Hitoshi the Sad

Name	Hitoshi Matsuda
Gender	Male
Born	25 January 2292 (2292-01-25)
Weight	Approx. 190 lbs.
Hair	Black
Race	Human
Affinity	Rift
Alignment	Lawful Evil
Weapon of Choice	The Devil's Veil
Affiliation	Dark Jesters
Player	Greg

History

Early Life

Hitoshi was born in the United Provinces, the son of a prostitute. A frail child, he was often mistreated and picked on for being weak and poor, constantly breaking down and crying when tormented by other children. Often he found himself trudging home alone in the dirty streets, his face smeared with blood after suffering one beating or another at the hands of his bullies. His mother never knew of these things, only ever coming home to sleep and to leave groceries, just enough to survive on. Hitoshi would sit in his room and cry until his sister came.

Satori Matsuda, Hitoshi's older sister, was his whole life, the only sparkling smile in his universe and the only person who cared. Though she was only a year older than Hitoshi, but was a much stronger person than him. Every memory of his time with her was a cherished moment, but it was not fated to last. In 2303, when Hitoshi was 11 and Satori was 12, their world was thrown into even deeper sorrow. Their mother had died on the street, murdered by nameless cutthroats. Before they knew it, the pair were shipped off to separate orphanages by social services.

Hitoshi grew up very strong and very mean, not spiteful or mean spirited, but wrathful and capable of delivering terrible retribution on his enemies. It was with this raw anger that saw his way to a life of crime almost as soon as he left the orphanage. With no goals, no ambition, and no family, he found joy in nothing, doing only what he needed to in order to survive in the only way he knew how. He stole, he destroyed, he murdered, all for money. He was small time, but well respected among those who knew him. In those days, there was only one bright memory in his mind: Satori, his long lost sister.

The Dark Jesters

He was twenty years old when his curiosity and yearning became overwhelming. Even for a killer like him, love was a necessity. He would have that love again from her, or he would always feel nothing. After months of searching, he found the orphanage where they placed her, only to discover she had been adopted shortly after arriving there. While he had been a weakling, no prized son to anyone, and spent his entire childhood in a boys home, his sister had been taken in right away. The thought pleased him.

He had to break into the orphanage to find out Satori had been adopted under an assumed identity. Further searching lead him to the realization that her new family didn't actually exist, and never had. It was a dead end, and a frightening one. Why would someone take his sister away and take the care to keep her hidden? Eventually, he found out through his criminal contacts that this kind of disappearing act was rather common. His sister had been adopted by an underground group whose purpose and location was largely unknown. Only rumors about them surfaced; that they wore clown make up, that they were a group of murderers. The locals called them Jesters.

The Jesters grew their ranks almost exclusively through the adoption of children, who were easily trained and indoctrinated, a strategy well documented in past wars. It was too late for Hitoshi to get in that route, and so he organized a phony assassination, ordering a kill under false pretense for the Jesters. He used some of his underground contacts to open a contract with the elusive assassins, then waited outside the mark's house. He had carefully selected someone believable, a retired judge with a ton of enemies, but also someone who never left their home due to illness. It was then that he first witnessed the exquisite art of assassination the way the jesters did it. He himself was no slouch when it came to camouflaging himself and hiding out, but when he saw the way four jesters simply materialized from the shadows in the man's front lawn, he understood just how outclassed he was. In only a few seconds they'd secured a perimeter and one member of the group slipped inside. Less than a minute later, the jester returned and they all scattered to leave. Efficient, quiet, ruthless.

Hitoshi chose to follow the one who'd made the kill. Though he was certain he'd be caught at any moment, he somehow managed to remain hidden all the way into an old service tunnel beneath the city, after miles of walking and slinking through narrow streets. It was there he was ambushed and subdued beyond any hope of resistance, attacked from behind by the other three jesters that had been tailing him even as he believed himself undetected. His arm was twisted until it cracked under a knee. A dark glove crowned with brass knuckles knocked him unconscious.

When he awoke, he was somewhere on the inside, a room with a bed and a shelf full of books, a small table with a candle. Here he was to learn that the jesters knew why he was there. He would be allowed to see his sister if he were to swear allegiance to the Dark Jesters as a trained killer. Although he was older than most inductees, they were aware of his aptitude for the trade, and were willing to make arrangements. They made only one condition; that he would never reveal his true identity to Satori.

