Difference between revisions of "Kazuo Kagayama"
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On the other hand, if stressors (be they sounds, emotions, even things like physical hunger) mount to the point where his damaged filter cannot handle them, Kazuo's personality erodes, sometimes to the point of catatonia. Or, more often, a retreat behind the Lurker, who is better equipped to deal with outside stimuli, if only in that it makes them go away (one way or another). | On the other hand, if stressors (be they sounds, emotions, even things like physical hunger) mount to the point where his damaged filter cannot handle them, Kazuo's personality erodes, sometimes to the point of catatonia. Or, more often, a retreat behind the Lurker, who is better equipped to deal with outside stimuli, if only in that it makes them go away (one way or another). | ||
| − | | Combatinfo= | + | | Combatinfo=The Lurker Beneath is something of an inversion of the Egyptian demon [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammut Ammut]. Constructed around the Crocodiles In The Sewers meme/thoughtform, building from Kazuo's semi-instinctual terror of the Dark Hour. The Lurker is very strong, very tough, capable of startling bursts of speed (but otherwise slow), but definitely not the brightest crayon in the box, in that it isn't very inventive or tricksy. It usually doesn't bother with magic for the most part, being more likely to rip your leg off or drag you down into the darkness to drown. |
| − | If Kazuo's insanity is ever cured (or at least brought to heel) there's a good chance his Possession will revert to | + | If Kazuo's insanity is ever cured (or at least brought to heel) there's a good chance his Possession will revert to an actual Persona: Ammut. Provided there's sufficient support available to help him externalize, confront and subdue his Shadow, that is. Ammut's abilities will focus more around fire, stat damagers, and Cost-Up effects (reflecting the Second Death of having your unworthy heart eaten by the Great of Death). Instead of being a hate- and pain-driven destroyer and devourer, she (Ammut is female, and to some extent the last legacy of Kazuo's dead wife) would be a fiercely determined scourge against evil and corruption. |
| Attacks='''Attacks:''' | | Attacks='''Attacks:''' | ||
Revision as of 16:29, 25 September 2010
| Broken Fragments |
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| Status | |
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| Full Name: | Kazuo Kagayama |
| Arcana: | Tower Reversed |
| Nature: | Shadow Possessed |
| Gender: | Male |
| Age: | Early 40s |
| Faction: | Unaffiliated |
| Team: | Civilians |
| Eyes: | Gray |
| Hair: | Gray (was black) |
| Height: | 5'6" |
| Voice Actor: | Fred Tatasciore |
| Persona: | The Lurker Beneath |
| Error creating thumbnail: File seems to be missing: /home/m295reb/public_html/mw/images/f/f2/LurkerBeneath.jpg
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| Gallery | |
| Error creating thumbnail: File seems to be missing: /home/m295reb/public_html/mw/images/0/08/LurkerBeneath2.jpg  Error creating thumbnail: File seems to be missing: /home/m295reb/public_html/mw/images/a/a3/Ammut.jpg  | |
| Quote | |
"The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility." | |
| Profile And Skills |
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| Men can be pushed in strange directions by what Fate hands to them. Once he was a prominent scientist, with a wife, a home, a life. Once he was working towards the salvation of humanity. Ten years ago, that was all ripped away in one hour of chaos and terror. Now, the broken, lonely wreck that was Kazuo Kagayama skulks in the darkness of Port Island, clinging to the only things he has left: Time and his own pain. He always wanted to make the world a better place, a safe place, and in a weird way, he still does. Even in the grip of his Shadow, he hunts the wicked. But with your eyes clouded by darkness and loss, it can be so difficult to tell who is the predator and who is the victim... |
| Skills: Tick Tock, Feed the Croc, Fallen from Grace, Ravaged Heart, Shattered Dreams, Pride Goeth, Like Sands Through the Hourglass, Time is Precious, I Can Hear My Thoughts Touching Every Second, Almost An Enemy, Darkness Will Swallow All Life In Its Own Pain, Time is Fleeting, Devourer of the Dead, Moments Lost Though Time Remains, Eater of Hearts, Got Your Scent, Eat Your Bones, Broken, Twice Scourged |
| Personality | |
| Kazuo's overall personality is difficult to describe, these days. Most of the time, he's nervous, twitchy, and easily startled, with what appears to be a badly shortened attention span. Most, if not all, of this stems from the fact that his input-filter is so badly damaged as to be completely useless. Where most people become accustomed to certain inputs over time, Kazuo does not have this luxury. If, however, he can be calmed sufficiently, more and more of the man's original personality will show itself. He has long ago lost the cheerful energy from before the Disaster, but he remains a warm, caring individual.
