Character Information
Character Name(s): Born- Saito Keisuke Currently uses- Uesugi Keisuke
Nicknames/Aliases: Also uses Haruno or Uesugi as last name. On occasion has used Kei, Kyosuke, Kyo, Keito as aliases.
Gender: M
Race: Vampire
Character Age: 449
Date of Birth: October 20th 1557
Date of Death/Turning: Turned in Winter of 1577
Physical Description:
Height: 5'10"
Hair: Black, shaggy cut and loose. He usually doesn't bother styling it much other than running his hands through his hair when wet.
Eyes: Dark Brown
Build: Slender and lean, although his frame isn't very small. He doesn't have a very muscular build and often has bad posture, further making him seem smaller than he really is. He often wears over-sized clothes that hang on him.
Style: Comfortable, loose. He likes soft fabrics and wears scarves a lot as well as loose jeans and slacks. He often is seen with gloves to cover his scarring. He enjoys wearing converses because they are very comfortable and let him feel the ground as he walks. He almost always buys his clothes too big because he doesn't bother trying them on.
Scarring: A scar on his abdomen from a sword wound before he turned. His hands have the remnants of fading sun scarring.
Tattoos: The Kanji for "Echigo" is tattooed on his inner left wrist but he usually wears a leather band over it or black handkerchief tied on it.
PB: Ken'ichi Matsuyama
Birth Location: (Echigo) Niigata Province, Japan
Personality:
Quiet and passive at first glance, Keisuke gives off a sense of fading away. He smiles randomly sometimes, small gentle smiles for someone who lives off of blood and life. Otherwise, he usually carries a forgetfully neutral expression, as if he sometimes forgets to form facial reactions. He doesn't hate humans, nor most other supernatural races, choosing instead a biased neutrality towards them all. Having come from a cultured and educated type of background before he turned, he gives off a bit of aimless scholarly persona, making people feel he's always a little distracted or forgetful. He is quite gentle if firm in his speech and actions during everyday life and many people suppose him to be a dreamer or artist of some sort. He has a tendency to comment and react, rather than excert his own opinions and has a tendency to skirt issues if he doesn't feel like explaining or talking about it. He hates to say no, a remnant of his Japanese upbringing, and will often try his best to let people down in an indirect way. He's slow to anger and when caught in a hostile situation, will usually back down rather than directly confront the person. He's decently neat and organized and is polite and friendly to everyone he meets, even with some light humor.
Keisuke is the type that will help someone with the bus fare or lend his umbrella to a stranger. However, when people try to get close to him, he usually will redirect the conversation, preferring to talk about others. When backed in an absolute corner though, he turns very cold, and when annoyed will just ignore you.
Personal Background:
Keisuke was born the older of two brothers. His father was a samurai under a vassal of Nagao Kagetora, who had overthrown his brother and succeeded in ruling Echigo under the Nagao name. Keisuke was brought up by his mother, who was a proper Samurai wife, taught about duty and serving and learning the laws of survival in the harsh world of feudal Japan.
After his younger brother was born, when Keisuke was about 6, his father had him sent in to serve under the tutelage of a small lord in the Echigo province by the name of Masahiro Shibuno. Trained to be a companion for Masahiro's sons, he would recieve a proper education and upbringing before Masahiro took him as a page to join him when he left his castle to join Kagetora's side. It was around this time that his mother passed away from illness, most likely pneumonia. Keisuke had not seen his family for 5 years by then and he heard about his mother's death only because one of the samurai in the general's camp knew of his father.
His early teens were filled with training as a page and future training companion to keeping notes and journals. Because of his time with Masahiro's children, Keisuke was literate and quite well-read. Kagetora, who would take on the name Uesugi, took notice of the boy when Masahiro introduced him and took him from the lord to be his personal page as well.
From then on, Keisuke's focus was less in physical training and more in learning the books and writings that Kagetora had him dealing with. Keisuke adored the general and took it upon himself to serve him as best as he could. His dream was to serve him forever. He was almost always with the warlord, becoming his close personal shadow, taking notes, holding his things, serving as a personal assistant. With all this, he learned even more, taking in religious knowledge, classics, court proprieties and political maneuvering. Whether Kagetora went to court, stayed in his castle, or was out on the battlefield, Keisuke attended him.
As the years went on and Kagetora's health deteriorated more and more, Keisuke became more and more stressful. The man he'd grown to love and worship was getting old and the possibility of a future without him frightening him to no end. Around that time, he was introduced to the beautiful attendant of another powerful warlord. The new attendant was a graceful and tall man, known for his beauty and supposedly sensual affairs with many members of the court. Known by the alias Yamashita Inzo, the man had appeared in the courts a few years back as an attendant of a lord. Keisuke poured his heart out to the understanding, kind and patient older man. Little would he realize that he was being preyed on as Inzo, who's real name was Haruno Akito, had decided on his next fledgling.
