Mentality
Personal history
Popularity: He made friends without trying; his confidence and upper society mannerisms caused lesser people to throw themselves at him in order to gain his favour.
Hobbies:
- Under the Surface: Meditation, deep breathing, mixed with observation.
- The Impersonal Trainer: Promotes life-extending techniques like fitness, breath control, dieting and blood checks.
Job / Duties:
- Battle Researcher: Studying life through blood and air, sometimes through warfare (Samurai or similar training).
- Mage Slayer: Studied how to disrupt magic through a mage's blood in order to stop their spells.
- Subduer of the Beast: Keeping his mistress happy and subdued.
Life Events (Overview) x5
1) Magical Event
2) Childhood Relationship
3) Made an Ally
4) Supernatural Event
5) Made an Ally
Magical Event - Cult in his name
Kuro had always drawn followers. Whether through his connection to Kira Mito or the quiet authority he carried, people gravitated toward him, eager to be acknowledged. He rarely indulged them. Those closest to him, the few PETS he tolerated, began mistaking proximity for privilege. They boasted of being his favourites, invoked his name in petty rivalries, and sought to elevate themselves through spectacle.
It escalated into a ritual. Believing they could prove devotion through cruelty, they performed forbidden rites in his honour. It was not the violence that disturbed him… it was the lack of refinement. They were reckless, theatrical, and dangerously visible. Worse, they misunderstood power entirely. The ritual succeeded, in its crude way. They transformed themselves into ghouls… stronger, hungrier, impressive in execution.
BUT THEY HAD TRADED POTENTIAL FOR ROT!
Kuro ended them himself. Cleanly. Efficiently. An act of mercy. Not in fury, but disappointment. Their transformation was clever, yes… but WASTEFUL!. Undisciplined ambition always is. The air had begun to warp around them, and he would not allow his name to be tethered to such decay. Power, in his eyes, is elevation… not degradation. They had mistaken corruption for ascension, and he corrected the error.
Childhood Relationship - The unwanted courtship
In his early twenties, Kuro’s ascent through noble society was proceeding precisely as intended. His composure impressed, his discipline distinguished him, and under Kira Mito’s patronage, his influence was steadily expanding. Then came the expectation: marriage. Advancement within the Empire’s ranks required alliance through union. Kira presented the matter plainly, even showing him the skull of the husband she once married for power. This was a clear reminder that nobility is secured through utility, not affection.
The woman chosen for him was Kazumi Kurogane, daughter of a respected military house. She embodied her lineage well, poised, disciplined, harmonious in speech and movement. The match was politically elegant. Steel and shadow, refinement and structure. On parchment, it was flawless.
Kuro treated the arrangement as a negotiation rather than romance. He observed her manners, her obedience, her careful composure. She would have made a competent noble wife. But when Kazumi placed her hand upon him… a small, innocent gesture meant to solidify familiarity, clarity settled in him like cold air. There was no spark. No curiosity. No desire to be bound in that way. His body would not be traded, even for power. Definitely not for her who was using him for power as much as he was to her.
He did not disgrace her publicly. Instead, he dismantled the union with surgical precision. Doubt was introduced into conversations. Compatibility was questioned. Priorities subtly shifted. Within weeks, the arrangement dissolved under political inconvenience rather than scandal. Was it excessive? Perhaps. But it ensured finality.
Through careful negotiation and Kira’s considerable influence, Kuro secured exemption from further marriage negotiations in exchange for dedicating himself fully to imperial research into life extension for the Emperor. He would serve the Empire with intellect and discipline.
But his body, and his autonomy, would remain his own.
Made an Ally - The Kobayashi Family
In his late twenties, newly granted permission to travel alone under imperial authority, Kuro sought distance from courtly noise. He came upon a quiet orchard heavy with red fruit and, without ceremony, took an apple. He did not consider ownership. He did not assess the family’s situation. He simply wanted something crisp and grounding. When confronted by Emi Kobayashi, whose cheer faltered after he sharply corrected her for touching him, he remained unmoved. It was only hours later, when she returned composed with a drink and apology, that the tone shifted.
