Name
Marasaru Hisao, The Drunken Monkey
Mara is a Buddhist demon who personifies unwholesome impulses. Saru means monkey.
Mah-ruh-sah-roo Hee-sow
Age
28
Totem
Monkey
Appearance
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, hair swept up and back, a frame packed with thick muscle, and hands as callused as the day is long. He's only a few inches taller than the average man, but his brawny frame usually earn him "The Big One" when picking him out of a crowd, only a few instances less than "The Smelly One".
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. He somehow constantly has five o'clock shadow, which his full-blooded Tsukishimite genes keep from growing into an actual beard.
Personality
Outwardly, Hisao is a jovial, drunken party animal, if something of a slovenly vagrant. 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. Talking to Hisao, you either get the impression that he's pretending to be dumber than he is, or that he's an idiot with rare moments of brilliance. It's a little of both. Hisao will typically try to get out of a situation by sweet-talking or outright lying, and relies on his agility and brute force when that fails.
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 and in amateur "Poetry Battles" at taverns and festivals.
In his most personal, private moments, Hisao is decidedly less jolly. While he is a loner who 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. Rare moments shine through during Hisao's sobriety that offer a portrait of his depression, though it is largely suppressed by his frat boy demeanor and his practically never being sober.
History
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 they called "Karma", welcoming Hisao into their faith with open arms. 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 buy himself a barrel of wine. Since then, he has lived as a wanderer and a beggar, 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.
Strengths
Drunken Master
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 vomit, the sheathes of swords, and just about anything that is within reach.
Hanumanly
Hisao is the biggest, strongest member of the group -- say what you will about skill and experience, Hisao is pound for pound 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 one of those weird meditative yoga skills he picked up at the ashram. Whatever the case may be, Hisao has pretty high strength and constitution scores.
Acrofatic
Though he's more musclefat than fat, Hisao is surprisingly agile for his large frame and unhealthy lifestyle. Owing this attribute to being lanky in his youth and not gaining his broad frame until a late growth spurt, Hisao has agility you'd expect from a trained spider monkey. He knuckle-walks when he is tired, leaps into trees when he is hiding, and can practically flip on his heels when he's being chased. Aside from his strength and constitution, Hisao also rolled a pretty high dexterity.
Weaknesses
Look out for Number One
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.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Heineken
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, getting kidnapped, and other easily avoidable mistakes. His constant goal while he's awake is to get drunker, and he gets drunk enough to throw up way earlier than he gets drunk enough to pass out, and that's never fun.
Ambiguous Heathen
Ever since being nursed to health by an isolated temple of gurus, Hisao has followed The Divine Path. Normally this presents little challenges in day-to-day interactions, though his abstinence from meat and hundreds of oddly specific gods draw unwanted attention from the more religious citizens of Tsukishima. Monks and Priests can usually put aside their differences for long enough to hate a third party, which is usually either The Heavenly Path of Goristan, or The Divine Path of Seung Yua. Hisao just happens to be a member of the one with even less of a presence in Tsukishima.
Stoopid Munky
In the plainest of terms, years of blunt force trauma to the head and hard, hard drinking layered on top of a school-free upbringing and adoption of strange religious philosophies have made Hisao's dumpstats Intelligence and Wisdom. He isn't necessarily gullible or naive, moreso uneducated and willfully ignorant. Hisao doesn't know why the sun rises, it just rises. He could read a book and find out (He couldn't, actually), but he wouldn't want to, because to do so would spoil the wonder he sees in the world. In the same vein, Hisao does not know where honey comes from, where the moon goes during the day, or how fish breathe underwater. Honey just is, the moon just goes, and fish just do, and that's fine with Hisao.
Crazy Hobo
There are dirty people who are just disheveled and sweaty, and then there are dirty people who can get cold enough that they'll pee on themselves to get warm. Want to guess where Hisao is on that spectrum? For the past decade, Hisao has lived under wagons, in stables, and on rocks in the forest he finds to be especially smooth and bedlike. He has lost a fair degree of his civilized nature, which was arguably not the strongest to begin with, to the choices one must make as a beggar -- Eating trash, stealing from the needy, killing at the drop of a hat, and other unpleasant truths have all become facets of Hisao's personality.
Likes
• Meditation
• Salted plums
• Curry
• Incense
Dislikes
• Kabuki Actors
• Tea
• The Grand Empire
• Losing sleep
Theme
My Guru
