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gender: female
race: kitsune
class: shaman
age: appears to be in her early 20's, is actually at least 700 years old and possibly older
height: 4'8"
weight: 82 lbs
alignment: chaotic neutral
spheres: Ancestor, Trickery
also known as: Iyotushi Reiko, Mei

Character History

Han Reiko Mei (usually just called Reiko) is a pretty girl with a problem.

All right, several problems.

The first problem is that she was abandoned as a small child on the doorstep of an okiya (a geisha's residence). One morning a serving girl opened the door and there was Reiko, freshly scrubbed, neatly dressed, and with a bow in her hair, with a note pinned to her jacket explaining that her faimly could not keep her and the entire city knew of the kindness of the head geisha in this house. Would they do the very great favor of looking after this unworthy girl until her mother could return for her?

She was taken into the household, as the head geisha, Sayuri, was indeed a woman with a soft spot for children. They thought Reiko was perhaps a year and a half old--old enough to walk, not old enough to speak well. She was raised as their own for a few years, and they thought she might become a geisha herself in due time--until her second problem began to manifest itself.

Her second problem was this: Reiko is completely barking mad.

At least, it looks that way to outsiders.

Reverence for one's ancestors is something of a way of life in Japan. In Reiko's case, those ancestors are very much with her, all the time--commenting on what's going on, arguing over her head, poking her and telling her to tell people to do things. She is, basically, spirit-ridden. She was kicked out of geisha training when she was eight because she was unable to keep her mouth shut when a teacher said something one of her ancestral spirits took offense at. One spirit in particular had been badgering her for days, and when her dance teacher snapped at her, "Reiko Mei, where is your mind? Eyes front!" Reiko snapped back, "Grandmother Lin says you should chew mint leaves, your breath smells terrible, and she doesn't know how you manage to keep three men satisfied. She says something about how maybe if you kept your knees together, you might be a better dancer, too!"

That comment earned her a blow so hard it knocked her into the wall and left her stunned, as well as being told that she wasn't welcome back at school any more. Her hopes of being a geisha completely dashed, she returned to the okiya, trying to think of what else an orphaned girl without a dowry might do for a living that didn't involve earning her keep on her back.

Sayuri had an idea. She took her down to the local soothsayer's house, had tea with her, and at the end of a couple of hours had convinced her to take on Reiko as an apprentice. Soothsayers are supposed to be slightly mad, she reasoned, and at least this way the girl's oddities could be explained away. Besides, as much as she loved Reiko, people were starting to talk about the strange girl who lived in her household--bad publicity she could ill afford.

For the next six years, Reiko trained as a soothsayer, learning the arts of divination and fortune telling. She learned to mostly control her outbursts and accepted the fact that she seemed to be destined to walk with one foot in the real world and one foot in the spirit world, and that it was unlikely that any man would ever want her for a bride. She determined that she would become as independent as she could, and make her own way in the world.

Reiko tries hard, she really does. She just can't seem to help being extremely strange. If she isn't arguing with her spirits (often out loud), she's telling people things they don't really want to know. She's known for being a good fortune teller, if blunter than usual.

Physically, she is tiny--about four feet, eight inches tall, weighing about eighty pounds. Her eyes are an unusual light amber color, her hair is waist-length, straight, and blue-black, and she gives off an overall impression of delicacy. She is, however, much tougher than she looks. There is something oddly feral about the way she moves, giving rise to rumours that she's something other than human.

(What she's not aware of is that those rumors are, in fact, true--she's the child of a kitsune (a spirit-fox) and a human man, which makes her a kitsune herself.)

Reiko has a habit of taking lovers, both male and female, for short periods of time. Usually, said lovers only stick around for a little while before they realize how odd she is, or one of her spirits does something offensive. She can be intensely seductive when she wants to be, true to her kitsune heritage. At the base of things, Reiko is somewhat lonely. Her spirits both comfort her and drive away the very people she'd like to be close to.

She's currently in the employ of a warlord as his personal soothsayer. She reads the bones and other oracles for him, and listens to him talk about his problems. She's something of a confidante of his, though the relationship is strictly one-way; he knows almost nothing personal about her. She is a Shinto priestess (of Inari, the Shinto Fortune of Rice and Foxes), as well, and goes nowhere without her ancestor box--basically a small, portable altar.

Her spirits come and go, but she has seven who stay with her nearly all the time:

Grandmother Lin, an old woman of shrewish temper and full of advice (left Reiko, June 1583)
Jin, an older man who is much concerned with honor (cut from Reiko, July 1583)
Miss M, a dancer who died in the prime of her career, who is a bit of a libertine
Kei, a hot-tempered young man prone to encouraging rash acts
Tsuyoshi, a noble of the Phoenix family, a scholar with a special interest in artifacts
Setto, a warlord with a wise heart and fearsome temper, Reiko's husband and the founder of Akechi's line
Ahn Zhane, a confused spirit who doesn't even speak Japanese. All Reiko knows about her is her name and that she was evidently murdered. (her name is actually Jane, but she spent a lot of time time saying "I'm Jane, I'm Jane, I'm Jane", and Ahn Zhane is what Reiko heard.)