On the other hand, if stressors (be they sounds, emotions, even things like physical hunger) mount to the point where his damaged filter cannot handle them, Kazuo's personality erodes, sometimes to the point of catatonia. Or, more often, a retreat behind the Lurker, who is better equipped to deal with outside stimuli, if only in that it makes them go away (one way or another). | |
| Persona | |
| Resonance: Kazuo's Resonance is of a very dark sort. Dark and heavy and somewhat cold, like the air in a tunnel that is not reached by the sun. Violence lurks around the edges, but also a sort of thin, breathy fear, threaded throughout the whole works. Like the quickened breathing and widened eyes of someone desperately certain that a predator has their trail. | |
| Originally a manifestation of fury at that which had caused his loss, namely the Shadows, Kazuo's nascent Persona was stirred by the mental and spiritual trauma of not only witnessing the Port Island Disaster from practically Ground Zero (and losing his dearly loved wife in the same incident), but also being thrust into a Dark Hour still reverberating with the birth-cries of the Arcana Shadows. Fear mixed with rage and was fueled by the hunger that comes to all the homeless eventually. In a way, the Lurker is a very primal darkness, more directly Kazuo's id than most peoples' Shadows tend to be. Its desires are very basic and very direct: food, shelter, safety. There is very little else within the Lurker's "mind," though it has full access to all of Kazuo's intellect.
The Lurker is, at its base, a predator. It tends to regard most things as food, and is usually able to make those things see its point of view. The Lurker is a very large part of how Kazuo has managed to survive for the 10 years since the Incident, not only because of its ability to eat nearly anything (and we mean anything) but also keeping him safe (directly or otherwise) from the predations that many homeless have to fear. | |
| Combat Info | |
| The Lurker Beneath is something of an inversion of the Egyptian demon Ammut. Constructed around the Crocodiles In The Sewers meme/thoughtform, building from Kazuo's semi-instinctual terror of the Dark Hour. The Lurker is very strong, very tough, capable of startling bursts of speed (but otherwise slow), but definitely not the brightest crayon in the box, in that it isn't very inventive or tricksy. It usually doesn't bother with magic for the most part, being more likely to rip your leg off or drag you down into the darkness to drown.
If Kazuo's insanity is ever cured (or at least brought to heel) there's a good chance his Possession will revert to an actual Persona: Ammut. Provided there's sufficient support available to help him externalize, confront and subdue his Shadow, that is. Ammut's abilities will focus more around fire, stat damagers, and Cost-Up effects (reflecting the Second Death of having your unworthy heart eaten by the Great of Death). Instead of being a hate- and pain-driven destroyer and devourer, she (Ammut is female, and to some extent the last legacy of Kazuo's dead wife) would be a fiercely determined scourge against evil and corruption. |
Attacks:
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| History | |
When air bleeds, whispers are stilled and each breath is deadly... Looking back on it all, it almost seemed like a charmed life. One of those that the frightening phrase "too good to be true" could be applied to. And it was. Kazuo Kagayama was on the fast-track almost right out of the gate. The son of a prominent mathematician, we was hitting the books hard from the very moment he knew how to read them. His scores in primary school were exemplary, and he was a shoe-in for one of the better secondary schools in the region, and from there on to university. Throughout his scholastic career, Kazuo showed not only his father's gift for mathematics, but an even more notable grasp of physics, especially in regards to higher theory. Math that many people would regard as little different from arcane scrawls came almost naturally to the young man, and several research groups were vying for his attention long before the end of his scholastic career. Along the way, as is somewhat cliche in tales such as these, he met a girl. Her name was Sara, and she was one of the few that showed not only the interest but also the ability to keep up with the young genius. At first they were study partners in high school. Then lab partners in university. They complemented each other, strengths to weaknesses, two halves of the same whole. Yin and Yang. It was all very poetic, really, and it came as no surprise at all when they declared their marriage. In the end, they both came to work with the Nanjo Group, and nothing would ever be the same again. Not long after their employment, there was a division within Nanjo, creating the Kirijo Group, a move that took Kazuo and Sara with it. Their works in higher energy theory had caught some eyes, and it was decided that they would be a perfect addition to the Shadow research division. Kazuo had no idea just what he was getting into at first, considering his studies and formulae still simply theory. Strange and interesting theory, yes, but nothing more than numbers on paper. It wasn't until later that he learned just how real those numbers were. At first he regarded the existence of the Shadows to be something of a joke. Yes yes, ha ha, let's all have a laugh at the scientist that doesn't go outside for several days at a time. But then he was taken to the labs, shown the specimens, shown just how his numbers and theories had advanced the work in those labs. It was a strange thing... but then, most of the things touched on by