Post by reasonable on Feb 12, 2007 9:03:38 GMT -5
Name: Colonel Kirijin of the Atobara family (the Dragon’s Swordsman)
Age: 37 (kirijini=fighting to death, atobara=afterpains)
Gender: Male
Nation: Fire Nation
Bender: Yes, proficient. Possesses power, but lacks focus
Appearance: The first thing anyone notices are his eyes. A deep, dark shade of hazel, eternally locked in a scowl as they sit, set deeply into his face. A slight scar running from the right nostril all the way down to the tip of his chin is almost completely faded, taking a serious effort to see at all. Adding to the scar’s elusiveness is the black scruff that Kirijin is always sporting, stuck between being stubble and a real beard. The character of the face is darkened even more by his jet black, bushy eyebrows that only seem to be storm clouds increasing the peril his scowl promises. Oh, and he has a perfectly straight nose and a strong jawline, but those things never get noticed because of his scowl. Did I mention he really likes to scowl? Well, keeping his face scrunched like that all the time has made him look older than he actually is, leaving deep wrinkles marring his face, but that hasn't stopped him scowling yet.
Standing just a couple inches over six feet, it isn’t his height that makes him so intimidating. It is the years of hard training that have turned him into a very solidly built man, and the years of fighting that made him tough. Despite his amazing strength and his ability to endure blows, he is aging. While he’d never admit it, he is starting to slow down a bit. He doesn’t heal as fast as he used to and, probably the most worrying to him, his joints have began to ache with the onset of arthritis.
Kirijin keeps his topknot in a very short bob, but no one actually ever sees it since he hides it under a traditional Earth Kingdom conical hat tipped low so more menacing shadows build on his face. Apart from his unusual taste in hats, Kirijin dresses outwardly like one would expect a soldier of the Fire Nation to dress. Underneath is another story, as he also wears some very thick padded armour. This addition was very important when dealing with earthbenders, as it absorbed a lot of the force of being hit be a boulder. Coupled with his frame, the padding makes him look puffed up in his armour. To downplay the look, Kirijin often wears a simple cloak to cover his body and his wide array of weapons.
Of the most importance to the overall look of Kirijin Atobara is, apart from his scowl, is the tattoo on his back. Given to him as an initiation, the tattoo depicts a large dragon circling a sword while in the background an inferno engulfs an Earth Kingdom city.
Personality: Kirijin Atobara was marked his entire life as overly aggressive, psychotic, and a danger to others. His nature, while tolerated at first due to his immense promise, soon closed many doors to him and threatened to leave much of his potential unrealized. While he would later attain some skill, the memory of being rejected left him angry and bitter. He’d never admit he was bitter, Kirijin is too stubborn to show that his past was not what he would like it to have been. To stubborn to admit certain truths about himself.
Of all his flaws, like being sadistic and arrogant, it is his temper that gives him the most grief. While at times he can keep a level head and think things through, the truth is he will almost always erupt at the most inopportune times. In a blind rage Kirijin isn’t a reasoning creature, attacking the source of his anger till either he or it is unconscious. The source of these explosions is quite often the slightest thing, meaning most people who don’t want to get in a fight walk on eggshells all day long.
Any free time is filled with training. It is an obsession of his, training his body, readying his mind, learning new firebending techniques. This single-mindedness has allowed himself to become powerful, has also left him alone. While he will say he doesn’t need anyone, his grandfather’s saying, “A man doesn’t have eyes enough to watch his own back”, does remind him how exposed he really is. None the less, Kirijin insists on trying to avoid all emotional attachment with anyone in his life.
