Ryume Mirumoto (polesia)
A member of the secret Elan Collective, Mirumoto Ryume is a Mysterious woman from the land of Asashiro.
Character Appearance[edit]
Ryume appears to be an exotic warrior.
Approaching six feet in height, slender, and decidedly female, she sports a suit of armor unlike any seen in the North. Gleaming metalloid plates, lacquered green, and cut into a scaly motif, the trappings appear to be held together with neatly knotted lengths of red cord. Just as curiously, the armor appears to be only a partial set, revealing a green silk tunic-like garment underneath, and a fair amount of bare skin, completely resurfaced with a network of majestic and colorful tattoos of serpents, clouds, flowers, waves, plants and green scales.
Her head, completely shaved, is wrapped with a twisted and knotted bandana, and her nose and mouth are covered with a steel armor face mask featuring a bestial design of sharp reptilian teeth. Her eyes are slanted, squinted, and dark.
On her feet are wooden sandals, and at her waist is a wide belt holding two curved sword sheaths. Both sheaths are empty.
Character Ability Profile[edit]
Ryume hails from the Kasai No Hebi clan of the Okubo Empire. As is tradition in this clan, she is trained in the Niten-Ichi style of swordsmanship; a dual-wielding style.
What makes Ryume's swordsmanship unique is her psionic gift. Rather than bearing the daisho of her family, Ryume instead manifests a daisho of pure psionic energy. This "Mindblade" power is unique to those of the Soulknife discipline, a rare talent possessed by only a small number of psionically gifted creatures.
Ryume's psionic gift has also allowed a special relationship with gravity and dimension. Often, Ryume has been observed as fighting with neither foot quite touching the ground. She has even been observed floating up the edge of a wall when moving at a great enough speed.
Character Biography[edit]
Ryume was born to the Kasai No Hebi Clan of the Okubo Empire. The Kasai No Hebi are a samurai clan famous for its mysterious motives. While other clans, might vie for military power like the Tora Clan, or for cultural standing like the Shinseina Washi clan, the Hebi appear to shy from such motivations. In the mountainous regions in which they hold sway, the Hebi support many monasteries and libraries, and seem to prefer the charms of a more ascetic life, as opposed to a life of decadence or artistic culture. The monks of the Hebi clan are lauded for their wisdom and are often wondered at for their tendency toward bright and magnificent tattoos. These were the ardent people to which Ryume was born. She was the second child of a rather prominent lord in service to the Hebi Daimyo. As she came of age, she was trained as an Onna-bugeisha (female samurai). From her father and brother, she learned the Niten-Ichi style of swordsmanship, the dual-wielding style for which some Hebi clansmen are famed.
In the mountains of Asashiro, there is a dark and twisted place known as the plateau of Leng. Legends of the Plateau of Leng extend back to the time of the founding of the great clans, when the kami descended from the sky and founded the prodigious culture and civilization of the Okubo. In the writings of those times, the great kami were deeply concerned with the existence of Leng, and seemed to imply that they knew how it came to be, and what it was that had gone so horribly wrong there. But this knowledge was never imparted to the Okubo. Only instructions that all passes to the Plateau should be walled off and kept under guard so that none of the evils that occasionally seeped out could take root in the world of men.
This has proven to be good advice. The very environment of the plateau is infectious. Things tainted by Leng often mutate in monstrous ways. Some few are seduced by its calling from a distance and enter the land only to become servants of the dark place. The only way to fend off this taint is to carry talismans of purifying elements with you to absorb the evil influence in your place. There were some instances even, in which even the purest elements could not keep the taint from infecting a person.
When dark things began massing out of the plateau, attacking the empire and infecting innocent people, the Samurai of the empire took it upon themselves to protect their lands. Hard campaigns were fought in the passes while others cleaned up traces that had passed through into the land. Some few were even selected to venture into the plateau to determine what it was that was causing this sudden influx of dark forces. Lord Mirumoto, Ryume's father, was selected to be among these elite warriors. He took his son, Ryume's brother, along with him. When days passed and none returned, people began to wonder at the fate of these men. The pure elements, (many fingers of pure jade, in this case) would soon be expected to run out, and the men would only be able to return as vile monsters.
Though young, and not particularly talented, when Ryume received word that a team was being constructed to either bring new jade to the Leng expedition, or at the very least, return home with the bodies of the fallen heroes, she pushed ardently to be named as a member. Her wish was granted, and she and twenty other samurai departed into Leng with a fresh supply of jade in order to find the fate of her father and brother and their company.
Unfortunately, none have any information on what happened after that. It seemed most plausible that Ryume was among the few to whom pure elements like jade were no use in the territory of Leng. Most likely, what happened was that her body and mind became corrupted by the dark taint. She would have mutated and twisted into a horrible monster. From the remains that were found, the rest of the expedition was torn into unrecongnizable bits by the surprise attack from within. It's still undetermined if the members of the first expedition were ever found. The only survivor was Ryume, and she was not Ryume.
Those who found her, however, were the psions. In Asashiro, it has been discovered that a select few have the gift for psionics. A secret group of humans who unlocked a secret art of lacing one's own being with psionic energy in an attempt to possess a more psionically perfected vessel rose to prominence as the Elan Collective. It was a handful of these men, at the request of the empress herself, who came to the aid of the Okubo to assist in the quelling of the uprising at Leng.
There, they found the creature that had been Ryume. While it was quick work for experienced psionic beings to subdue the monstrous human, they were nevertheless surprised by what they saw. This beastly samurai was manifesting weapons of pure psionic energy. More than that, though, she possessed an excess control over a force which the psions referred to as "the southern great world dragon". They theorized that this girl must have had a latent psionic talent that was awakened by the disturbance of the taint. After a brief discussion amongst themselves, the members of the Collective elected to purge the dark taint from this girl by making her one of them. A wild psionic talent was not to be wasted, after all. When the secretive process was complete, Ryume reawakened as an Elan. She possessed very little memory of her experiences in the Plateau. While she retained all memory of her life otherwise to that point, having become an élan now, it meant something different to her. While she honored her family, she had not the same feeling of belonging in regard to them anymore. The Collective was her home now. That was where she belonged.
With her psionic power recharging her body at will, she needn't experience the weathering of age, and so for the next hundred and fifty years, Ryume lived and worked among the psions. Eventually, she left her homeland to work in the Elan library housed secretly at the ruins of Shahar-Khet. Often, she was sent on errands to other destinations to seek and catalog information. This became her calling.
One day, Ryume was sent on an errand to investigate an energy disturbance in the North. She has yet to return.
