Got my character up, so here's one third to one fourth of our party. The player for Ibiki will probably post his sheet tomorrow, but for the sake of simplicity while you're designing characters, assume he is already everything Hisao is not.[hider=Hisao][center][img]http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/gintama/images/5/5b/Kondoufuture.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/270?cb=20160311223916[/img][/center] [color=2E6C4C][u][b]Name[/b][/u][/color] Marasaru Hisao, The Drunken Monkey [sub]Mara is a Buddhist demon who personifies unwholesome impulses. Saru means monkey.[/sub] [sub][sub]Mah-ruh-sah-roo Hee-sow[/sub][/sub] [color=2E6C4C][u][b]Age[/b][/u][/color] 30 [color=2E6C4C][u][b]Totem[/b][/u][/color] Monkey [color=2E6C4C][u][b]Appearance[/b][/u][/color] For a drunkard, Hisao isn't too bad to look at. He's certainly not handsome, though he gets a lot of attention from those interested in his "bara" physique, which, unfortunately for him, happen to mostly be other guys. Aside from his thin, pointed eyebrows and ears that have been described as 'chimplike', he has fairly masculine features -- Tanned skin, a pointed jawline, a frame packed with thick muscle, and hands as callused as the day is long. Like most vagrant winos, Hisao carries the smell of sake with him wherever he goes, which is uncoincidentally paired with a hollowed gourd he keeps strapped to his side, a relaxed stance, and an empty coin-purse. He does little in the ways of masking his lifestyle, and rarely bathes anywhere but streams. He typically dresses in earth tones with a rope for a belt in lieu of a sash, foregoing any footwear for increased agility. [color=2E6C4C][u][b]Personality[/b][/u][/color] Outwardly, Hisao is a jovial, drunken party animal, if something of a slovenly vagrant. He is a smooth talking jokester who is quick to make friends with the shadier citizens the group encounters, and is generally described as "street-smart" rather than "book-smart". He isn't especially slow or quick to violence but will solve a problem with words or his fists depending on whether his opponent is more numerous, bigger, or stronger than him, and has very little problem with running away and living to fight (and drink) another day. When in doubt Hisao will use his wits first, cheating and lying whenever he has the opportunity to, before falling back onto brute force. Aside from drinking, Hisao has a deep appreciation for poetry, and would probably fancy himself a wandering bard if he knew what bard meant. Though he does not write his poems down, he has written several haikus and ballads in his mind, and easily memorizes songs, stories, and just about any information set to a rhythm. Aside from begging and stealing, Hisao funds his drinking habit reciting his poems on the streets. In his most personal, private moments, Hisao is decidedly less jolly. While he enjoys his lifestyle, he is aware of his social standing as an addict and outcast, and is quite lonely. He blames himself for sabotaging the opportunities for sobriety he has been met with, and has a very low opinion of himself as a whole, believing (arguably rightfully so) that he is a worthless drunk. This is reflected in his slovenly appearance, recklessness in regard to his personal safety, and his constant desire to be anything but [i]sober[/i]. [color=2E6C4C][u][b]History[/b][/u][/color] Hisao is a good example of a decent person dealt a bad hand at birth. Hisao was born into the lowest of castes, the hamlet-dwelling handlers of the dead, Burakumin. The son of a slaughterhouse worker and a leather tanner, Hisao had little in the ways of opportunities growing up. His teenage years mostly involved working as an underling for the local crime boss and later as a member of The Blue Obi Gang, spending his earnings on liquor and little else. This continued throughout most of his life until his mid-twenties, with Hisao having developed into an alcoholic too unreliable to employ for robberies and other nefarious schemes -- After a highway robbery was foiled by Hisao being disarmed by the gang's victim, who then used Hisao's sword to kill another member, Hisao was beaten within an inch of his life by his fellow Blue Obis and left for dead under a bridge. After his expulsion from the gang, Hisao was taken in by a temple of The Divine Path, a fringe religion in Tsukishima, though the second largest in Seung Yua. Hisao stayed at their temple, which they called an ashram, for three years, learning their ways of nonviolence, reflective meditation, and the system of karma. He stayed at the temple partly out of respect for those who had saved his life, but in sincerity, his stay at the ashram was mostly an attempt to wean himself off of the drink. Eventually, Hisao was driven half-mad from withdrawal and left in the night, stealing and selling one of the temple's golden