This is of course impossible for anyone to do resulting in Kirijin having a somewhat grudging friendships with one of his comrades, Ghul the Devourer, an Earth Kingdom mercenary. Kirijin and him are bit of rivals and overtime grew to associate with each other on a purely competitive level. Truth is Kirijin would never like the idea of being seen as Ghul's friend as he sees him as a barbarian, since he is from the Earth Kingdom, and a traitor, he willingly fights for the Fire Nation. Unlike his dealings with Ghul, Kirijin shows actual fondness for his grandfather and even Ashi Hanzo. Both out of respect for the training they gave him and fear of their power, he quickly developed a odd sense of loyalty to them and, by extension, the Fire Nation itself. On the subject of unwanted attachments, Kirijin seems to have some unknown person on his mind. While he sleeps, he’ll often cry out a name. The moment of vulnerability is expensive though, as Kirijin would be in a terrifying mood the next stay. His usually hot temper burning even more intensely.
Along with talking in his sleep, Kirijin has several curious habits. One is his love for wearing extra layers of clothing, regardless of the actually temperature outside. He claims that the trapped heat helps enhance his firebending, while the extra armour helps keep him safe. The truth is that the extra armour hasn’t stopped his body from being ripped up and marred by many scars and burns. Despite this, Kirijin always focuses in on one, a nearly indistinguishable cut on his face. Whenever “Captain” Hanzo is berating him, he seems to unconsciously start to trace the line of the scar with the tip of his thumb.
When asked about his reason for living, Kirijin always lies, claiming not to have one. The truth is he does have a mission in life. It is to be the best. What motivates this need is unknown, but those who served in his squad have many ideas. One is that he really has lost all touches of humanity and genuinely wishes to be a perfect killing machine. An other is he is trying to prove that he isn’t worthless, that passing him by and discarding him was a mistake. A different take is that his grandfather who he is always quoting advised him to take such a course in life. “Captain” Hanzo, probably the only man to truly ever understand Kirijin, likes to say that at some level it all of the above.
History: The Atobara family used to be a considered great nobility. Well respected and famed, they had fallen on hard times. A string of inept and talentless generations left the ancient family, which had once boast to having produced two Avatars, nearly extinct. Unknown and ignored, the sole hope for a faded legacy was placed at the feet of a Kirijin Atobara, the sole heir to a name that had long been bereft of power.
His mother, Yukionna, disapproved of the pressure that was being placed on her young son. Fearing that the family legacy might be compromised by “weak emotions”, Okure Atobara turned her in for sedition. This left Kirijin’s future in the hands of his obsessed father.
Despite merely being a toddler, Okure showed no mercy in teaching his heir the finer points of being a warrior. Since Okure couldn’t make a child do the strenuous exercises that a warrior would do, he wasn’t a fool, he focussed instead in preparing the young Kirijin’s mind. Through a series of brutal lessons, Kirijin had what Okure considered undesirable in warrior removed. Mercy and conscience were easy, but what proved to be difficult was removing all emotion, making him cold.
In retrospect, Okure’s continued attempts to make Kirijin this ideal, “cold” warrior had the opposite affect. By the age of six, Kirijin seemed to be locked in a permanent rage. While this wasn’t what Okure wanted, it did give him something he desired more. During a session where Okure was introducing Kirijin to the bow, Kirijin threw a fit. In a matter of seconds the bow turned to ash in his hands. Kirijin was a firebender.
Letters were quickly sent to every available firebendering master. Those who answered quickly discovered that Kirijin’s quick temper was a huge impediment to training him. Those few who got past Kirijin’s complete lack of control quickly ran into another problem, he was very lazy. More like unmotivated, but still it proved too much and soon no one would be willing to take Kirijin as a student. Only six years old and it already appeared that he had been fated to be nothing more then mediocre. Losing heart, Okure remarried and sent Kirijin away to live with his mother’s family.
Kirijin’s gifts impressed his grandfather. Often commenting on his previous training, Kirijin’s grandfather would point out that Okure was so focussed on taking stuff out of Kirijin that he never thought of putting anything back in. Scoffing at his son-in-laws attempts at bringing out a great warrior in the boy, Kirijin’s grandfather, who’d raised two sons and a daughter himself, set about making Kirijin a true warrior. So while the old man began teaching him martial skills, he also went about instilling a new work ethic in the boy. During the ten year span Kirijin was transformed from a unfocussed and unmotivated mess, into an obsessional trainer.