Hitoshi was taught their tactics, and trained to murder the way they did. They tattooed him, and he named himself Hitoshi the Sad because he had been such a crybaby as a boy. He didn't understand at first their reasons for shielding Satori, but he soon learned. He was allowed as much time as he pleased with Satori the Joy, a Voice who often spoke with him cheerfully and spent much time with him. She did not recognize him for who he was, and went on and on about how she had a little brother somewhere, a brother pure, and smart, and clean, far from the wretched, dirty underworld where she would always exist. It was her greatest pride, that she had convinced the Jesters to leave him alone, even all those years ago as a young girl. She went on and on about all of this because her brother shared his name, and that was very funny to her.

Hitoshi loved his sister. Growing in strength and skill, he completed every mission given him smoothly, even soloing a high risk target. They made him a captain; a leader of a four man squad and chiefly responsible for making the contracted kill. Every day he stayed with Satori, and eventually every night she fell asleep in his arms. In time they began an incestuous relationship against her knowledge. Hitoshi knew nothing of Heaven or Hell or decency, and it didn't matter to him that he lay down with his own blood. She was the only person he cared about, the only reason he was the Jester's dog. Nevertheless, this particular sin would threaten to destroy him.

Mission to SAHBER

In December 2315, the life Hitoshi and Satori had together was forever ruined. Hitoshi's team was sent on an especially dangerous mission, one that took them within the nest of the organization known as SAHBER. They were to kill a high ranking official named Marcus Reins. Entry was easier than expected, his squad quickly dispatching the lobby guards and setting up a defensive position as Hitoshi went upstairs to deal with the target alone. Marcus was waiting, however, despite the Jester's typical supernatural stealth in reaching him. It was a trap.

Satori was there, held prisoner somehow, tied up and in Marcus's control as a hostage, one that would have cowed Hitoshi on another day. However, Hitoshi was within the Death Walk, a terrible and beautiful state the jesters put themselves into with secret drugs. He was more than fearless, incapable of hesitation. Like this, nothing was important but the destruction of the target. Satori pleaded with him, her eyes locked upon his. Somehow, against impossible odds, he hesitated, just for a moment.

As Hitoshi drew his 45 caliber pistol, the bomb strapped to the front of Marcus's desk detonated. The room went up in a brilliant flash. Hitoshi turned away from it reflexively, but the impact blew him clean through a window. He fell, burning, a dozen stories to the streets below.

Return from Hell

In November 2316, Hitoshi woke up in a hospital after nearly a year of constant nightmares. He had somehow acquired new powers, fining himself automatically protected by a shield of skeletal spirits in battle, which manifest and swirl around him. He soon learns to project this spiritual energy, attacking and moving objects with wraiths. In his dreams he remembers speaking to a beautiful woman, clad only in blood. She had given him these powers to exact revenge upon the man who would have him dead: Jubei the Wrath. Pursuing this line of thought, he learned from Mentir the Solemn that Jubei is his biological father. After demonstrating his new Hellish abilities, Hitoshi instructed Mentir to gather the rest of his squad and hide away until he came to them. In this way, Mentir the Solemn, Jacon the Smile, and Fenrir the Proud were saved from the eventual destruction of the entire Jesters guild.

The Dark Jesters Destroyed

In March 2317, during an especially chaotic year within which SAHBER began an all out war on the Dark Jesters, Hitoshi found his father Jubei the Wrath. After a vicious, cutthroat battle, within which they possessed strikingly similar powers, Hitoshi killed Jubei with the man's own sword. Little did he know, this patricide was the sacrificial end note to a dark ritual began by Jubei long ago. By the time Hitoshi had taken Satori into his arms again, a vile presence had taken control of her. The monster from his nightmares, the Devil known as Lilith, possessed her body and mind entirely, slaughtering the remainder of the Dark Jesters with supernatural might. Hitoshi alone survived that bloody day, and swore a horrible vengeance on the witch. His hunt for Lilith began immediately.

The Broken Sister

In October 2321, after the Two Year Gap and many years of constant searching, Hitoshi, Mentir, Jacon, and Fenrir found themselves on Earth. An Aethership had arrived there full of dead bodies which seemed to carry Lilith's calling card, the grisly and inexplicable scene making the news for days. Once there, a Dark Elf named Elkorvir lead them to the desecrated ship and on through the cursed land known as the Banivian Empire.

It was unexpected, the way things were resolved. Rather than achieving the revenge Hitoshi so desperately sought, they discovered Satori wandering the wilderness. Bereft of any unholy powers, simply appearing catatonic and incapable of understanding them. His heart broken, Hitoshi the Sad took his sister back to Disparatus, to secret her away within the old vaults of the Dark Jesters' guild.

Hitoshi remains there to this day, running the shattered remains of the once legendary assassins and growing their ranks, though to what end is unknown. Those peering within his sacred lair report the lonesome killer sits upon his throne with head downcast, and the ghost of a shattered woman at his side, her hand in his hair.