpless. If confronted properly he can be reverted to Beast Mode (this would require a stronger caster than him or an especially holy person) or his illusions can be shattered.
UNION MEMBER
As a card-carrying member of the Shinigami, Oni, Tanuki and Yokai Fraternal and Beneficial Collective Order, Rory has to assist other Yokai who need it on request (though he doesn't have to assist someone who is a deadbeat more than once). Because he is an Oni, he is much more likely to be approached with such a request. This may include helping protect them from metahumans who operate as heroes, and to protect them from being tortured, dissected, or otherwise hurt by police and government agencies.
URGENT
Logs
To Refresh Character's Log List Click Here. Then hit the resulting button to dump the old cached list.
| Title | Date | Scene Summary |
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| Titan Team Time | December 17th, 2018 | Summary needed |
| Panic In The Streets (or how I learned to love the goat-god without getting THAT close.) | January 27th, 2018 | Ares did not punch out Pan. Pan turned all the kids back. Boring. |
| AoP - Two Devils Walk Into a Bar | January 5th, 2018 | Our scoundrels have met up, but will they form a crew to go after the Treasure of the Sea Witch? |
| Awakenings | December 11th, 2017 | Daken and Vorpal are nearly tentacled by a mutant girl, and Rory Sakura hears a familiar voice (and it isn't the cat boy.) |
| TITANS: I forgot what I was remembering to not forget. | October 1st, 2017 | TITANS: Stardust is too late for the end of the battle... but who cares about that? Tommy is too late to buy comics. By several years. Now that is a tragedy. |
| Digging In The Dirt | August 13th, 2017 | Simon and Hecubah are unable to help a budget voudon when a Space Bird and Earth Oni get in their faces. |
| TITANS: It Came From The Green Depths! | August 13th, 2017 | They may offer you fortune and fame,
Love and money and instant acclaim, But whatever they offer you- DON'T FEED THE PLANTS! |
| The Veterans Ball | July 14th, 2017 | Omens, portents, and fortune telling games at the Veteran's Ball. |
| Midsummer Confusion: Cherry Blossoms and April in June | June 30th, 2017 | April O'Neal and Michelangelo (turtle ninja) find themselves in a surreal art-movie experience ... with ninjas |
| Summertime ooze | June 19th, 2017 | Fathom attempts to recruit Vorpal and Yokai to the Young Avengers. (Sadly, this didn't take off.) |
| Busking Away | June 4th, 2017 | Wilykit and Wilykat are busking ... and Lion-O does not approve. Hijinks ensue. Whiskers! |
| Chat Noir Sur un Toit en étain Chaud | May 13th, 2017 | Two cats and a teapot arrive in a tea garden, and the owner must thus serve tea. |
| Super Zeroes | May 7th, 2017 | Gotham's Minor League team wants a superhero mascot. They can't pay much. Tryouts ensue. |
| The Egyptian Exhibit | May 6th, 2017 | An oni in disguise and a miraculous young man encounter an exhibit that reveals some ancient history |
| Meanwhile Back At The Ranch | May 1st, 2017 | Rory Sakura has a visitor to his imaginary garden |
| Collect Call to Hell | April 26th, 2017 | A Cat, an Oni and a Crusader crash a demonic party, and everyone gets covered in garbage. Hooray! |
| Party at the Museum | April 14th, 2017 | When Giganta and her friends decide to rob a museum, its up to the heroes to prevent them from causing irrepairable damage to the relics inside. |
| Central Park Confrontation | April 7th, 2017 | A lovely afternoon ruined by villains! |
| Trouble down in Mutant Town | April 4th, 2017 | Crusader and Rory Sakura meet, in the process facing off against a criminal. |
Cutscenes
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| Title | Date | Scene Summary |
|---|---|---|
| No logs submitted yet. | ||