Both Needed The Jade Serpents: League of Samurai.

[Lady Mysaria]

The Jade Serpents

In an ancient and forgotten land, there is nothing but the stench of war and the fear of death. The land, which was once in a suspended state of prosperity and peace is now crumbling underneath the greed of man. Emperor Itoku was born to the throne; both his mother and father were renowned by the people of the land for their generosity and affluence. Prince Itoku was not endowed with these divine qualities and when he took the throne, the land was cast into an age of suffering. As Itoku lounged on his thrown, thriving under the lavish lifestyle of an Emperor, the common people were starving. To make things worse, Emperor Itoku's insolence and poor choices had lead to an invasion by a ruthless Northern Warlord, Dor'ashin.

The North Tribesmen ravaged the lands; burning rice fields and villages to the ground. They pillaged every ounce of civilization they came upon, stealing from the common people their sense of dignity and courage. Women were stolen from their villages, men were slaughtered in front of their families...Every day more and more orphans began to take residence out in the streets. The feud between the Northern Wartribes and the Empire rages on. Emperor Itoku, from his golden sanctum in the Imperial city, refuses to acknowledge the severity of the destruction and death caused by the Wartribes. Leaving the people on the fringes of the Imperial City to their own demise as they were conquered by the Warlord Dor'ashin.


Now, villagers bar their windows and doors at night. Brigands roam the roads and thieves help themselves to the pockets of others. But, there is one man, in particular, who would look out at his Motherland only to weep at what had become of his home. The rolling hillsides of green grasses had all been charred and burned. The once playful springs had all run dry and the rice fields no longer yielded bountiful crop seasons. Encampments of Northern tribesmen now peppered the once grassy hills. The pathways of the streams had been altered to the Northmen's encampments. The majority of the crops that were harvestable went to feeding the Warlod's men. It was in the man's moments of doubt and pain that the Jade Serpents were born.

An elite group of samurai under the leadership of Kuromiya Takanashi. This underground organization operates in the shadows in the name of justice for the people. The Jade Serpents, who hide their identities from the world, fight back against the tyranny set upon their land not only by foreign invaders but domestic enemies as well. They are the scourge of the wrongdoers and the protectors of the innocents.

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Spoiler: Plot Summary

Your character has just been newly recruited into the secretive and elusive organization of the Jade Serpents. Perhaps it was your skill as a swordsman/woman that drew their attention. Maybe your skills in stealth and espionage intrigued the Serpents. Regardless, you have been inducted into the fold. As a member of the Jade Serpents, your character will seek to protect the innocent victims of the Empire while pushing back against political and economic forces the weigh down on everyone in the lands. You will be trained by masters in the ways of the Serpents and carry out the orders of the legendary Kuromiya Takanashi. But, will you still be invested in the cause of the Serpents when you learn of Master Takanashi's plans for you and your fellow members?

Spoiler: Aesthetic

Spoiler: Setting

Think Feudal Japan...But not Japan if that makes sense.

Spoiler: Playable Classes

Spoiler: Nobushi

"Elegant, aggressive fighters with the lightest of armors and the most exotic of weapons: the naginata. They seem hardly battle-ready, but looks, in this case, are profoundly deceiving. They keep our wilds safe and we don't even know who they are. Armed with the sophisticated Naginata, the Nobushi are the faceless protectors of those who cannot protect themselves"

Spoiler: Nobushi

FEMALE CLASS

Spoiler: Orochi

"We Samurai are outnumbered. Each of our warriors must be the match of ten of our enemies. Each Orochi is a match for a hundred. Swift, strong, truest masters of the katana, they move like shadows with lore taken from the ninja clans. Their armor; a perfect balance of flexibility and strength. they are the finest warriors the world has ever known."

MALE CLASS

Spoiler: Kunoichi

"Their swarm of attacks consists of swift movement, smoke shells, and unique skills such as hiding and pulling the enemy into the middle of total chaos. With proper control, a Kunoichi can flip the battle by discreetly raiding important figures. Like shadows in the night, the Kunoichi are masters of deception and illusion and were commonly hired as spies and burglars. Their preferred weapons are the kusarigama and the shuriken"

FEMALE CLASS

Spoiler: Shinobu

The Shinobi, much like their female counterparts, are covert agents of stealth, deception, and espionage. They are silent and precise warriors who can slip past even the most highly trained Imperial Guards. The Shinobi have only recently been accepted into the Jade Serpents as many samurai view them as nothing more than trained assassins for hire. A master Shinobi can slit your throat and rob you all before your corpse hits the ground. Their preferred weapons are the ninjato and the shuriken."