Akito told Keisuke of how sympathetic he was and slowly, throughout a year of slow acquaintance and tending to their relations, suggested a possibility. If he knew a magical spell that could allow Kagetora to live forever, then Keisuke would no long have to worry about his warlord dying. Keisuke, young and naive, easily was manipulated. One catch, the older man said, was that Keisuke needed to try the spell first, in order to make sure it was safe. Hesitant for a long time, Kagetora's illness one winter pushed him over the edge, writing to Akito and agreeing.
Akito arranged for the young man to meet him in a deserted farmhouse outside of the encampment area. Keisuke told his lord he was going out to pick up some things and would return soon.
At the farmhouse, Akito plied on the boy's emotions, pushing his insecurities away in the one fervor of his fear of losing Kagetora. Then, he told Keisuke to drink a mixture of alcohol and some herbs, causing the young man to fall into a disoriented semi-consciousness. Akito fed then, drinking and draining his blood as Keisuke feebly tried to fight him off, the older man taking him sexually at the same time he took his human life. Then, Akito forced him to drink, telling to half-conscious man that this was the only way he'd ever see his beloved warlord again.
When Keisuke regained consciousness and was able to function again from the pain and nausea that came with turning, Akito informed him quite calmly of what had happened. He was now an undead, a vampire fledgling, and he belonged to Akito. Furious, torn apart mentally at the betrayal, and terror, he tries to attack his sire. Akito toyed with him playfully, telling him that he will have to wait years before it's possible for him to deal him damage. Keisuke attempted to flee but Akito captured him, binding him and spending the next few weeks breaking his spirit.
It isn't until nearly a month later that Keisuke managed to escape, although he has since then realized that Akito let him. He sneaks back into the encampment, which was preparing to travel and at night, reaches Kagetora's room. Gazing at the sleeping warlord, he realizes that he can never stay with his beloved Kagetora-sama again. He's lost the right to watch over his lord and serve his needs. As he takes his leave, he leaves an unmarked farewell poem. "My spirit will always be with Echigo. My heart will always follow my master." Bitter and finally broken in spirit, he leaves and is picked up by Akito again, who lovingly begins the process of making the young fledging his new play toy and childe.
It was April of the next year when he saw Kagetora again. Having watched his master leave the hall in order to hide his coughing and pain, he followed him to the room leading to the lavatory where Kagetora had gone to hide his condition. Entering from the roof, he'd met his old master. The older man had been shocked, pleased, then saddened at the sight of his page, who'd gone missing over half a year ago. Desperate and uncertain how to proceed, he told Kagetora, hesitantly, half-truths. He could offer him eternal life, or at least a man he knew could. Then he would never have to suffer, and could live forever protecting Echigo. At least that was what he wanted to tell him.
Akito took them by surprise before Keisuke had a chance to explain any further. His sire backhanded the younger vampire, throwing him into the wall before turning his attention on the warlord. Akito was furious that the boy still had the nerve to get away from under his thumb. He told Keisuke that he would kill Kagetora in front of him, to prove that he could never hold anyone important to him without his Sire's allowance.
Keisuke managed to get up and tried to hold Akito back, but he was utterly hopeless against the older undead. His fighting turned to begging, verbally agreeing to whoring himself out, swearing to be bound to Akito in any means possible if his sire would spare the old warlord from being fed on further. Akito agrees, pleased to see his new childe finally understanding his place in life. They left the warlord unconscious in the lavatory, Keisuke feeling as if he was dying all over again.
His bargaining attempt came too late. Kagetora faded in and out of consciousness the next few days and eventually died four days later. Years later, Keisuke hunted down a servant who had served the warlord in his final days. The servant swore that the warlord awoke towards the end with sad tear-filled eyes and spoke only of his old page, "my faithful servant of Echigo". Because of that information, Keisuke refused to feed on the man when Akito killed him. Akito laughed and mockingly called him an emotional piece of meat.
He spent the next century and a half with Akito, unwilling to leave his beloved Kagetora's country, as well as bound by his promise of loyalty and subservience. The hate and disgust that he felt initially towards Akito slowly changed to a apathetic dislike of the older Vampire. His sire did not treat him poorly, always providing him with blood to cull his bloodlusts, even forcing him to feed in the early days when his horror at drinking blood overrode his hunger. Slowly he learned the skills of the vampire. They eventually met with other fledglings that the old vampire had turned over the years. Akito had a taste for beautiful young men and women, so his children all reflected beautiful or alluring features. The two he was closest with was a long-limbed young-looking geisha named Himiko, and an older peasant born, but beautiful faced man with light colored eyes named Mimoru.
Mimoru would teach him about the skills of Vampire interaction and fighting but Himiko was the one that guided Keisuke's ability to find humans to feed on. She took him under his wing, often times chiding him for his sympathy for the humans they hunted. Pitying the young undead, she also taught him skills on how to interact with the normal population and how to find a Blood Partner, willing humans who let Vampires feed on them. Although confused and sickened at first by the concept, Keisuke eventually accepted it as a part of his new, dark life.