The ten years weren’t just spent on swordsmanship and building a work ethic. Things Kirijin’s father had thought as unnecessary, such as history and even basic literacy, were of vital importance to his grandfather. Kirijin was introduced to music and art later in his stay with his grandfather, but the intent was the same. His grandfather hoped to use all these things to sharpen Kirijin’s analytical skills. As his grandfather said, and Kirijin would often repeat, “ A thug needs to only win or lose, a warrior must understand how the result came about”.
Despite the changes, the new work ethic and influence of his grandfather’s philosophy, Kirijin remained an uncontrollable ball of rage. While he was healthy, his grandfather had no problems keeping him in check with his iron will and own vicious nature. As time went by, and Kirijin grew more powerful, his grandfather had to resort to more extreme methods of keeping him in line. One incident had an enraged Kirijin attacking an attendant with a priceless vase. Fearing that the vase might get cracked hitting the attendant, Kirijin’s grandfather stepped in and tried to force his grandson back. When it became clear that the vase would end up being smashed, his grandfather had no other foreseeable option but to subdue the raging Kirijin by force of arms. After a quick fight, Kirijin was brought down by a stunning blow to the chest and a nasty cut to the face.
The cut eventually faded into a barely visible scar, but one that Kirijin was very self-conscious of. Soon after that incident the old man’s health took the turn for the worse as it was discovered he had contracted pentirpox. Understanding that he had outgrown the lessons his grandfather could teach, Kirijin moved on and did the only thing a man of his age could possibly do.
Joining the Fire Nation army was easy. At the tender age of sixteen his skills made him a well respected soldier, but his temperament quickly made him a lot of enemies. Not only did he maintain his psychotic and violent temper, but he also had picked up his grandfather’s stubbornness and controlling nature.
Wanting to be rid of such a troublesome soldier, Kirijin was assigned to a classified mission. Officially declaring him dead, the army moved him into a squad in the Earth Kingdom. The mission was to pose as simple bandits and do their best to disrupt trade and just cause general mayhem.
This is how Kirijin came to serve under “Captain” Ashi Hanzo. Ashi, sometimes called the White Shirshu, was an accomplished firebender and quickly recognized the potential the new recruit had. Over the span of their twenty years together, the White Shirshu took Kirijin from having no skill what so ever to possessing a wide array of bending moves. Most famous of all his firebending moves was actually an unconscious habit of beginning a battle by engulfing his sword, and parts of his hand and arm, in a plume of harmless flame.
Over time, as Kirijin grew in ability and renown, he was assigned his nickname, proof that he was an official member of the squad. He was known as the Dragon’s Swordsman, not the most imaginative of names, but to compensate he was given the most elaborate of tattoo of the group.
Soon after he recovered from the process, he was promoted to “lieutenant” of the squad.
The time flew by as Kirijin Atobara progressed from the green recruit into a battle hardened veteran. Then came they day he never expected, a letter summoning the squad’s immediate return to the Fire Nation. Upon his arrival home, the Fire Nation declared him alive again and compelled him to stay in the army. When Ashi Hanzo was returned to his rank as general, he took Kirijin and the rest of the squad with him, promoting them to various key positions. Kirijin was given the rank of colonel.
So that is where the Dragon’s Swordsman, Colonel Kirijin of the Atobara family, is at before the outset of the War of Four.
***********************************************************
Well, there he is. I have personal concerns about the balance of the character, so when examining him could you pay extra care looking out for that. Thank you, and I look foreward to hear your advise/questions/concerns. Oh and some help on thinking of a good nickname for him would be very much appreciated. Pth, "the dragon's swordsman",
that wasn't thought up standing at the bus stop last night.
