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Vital Statistics
Clothing and armour
Occupation
Affiliations
Abilities and skills
Weaknesses
Equipment
Personality
History
Ambition
Gift art, music, and poetry from others (thank you!)
[edited/revamped 11/11/2003 to reflect character growth]
Age:24
Gender:male
Race:human - Japanese-American
Height: 5'8
Weight: 135 lbs.
Build: trim, with the musculature of a practicing martial artist
Hair: black and straight, usually worn long and loose down to the middle of his back
Eye Color: warm brown
Clothing/Armour
Kai tends towards black jeans, t-shirt, black leather renfaire/moccassin boots, and a black leather jacket. Sometimes he wears colourful Chinese silk shirts instead. Occasionally he wears black, fingerless gloves and/or a yin-yang pendant. No matter what else he wears, he nearly always has a black silk sash tied around his hips in Shao-lin monk fashion as a symbol of his affiliation with the Zen Mystic sect.
Kai recieved, as a post-humous Christmas gift, a shirt of chain maille from Vanvanarmo. It is described in his own words as: It is a fine piece of craftsmanship, and has the magical ability of stopping high velocity impacts (from bullets, meteors and alike, but not darts, kicks and punches) and providing a little protection against kinetic attacks of magical nature. Typically Kai keeps this at home, displayed on an armour stand in honour of Vanvanarmo. He will only put it on if he feels that a situation is overly dangerous, and that whatever he is about to do would reflect honourably on Vanvanarmo's memory.
Occupation/Class:student of the Zen Mystics (currently on an extended field trip, one might say)/martial artist
Affiliations:
The Zen Mystics, a sect of eastern mystics from Kai's native earth that are dedicated to seeking enlightenment and instructing born magi in the use and understanding of their gifts (akin to the Akashic Brotherhood of the RPG "Mage:The Ascension")
Back in his native earth he still has a quite normal family including mother, father, and sister with whom he gets along passably well, all things considered. They do not realize the exact nature of the 'special college' he went to after graduating high school, and think it is some sort of religious acadamy.
In the Dream he has become very attached to Jeri Kleinlowe, going so far as to make room for Jeri to come live in his home at Paradox Springs.
Abilities/Skills
1. Kai holds a first dan blackbelt in Aikido. Through his training with the Zen Mystics he has also picked up bits of several other martial arts styles including Tai Chi, Tai Kwan Do, Shao Lin Kung Fu, and Ninjitsu. His physical strength and dexterity reflects that of a normal human body that regularly practices martial arts.
2.Growing up in a Japanese-American family made him bilingual, able to speak and read/write English and Japanese fluently. After entering the tutelage of the Zen Mystics he also acquired a very basic understanding of Chinese, necessary for studying old religious and mystic texts.
3. Training with the Zen Mystics has also given him certain unusual perspectives on the nature of reality, which effectively translates into 'magickal abilities'. Since his arrival in the Dream, constant training and research has allowed him to improve his skills and understanding. However, the scope of his ability to alter reality depends on how static the reality of the world he is in happens to be. (Things are much easier to alter in the Dream than in, for example, a place where people don't believe in magick. Sometimes making effects appear coincidental helps the magick to work more easily.)
For those familiar with the RPG 'Mage: The Ascension' 2nd ed., Kai's abilities translate roughly into:Correspondance:4 Forces:4 Prime:3 Mind:2. He will never have access to Life.
To everyone else: Kai basically has enough understanding of spatial relationships to be able to manipulate them in interesting ways - for example: teleportation, creating worldgates, scrying across distances, and reaching across distances to manipulate objects. He also understands the basic 'forces' of nature well enough to manipulate and even create them. These forces include kinetic energy, heat, electricity (lightning), gravity, magnetism, light, and suchlike. His mental abilities include some degree of empathy and the (somewhat strained) ability to communicate telepathically with someone who is an accomplished telepath. He has mental shields to prevent casual mindscanning, but a reasonably adept telepath could easily punch through them.
Due to a soul-damaging encounter he is utterly unable to work organic magick, and thus cannot (and will never be able to) heal himself magickally, shapechange, or otherwise alter his own body (or that of others).
He is able to get better results when he is in his sanctum, Paradox Springs.
Weaknesses
At the end of the day, Kai is basically just a human. He is subject to normal human flaws and emotions and reactions, and is innately neither especially strong nor especially resistant to damage. If he does not have the time to focus or is not allowed to concentrate, he cannot alter reality, and if the local reality doesn't like his style of magick or is especially rigid this also makes reality alteration more difficult for him. Due to a soul-damaging encounter he is utterly unable to work organic magick, and thus cannot (and will never be able to) heal himself magickally, shapechange, or otherwise alter his own body (or that of others).
He has a weak spot concerning Jeri Kleinlowe, and will generally try to protect Jeri when it looks like anything is threatening. He is also deeply terrified of the force that he privately calls "the Nothing", having adopted that term from the movie "The NeverEnding Story" (see history).
Due to a (cough) misadventure during his Shangri-la days, he is permanantly geased to neither harm nor allow harm to come to a true Bard (by the druidic standard, meaning one who has undergone the specific training in history, lore, oratory, and music and has earned the right to wear a torc).
