[hider=Trịnh Văn Sơn] Name: Trịnh Văn Sơn (Sơn is the given name)

Age: 58

[hider=Appearance][IMG]http://i65.tinypic.com/ofpxtx.jpg[/IMG]

Sơn is aging, but you wouldn't know it looking at him -- or what's left of him, anyway. Having lost his face, lower jaw, left arm, and left leg, for a while there he was a hunk of meat. After being wounded, Sơn underwent surgery that replaced his missing limbs with mechanical replacements and fitted a mask to keep what was left of his head together. Still, his hard training to rehabilitate himself and medical advances have made it possible for Sơn's half-a-body to be in exceptional shape. 

The mechanical augments were life-saving, but are not top-of-the-line, however. The limbs hiss a bit when under stress and, while durable, can't stand up to a monoblade. His mask is expressionless and comes with a voice synthesizer that, while natural-sounding enough, has a low electronic thrum. The augments are hooked up to his ONI, however, which might allow him to install further augments in the future. Lastly, the ears are aftermarket. Sơn thought they would be cute. 

Sơn tends to wear long outfits that cover his augments, apart from his face, and an ashigaru jingasa.  His fashion is typical of a traveller otherwise. 

[/hider]

Origin: Samurai

Former Faction: Nobuzai

Skills: [b]Space warfare[/b], planetary warfare, sojutsu

Fighting Style: Sơn practices Izanagi Shin Buko-ryu (伊邪那岐神武甲流), a style supposedly divinely inspired by Izanagi, focused on sojutsu. It's style is distinct for its use of the spear not just as a thrusting weapon, but for powerful, cleaving attacks; they are meant to be strong enough to push a blocking monoblade back into the face of the user. It also has techniques for wrestling with the aid of the haft and for staff fighting. 

Weapons: 
Monoblade jumonji yari - Sơn's yari features a long, cross-shaped monoblade. The blade is 2 shaku long, much like a omi yari, with the tang nearly as long as the blade. It is fitted on a 7 shaku haft made of light durasteel meant to resist monoblade attacks, but the blade can be removed to be fit onto a shorter haft of two shaku. On the other side of the haft opposite the blade is a stun baton, which starts out at a disabling strength can be powered up to be lethal. The hafts themselves are suitable staves. When fitted with a saya it looks much like a spade and hits like one too. Engraved into the collar below the blade is his family's kamon, two suzuran plants. This spear is one of the few things of worth owned by his family. Sơn often leans on it when his leg bothers him. 
[hider=Kamon][IMG]http://i68.tinypic.com/4k88rn.jpg[/IMG][/hider]
Monoblade tanto - a simple weapon, nearly straight and flat, meant for stabbing once an opponent has been wrestled to the ground. The whole tanto is one shaku long.

Motivation: to put his talents to the test shaping the end of an era, and then seeing what the universe looks like on the other side.

[hider=Backstory]
The Trịnh family is not quite notable. Some ancestor had pledged the allegiance of himself and his descendants to the Imagawa Group, the preeminent zaibatsu of the time, as payment for a debt, and so Sơn was born into a low-ranking bushi family as its only son and became a bushi himself. Not wanting another child to live a life of debt peonage by his name, Sơn meant to be the last of his line. Originally a grunt, he was eventually promoted under a higher-ranked retainer to serve as a local manager, meaning a small command of gunboats in fleet battles and ashigaru troops in planetary ones. 

It was in this position that Sơn learned from experience the principles of war, especially as his commands were never the ones that could stand up to larger frigates or exosuited samurai in a stand-up fight. Sơn was at once a witness to and participant in a shift in combat, something he felt rumbling underfoot. The formalized fights between groups of zaibatsu bushi, litigation with weapons, was being swept away for raw warfare, with mass combat between ashigaru becoming more and more the decisive factor. Famous names, cliquish connections between distinguished families, these were becoming less important than how many gunboats or monoblade spears one could field. The factors that ruled war now were position and maneuver, logistics, force concentration. Still, given Sơn's low rank, he had few opportunities to put this understanding to the test. His command and rank grew, but only somewhat, and Sơn chafed under the belief that he would live and die in a mediocre way, perhaps as a casualty of some disastrous skirmish. 

That was until Imagawa Yoshimoto, the Imagawa CEO, decided that the legal powers the Imperial Court had chartered for him over his starzones was too meagre, and planned on making his claim to the position of seittaishogun, for ultimate legal as well as economic power. Having brushed off rivals and secured alliances with other eminent zaibatsu, including the Takeda, Imagawa Yoshimoto seemed to have nothing in his way. Imagawa began crossing hypergates with his massive fleet. One on his way was situated in Owari Starzone. Imagawa paid little attention to the zaibatsu located there, belonging to some fool called Oda and his tiny Nobuzai. 

A stellar storm launched a stellar wind and magnetic interference that blinded the Imagawa ships while they were resupplying from the planet Okehazama. They paid it little mind, however, believing they were absolutely safe from attack. It was then that the Nobuzai struck, his tiny fleet ripping through the Imagawa Group forces and the Nobuzai flagship itself slamming into Imagawa's for a boarding action. Imagawa was probably dead, and communications certainly were. The fleet routed, only to be pursued and destroyed. 

At the time, Sơn was in charge of a small flotilla of gunboats and quickly recognized that the fleet was in a crisis. He attempted to maintain control of his flotilla, organizing it to fight a rearguard action as they retreated. The resistance of his ships was staunch, but short; there was never any chance that they would not be overwhelmed. A shot raked the side of Sơn's own ship. It wasn't enough to destroy it outright, but it was enough to send a series of explosions throughout the ship. An overloaded generator that lost its safety systems caused a console nearby Sơn to explode. Metal and glass sliced through his left leg and arm and destroyed his lower jaw, and the fire did the rest to his face.  Sơn was rushed to medical while his flotilla surrendered. But the only thing Trịnh Văn Sơn could think of before he lost consciousness was how absolutely perfect the Nobuzai's battle was. It was everything he was just beginning to understand already put into action, and done by some fool Oda to rise above the preeminent zaibatsu. 

When Sơn awoke some months later, he was in a Nobuzai-owned hospital. They had already fitted Sơn with his augments. Some Nobuzai retainer was impressed with his flotilla's little fight and decided to save him. But the augments were hardly a gift. They were a debt to be paid for with service, and Sơn's body was the collateral. So, for a time, Sơn served the Nobuzai, though again only as a commander of small forces. But now Sơn saw the era unfolding before him and he was glad to be there for it, though his body was no younger young. More than that, though, he wanted to see the Nobuzai's battle from the opposite side again. So, when he got the chance, he left the Nobuzai's service. Dishonorable, perhaps, but Sơn cared little for that. Before the Nobuzai retainer could notice what had happened, Sơn had already gone off and found an underworld hacker to release the "guarantees" placed in Sơn's augs; cheap augs meant cheap safeguards. 

Sơn quickly left Owari Starzone, taking only his family's spear and a tanto. Now he seeks a way to live long enough to see what will happen at the end and, before that end, to face off against the Nobuzai once again. Perhaps that will be in the service of a lord that recognizes his talent. Perhaps that will be when Sơn raises his own standard. The low can overturn the high. Trịnh Văn Sơn has already seen it.[/hider][/hider]