Description

::Name:: Rokkaku Tsubaki

::Age:: 25

::Clan:: She is affiliated with the Koga clan of shinobi, as well as her father's clan, the Rokkaku. Presently, however, she works as a mercenary for whomever will hire her.

::Class:: Shinobi

::Sex:: Female

::Weapon:: Kunai and assorted shuriken, poisons, and dual kodachi.

::Hair Color:: Black

::Eye Color:: Oddly, an accident of genetics gave Tsubaki greenish eyes, though they are dark enough that it's hard to tell unless one looks closely.

::Physical description:: Tsubaki is, as any true shinobi, a master of disguise. She wears many faces, many names, and each is indistinguishable from the last. She is the simple wandering miko, beneath the suspicion of important and above that of those that do not matter. She is the elegant geisha walking down the street, all delicate beauty and sweeping, willowy limbs. She is the humble peasant woman whose eyes never seem to leave the earth beneath her feet, and somewhere in all of these things, she lost herself. Still, a few things about her appearance necessarily remain constant. She's rather tall for a woman at 5'6", and moves with the uncanny grace of those born with it and trained into it by long and arduous hours of practice.

Her inky black hair falls to her waist, but most of the identities she assumes call for it to be worn some other way; humbly tailed beneath a sugegasa, or up and ornamented. It seems that when she has a choice, she braids it for practicality's sake, but she does not often have a choice. Her heart-shaped face has all the delicate features one would expect of a well-bred Japanese woman: the large almondine eyes, slightly upturned nose, defined lips, a delicately-pointed chin. This is all either de-emphasized or played upon as the occasion demands.

Tsubaki is lean and well-formed, highly athletic by necessity but able to use a certain kind of feminine softness to her advantage as well, though she'd prefer not to. Her pale aristocrat's skin has not a hint of a tan to it.

::Clothing/ Armor:: Her disguises are many and varied, but when she is allowed to dress as she chooses, she often dons a martial artist's uwagi and zubon, plus durable tabi and geta. The set that she keeps with her is colored a very dark blue, and has the crest of the Koga displayed on its back in white, a stylized autumn bellflower.

::Combat Specialization:: Being a shinobi is more about having options than specializing, and Tsubaki has learned to use a variety of weaponry, especially of the concealable variety. Still, if she could be said to be best with one thing, it would have to be her dual kodachi- shortswords that while longer than a tanto, are much shorter than a katana. They are often taken for wakizashi, but this is a mistake, as kodachi are more curved in construction and usually have longer handles. While the blade length of a wakizashi might be altered to match the katana it is paired with, kodachi are all around the same size (about 59cm).

Personality

As with anything else about her, Tsubaki changes the way she acts to suit the job. Her own personality has become somewhat lost in translation, but it can be said that she is generally quite pleasant. She seems cheerful and tends to smile, and it would take a skilled reader of people to understand that this is nothing more than another facade. The amount of combat she has seen has transformed a rather naive, hopeful child into a world-weary woman who is sick of death and killing. Some part of her still holds out hope that one day people like her will no longer be necessary, but she isn't holding her breath.

Despite this attitude, she still takes jobs to fight, kill, spy on, or steal from people, perhaps because she has never known anything else. She's not bitter, exactly, just resigned. Living away from her clan and her family for so long has taught her that life is to be valued, and though she knows what she does is wrong, she does not believe she has the strength or the means to do otherwise. She owes the people she works for everything, and she feels bound by a duty to continue repaying that debt by doing what they would ask of her. It is an internal tension that she does not really know how to deal with.

Tsubaki, had she not been trained to be a killer, probably would have been a rather gentle soul, all things considered, and this shows through in her love of music, the arts, and children, of all things. She seems to have a very prominent big-sister instinct for those younger than her, and in the time between missions, she likes interacting with the people in the places she visits, doing what she can to help them out, perhaps as a form of repentance for what she has come to see as her crimes.

Equipment

She carries several (10) concealed kunai most of the time, as well as an assortment of shuriken. When she is able to carry weapons openly, she adds her two kodachi to this, usually slung, saya crossed, over her back. The tools of a shinobi's trade are varied, and she also has a variety or liquid poisons, a length of thin but strong rope, and a soft-shelled smoke bomb or two. By necessity, most of these things are not with her at any given time, but if she expects a fight, she will be armed to the teeth.

History

On the Koga and the Rokkaku:(from Wikipedia) While the town of Kōka was under the jurisdiction of the Rokkaku (lit. "hexagon") clan, it was a kind of autonomous municipality composed of peasant unions, then called sō (惣). All important decisions in the municipality were made by a majority vote from the union representatives, this kind of system was uncommon for the period in question.

Sasaki Rokkaku of Ōmi Province, using Kannonji Castle as a base, started to steadily build up military might. He made light of commands from the Ashikaga shogunate, and eventually began to ignore the shogunate altogether. In 1487, General Ashikaga Yoshihisa brought with him an army to stamp out this rebellion, and a battle between Ashikaga and Rokkaku’s camps ensued. Ashikaga mobilized daimyo from several provinces in the castle of Kannonji, the headquarters of the Rokkaku; as a result, Rokkaku Masayori and Rokkaku Takayori (Masayori's son) were forced to flee to the castle of Kōka. The factual accuracy of their escape is debated and it is likely that they gave up the town to avoid a direct confrontation instead.

Ashikaga then moved his base to Anshiyoji of Kurita District and attacked the castle of Kōka. Kōka fell, but the Rokkaku duo escaped and ordered the Kōka warriors who followed them to mount a heavy resistance against Ashikaga using guerrilla warfare. Exploiting their geographical advantage in the mountains, the Kōka warriors launched a wide range of surprise attacks against Ashikaga’s forces, and tormented them by using fire and smoke on Ashikaga’s camp during the night. The guerrilla warfare prevented a final showdown, until Ashikaga died in battle in 1489, ending the three-year conflict and sparing the lives of the Rokkaku duo.

The elusive and effective guerrilla warfare used by the Kōka warriors became well-known throughout the whole country. This also marked the first time that the ninja of Kōka were drafted as a regular army by their lord. Previously, they were only mercenaries and it was not uncommon to have warriors from Kōka on both sides of a battle. As a result of this victory, the local samurai in the 53 families who participated in this battle were called "the 53 families of Kōka".