Personal Accessories
1. The Kama no Haiiro (Greyscythe) - A magickally collapsable kusari-gama. In collapsed form it appears as a magical rod, about as long as a pencil and about an inch thick, upon which a line of silver cloudscript kanji is inscribed. When magickally activated the rod elongates to roughly two feet long, a large sickle blade snaps out of one end, and the other end sprouts a chain with a grappling hook attached at the tip. Aside from being collapsable and the chain being able to extend to some rather improbable lengths, (both are effects of Correspondance magick, see below) the weapon has no other special features.
2. His jacket pockets contain an assortment of small, minor items left over from his pre-Dream days and the adventures he has had since. These include a couple of small shuriken, a ballpoint pen, a book of crossword puzzles, assorted small change from a couple of different worlds, personal identification from his native earth, and other similar sundries.
General possessions
Skybike - this is an exact duplicate of the skybike owned by Jeri Kleinlowe (tech specs here), aside from being green instead of blue. Think of a motorcycle with wings instead of wheels. Generally reserved for recreation.
A wooden handcarved flute, given to him as a birthday present by Vanvanarmo.
A pair of pocket-dimensions, pocket-sized and contained by zippers (insertable into clothing) - birthday present from Porter.
A keystone that allows entrance into Matrim Ten'Kerr's realm. It has a hitherto-undiscovered additional power that is said to manifest according to the bearer's personality.
A key to the Hole in the Wall labs, held in trust until RMH comes back from sabbatical.
An animate toolbox - present from Tangent the Gremlin
A pendant containing a Nightstone, which supposedly will double his power, birthday present from Jester Scythe. He has not yet tried to use or experiment with this.
A journal of handmade paper embossed with his name - present from Silver Fox
Handmade hanging chimes that ring when they detect the presence of evil intentions - present from Fantasy Forever-Prowell. These are currently hanging on his porch.
Small statue of himself - this is a token/reminder of the debt he owes to Ceera Darkwynd in exchange for being able to keep the duplicated skybike.
Description of Personality
Kai strives to be a calm, balanced, conscientious person who lives according to the Dao. He is usually a fairly congenial person who believes that it is always important to be polite, even (and especially) to enemies. He does not make enemies readily, considering it generally better to hold neutral relations with those who are not actually friends. Despite his relationship with Jeri Kleinlowe he is not particularly male-oriented, but is willing to accept that sometimes karma comes around in very strange ways. His usual philosophy regarding blatant use of magick can be summed up in one quote: "Never play an ace when a two will do."
Brief history
Kai grew up in a very normal American family in Kentucky, moving from a small town to a much larger one at a fairly young age. Due to developing problems with anger and authority he was enrolled in an aikido class. Not only did this help him find inner balance, he showed talent and love for the art, devoting enough time and work at it to earn his first dan blackbelt by his 18th birthday. While he was pondering what to do after graduating high school, fate stepped in and handed him his magickal Awakening - a story unto itself. A brother of the Zen Mystics promptly turned up to intervene, and when the metaphorical dust was finally settled Kai agreed to spend the next few years of his life studying this new turn of events with the Zen Mystics. This was ultimately to lead him to Shangri-la, a secret pocket realm of reality maintained by the mystics specifically for the purpose of training seekers of enlightenment.
Though the training was rich and fulfilling, it was also strict and the lifestyle spartan, and it involved cutting off contact with his former life for a sizable span of time; It was only after four years of study that the masters allowed Kai time to go and revisit his family in the "real world". The visit went well enough, but immediately upon returning to Shangri-la the realm was attacked by an unknown force, a sort of Nothing that seemed determined to home in on Kai for reasons unknown at the time. By the time one of the temple cats saw fit to kick him out of Shangri-la into the Napping Cat's Dream, the Nothing had effectively caused large chunks of Shangri-la and several people to utterly and forever cease to exist.
Since being banished (sent to safety?) to the Dream Kai has been working hard to train his abilities and understanding so that he can return himself to Shangri-la, find out what happened to it after he left, and try to deal with the Nothing if it is still there.
What is my ambition?
"Nosce te ipsum - this was the advice imparted to me when I was first sent here. Life in the Napping Cat's Dream has taught me much about myself and others and about the nature of existance - some good, some less so. But there's still much more to learn, and maybe someday I'll have learned enough to return to Shangri-la and close the circle I began so long ago."
*********
Gifts from other people (Thank all of you so much! ^_^)
Music
Maus Merryjest
Art
Daync 1 2 3
Donevan Blake
Ende 1 2
Fantasy Forever
Gabriel Blue
Hitomi
Hitomi 2
Jeri Kleinlowe 1 2 3 4
Jester Scythe
Joshua Prowell
Kalista
Kei Kittora
Lin
Lisa V
Mercutio
Nyu 1 2
Ozymandias the Strange
Rai Witter
Seby
Sun Stormbrand
Zoe Summers
Poetry
Art Moderator
learned in many martial arts
as well as magic.
A student of Life
constantly learning the ways
of the world around.
--Jorick Soriano
Mage and confidant
Sensei of Paradox Springs
Kai Takahashi
--Ceera Darkwynd
He forms the first spark,
but Kai shall not cease his search
For knowledge of life.
--Sophie Naya
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