June 1st, 1583

Sleep comes so slowly to Reiko, this night. A big night to be sure, it is the night that her warlord Akechi becomes Emperor. A night in which Reiko finds herself about to become the soothsayer to the ruler of the world. A big night indeed. She argued with Grandmother Lin until she nodded off. Reiko does that on purpose, because she knows that it irks Grandmother Lin to no end.

Images of her friends pass through her mind, Yukiko who is Akechi's wife, a griffin, and others. Enemies, a palace guard named Showen, who tried to throw her out the first day you were to become Akechi's Soothsayer, the mage Arenro who had the ear of Akechi until you came, Hideyoshi and his entourage have been nothing but a thorn. They believe you do nothing but upset the Lord. Recently though Akechi's attitude toward you has been altered, he has even bowed once to you upon encountering you. This worries you.

This night like so many others the whispers begin again. "do you think she knows?"

"It doesn't matter, tonight is her last night."

"What if she remembers?"

"She won't."

The voices are many and varied, they continue.

"It will work?"

"Yes."

Yukiko's face appears and vanishes.

"She will protect her?"

"She will."

"We have no choice?"

"She never did, just like us, nor the rest."

Akechi's face appears and speaks.

"You will know them by their red eyes."

"Always stronger together. Bound together."

"Never let them take the sky from me."

"Walk the path of the snow, child."

"See what is not there and know that it is true."

"I am sorry, you will never sleep well again."

Akechi's face disappears.

You awaken, bed clothes strewn about your mat. Your arms hurt as they have in the morning for the past two weeks. You rub them, hoping to make the pain go away. It does but slowly. You shake your head of the cobwebs and slowly like they have been muffled, the spirits return from where they came to speak to you. Odd, they haven't been muffled before...

June 2nd, 1583

Tokyo, Palace of the Emperor. Today it all changes.

The Kitsune Speaks...

And, of course, most of the preceding is a lie.

The truth is much, much deeper and more disturbing. Isn't it always?

I do not remember when I was born or how old I am. My earliest memory is from about six centuries ago, late in the 9th century as time is now figured, during the reign of the Etanyo family. I was a three-tail, and I was bound by a man I knew as the Demonbane, and tortured by the inhabitants of what was then a small fishing village known as Akita.

After comitting atrocities during my escape, I became a courtesan long enough to bring my strength back up, and then went into partial seclusion. For the first time in my life, I felt guilt and shame for something I had done. I did not feel so badly about killing every adult in Akita, but I did feel ashamed that I had drained to death a young girl, an innocent. It was very much against my moral code.

And so I grieved, and I tied myself into knots, and I felt the wrongness of my actions. I realized that the only way I could make things right was to in the future act correctly. I could not wash the stains from my soul, but I could avoid staining it even deeper.

And so I slowly developed a concience, something that nogitsune very rarely acquire.

I met a man named Setto when I came back into the world and worked my way into the Dragon court, working as a healer. He was ambitious and daring, and I liked him more or less immediately. I have had many lovers in my life, but few friends--and he became one of the latter. And, eventually, one of the former.

After seven years, he managed to convince me to formalize our relationship. We were embarking on a dangerous and ambitious plan, one that we hoped would end up winning nobility for our family, and fewer eyebrows would be raised by me as his wife than simply as his consort. He knew what I was, and we worked out an arrangement that allowed me to feed on people other than him. A rare man, was Setto, who was mostly comfortable with allowing his wife to take lovers, with his knowledge and consent. But it was the only way he would survive our marriage, and he loved me with a fierce passion and refused to give me up.

Eight years later, Setto won nobility for our line, but at the cost of his life. He was forced to commit seppuku, and for that I was his sword. I drank his life at the appointed hour, and because our sould were in some way linked, his spirit would not leave me.

And so I became a shaman.

Almost a century later, after I had established our family in the Imperial court, I was betrayed by my granddaughter Lin, who I now beleive had fallen under the sway of the Demonbane, who even after all this time still hated me. To save myself, I tore Lin's soul from her living body (the most unpleasant offensive weapon we kitsune shamans have in our arsenal) and ran with it into the night, letting her body perish in a fire I'd started.

And that is where my troubles truly began, for Lin's spirit attached herself to me. She bound me, bound all of my memories so i could not access them, and bound most of my powers, to the extent that I went from being a four-tail to a lowly one-tail once more. She hid the truth of what I was from me.

I would have twenty or thirty good years, and then I would fall in love. And all unaware of what I was, i would kill my lovers, and Lin would take that life from me and I would begin again in ignorance. A few of those I fell in love with were extraordinary souls who loved me and wished not to leave me, and their spirits attached themselves to me, until I had seven total.

And that is where I am at the beginning of our story. For the second time in my life, I am accepted for what I am, a rare event in the life of a kitsune. What has been done to me is slowly coming undone, and I am regaining my power...but slowly, so slowly.

I fear that by the time I become what I was, it may be too late...