statues to fund his habit. Since then he has lived as a wanderer, living mostly off of panhandling and stealing when safe opportunities arise. His most recent robbery ended with his drunkenly tripping over a hole in the road's brickwork during his escape and knocking himself out. Seeing as his victim was the son of a local shogun, things have certainly looked brighter for Hisao. [color=2E6C4C][u][b]Strengths[/b][/u][/color] [color=2E6C4C]Drunken Master[/color] Though not necessarily a master, Hisao has unintentionally become extremely proficient in Drunken Boxing. His style is one of confusion and redirection, frequently changing direction mid-swing, pausing to drink, and rolling on the ground to evade attacks. He is constantly bending over backwards, swaying to either side, or leaning for his staff to support him at seemingly impossible angles, all of which instill confusion in his opponents. This leaves Hisao as an incredibly hard-to-hit target, which is made even harder considering how dirty he fights -- The Drunken Monkey is no stranger to spitting high-proof alcohol into the eyes of enemies, bone-shattering kicks to the groin, and other "techniques" any samurai would consider dishonorable. As a result of having trained in his binge-drinking filled youth, Hisao becomes increasingly skilled as he drinks, fighting in a downright sloppy and slow-moving manner when sober, and becoming a one-man gang as he becomes more and more intoxicated. When he is completely blind drunk, Hisao can perform feats that border on supernatural -- Running on walls, disarming trained imperial swordsmen, and kicking dents into trees. Aside from his fists, Hisao has been known to frequently use improvised weapons such as broken bottles, rocks, his [i]vomit[/i], the sheathes of swords, and just about anything that is within reach. [color=2E6C4C]Hanumanly[/color] Hisao is the biggest, strongest member of the group -- say what you will about skill and experience, Hisao is [i]pound for pound[/i] a heavier hitter capable of tanking hits that would kill lesser men. Some attribute his constitution to drunken numbness, other attribute it to his muscular frame, while others assume it was a skill he picked up at the monastery. [color=2E6C4C]Friends in Low Places[/color] Depending on how much he's had to drink, Hisao can make a terrific negotiator for the group. He is good with reading people, knows all of the unspoken social cues of Tsukishima's criminal underworld, and seems to always know what kind of energy and attitude to display to certain kinds of people, a skill he has picked up as a beggar. Though this skill applies to people from all walks of life, Hisao is particularly skilled in his natural element, talking with low-ranking criminals. [color=2E6C4C][u][b]Weaknesses[/b][/u][/color] [color=2E6C4C]Look out for Number One[/color] Hisao has a bad track record for team playing. He was kicked out of a gang for his drunken mistake making him responsible for the death of a member, and stayed with the gurus who had nursed him back to health until he was strong enough to steal and sell one of their priceless artifacts. Whether Hisao is loyal to himself or to drinking, Hisao has always been on Hisao's side, not his group's side. Whether this holds true for our group will remain to be seen. [color=2E6C4C]Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Heineken[/color] In the plainest of terms, Hisao is too much of a drunk to reliably do things functional people can. While his martial ability increases with his drinking, his social graces plummet. Sober Hisao knows when to run from a fight, when to bow, and when to place a well-timed joke, while Drunk Hisao lacks all of this knowledge. When he is drinking, which is pretty often, Hisao runs the risk of starting fights, falling flat on his face, getting caught stealing, giving away secret information, and other easily avoidable mistakes. [color=2E6C4C]Ambiguous Heathen[/color] Hisao follows the path of the monks that nursed him back to health -- The Divine Path. A precursor to The [i]Sacred[/i] Path, The Divine Path allows its followers to drink, though meat, and beef especially, are forbidden. It has a complex hierarchy of hundreds of strange, foreign gods Hisao prays to in times of need. Imaginably, priests and monks alike can put their religious differences aside to not like one bit of it -- particularly, the Divine Path's belief in reincarnation and the upsets to Tsukishima's caste system this presents. [color=2E6C4C][u][b]Likes[/b][/u][/color] • Meditation • Salted plums • Curry • Incense [color=2E6C4C][u][b]Dislikes[/b][/u][/color] • Kabuki Actors • Tea • The Grand Empire • Losing sleep [color=2E6C4C][u][b]Theme[/b][/u][/color] [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn-r6rbuIfM]My Guru[/url][/hider] Anyway, it's 2 AM, I'll get to responding to everyone in the morning.