Ro Iki

Me?

Hi, I'm Ro. I guard the mortuary and perform funeral rites. I'm also a recovering necromancer. Don't worry, the bodies of your deceased love ones are perfectly safe with me, I promise.

— A conversation that would go very poorly

I used to be powerful. Someone people said had a "promising future". Then I learned that future was being a powerful puppet to a selfish man. I trusted him, believed everything he said, and escaping those lies cost me everything.

I've tried to rebuild myself in Main City, where I serve as an acolyte to the Justice Shard. It's better than being a puppet, but the version of me that had a promising future would hate what I've become.

Age

26

Residence

Main City

Followed Shard

Justice Shard, no shardmark

Current Status

Acolyte of Church
Necromancy Reject of Cult (secret)

Place of origin

Necromancer Settlement (secret)

---

A Job's a Job

I can perform a perfect ritual in my sleep, but that's only half the point of funeral rites.

To a necromancer, death isn't sad. It's a... transition. We don't even have funerals. Here, it's a whole process. People sob and wail and lament. The other acolytes cry with them and say soothing words to offer comfort. I try, but I'm not like them. There's a piece I'll never understand.

They know it, too. They're kind to me, but I'll always be an outsider in their world. Different. Wrong. Sullied. I wonder if they'll figure out why I'm like this, and what they'd do if they knew. I doubt they'd let me anywhere near their dead anymore.

A Friend's a Friend

Kim's my only real friend. She showed me the cracks in what I was raised to believe. Made me start questioning. She's why I left Necromancer Settlement.

As an apostle of the Justice Shard, she helped me become an acolyte. She keeps my background secret, and nobody needs to know I'm a loathsome Necromancy Reject. Nobody but us can enjoy the irony of a former necromancer putting the dead to eternal rest.

Sometimes justice means lying on a few forms.

— She actually said this

Author Commentary

Character Notes

Ro wants to fit in and be like the people around her, but gets regular reminders that she simply can't.

• Any discomfort she shows around death and the dead is an act to fit in better/stand out less.
• She can seem cold or heartless at times, and her sense of humor dark or morbid, due to her background.
• She doesn't understand most references to cultural events from before she escaped the intentional isolation of Necromancer Settlement.
• She sometimes still acts like she has a leadership position.
• There's something simmering just beneath the surface, begging to escape.

Inspirations

• Ikiryō, or living ghosts. They can be peaceful, but often they haunt places or torment people out of spite or for revenge.
• Yuki-onna, or snow women. They often appear during snow storms as beautiful young women. Stories vary between whether they are heartless killers or protective saviors.

Expected Arc

1. Hiding her past
2. Overcoming her past
3. Embracing her past