His Blade Paints The Earth Red
Dishonor of Bushido Julia Alexis Aerdin
His Blade Paints the Earth Red (commonly called 'The Painter' by his fellows) is a member of the Thousand Blades, the personal assassin of Bushido. His status is one of great shame and dishonor, but he is forbidden to take his own life. He is the seventeenth person to bear the sword of the same name, and more than most other Blades is the sword. He bears a particular and unique shame, a distance from other samurai of the Blades. The samurai is not strong enough to resist the influence of a bad sword, so the other samurai avoid him. The sword willfully destroys the personality of its master, so the other swords refuse to talk to either of them. The swords themselves consider His Blade Paints the Earth Red an abomination among their kind, no different than a sword bonding itself to a child.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
The magic of the sword keeps the host samurai in peak physical condition. He is sickly and pale in appearance, as he does not move often and does not eat more than is needed to live, but his is fit and muscular as any career swordsman due to the sword's intervention.
Identifying Characteristics
His Blade Paints the Earth Red is one of the few living half-elves of Gemloki direct origin. Like all of that blood, he has faceted eyes in different shades of blue so as to resemble sapphires. This and his pointed ears set him apart from his human heritage. In all other respects he favors his mother's Tegdylun heritage.
Special abilities
The power granted to any bearer of the sword His Blade Paints the Earth Red is combat enhancement. He becomes artificially skilled when ordered to kill someone, and until the task is complete does not feel pain, and any injury he takes seems to be less serious than it should be. His increase in stamina, skill, strength, and durability is directly proportional to the number of enemies he faces at any time, the sword is specifically designed to help a samurai win a fight while outnumbered and alone. The sword's gifts are also increased when the opponent is unarmed or otherwise not a threat, as the sword is wicked. More powerful in ego than any other sword of the Blades, it is capable of fully possessing the host samurai and fighting without approval of its master.
Apparel & Accessories
His Blade Paints the Earth Red wears an inverted version of the traditional uniform of the Thousand Blades. His silk shirt is red, crossed with a black sash bearing the Imperial golden dragon, though the dragon is intentionally faded and hard to see. When not on a mission, he only wears a tattered green dress as a reminder of his old life with House Inser.
Specialized Equipment
The namesake sword takes the form of a standard Blades katana, and is not known to take any other shape, even when a ranged attack may be neccesary. The sword steadily drips with the blood of past victims when removed from its sheathe. His Blade Paints the Earth Red does not use armor, and he voluntarily does not utilize any other standard Blades equipment such as healing potions or extradimensional bags.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Julia Aerdin was born to a knight in the service of House Inser, who had lived among the remaining Gemloki in the Lancaster area for a time. Despite the relatively low rank of her mother, she was primarily raised among the higher servants at Castle Inser as her mother was frequently sent to deal with the mountain elves on behalf of the Empire. She was trained as a squire, and then elevated to the knighthood in the Order of the Rose during the Dragon Wars of the second century. It was there that she met the previous master of the Blade, and when he died in dragon's frost it chose her as the new samurai. Almost immediately, the overwhelming force of the sword's will overwrote her own, and Julia became His Blade Paints the Earth Red.
After the Dragon Wars, he was frequently sent to remote outposts by Bushido and other Blades commanders with the intent of depriving his sword of opportunities for violence, but in the year 299 following the Breaking of the Sky and the death of Skaldor, he lost what little control he had over the sword as war swept over the realms of Evermore. He took service with Kei Ran the Unlikely in the Broken Realms, slaughtering entire villagers of those who supported any emperor but his own until he was disarmed and captured by the Blades Deliverance and Snail Inside Shell. With the Empire restored, he spent three centuries regaining his sanity and control over the sword's will, but occasionally still was overwhelmed and forced to indulge the bloodthirst. In the year 940, Bushido proposed that the sword's violence could be directed towards specific, unwholesome purposes that would help the Empire, thereby keeping it just pleased enough to not completely control its master. To that end, His Blade Paints the Earth Red became known within the organization as the Dishonor of Bushido.
Gender Identity
Before becoming bonded to the sword, Julia presented herself as a cisgender woman. The sword, as it always has done in the case of a female samurai, burned away as much of that as it could to impose its own idea of what its samurai should be, which is to say its original master. The destruction of the original self has caused conflict in the warrior, even when he has control of the shared self. As far as he is concerned, he is and always has been a man, though he tends to present himself in a more feminine fashion when he is in control.
Sexuality
The sword does not permit its samurai to experience sexual or romantic attraction unless it happens to run into someone that resembles the husband of its first master, in which case it attempts to force attraction in the already-fractured psyche of its host. For fear of this, Julia keeps as much distance from people as he can after witnessing this happening in past lives.
Left to his own devices, the current samurai is asexual and panromantic.
Education
His Blade Paints the Earth Red was trained as squire and knight more than 1200 years ago. He is technically extremely versed in court ettiquette, fey lore, history, and tactics, but all of his information is so out of date its hardly useful. Ever since his voluntary exile, he has gone out of his way to avoid learning anything when out on missions.
Mental Trauma
His Blade Paints the Earth Red suffers an extreme and unprecedented case of Blade Psychosis, a unique variant that has haunted every iteration of the sword's host since the first. With the initial bonding of the sword, as much of the personality of the host was overwritten as the sword could manage. Some hosts are stronger than others, and Julia was one of the "lucky" few who could resist some of it. This has led to a fractured sense of identity. Julia as His Blade Paints the Earth Red is the sword, as far as he is concerned most of the time, but struggles with a sense of mortality, shame, and memories not his own. In effect, it is an inverse version of traditional Blade Psychosis, in which the sword struggles with its own identity because of the presense of unfamiliar feelings.
Morality & Philosophy
Most of the samurai to take the sword (and be controlled by the sword) died violently, and all accounts of these actions seem to indicate that the warrior seeks death in battle, sometimes seemingly throwing a fight in order to be killed. Julia refuses, believing that so long as the sword is bound to himself, all responsibility for its actions falls on him. He does not want anyone else to have to bear his burden, even if it means suffering for all time. If he feeds the sword the violence it craves in a controlled setting, in the service of a higher power, he can maintain what little control he has and thus prevent it from slaughtering indiscriminately. At the cost of his soul and a few innocents, he can spare untold lives and the souls of future samurai. He lives a life of voluntary imprisonment and denial of all pleasures, all actions not neccesary to continued survival as pennance for what he has done and will do again. In recognition of this sacrifice of self and soul, the House of Inser makes him keep his title as Knight of the Rose against his will, despite taking actions that would cause any other knight of the same order to be executed under the Code of Avalon.
Alignment
Neutral Good and Chaotic Evil
Current Status
Voluntary imprisonment within the Temple of the Blades
Species
Conditions
Ethnicity
Other Ethnicities/Cultures
Date of Birth
17th of Exitor
Year of Birth
170 EK
1275 Years old
Circumstances of Birth
Eldest child of a knight in service to Inser
Birthplace
Heretoday, Lancaster
Children
Pronouns
He/They
Sex
Female
Gender
Man
Presentation
Masculine
Eyes
Dark Blue
Hair
Red, short and jagged cut
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Pale
Height
5' 9"
Weight
180 lbs
Quotes & Catchphrases
"If any must bear this burden, let it be me. But do not ask me to approve, Bushido. Nor shall I ever forgive you."
Belief/Deity
Blades Philosophy; Cult of Doomsday
Aligned Organization
Other Affiliations
Comments