Her father, Haruto Kobayashi, was less forgiving. Words were exchanged about entitlement, nobility, and dignity. Kuro did not assert status to end the dispute. Instead, he observed the strain in Haruto’s breath and pulse. “You argue inefficiently,” he remarked, before guiding the older man outside. There, beneath the orchard trees, he taught him how to breathe slowly and deliberately, lowering blood pressure through controlled air. The argument dissolved into meditation and recognition of what's important.
He remained several days under the pretence of assessing fruit quality. In truth, he assisted quietly. He reviewed contracts, restructured debts, and advised on merchant negotiations. The Kobayashi orchard stabilised. The family’s burden lessened. Kuro never framed it as kindness, only efficiency. Yet he returned more than once, always purchasing apples properly thereafter. Overpaying for apples for the privilege of a single tree, which he fed his blood to.
Haruto has long since passed, likely living years longer than he might have otherwise. Emi now runs the orchard as age touches her hair with silver. Kuro still visits. He would never admit it, but the orchard left its mark. If there were a way to extend their lives without corruption or vampirism, he would pursue it. Not for politics. For them.
Supernatural Event - The Unfinished Mage
By thirty-five, Kuro had begun pursuing rogue arcanists under imperial sanction, shaping a public reputation as a defender of disciplined flesh over reckless transcendence. Among those he hunted was Rin Tsukishiro, a prodigious scholar obsessed with lichdom who believed mortality to be an inefficiency rather than a condition of existence. Rin sought to abandon the body entirely, claiming magic could refine what biology constrained. Kuro disagreed fundamentally, arguing that true supremacy lay not in escape from flesh, but in its mastery.
Their confrontation was as much ideological as it was physical. Rin’s ritual of ascension was nearly flawless, the culmination of years of study and ambition, yet Kuro’s intervention disrupted a critical moment in the transformation. Through calculated timing and precise interference, he destabilised the ritual’s anchor before it could complete, fracturing what should have been an immortal rebirth into something incomplete. Rin did not become a lich. He became unfinished.
Execution followed under imperial authority, and the body was buried with public certainty. However, Kuro sensed an imbalance in the air and a tension within the blood that refused to settle, prompting him to order the grave disturbed. Rin rose before dawn, conscious and furious, bound imperfectly between life and undeath. Without a perfected phylactery to stabilise him, his existence became cyclical rather than eternal.
Each time Rin returns, he does not rage blindly. He withdraws, regains strength, studies failure, and refines his methods before resurfacing. His memories remain intact, his intellect sharpening between revivals as he corrects prior weaknesses with cold precision. He does not announce himself prematurely, nor does he seek spectacle. He plans. He prepares. And when he returns to challenge Kuro, it is not for drama, but for vindication.
Made an Ally - The ambitious slave
In his 61st year, as imperial law tightened against arcane practice, Kuro oversaw the capture and exile of mages beyond the Empire’s borders. While executions were sanctioned, he favoured banishment where possible; extinction was wasteful, and power displaced was often more stable than power cornered. Order, not cruelty, guided his decisions.
During one transfer, a chained tiefling broke formation and struck with startling precision. The attack was calculated rather than desperate, and though Kuro absorbed several blasts before closing the distance, he subdued the caster decisively. Even with a shattered arm and blood pooling at his feet, the tiefling refused to kneel.
Instead, he began casting again.
The spell forming in his palm would have consumed both of them and much of the escort, yet there was no hysteria in his expression… only determination. In that moment, Kuro recognised something familiar: ambition that would rather burn than yield. Both men laughed, not in madness, but in recognition.
“Ha. You truly do not give up, do you?”
The spell stilled as the tiefling, Kaji Akihiko, spoke not of survival, but of ascension. He described a future built on structure, not chaos, and ambition tempered by strategy rather than rage. Kuro listened and, finding the resolve worthy, granted him passage beyond the Empire’s reach. It was not mercy. It was an investment in disciplined fire.