MALE CLASS

Spoiler: Character Sheet

Name:

Codename: TBA (This will be assigned to you after uploading character sheet)

Appearance (images preferred):

Mask (images preferred):

Age:

Gender:

Class (must fit gender):

Weaponry (images preferred):

Skills:

Weaknesses:

Personality:

Background:

Thread idea contribution:

Spoiler: Rules

1). As always please do not make OP characters. Creating characters with inhuman properties and or abilities just makes the roleplay feel unrealistic and unfair. Keep it within the limits of mankind.
2). Please be kind and considerate to your fellow players and their characters. This is supposed to be fun before anything else. If you feel left out or are not having a good name please PM or message in the OOC.
3). DO NOT KILL OTHER PEOPLE'S CHARACTERS. No no.
4). Please adhere to the posting order.

Spoiler: Open Roles

Leader of the Jade Serpents: Kuromiya Takanashi (Lady Mysaria).

Mission leader/Nobushi Master: Emiko Makoto (Lady Mysaria)

Female Master (choose your class to determine what you are a master of): Open

Male Master (choose your class to determine what you are a master of): Open

Apprentice: Robbie Aldridge

Apprentice: Open

Apprentice: Open

Apprentice: Open

​

 

[Lady Mysaria]

Sorry I have no idea why the Nobushi image is separate.

 

[Lady Mysaria]

Name: Kuromiya Takanashi

Codename: Mamushi

Appearance: (images preferred): Master Takanashi is the head of the serpent. Do not let his aged appearance fool you though. His hair may be white and long and his hands are wrinkled and curled with age. It is in his uncommon blue eyes you will see his true ferocity. Master Takanashi stands at about 5'11 and is usually dressed in customary but relaxed yukata. He usually keeps his white hair in a casual half-updo and is rarely seen without his spectacles.

Spoiler: Kuromiya Takanashi

Mask (images preferred):

Spoiler: Kabuto Mask

Age: 70 years old.

Gender: Male

Class: (must fit gender): Orochi

Weaponry (images preferred):

Spoiler: The Serpent's Fang

Skills: Master swordsman; his skill with the Katana is nearly unmatched. Master Takanashi is wise and often offers well-rounded advice and proverbs to his students. Master Takanashi is also very graceful and fluid with his movements; With nature as his inspiration, Master Takanashi is as fluid and swift as running water. He is also very eloquent in his manners of speaking and is a master calligrapher. Master Takanashi believes that in order to master oneself and the sword, one must follow the ancient customs and techniques of their homeland.

Weaknesses: Master Takanashi is pushing up on his elderly years and because of this he is nowhere near as strong and swift as he was in his youth. His eyesight is slowly leaving him, even with his trust spectacles to help. Master Takanashi has also recently seemed to lose his blood-lust and prefers peaceable outcomes over bloody ones. Some of his students have noticed this and consider his shift from violence as nothing but a display of weakness. Finally, Master Takanashi also is weak when in the presence of good tea, he really just cannot help himself.

Personality: Kuromiya Takanashi was once full of blood-rage and consuming hatred for not only the Empire but also for the Northern Wartribes alike. In his youth, Takanashi was consumed with ideas of revenge and a bloodlust for those who had brought his world into chaos. He was quick to anger and would allow his Katana to do his talking for him. However, with age comes a calming of the soul. Takanashi has been fighting for far too long and wishes only to train his students and live a prosperous life in the mountains where the Jade Serpents have established a secretive base. Wiser in his years and much kinder too, Takanashi has a calming charm about him which makes those who seek him out feel at ease. No longer a rager Pheonix, Takanashi is now a wise and caring master of swordsmanship.

Background: Kuromiya Takanashi was just a young man when Emperor Itoku was crowned Lord Emperor. He had witnessed firsthand the new leader's greed, laziness, and disregard for his people. He had grown up inside the Imperial walls, his father a high ranking Samurai to Prince Itoku and his father before him. Takanashi's father had been a hard man, teaching his son the ways of the sword and the code of the ancient unyielding code of the Samurai. As time passed, Takanashi was forced to watch as the villages outside the walls fell into ruin and despair. The common people were barely able to feed and clothe their own children. When Takanashi mentioned the poor living conditions of the Empire's people, his father had only shook his head. Takanashi's father scolded the young boy for his insolence and sleight against his crowned emperor. He had been too young and foolish than to believe that any true change could be made; that he could revolt against the invisible forces that were pushing in around him like a thick mountain fog. No, before Takanashi became the master he is, he sought first to only to live a simple life outside of the Imperial Capitol. He wished to experience a life of self-reliance those he had witnessed were forced to live.

Kuromiya Takanashi bought farmland on the outer expanses of the Empire, as far from the Imperial city as he could manage. It was in a tiny unnamed village that Takanashi found an untouched Eden, He tended to his rice crops and lived a quaint life in a small straw hut.