his work were rather strange. And there were those dark-energy equations... All too soon, Kazuo was caught up in his research again, but this time with a new purpose, a new inner fire. Here were these creatures, these predators of thinking minds, that could be used to benefit those they would normally hunt! Here was the key to making everyone's lives better! Not just in Port Island, not just in Japan, but the whole world! It could be that he misunderstood the true aims of the Kirijo Group. It could be that he was misled intentionally. In the end, it doesn't really matter, does it? One man, Eiichiro Takeba, interrupted the process that would create the final key to everything the Kirijo Group had been working together towards for so long. The next hour will never leave Kazuo Kagayama's memories. He was there, in the test chamber with his wife, holding her hand as they watched the main timer spiral down towards zero, when everything went horribly wrong. He knew, in the split instant when the readings all went berserk, exactly what had happened. And that no human act could possibly prevent what was going to happen. The test subject shattered, time itself broke into a thousand razor shards, and energy like the heart of a star arced through the room in a howling maelstrom. People, his fellow scientists, his colleagues, were killed almost before they realized what was happening. Many were simply annihilated in the initial resonance cascade, reduced to literally nothing in the explosion. Those further from the main chamber were less fortunate, ripped to pieces by flying debris, immolated by discharging energy... and devoured by rampaging Things. It could be argued that Kazuo was lucky, in that he survived at all. He would be one of the first to argue against this idea. His wife shielded him from the primary blast with her own body, only to be ripped from his arms by the ensuing secondary explosions. He had to watch, barely conscious and pinned under burning debris, as what was left of Sara was dragged screaming down an air vent by some creature that science did not acknowledge. In the end, barely a handful of the researchers on the Shadow project survived to be pried from the smoking rubble. Some more so than others. His physical wounds were treated in a good hospital, and his body healed as well as could be expected. But he was unresponsive, not speaking a word, staring blankly at the ceiling day after day. Shock, the doctors said. Psychological trauma from the loss of his wife and witnessing such a horrible disaster, combined with a nasty blow to the head. He wasn't technically in a coma, but it was a near thing. It was hoped that he would come out of it soon, as his other wounds healed. And, in a sense, they were right. But even when the man that was Kazuo began responding to the nurses and was cleared for discharge, there was much that had not healed at all. He did not reestablish contact with his family. He did not seek the Kirijo Group. He did not go home. Instead, he wandered the streets for a time, with only the possessions the hospital had given back to him. His old watch, a wedding gift from his wife, still worked, and he would sit and watch it for hours, the steady tick tick tick of the mechanism soothing the tumult within him. Though it was uncaring of his plight, time had never betrayed him. It was his constant companion, walking always by his side. Every second followed the next in predictable progression. Predictable, safe events, one after the other, the seconds passing. And then they didn't. That night, the moon turned green, the waters became as blood, and the clock stopped. Even time had betrayed him. And, to add insult to injury, those Things he had seen in the labs, those Things that had killed his wife, were crawling out of the shadows. Something awoke within the former scientist. Something... terrible. In the years since, the Lurker Beneath served to keep Kasuo safe from the dangers that one in his position might have to fear. It served to give voice to the boundless fury and darkness that howled within the shattered core of the man. From his lair within the sewers, its roars shook the tunnels during that horrid Dark Hour, that time when time was not. He had grown rather attached to time. The measured ticking of its passage was a great balm for him. For he knew that, in time, those that had destroyed his world would get their just rewards. It was all just a matter of time. | |
| Miscellaneous | |
When he's calm or focused, Kazuo speaks in a markedly educated mode.
Known to frequent the Port Island train station in particular, but has also been sighted at similar facilities around the area. Apparently something about the trains themselves interests him. Though the trail has long gone cold, someone with determination and connections might be able to track Kazuo back to the handful of survivors from the Port Island Kirijo disaster. Kazuo's Shadow, the Lurker Beneath, is an inversion of the Egyptian demon Ammut. Presumably, if he could be freed from the grip of his Shadow, it would revert to a proper Persona.
It is a very real possibility that some factions know of Kazuo's existence, if not the details of his condition.
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| Logs and Cutscenes | |
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| Social Links |
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At the moment, largely all of Kazuo's "relationships" are more the Lurker declaring this person or another as known threats and/or prey.
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| Soundtrack | |
Constant work in progress, suggestions welcome
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