*edited portions bolded and underlined
Age: 37 (kirijini=fighting to death, atobara=afterpains)
Gender: Male
Nation: Fire Nation
Bender: Yes, proficient. Possesses power, but lacks focus
Appearance: The first thing anyone notices are his eyes. A deep, dark shade of hazel, eternally locked in a scowl as they sit, set deeply into his face. A slight scar running from the right nostril all the way down to the tip of his chin is almost completely faded, taking a serious effort to see at all. Adding to the scar’s elusiveness is the black scruff that Kirijin is always sporting, stuck between being stubble and a real beard. The character of the face is darkened even more by his jet black, bushy eyebrows that only seem to be storm clouds increasing the peril his scowl promises. Oh, and he has a perfectly straight nose and a strong jawline, but those things never get noticed because of his scowl. Did I mention he really likes to scowl? Well, keeping his face scrunched like that all the time has made him look older than he actually is, leaving deep wrinkles marring his face, but that hasn't stopped him scowling yet.
Standing just a couple inches over six feet, it isn’t his height that makes him so intimidating. It is the years of hard training that have turned him into a very solidly built man, and the years of fighting that made him tough. Despite his amazing strength and his ability to endure blows, he is aging. While he’d never admit it, he is starting to slow down a bit. He doesn’t heal as fast as he used to and, probably the most worrying to him, his joints have began to ache with the onset of arthritis.
Kirijin keeps his topknot in a very short bob, but no one actually ever sees it since he hides it under a traditional Earth Kingdom conical hat tipped low so more menacing shadows build on his face. Apart from his unusual taste in hats, Kirijin dresses outwardly like one would expect a soldier of the Fire Nation to dress. Underneath is another story, as he also wears some very thick padded armour. This addition was very important when dealing with earthbenders, as it absorbed a lot of the force of being hit be a boulder. Coupled with his frame, the padding makes him look puffed up in his armour. To downplay the look, Kirijin often wears a simple cloak to cover his body and his wide array of weapons.
Of the most importance to the overall look of Kirijin Atobara is, apart from his scowl, is the tattoo on his back. Given to him as an initiation, the tattoo depicts a large dragon circling a sword while in the background an inferno engulfs an Earth Kingdom city.
Personality: Kirijin Atobara was marked his entire life as overly aggressive, psychotic, and a danger to others. His nature, while tolerated at first due to his immense promise, soon closed many doors to him and threatened to leave much of his potential unrealized. While he would later attain some skill, the memory of being rejected left him angry and bitter. He’d never admit he was bitter, Kirijin is too stubborn to show that his past was not what he would like it to have been. To stubborn to admit certain truths about himself.
Of all his flaws, like being sadistic and arrogant, it is his temper that gives him the most grief. While at times he can keep a level head and think things through, the truth is he will almost always erupt at the most inopportune times. In a blind rage Kirijin isn’t a reasoning creature, attacking the source of his anger till either he or it is unconscious. The source of these explosions is quite often the slightest thing, meaning most people who don’t want to get in a fight walk on eggshells all day long.
Any free time is filled with training. It is an obsession of his, training his body, readying his mind, learning new firebending techniques. This single-mindedness has allowed himself to become powerful, has also left him alone. While he will say he doesn’t need anyone, his grandfather’s saying, “A man doesn’t have eyes enough to watch his own back”, does remind him how exposed he really is. None the less, Kirijin insists on trying to avoid all emotional attachment with anyone in his life.