During his time there amongst the singing rivers and whispering hills of the unnamed village, Takanashi met the love of his life, Yua. A simple farmhand with hair of midnight silk and skin of porcelain. The two had been married under the moon of the winter solstice. He would never forget how beautiful his sweet Yua looked in her crimson gown; how her skin danced wickedly with the moonlight or how her dark eyes glittered like a thousand stars. No, he could never forget that night with his sweet Yua. When the leaves turned vibrant and the tender cherry blossoms were naught but budding green, did Takanashi expect his first child. Yua had been convinced they would have a little girl, she called their unborn babe Asashi - her morning sunshine. Everything in Kuromiya Takanashi's life was perfect in those gentle moments away from the Imperial Capital.

Unfortunately, too much good is never meant to last. The days were chilled and destitute when his beautiful Yua went into labor. He had been out attending to the small coop of chickens they had in the early morning mists. He had heard the crash from the house and remembered how his heart had dropped. Inside he found Yua on the ground, holding her stomach. Beneath her, the floor was slick and wet. Panic had welled inside of Takanashi when he had carried his young wife to the bed; she was in labor and the nearest midwife was at the other end of the village. They had not been expecting the birth for another week. Darkness submerged Takanashi's heart after that still, quiet morning. His sweet Yua was gone and with her she had taken their only daughter that Takanashi had helped to deliver. His little Asashi...

As the seasons passed the darkness in Takanashi's heat only grew. He became reclusive and angry, spending much of his time practicing the ancient sword techniques of his father and his father's father. He fermented the rice that grew in his crops and began distilling copious amounts of sake in his free time. These dark days grew even darker when, on a spring afternoon, Takanashi had seen flames roaring over the whispering hills, consuming the grass and shrubbery hungrily. The scent of blood was in the air and the ground shook as if by some thunderous force. Savage creatures crested the top of the hills. Their hair in dreads and their bodies covered with thick furs and leathers. Barbarous and monstrous, the enemy beat their weapons to their chests and cried out before they swarmed on the village. They were just a small party, fewer than twenty-five but the havoc they wreaked on the unnamed village seemed that of one hundred Northmen.

This was the first of many battles that gave rise to Takanashi's alter ego, Mamushi; the silver masked warrior of legend who had fought and killed sixteen Wartribe invaders with his blade alone. Those who were there to witness Mamushi's great standoff against the Northmen told tales of a legendary swordsman who had appeared as if out of thin air. Legend of the Mamushi warrior spread throughout the provinces and though many called it a victory, Takanashi felt differently. When he looked through the shutters of his small hut he no longer saw the land his beloved Yua had adored so much. Though he had defeated the first wave of invaders, more came and eventually, there were too many for one man alone. As he grew older he could only weep at the sight those ravagers had left his home and vowed to put an end to their tyranny once and for all.

Thread idea contribution: Something could happen to one of his former apprentices and he could snap back into his state of rage and hatred that he had broken away from in his youth.

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Name: Emiko Makoto

Codename: Viper

Appearance (images preferred):

Spoiler: Emiko Makoto

Emiko is small in stature standing at on 5'5. She has a lithe, petite frame but she is toned with thick muscle. She has dark brown hair and honey gold eyes. Her lips are full and usually curved in a heavy frown, there is also a deep scar at the corner of her mouth which she received from a stray shuriken. Another smaller scar can also be seen at the edge of her brow. Her skin is pale and smooth, much like many women of the area. Her first mask was also wooden but had been painted a dark black with a red face. It is this mask that many remember when they think of the ruthless and deadly Viper...Now, she sports a simpler mask of similar shape and design but different coloring.

Mask (images preferred):

Spoiler: Handcrafted wooden mask

Age: 29 years old.

Gender: Female

Class (must fit gender): Nobushi Master

Weaponry (images preferred):

Spoiler: Nightshade's thorn (the blade is also oiled with poisonous nightshade)

Skills: A master with the Naginata, Emiko's movements are delicate but precise. She uses the advantage that the naginata grants to her reach against her opponents. Emiko is also a fairly knowledgable botanist, her interest lies with the more hazardous of plants; beautiful, poetic and very very deadly just like her. Emiko is also quite small which makes her quick and light on her feet. Her fighting style always reminded her Master Takanashi of a tranquil swan; movements that were deliberate and delicate in their manner, hiding the true force underneath.

Weaknesses: Emiko is rather lacking in the social department. She has a hard time building long-lasting relationships with others and always seems to say the wrong things at the wrong times. Emiko is rather young to be considered a master and whether she is trying to prove that she is worthy to herself or others, she can push herself too hard sometimes. This need to fulfill the title given to her by Master Takanashi has also led to her making reckless decisions.

