Kiba



The Fanged One

The Basics

 * Name: Kiba
 * Aliases: The Fanged One, the Great Fox, the White Fox, the Trickster King, and others.
 * Species: Kitsune
 * Gender: Male
 * Age: Approx. 10,000. Looks to be in his early thirties.
 * Hair: Blonde
 * Eyes: Red
 * Race/Ethnicity: Caucasian, some Mediterranean features.
 * Location: Corrant City, Moorath, The Mortal Plane
 * Year: 1893 (Equiv. to about 2007)
 * Verse: Original
 * Played By: Cyril Niccolai
 * Room #: 511
 * Mun: Pen

Appearance
Kiba’s appearance tends to change a lot, though tends to have one preferred form at a given time. Currently, his favorite form is that of a tall, extremely handsome human man with perfect, blond hair to about his chin. His skin is tanned and flawless and his hands are manicured. He almost always wears a white suit with a red silk tie, and he always has a small silk bag with an odd, red swirling design on it, which he keeps attached to his belt. His eyes, however, are bright red and his two upper canine teeth are just pointed enough to be called fangs, which is where his name and title come from. He speaks with an accent that would sound to normal ears like a mix of Czech and British, though good luck trying to figure out where the hell it’s from.

Anyone with any sort of psychic, mental, godly or magical (the wizard kind) abilities will be able to see a small flame flickering above his head when he is in human form.

When he’s in his normal form, he is a white-furred fox, about the size of a horse and with nine tails. In this form he is quite a bit stronger and faster than a normal fox, and can teleport, but aside from that he isn’t all that special.

Psychology
Kiba is, first and foremost, extremely bored. He is very, very old, even for a kitsune, and has done and seen and experienced just about everything ever. His entire purpose for being, these days, is to do and see things that he hasn’t before, or at the very least to amuse himself.

What this translates to is that Kiba is completely selfish and completely amoral. He can tell right from wrong, he just has no need for either. He lives only to amuse himself, and 99% of the time this amusement comes at other people’s expense. He once seduced and slept with a queen, an act which then caused a war between four kingdoms that lasted many years and cost many lives, all on a whim. He usually doesn’t go in for major catastrophes, preferring to slowly and methodically ruin an individual’s life, though every once in awhile he likes to ruin entire countries or economies. He plays tricks and makes deals, and in many ways is sort of a devil figure. His reputation is global, and he is referred to as “The Fanged One,” “The Trickster God,” and other such titles.

Sex is another amusement for him. It’s one of the few things in his life that has yet to become boring. Folk in general are a bit liberal when it comes to views on sex, and Kiba in particular is very open about the whole thing. He’ll talk extensively about what most would consider very private things, and will basically sleep with anything that moves (and he has).

Kiba’s manner is one of charm and elegance. He looks like the sort of person you’d expect to wear a robe and sit in front of a fire while sipping brandy from a snifter. He has a very sophisticated way of speaking, and is very creative in his insults. He can talk people into just about anything, which makes making deals quite easy. He prefers a high class lifestyle and exudes an aura of sophistication, confidence and wealth, though people who get to know him find that he comes off as cold and detached. One of his favorite pastimes is completely obliterating the lives of rich people.

Kiba is virtually incapable of loving anything but himself. He is completely and utterly selfish, and has never actually been in love with anyone, though he’s an excellent actor. He is self-absorbed, callous, and arrogant, generally looking down on humans and most Folk. At the same time he is not above degrading himself or showing deference to someone, so long as it is all part of his plan to eventually destroy them. It is hard to actually anger him, but if he is affronted, annoyed, attacked, or killed by someone, he will curse that person and destroy their lives, and the lives of everyone they love, utterly.

Very, very rarely, something will strike him on a real, emotional level, and he will actually act in the interest of others. This sometimes means going out of his way to save someone’s life or even just be nice to them. No one, not even Kiba, is sure why or when this happens, though it does happen when he becomes attached to something or someone that interests him. The most recent instance of this is the relationship he is forming with Violin, Axis and Ko—he is starting to actually care about them a little bit, which is extremely confusing for him. Emotions in general confuse him, because he doesn’t really feel them in the same way that most people do.