This is of course impossible for anyone to do resulting in Kirijin having a somewhat grudging friendships with one of his comrades, Ghul the Devourer, an Earth Kingdom mercenary. Kirijin and him are bit of rivals and overtime grew to associate with each other on a purely competitive level. Truth is Kirijin would never like the idea of being seen as Ghul's friend as he sees him as a barbarian, since he is from the Earth Kingdom, and a traitor, he willingly fights for the Fire Nation. Unlike his dealings with Ghul, Kirijin shows actual fondness for his grandfather and even Ashi Hanzo. Both out of respect for the training they gave him and fear of their power, he quickly developed a odd sense of loyalty to them and, by extension, the Fire Nation itself. On the subject of unwanted attachments, Kirijin seems to have some unknown person on his mind. While he sleeps, he’ll often cry out a name. The moment of vulnerability is expensive though, as Kirijin would be in a terrifying mood the next stay. His usually hot temper burning even more intensely.
Along with talking in his sleep, Kirijin has several curious habits. One is his love for wearing extra layers of clothing, regardless of the actually temperature outside. He claims that the trapped heat helps enhance his firebending, while the extra armour helps keep him safe. The truth is that the extra armour hasn’t stopped his body from being ripped up and marred by many scars and burns. Despite this, Kirijin always focuses in on one, a nearly indistinguishable cut on his face. Whenever “Captain” Hanzo is berating him, he seems to unconsciously start to trace the line of the scar with the tip of his thumb.
When asked about his reason for living, Kirijin always lies, claiming not to have one. The truth is he does have a mission in life. It is to be the best. What motivates this need is unknown, but those who served in his squad have many ideas. One is that he really has lost all touches of humanity and genuinely wishes to be a perfect killing machine. An other is he is trying to prove that he isn’t worthless, that passing him by and discarding him was a mistake. A different take is that his grandfather who he is always quoting advised him to take such a course in life. “Captain” Hanzo, probably the only man to truly ever understand Kirijin, likes to say that at some level it all of the above.
History: The Atobara family used to be a considered great nobility. Well respected and famed, they had fallen on hard times. A string of inept and talentless generations left the ancient family, which had once boast to having produced two Avatars, nearly extinct. Unknown and ignored, the sole hope for a faded legacy was placed at the feet of a Kirijin Atobara, the sole heir to a name that had long been bereft of power.
His mother, Yukionna, disapproved of the pressure that was being placed on her young son. Fearing that the family legacy might be compromised by “weak emotions”, Okure Atobara turned her in for sedition. This left Kirijin’s future in the hands of his obsessed father.
Despite merely being a toddler, Okure showed no mercy in teaching his heir the finer points of being a warrior. Since Okure couldn’t make a child do the strenuous exercises that a warrior would do, he wasn’t a fool, he focussed instead in preparing the young Kirijin’s mind. Through a series of brutal lessons, Kirijin had what Okure considered undesirable in warrior removed. Mercy and conscience were easy, but what proved to be difficult was removing all emotion, making him cold.
In retrospect, Okure’s continued attempts to make Kirijin this ideal, “cold” warrior had the opposite affect. By the age of six, Kirijin seemed to be locked in a permanent rage. While this wasn’t what Okure wanted, it did give him something he desired more. During a session where Okure was introducing Kirijin to the bow, Kirijin threw a fit. In a matter of seconds the bow turned to ash in his hands. Kirijin was a firebender.
Letters were quickly sent to every available firebendering master. Those who answered quickly discovered that Kirijin’s quick temper was a huge impediment to training him. Those few who got past Kirijin’s complete lack of control quickly ran into another problem, he was very lazy. More like unmotivated, but still it proved too much and soon no one would be willing to take Kirijin as a student. Only six years old and it already appeared that he had been fated to be nothing more then mediocre. Losing heart, Okure remarried and sent Kirijin away to live with his mother’s family.
Kirijin’s gifts impressed his grandfather. Often commenting on his previous training, Kirijin’s grandfather would point out that Okure was so focussed on taking stuff out of Kirijin that he never thought of putting anything back in. Scoffing at his son-in-laws attempts at bringing out a great warrior in the boy, Kirijin’s grandfather, who’d raised two sons and a daughter himself, set about making Kirijin a true warrior. So while the old man began teaching him martial skills, he also went about instilling a new work ethic in the boy. During the ten year span Kirijin was transformed from a unfocussed and unmotivated mess, into an obsessional trainer.