Before they parted, Kaji made one final promise. If Rin Tsukishiro rose again in strength and threatened the balance Kuro sought to preserve, his fire would answer the call. Unfinished immortality was an insult to disciplined power, and Kaji had no desire to see such instability reshape the world. His vow extended further still, spoken carefully but without hesitation: should Kira Mito’s hunger or sorcery ever tip from indulgence into tyranny, should her appetite endanger structure rather than merely strain it, he would stand against that as well. Not as a servant, but as an equal flame correcting excess. Kuro listened in silence, then did something rare… he reached forward and took Kaji by the wrist. Not to restrain, not to dominate, but in acknowledgement. It was one of the few gestures of physical contact he tolerated. A sign of respect between two ambitions that refused to kneel.
Revived Tradition - Bastard Steel
Bastard Steel is a layered alloy forged from incompatible fragments of different metals, known for its resistance to conventional enchantment. Magic slides across it unevenly, refusing to settle or harmonise within its grain. Yet under disciplined ki, the metal responds differently, vibrating faintly with controlled life force as if recognising structured energy. It rejects wild arcana, but hums in the hands of one who governs their breath and blood.
In his right ear, he holds a number of rings made from this material. (There is significance, but not sure yet)
His daggers are also made from this metal, allowing him to use them to disrupt magical signals in blood.
Education
He was highly educated in the empire. His studies focused on blood, primarily as a cunning way to source blood ‘humanly’.
Employment
He was left to his work with alchemy and blood. Through his own ambition, he gained a noble name but fell under the rule of his mistress.
Accomplishments & Achievements
Causing foes to disappear with little trace.
Mental Trauma
He is trapped in a deal with Kira, his mistress, where she drinks his blood. He hates being touched without permission, but has to let her feed, or she would become too powerful to defeat.
Morality & Philosophy
“If those casters can be pushed down so easily, then maybe it's for the best they are banned. Have some ambition or die…”
“Did you call yourself a person pet? That is borderline cute… almost.”
“Did you just insult my pet? I’d recommend you apologise before things escalate…”
person.sexuality
Forcefully Ace-sexual. If touched without permission, he will go into a rage and probably punch them, if not stab them.
person.gender_identity
Male
Taboos
Sees unproven or week inderviduals as pets, not people.
Social
Birthplace
Home of the village healer in Elikassi
Current Residence
The road
Contacts & Relations
Kira Mito – Mistress, Patron, Addiction
(Ki-ra Mite-o)
A mutual dependency built on blood and leverage; she feeds on him for control and euphoria, and he steers her excess away from war and instability.
Rin Tsukishiro – The Unfinished Mage
(Rin )
An ideological enemy turned cyclical rival; Rin blames Kuro for his failed lichdom and grows sharper with every resurrection.
Kaji Akihiko – The Ambitious Ember
A disciplined exile whose ambition earned respect; a future rival who promised to burn against Rin—or Kira—if balance ever collapses.
Kazumi Kurogane – The Broken Betrothal
A politically perfect match, Kuro dismantled to preserve autonomy; she represents the life he refused.
Haruto Kobayashi – The Farmer (Emi's father)
A stubborn patriarch who challenged his values and earned his respect through breath and discipline.
Emi Kobayashi – The Orchard Daughter (Ren's mother)
A woman who met his sharpness with dignity; one of the few civilians he quietly protects without calculation.
Ren Kobayashi – The Fearless Child
Unintimidated curiosity; a reminder that not everyone trembles at his presence.
Honorary & Occupational Titles
Mage Slayer
Warrior of Mercy
Wealth & Financial state
Grew up Aristocratic in a manor or small castle.
Family Ties
Parents (Birth): Unknown / Mother (Deceased in childbirth) / Father (Diapered mysteriously)
Parents (Mistress): Kira Mito