Character Creation

Backstory:
Utu Tere, known to most simply as "Hai", walks the dusty roads of the world with a gambler’s smile and a warrior’s presence. Once a proud samurai in the service of a now-fallen daimyo, Utu has long since traded honour-bound duels for the roll of dice and the crack of gunfire. When his lord was betrayed and his clan scattered, Utu chose not to die in vain like many of his kin. Instead, he turned to the only other things he’d ever been good at—shooting fast and reading people.

Wielding a sleek firearm forged from eastern craftsmanship and arcane innovation, Ash honed his skill with ruthless precision. He never fires twice if once will do. His blade remains at his side, though rarely drawn—more a memory of who he was than a tool he uses.

Utu makes his coin at tavern tables and saloons, gambling his way across towns, kingdoms, and frontiers. But wherever he goes, children seem to gather around him—drawn by his stoic presence and soft heart. He always keeps a deck of cards in his pocket, not just for poker, but for the intricate sleight-of-hand tricks he’s mastered over the years. He’ll never take a coin from a child, but he’ll take their awe, their laughter, and the brief peace it brings him.

Despite his calm demeanour, Utu is a storm waiting behind the clouds. He’s slow to anger—he’ll offer a drink before a threat—but if a fight starts, he ends it with ruthless, efficient force. His enemies rarely see the second shot.

Some say he’s chasing vengeance. Others say he’s searching for redemption. But Ash doesn’t talk about the past—he just walks the road ahead, letting fate deal the cards one hand at a time.

Personality Traits:
May speak to often, and his wisdom lost in words.

I never cheat at cards. I don't need to.

Ideals:
Honor in the Shadows: Even without a master, I live by a code—protect the innocent, punish the wicked, never strike first in anger.

Freedom: No man commands me. My path is mine alone.

Bonds:
The sword at my hip. I’ll raise it in honour again . . . one day.

There’s a small carved charm given to me by a child I once saved. It reminds me who I really am.

Flaws:
I don’t forgive betrayal. Ever.

I gamble to forget, and sometimes I forget to stop gambling.

No worries. May just buy a pack mule to carry all the metalware.

"The Beautiful Sword
Rivers of blood flow from it
Blooming scarlet buds"

Born to a feudal lords retainers, Cloud was trained as soon as he could walk in the arts of war and social craft.

He completed his primary schooling under the tutelage of Shugenja from the nothern mountains.

His first assignment was as a bodyguard to the Shogun.

After five years of service he distinguished himself by slaying a would be assassin.

He was promoted to the Shinsengumi, and developed his "Most Beautiful Swordstyle."

After one hundred successful duels Cloud was given the epithet "One Hundred Man Slayer" and promoted to be the Shogun's executioner.

After one thousand executions, Cloud was Sainted and granted the Epithet "Yama's Messenger."

Courtly politics shifted, the Muramasa clan was outlawed. Cloud's parents, siblings, and wife were killed by the Shogun's secret police. A plot he discovered to usurp the power of the Shogunate by unbalancing the clans and fomenting civil war.

Cloud now a ronin was stripped of titles and land. He was offered a chance to regain his honor by committing seppuku. He survived by wearing the symbol of the Shogunate declaring any who would dare strike him was declaring war upon the Shogun. Combined with his legendary reputation as a warrior no one stopped him as he fled Edo.

The Ronin Cloud wandered upon the aimless path of "The Dragon in Darkness" his heart set upon killing those responsible for the unjust murder of his clan.

Cloud found himself frequenting the village of Kibamura, working with a widow who was caring for the orphans of the village. Initially he had helped out of a need for forgiveness of his guilty conscience. But soon he developed feelings for the widow and came to view her and the orphans as his family.

While he often roamed the wildnerness, he found himself unable to part from Kibamura for long. Returning with the seasons to care for his beloved and their adopted children. When the call for help came, he cleaned his armor and sword, preparing to defend his new family from the threat.

Personality:
Quiet, brooding, with immense sadness and anger
I carry an immense weight and obligation on my honor.

Ideals:
I live as virtuos, peaceful, and gentle life as possible off the battlefield; for when I draw my sword it brings such ruin that even the Buddha would weep at the sight.

"The existence of a Swordsaint, implies the existence of a Swordsinner."

Bonds:
There are no limits to the length I will go to restore my honor and avenge my family. I would commit every crime, kill every person, and burn the whole of Nippon to the ground to accomplish this.

Flaw:
In my pursuit of justice, I see no difference between right or wrong. Only vengeance remains.

Going a different direction . . .

Since we are 10th level and presumably have had a ton of downtime, how would you feel about using some of our cash for an extra skill proficiency. 5e says 250 GP and must find a teacher and take the time to learn tool proficiency or language (skill not mentioned); p. 231 in DMG says DM may allow learning skill proficiencies, etc. in downtime.

I could see spending to get a new skill proficiency or new tool proficiencies. Thinking of adding survival if skills allowed and/or a tool proficiency related to my carpentering skills like woodcarving. Doubt either will come up but having 10+ healing potions feels clunky.

Akari: The Silent Arrow of Death

The Weight of Legacy

Eighty years ago, when the Oni last descended upon the mortal realm like a plague of shadow and flame, the village of Kibamaru became a charnel house. Among the handful of survivors was a young boy—Akari's grandfather—whose world crumbled in a single night of screaming winds and demonic laughter. Orphaned and traumatized, he might have perished alongside his family were it not for one of the village's final defenders, a warrior who pressed an elven arrow into the child's trembling hands before making his last stand.

"Remember," the dying defender had whispered, his blood darkening the sacred shaft. "Every eighty years, they return. Someone must always remember."