The ten years weren’t just spent on swordsmanship and building a work ethic. Things Kirijin’s father had thought as unnecessary, such as history and even basic literacy, were of vital importance to his grandfather. Kirijin was introduced to music and art later in his stay with his grandfather, but the intent was the same. His grandfather hoped to use all these things to sharpen Kirijin’s analytical skills. As his grandfather said, and Kirijin would often repeat, “ A thug needs to only win or lose, a warrior must understand how the result came about”.
Despite the changes, the new work ethic and influence of his grandfather’s philosophy, Kirijin remained an uncontrollable ball of rage. While he was healthy, his grandfather had no problems keeping him in check with his iron will and own vicious nature. As time went by, and Kirijin grew more powerful, his grandfather had to resort to more extreme methods of keeping him in line. One incident had an enraged Kirijin attacking an attendant with a priceless vase. Fearing that the vase might get cracked hitting the attendant, Kirijin’s grandfather stepped in and tried to force his grandson back. When it became clear that the vase would end up being smashed, his grandfather had no other foreseeable option but to subdue the raging Kirijin by force of arms. After a quick fight, Kirijin was brought down by a stunning blow to the chest and a nasty cut to the face.
The cut eventually faded into a barely visible scar, but one that Kirijin was very self-conscious of. Soon after that incident the old man’s health took the turn for the worse as it was discovered he had contracted pentirpox. Understanding that he had outgrown the lessons his grandfather could teach, Kirijin moved on and did the only thing a man of his age could possibly do.
Joining the Fire Nation army was easy. At the tender age of sixteen his skills made him a well respected soldier, but his temperament quickly made him a lot of enemies. Not only did he maintain his psychotic and violent temper, but he also had picked up his grandfather’s stubbornness and controlling nature.
Wanting to be rid of such a troublesome soldier, Kirijin was assigned to a classified mission. Officially declaring him dead, the army moved him into a squad in the Earth Kingdom. The mission was to pose as simple bandits and do their best to disrupt trade and just cause general mayhem.
This is how Kirijin came to serve under “Captain” Ashi Hanzo. Ashi, sometimes called the White Shirshu, was an accomplished firebender and quickly recognized the potential the new recruit had. Over the span of their twenty years together, the White Shirshu took Kirijin from having no skill what so ever to possessing a wide array of bending moves. Most famous of all his firebending moves was actually an unconscious habit of beginning a battle by engulfing his sword, and parts of his hand and arm, in a plume of harmless flame.
Over time, as Kirijin grew in ability and renown, he was assigned his nickname, proof that he was an official member of the squad. He was known as the Dragon’s Swordsman, not the most imaginative of names, but to compensate he was given the most elaborate of tattoo of the group.
Soon after he recovered from the process, he was promoted to “lieutenant” of the squad.
The time flew by as Kirijin Atobara progressed from the green recruit into a battle hardened veteran. Then came they day he never expected, a letter summoning the squad’s immediate return to the Fire Nation. Upon his arrival home, the Fire Nation declared him alive again and compelled him to stay in the army. When Ashi Hanzo was returned to his rank as general, he took Kirijin and the rest of the squad with him, promoting them to various key positions. Kirijin was given the rank of colonel.
So that is where the Dragon’s Swordsman, Colonel Kirijin of the Atobara family, is at before the outset of the War of Four.
***********************************************************
Well, there he is. I have personal concerns about the balance of the character, so when examining him could you pay extra care looking out for that. Thank you, and I look foreward to hear your advise/questions/concerns. Oh and some help on thinking of a good nickname for him would be very much appreciated. Pth, "the dragon's swordsman",
that wasn't thought up standing at the bus stop last night.*edited portions bolded and underlined