Sills/Powers
Kiba is a kitsune, an extremely powerful one. A kitsune’s power grows as they age and with each tail they sprout, which happens every hundred years. Kiba is about ten thousand years old and has nine tails, making him one of very few such kitsune. His main ability is to create illusions so powerful that they will look and feel completely real. Only a very, very powerful psychic would be able to notice that it was an illusion or attempt to break out of it. His illusions can affect all six senses, and can also affect plants and animals. Most of his illusions these days are rather subtle, though he’ll sometimes show off if he feels like it. His human appearance is in fact an illusion, as is his location—in other words, if you see him standing near a tree, chances are he’s actually standing invisible behind you. He can create illusions of time, space, distance, direction, and just about anything else you can think of.

These illusions are all generated by a force called Foxfire. In its simplest form, Foxfire is just a sort of confusing flicker of light that tends to make you see things; it’s the same sort of thing that makes people see “lantern lights” in dark, misty forests. Foxfire is almost exclusively used for creating illusions, though it can also be manipulated into a minor and very subtle weapon. It is fire, after all, and can burn or suffocate depending on what form it’s in. Foxfire’s real danger, though, is basically its power of persuasion. The whole driving force behind Foxfire and illusions is that they persuade you to believe something, which causes a sort of placebo effect. You might get stabbed with an illusionary sword, and even though it’s not really real, the fact that you believe you’ve been stabbed is what causes the real damage, and perhaps even death. Essentially, in the words of Morpheus, “the mind makes it real.”

Kiba’s big thing is that he makes deals, which sort of counts as an ability. Kiba can essentially make things happen, either with illusions or in the real world, though he can only do this if someone has made a deal with him. He will offer a person whatever they want in exchange for something of equal value, and then he might make it happen if he feels like it. Unless he wants it to be illusory, it will actually happen. In this respect, he can basically do anything he wants, though he requires that someone have made a deal first. Similarly, he can “take” whatever he wants, so long as the deal has been made—bits of soul, body parts, memories, whatever the client is willing to offer.

He also has quite a few other tricks up his sleeve, or rather, hidden in the small infinite bag he always carries. These are highly varied and are usually tools and tricks he has created himself or stolen from others.

Kiba has a couple of weaknesses, though. Having his illusions broken is very, very painful and leaves him exhausted and hurt for quite awhile afterward. It’s not easy to break his illusions, though. A very powerful psychic can forcibly break them through mental attacks. The major thing, however, is a barking dog. If Kiba hears a barking dog, his illusions are immediately broken. The only other way to break his illusions is to lure him into the firelight of a fire burning with wood as old as he is—though good luck finding ten thousand year old wood.

His other major weakness is his pearl, which is actually his soul, though he never tells this to anyone. All kitsune have a pearl, which they keep with them at all times. Kiba’s pearl is about the size of a golf ball, and he keeps it in the little infinite bag hanging from his hip, along with a zillion other things. If someone manages to steal his pearl—and it’s not easy to do, as he guards it with his life—they essentially have control of him until he gets it back, and he is forced to follow their commands until then.

Kiba can in fact be killed, though he revives himself after a week or so. The only way to kill him permanently is to destroy his pearl. When he dies temporarily, his body disappears; when he dies permanently, it doesn’t. Killing him tends to annoy him a great deal.

History
Kiba was born in the Whodden like almost all Folk, though he left for the Mortal Plane sometime in his fifties, since kitsune prefer to be around humans. He built up a reputation for himself as being a little more cruel than other kitsune pretty quickly. He was quick to curse people, and also seemed to enjoy seducing men and women and then destroying their lives. He disliked how easily humans abandoned reality for an illusion and felt that he was teaching them a lesson.

As time went by, the more he saw of humans the more they disgusted him—and yet at the same time, he was fascinated. He found he wanted to learn as much as he could, not just about the humans but about everything. He began traveling, learning and doing everything that he could, but no matter where he went, humans continued to disappoint him. By the time he had turned a thousand and had grown all nine of his tails, he had essentially lost hope in humans and was beginning to lose hope in the world in general. He became detached from people emotionally, and began using his illusions solely for his own enjoyment.

Time passed, and Kiba’s power grew. He kept traveling, still hoping to learn and do everything. He solved mysteries, fought wars, caused wars, stole, pirated, seduced kings and queens, killed, and did basically whatever amused him at the time. By the time he was about six thousand, he was starting to become bored. He was running out of things to do or even new ways of doing old things. He began to do basically whatever could amuse him for awhile. By the time he was about nine thousand, he was doing just about everything out of boredom. At that time, technology was starting to change rapidly and humans were becoming interesting again. For the past thousand years he has for the most part kept himself entertained by watching humans change and transform, and though he would never, ever admit it, he became rather impressed at how rapidly they were progressing.