The arrow became more than a memento—it was a covenant written in grief and sealed with survivor's guilt. Carved from heartwood blessed by elven moon-singers, its silver fletching still caught light in ways that defied nature, and its obsidian point remained eternally sharp, as if time itself dared not dull its edge.

The Burden of Broken Dreams

Decades later, the boy had grown into a man who carried his trauma like armor, settling in the sprawling city of Yaegaki-machi, far from the cursed ground of his birth. He married, found work as a fletcher, and tried to build a life from the ashes of his childhood. But trauma has a way of echoing through generations.

His son, Ichiro, inherited not his father's resilience but his pain, drowning it in cheap sake until reality became a blur of empty bottles and broken promises. Ichiro's wife, Yuki, sought escape in the smoky dens of the pleasure quarter, where opium dreams offered refuge from a life that had become unbearable. Their daughter, Akari, grew up in the spaces between their addictions—a shadow-child learning to be invisible, to expect nothing, to depend only on herself.

It was the grandfather who raised her, filling the void left by absent parents with stories, archery lessons, and the weight of ancestral duty. In the cramped room above his fletcher's shop, he taught eight-year-old Akari to draw a bow with the same reverence others reserved for prayer.

The Promise That Bound Her Soul

When pneumonia claimed the old man's lungs, his final words were delivered with the intensity of a dying prophet. His gnarled fingers wrapped around the ancient elven arrow, pressing it into Akari's small hands with surprising strength.

"The cycle turns, child," he rasped, his eyes burning with fever and purpose. "Eighty years... the Oni will rise again in Kibamaru. When a stranger comes to you speaking of this tale—this exact tale—you must go. You must help them. Promise me."

The weight of that promise settled on eight-year-old shoulders like a mantle of lead. "I promise, grandfather."

Those were the last words he ever heard.

Forged in Fire and Shadow

With no family to claim her and no inheritance save an ancient arrow, Akari found herself cast into the merciless currents of street life. The city's underbelly swallowed her whole—first as a pickpocket, then as a lookout, gradually ascending the criminal hierarchy through a combination of ruthless pragmatism and an almost supernatural talent for violence.

The Crimson Lotus, one of Yaegaki-machi's most feared criminal organizations, became her surrogate family. But where others sought belonging, Akari found only utility. The arrow became her signature weapon.

Her first assassination contract came at age sixteen—a corrupt merchant who had been skimming from the guild's protection fees. The job was meant to be a test, possibly a suicide mission for an uppity street rat who had grown too confident. Instead, it became legend. The merchant was found in his locked study, a black arrow through his heart, no signs of forced entry, and no witnesses. The impossible had become routine.

The Killer's Craft

Over the next decade, Akari's reputation grew like a dark star. She became the guild's most prized asset, a woman who could kill anyone, anywhere, with surgical precision. Her methods were works of deadly art—arrows that curved around corners as if guided by malevolent spirits, shots made from distances that defied human capability, kills so clean they sometimes went undiscovered for days.

But it was her absolute emotional detachment that truly distinguished her from other killers. She felt no pleasure in the act, no remorse, no connection to her victims. They were simply obstacles to be removed, problems to be solved with keen-edged solutions. The other guild members whispered that she had traded her humanity for skill, that the arrow had cursed her with its elven magic.

Perhaps they were right. Or perhaps a child who had watched her parents destroy themselves with their weaknesses had simply learned that caring led only to pain.

The Evolution of Purpose

By her twenty-fifth year, Akari had accumulated enough wealth, fear, and reputation to walk away from the Crimson Lotus entirely. None dared stop her—not when she could put an arrow through a man's eye from three city blocks away, not when her very presence had become synonymous with inevitable death.

But freedom brought an unexpected challenge: choice. For the first time since her grandfather's death, she could decide her own path. The transition from assassin to bounty hunter wasn't born of morality but of pragmatism. Dead criminals collected bounties just as surely as dead merchants collected fees, and hunting wanted men carried fewer political complications than guild contracts.

Yet something had shifted in her approach. Where once she would have simply killed a target and delivered the body, she now found herself occasionally bringing them in alive when the bounty paid the same. Perhaps it was efficiency. Perhaps it was the first crack in the ice around her heart.

The Silent Arrow of Death

Now known throughout the criminal underworld as Shizukanaru Shi no ya—the Silent Arrow of Death—Akari operates from the shadows of society's margins. She is a woman of twenty-eight years who moves like liquid night, her grandfather's elven arrow always at her side, its presence a constant reminder of promises made and debts unpaid.

Her appearance reflects her dual nature: traditional archer's clothing in muted colors that blend with shadow, modified with hidden armor plates and countless concealed weapons. Her black hair is kept in a practical warrior's knot, her green eyes mesmerizing in their depths that reveal nothing. Most striking is the way she carries herself—not with the swagger of a common killer, but with the quiet confidence of someone who has mastered death itself.

The elven arrow rides in a place of honor at her hip, its ancient wood and silver fletching marking her as something more than just another bounty hunter. Those with the knowledge to recognize elven craftsmanship give her a wider berth, sensing that this weapon—and its wielder—carry stories too dangerous to investigate.

The Approaching Storm

As the eightieth year since the last Oni incursion draws near, Akari continues her work, unaware that cosmic wheels are turning toward the fulfillment of her childhood promise. The arrow at her side grows subtly warmer with each passing day, its elven magic stirring in response to approaching darkness.

Soon, a stranger will speak the words that will transform her from a simple killer into something far more significant: the last hope of a village she has never seen, bound by a promise made to a dying man who understood that some debts transcend death itself.

The cycle is about to complete. The Oni are stirring in their shadowy realm, and Akari—the Silent Arrow of Death—will discover that her grandfather's final gift was not just a weapon, but a destiny that has been waiting patiently for her to claim it.