Hikaru Keido

Hexmaster Hikaro Keido, Pilgrim of the Dawnglint Reach

The cat hengeyokai Hikaru Keido is an eternal pilgrim - an unassuming man who, along with his mate Tana Shaw, walks Generica seeking to right wrongs, help the injured and weak, and find the sacred in the vast openness of nature. What few people realize upon looking at this humble couple is that the man, Hikaru, is also likely the most powerful and deadly Hex Mage to have ever lived.

Physical Description

Special abilities

Hikaru Keido is in the rare class of hex mages who are capable of immediately reflecting the ectokinetic manipulations of other, lesser hex mages at the moment they are activated. The supernatural terror and weakness that Hikaru imposes on wrongdoers is so potent that it can cause permanent physical and psychological disability if so desired; tyrants, highwaymen, and roving monsters alike have been reduced to quivering piles on the ground by the mere brush of the venerable Hexmaster's hands. This power lies in stark contrast to his moral inclination to offer succor for the afflicted and forgiveness for those willing to seek redemption.
Aside from wielding all the iconic abilities of a hex mage in their most refined forms, Hikaru is also a competent Bearer of Burdens, allowing him to absorb maladies from allies and heal them within his own body through arcane inner alchemy techniques when they can't be dispelled outright. He owes these incredible powers to decades of experience in the field and the training provided by his unique monastic upbringing.

Specialized Equipment

Hikaru is a competent staff fighter and has wielded many staves and double-ended polearms over the years. Most have been inlaid with hexchrome to channel and enhance his abilities. Hikaru also carries sheafs of paper strips and calligraphy implements to create paper talismans to contain his hex glyphs. When used to bind or compel a course of action from opponents through the power of embedded hex glyphs, Hikaru refers to these talismans as 'Negotiator's Notes.'
Over the course of his many adventures in hexbreaking and mortal conflict with outre powers of eldritch darkness, Hikaru has amassed a small collection of cursed objects mercifully wrested from the unwilling grasp of unfortunate victims. One such item is a simple cloth doll that causes painful uroliths in anyone unlucky enough to touch it; Hikaru, himself unaffected by the curse of what he calls 'Kidney Stone Barbie,' sometimes throws this doll into the faces of opponents as a means of debuffing them as a prelude to walloping them into submission.

Mental characteristics

Sexuality

Hikaru was once a cat and, as such, retained a cat's promiscuous morality for a time. Preternaturally charismatic as a function his growing arcane powers, Hikaru's encounters with members of the fae realms often ended in moonlit trysts, exposing him to the unique magics of that other plane and further enhancing his powers. Over time, however, as his journey to the west found him increasingly isolated in unfamiliar wilderness and among cultures he barely understood, Hikaru developed an appreciation for the stability of monogamous relationships. He eventually settled down with fellow hengeyokai Tana Shaw, whom he considers his perfect counterpart despite the disparity in their species of origin.

Education

Hikaru awoke to his hengeyokai form among the monks of the Dawnglint Monastery, who had taken care of him when he was still just another tabby cat running around the bamboo copses of the Dawnglint Reach. The monks fostered the young Hikaru's spiritual development, tutoring him in reading, philosophy, and the healing arts. Nevertheless, Hikaru never developed the sort of divine connection that allowed his adoptive parents to wield magic as such; exposure to dark magic somewhere in the surrounding forest had granted him the power to sense and manipulate ectoplasmic miasma, and so he instead started naturally down the path of becoming a hex mage. Recognizing that his magic required a different sort of push to fully blossom, Hikaru thanked the monks for their care and embarked on a pilgrimage to the west to either finally gain his divine connection or, barring that, grow and share his talents to make the world a better place.

Mental Trauma

Hikaru's work as a hex mage has exposed him to danger and death in all their most twisted forms. He has fought the hordes of the undead in the darkness of subterranean caverns so deep that teleportation magic cannot reach out of them, redeemed enemies to the path of right only to see them cut down by blade and spell in the attempt to escape from their fellows, and traversed the still-smoldering ruins of civilizations cut short by the depredations of evil. Early in his career, Hikaru suffered the consequences of curse magic he was as-of-yet unable to counter, twisting and wracking his body until he could devise a cure for himself. These experiences sharpened Hikaru Keido into the man he is today, but not without deadening some of his youthful enthusiasm for the journey.

Morality & Philosophy

Hikaru Keido believes in transcendant moral good and, while the gods don't directly reward him for his prayers, he strives to please them by embodying the sometimes difficult to balance virtues of justice, clemency, dilligence, and faith. Hikaru provokes fear and weakness in wrongdoers he encounters on his pilgrimage not out of malice, but specifically because doing so is much preferrable to being forced to inflict lethal damage to stop their depredations on the innocent folk of New Generica. In fact, Hikaru is resolved to put these people on the road to redemption wherever possible, even if it sometimes takes a mighty walloping to make such an opponent see reason.
Still, some opponents represent ongoing dangers to members of his party or the greater world and are also not amenable to persuasion. Fiends, for example, are elementally evil and are almost immune to such efforts. In these cases, when Hikaru is forced to use lethal force to protect himself and others, he does so as quickly as possible to minimize suffering.

Personality Characteristics

Virtues & Personality perks

The path of the Bearer of Burdens requires a certain acceptance of personal discomfort and sacrifice. Hikaru Keido is fully prepared to lay down his life for his companions and has, in fact, been plucked back from the brink of death on several occasions after stepping into the path of danger on the behalf of others.

Vices & Personality flaws

Naturally inclined towards flippant or irreverent humor due to his hengeyokai nature, Hikaru sometimes has a hard time taking things seriously until they have escalated beyond his control.

Alignment

Lawful Good

Species

Hengeyokai

Professions

• Hex Mage

Age

~200 years

Sex

Male

Eyes

Green

Hair

Orange, graying

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Moderate tan (human form), orange tabby (animal form)

Height

5'6"

Weight

175 lbs

Quotes & Catchphrases

I know what you really are. My gift to you is a choice, kin. You can stay here, rejecting your awakening and preying on the road-weary until someone comes around strong enough to skin you like the animal you once were. Or, you can join our little pilgrimage and see what the world has to offer. Now choose.

— Hikaru, sparing the disguised hengeyokai bandit Tana Shaw.

Careful, friend. I can hurt you in a way that actually matters.

— Hikaru, to a particularly mouthy conjured devil.

Don't talk our wizard that way. In fact, I'm revoking your swearing priveleges; you are now driking the 'respect women' juice until I tell you otherwise.

— Hikaru, drastically reducing an elven warrior's vocabulary by the power of curse magic.

Par pari refero, fuck-o.

— Hikaru, upon reflecting Warlord Kenati's domination hex with lethal results.

D&D 3.5

Hengeyokai Hex Mage 20/Bearer of Burdens 10