It eventually got to the point that there were only a handful of things he hadn’t done yet, and one of these was that he had never seen the Fourth Plane. He spent about a hundred years trying to figure out how to access it, and in fact tried to go there several times and failed each time. Finally, only a few months ago, a young exorcist by the name of Violin sought him out for help, having heard that he had knowledge about just about everything. She revealed that a piece of the Fourth Plane had lodged in her left eye—covered by an eyepatch—and Kiba immediately decided that he was going to see her eye. He challenged her to a fight, during the course of which she blew a dog whistle and brought just about every barking stray to them, causing his illusion to shatter.

Realizing that he would have to give up his info without ever seeing the Plane, he “accidentally” dropped his bag containing his pearl, which Violin picked up. She offered it back to him right away, but Kiba made a show of telling her she was now his master, all so that he could stay near her and someday see the bit of Fourth Plane that had replaced her eye.

Since then he has been staying with Violin and helping her with exorcising oni-agnan.

Tree of Life and the Planes
Kiba’s world consists of four tiers—four planes—of existence. The four planes are connected by the Life Tree, which is a gigantic tree that is the source of all life. Think Yggdrasil. The Tree is the only passageway between the four planes, although some have discovered other means of travel.

The first plane exists at the roots of the Tree, and is known as the Underworld—this is where people go when they die and where, if they lived a decent life, they are eventually absorbed into the Tree and return to the cycle of life. This is also where oni-agnan are born, and where Plague originates. Oni-agnan are humans or Folk who become so corrupted and twisted that they turn into monstrosities that feed on the lifeforce of others. Their name means “corrupted ones”, and though little is known about them, it is said that they are intrinsically connected to Plague. Plague is a noxious purple-black gas that has been leaking into the Mortal Plane and the Whodden through Plague vents for the century or so. No one knows how it can pass between the planes or why it exists or even what it really is. Plague tends to kill all who come into contact with it, though it also causes mutations and diseases.

The second plane is the Mortal Plane, commonly called Gaea, and this is where humans reside. It exists at the trunk of the Tree of Life. It looks generally like the real world—mountains, rivers, cities, lots of people. The world is not Earth, however, and Kiba is currently living in Corrant City, in the country of Moorath. In recent years, more and more Folk have been coming to live in Gaea due to the Plague vents in the Whodden.

The third plane is the Spirit Plane, called the Whodden, and this is where most Folk reside. This Plane sits in the canopy of the Tree. No one is quite sure how big the Whodden is, as its size and shape change almost constantly, as does the landscape. Maps are impossible but also unneeded, since Folk tend to instinctively know their way. The Whodden is currently divided into the Four Quarters, and each Quarter is ruled over by a particular family of Folk. The Northern Quarter is ruled over by the wolf spirits; the Eastern Quarter by tiger spirits; the Southern Quarter by djinni; and the Western Quarter by horse spirits. Power tends to change hands with some frequency, though the whole of the Whodden has stabilized politically in recent years, and there is a slow progress toward unification of the Four Quarters.

The fourth plane has no name other than the Fourth Plane, and this is the realm of mystery. It resides at the very top of the Tree, and no one living knows anything about it. There are many theories about what exists in the Fourth Plane, but no one knows for certain. One of the only people to have seen the Plane and lived is a friend of Kiba’s, a human girl called Violin—she saw the Fourth Plane, and a piece of it supposedly took up residence in her left eye, though Kiba is still trying to confirm this. It is said that looking upon the Fourth Plane causes one to go insane.

Folk
Kiba’s world is populated by Folk, which is the collective name given to spirits, mythological beasts, and so on. There are four major groups of Folk:


 * Sidhe--These are commonly called The Fair Folk or the Fae. The group consists of fairies, elves, sprites, and various other creatures, some of whom are actually servants of the fairies. For the most part they are human-shaped, though many don’t look all that human. They are very clever and devious, and are known for their beauty and their affinity for Nature.