Personality: Master Emiko is everything that Master Takanashi no longer is. She is cool-headed, deliberate and ruthless. She leaves no margin of error for mistakes and can be very blunt with her choice of words. She prefers to communicate through actions rather than words as she always finds herself saying the wrong things to those she honestly cares about. Her demeanor can be icy, some may even say frigid, but that does not mean she is unfeeling. Emiko's childhood was rough before Master Takanashi found her and such experiences have a way of shaping and hardening people, much like a windblown bluff. Those who know young Master Emiko and Master Takanashi say that she resembles the Mumashi warrior more so in his glory days than now.

Background: Emiko Makoto grew up just outside the Imperial walls of the city. Her parents were poor pig farmers but they cared very much for their only daughter. As a child, she really was not keen to hardships and struggles that the Empire had fallen under. The Great War had been waging for some time before her birth so living in a land at war was all she had ever known. In her blindness, Emiko had never expected her simple but happy life to change. But, as Emperor Itoku became more and more tyrannical, the Makato family were soon forced from the only home they had ever known. Her father's heart broke the day they were forced out by Imperial guards; they could not afford the new property and food tariffs that Emperor Itoku had demanded. Emiko, along with her parents, were forced out into the provinces which since the war had become dangerous and unruly under the rule of Warlord Dor'ashin.

Unable to find adequate and livable housing, the Makatos were destined for a nomadic lifestyle. They would travel far distances from village to village, always under harassment, if not from the unrelenting Northmen then from bandits or extortionists. Her father found work anywhere he could, often performing laborious and dangerous jobs just to make sure his little girl could eat. Mother found more indecent forms of work servicing the Wartribe conquers or imperial soldiers passing through. This hardened lifestyle meant that Emiko spent a lot of her time alone. She would spend her hours wandering the villages or the surrounding wildernesses. Often she would scale small cliffsides and or trees to avoid the main roads which were always shrouded with risk. When Emiko was six years old her mother passed away from illness. Her father had already been heavily addicted to consumption and any money he was capable of earning could always be found at the bottom of his bottles. When her father finally did pass from consumption, Emiko was left to fend for herself.

At the age of seven, she would have her first meeting with the Mumashi warrior. It had been late evening and a heavy fog had settled over the land, obscuring everything against the darkness of the night. Emiko had been cast out of a rather large village for petty theft and begging. She had been wandering the desolate mountain roads for hours when she saw the figure in the distance. At her age, her imagination had run away from her. The figure in the distance resembled that of a demon with wideset horns and a hulking frame compared to her own. She had gasped and began backing away slowly but as she did she snapped a small branch, the sound reverberating off the trees around her in the stillness of the night. The demon's head had whipped around in her direction and a flash of moonlight against steel clashed against the dark shadows of the night.

Emiko remembered how she had cried in that moment so many years ago; whether out of fear or the despair of having nothing and no one, she was not certain. The Demon creature had descended upon her instantly and Emiko had pinched her eyes shut, preparing for the worst. However, when she had peeked one of her doe eyes open she did not see a monstrous beast in front of her. Instead, she saw the smiling, middle-aged face of a man. Emiko had never been sure what had driven Master Takanashi to take her in but she did know that she would be forever grateful for the life he had provided her.

As the years passed, Emiko became Master Takanashi's first and most favored apprentice. She trained day and night to master the skills that the Mumashi warrior entrusted to her. Her body grew stiff with muscle and soon she took began to attract attention throughout the Empire. Mumashi's masked apprentice was nearly as fabled as her master and it was she who had helped him leave the drunkards life for good. Emiko had been Master Takanashi's biggest support when he founded secretive league of the Jade Serpents, helping him to build the organization from the ground up.


Thread idea contribution: I was actually thinking it would be fun (if we can get the other master roles filled) to had each apprentice assigned to a master. They can still have a designated class but still train under the masters, dedicating most of their time with their own Sensei (whoever is decided).​

 

[Lady Mysaria]

I'd love an apprentice role!

I'll add your name. = )

 

[GillyFars]

Hi! I'm interested in this roleplay, but I wanted to ask what the responsibilities for someone playing one of the masters is?

 

[Lady Mysaria]

Hi! I'm interested in this roleplay, but I wanted to ask what the responsibilities for someone playing one of the masters is?

I was thinking if we get enough players they could take on an apprentice (another player) and also be advisors and friends of Takanashi's they would also be responsible and in charge under Emiko if, let's say, if your character was alone with someone else they would be superior. They will also be more skilled and knowledgeable of the fighting styles and techniques and would be true 'samurai'. Does that answer that question? We could hash out more details in pm?

 

[GillyFars]

Yeah, that makes total sense. I figured it was something like that, but I just wanted to check.
I'd be happy to talk more about it in PM though!