Akito eventually grew less possessive of him, still mocking him more and more as Echigo passed through one and then another of Kagetora's descendent's hands. In 1700's, Keisuke finally broke free of his bond, left his Sire to live on his own. The older Vampire had long since stopped requiring him to feed or rest with him and did not stop Keisuke from leaving. Free, he lived occasionally with the sensitive and yet cruel Himiko, sometimes hunting with Mimoru, though he never joined in Mimoru's preferred diet; the older vampire's own bitter-filled past often drove him to feed on children.
Living among normal humans, he often took historical writing jobs, for a while penning historical fiction novels or working positions in museums, art galleries. For a time he even worked in a Kabuki theater as a low level understudy. Mimoru thought him stupid for working in such close relations with the humans, but Keisuke soon realized that artist and scholars were allowed a leeway of eccentricity. Himiko often stopped by every few years or so, usually to flirt and bedazzle another one of the many young men she lured as her next meal. Often times however, Keisuke only knew she was around because of the gifts she left for him, the latest novels and painting, tickets to performances, all little things her admirers lavished on the beautiful and young-looking vampire. As Keisuke worked and learned, he found his niche was still as a scholar and artist, fulfilling the vision that Kagetora had seen in him so many centuries ago.
In the early 1800's, with the Meiji Restoration and Echigo's merge into the Niigata Province, Keisuke finally decided it was time to leave Echigo. He had long lost track of the watered down descendants of Kagetora, through his sister's child, and bearing some items of his past, he traveled from city to city.
In the mid-1800's, Mimoru tracked him down. His childe brother informed him that their Sire had turned a new Vampire a century ago, a boy child this time. Things had not gone as planned though and Akito found the boy to be quite insane as time went by. One night the boy stabbed Akito in the chest as the older Vampire rested. The Vampire had been furious but somehow in the chaos of the moment, the boy had fled. Akito, went into hiding and nursing his wound had demanded that Mimoru and the others hunt down the child and bring him back for punishment.
Himiko along with another fledgling Suki stayed with their Sire, Akito demanding they help him heal. Keisuke reluctantly joined Mimoru. The two found searched their way until they were at modern day Tokyo, where the boy, Ryuuji, had taken sanctuary with another Vampire and his coven-clan.
There they battled and nearly lost their lives when the Vampire Sire for the clan refused to give up the boy, who he'd decided to take under his wing. Keisuke, younger than Mimoru, was heavily wounded and the two fled back to their Sire to nurse their wounds and find alternatives. Akito, furious at the snub, called upon his clan based in Aizu. Clan war had been declared.
After a long, harsh hundred year war throughout the main island of Japan, the deaths of many innocents as well as Vampires, the clan heads finally came to a truce. The boy was given back to Akito's command, and the Aizu clan would stop their prosecution of Tokyo. But the war had drained all of Keisuke's energy and life from him. Mimoru had been killed during the war, the Vampire tricked and locked out in the light to burn to death. Keisuke, in an attempt to save him, burned both his hands severely. Only Suki pulling him back had resulted in the younger Vampire being saved from a fiery death. With only death and destruction for his memories of Japan, he traveled overseas and finally came to settle down for the time being in Seattle. Although he'd had experience with technology before, it wasn't until the decades after the war that he began usage of computers and the internet. He enjoyed it though and often times liked to go into forums to see how people's ideas and theories on historical events had evolved over time. He also uses it to talk and communicate with his clan back in Japan. Currently, he works as both a translator for books as well as a graphics designer and artist.
Family: (all deceased) Mother, Father, younger brother Toshiyo
Race and Personal Weaknesses: Holy attacks, fire, sunlight, decapitation, heart damage, spinal injuries. Loud noises and killing without need to feed.
Magical Abilities: He can mind speak in a limited range and use Persuasion, sending out emotions. The ability usually works strongest with people already feeling that emotion or instinct, allowing him to pressure them to act. He also has the same abilities of his sire in dissolving into smoke but he claims it's troublesome because it takes too much trouble to reform himself. Also, while he is reforming, there are moments where he is open to attack because he is not fully formed. He has typical vampire strength, healing, speed and senses.
Skills and Training:
Japanese art and calligraphy. He's good at languages and occasionally in the past has worked as a translator for Japanese books. He's a good artist and does a lot of designing and graphics work on top of his traditional work. He's familiar with computer programs for writing and has a basic grasp of photo-editing and digital art programs as well. He still prefers pen and paper though.
Job:Freelance artist and graphics designer
Residence: Old Town Towers Apartment A8
AIM Name: Plot TiesPlot Tie One: Art Projects - Selling paintings, commissions for pieces, buying supplies.
Plot Tie Two: Blood Partner - Someone he feeds on, who is voluntary.
Plot Tie Three: Polite Friends - Meeting nosing strangers who get to know him means having polite friends that call him.
Your informationCharacters insanejournal name: CatchYourShadow
Your email: usodekatameru (at) gmail.com
Your messengers (aim/yahoo/msn): uratarosNouso
Your name (internet or real): Urataros