 * Legendaries--This is the second largest group of Folk, and consists of every creature that is basically seen as “legendary” to humans. Dragons, wyverns, sphinxes, djinni, shedu, bunyips, thunderbirds, kitsune, and so on and so forth; all the mythical beasts from Earth legends fall into this category. Kiba, being a kitsune, counts as a Legendary. Legendaries have a high degree of magic, and are usually very intelligent and enigmatic.


 * Animal Spirits--This is by far the largest group of Folk there is. Basically, for every animal or insect that exists in the human world, there is a spiritual counterpart in the Whodden. They have the form of animals, though they can transform into human, can speak, and tend to be pretty intelligent. Some of them have certain magicks or powers. They are characterized by whatever characterizes the actual animals in the human world; dog-spirits are loyal and carefree, cat-spirits are aloof and clever, and so on. Unlike humans and other Folk, animal spirits are born with their souls on the outside, in the form of small glowing orbs like marbles, usually called their “light.” The light is typically carried in the mouth, stomach or behind the eye. Animal spirits can only die when the light is destroyed.


 * Insubstantials--This is a smaller group of Folk, and essentially consists of sentient and semi-sentient spirits. Elementals, house spirits, location spirits, and nature spirits all make up this group. They tend to be untalkative and rather mysterious, and don’t really get involved in the overall Whodden community. They just do whatever they do and keep to themselves.

Very rarely will two different Folk come together and bear children. These hybrid offspring are generally shunned and looked down on.

Currently Kiba is with three others—Violin, an exorcist, and her two teammates Axis and Ko, who are a human and a tree sprite, respectively. The trio have been fighting together for about a few years, and Kiba is a recent addition to the team. Violin belongs to the Cabal of Exorcists, an organization devoted to defeating the oni-agnan and Plague.

In-Game

 * Edgar Ross Holloway--Positive--Kiba just loves him. Edgar is easy to torment and terrorize, and what's more, he's a cocky little bastard who fights back and pretends not to be scared. He's the perfect target for when Kiba is particularly bored.


 * Luck--Positive--Probably the only person in Cicero that Kiba actually respects. Luck and wish-granting spirits are relatively rare in Kiba's world, and he appreciates their talents. Luck is also the only person he can talk matter-of-factly with, though it's anyone's guess how long she continues to interest him.


 * Isaiah Kennedy--Positive?--He's an annoying brat, but at least he's amusing. Kiba likes toying with him, but not as much as Edgar. Isaiah also has an unusual power that Kiba wants to know more about.


 * Ladon Ceto--Negative?--Kiba finds him interesting, which means he likes to toy with him and his daughter, and really wants entry into Ladon's world. Kiba is also really annoyed by Ladon's stubbornness and cockiness. Ladon just flat out hates him.

Canon

 * Violin--Positive--Kiba finds her extremely interesting, mostly due to her rather unpredictable personality, but also because of her missing eye. Violin is an exorcist, part of the Cabal of Exorcists, and her job is to fight the oni-agnan, which are normal humans and Folk that have been twisted beyond all recognition and corrupted by Plague, turned into demonic monsters. When Violin was twelve, there was an accident that ended up with her seeing the Fourth Plane; the Fourth Plane took her left eye and left a piece of itself in its place, as payment for her seeing it. Kiba wants more than anything to see the bit of Fourth Plane embedded in her eye.


 * Ko--Positive--Ko is a tree sprite and helps Violin with her exorcisms. He is able to talk to trees and manipulate their roots, making him formidable in a fight. He's in his eighties, but has the apperance and personality of a teenage boy. He likes practical jokes and all things amusing. He's rather childish at times. He also has a serious crush on Kiba, which Kiba intends to use to his advantage--though a part of Kiba really isn't sure how to deal with Ko, since he seems so innocent.


 * Axis--Positive--Axis is a normal human girl whose parents were affected by Plague. They were fine, but it caused a mutation in Axis. Since she was born, she has been incapable of being indoors; every time she crosses a threshold, she automatically starts to cause a reality warp. It's not something she can control. Kiba finds her fascinating, though he doesn't hang out with her all that much. He does appreciate her love of books and learning.


 * Tavin--Negative--The big bad in Kiba's world. Tavin is Violin's younger brother; he was formerly an exorcist until he slaughtered his entire family, save Violin. His exorcist weapon was turned into a corruption weapon, something that can actually turn otherwise normal creatures into oni-agnan. His goals are unclear, but he has a personal vendetta against Violin and her team, just as Violin has sworn to kill him. Kiba hasn't actually met him yet.