![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Rubi App
PLAYER
Player Name: Green Rivers
Pronouns: she/they
Are you over 18? 37+
Contact: @ GreenRives.plurk
Current Characters: N/A
Triggers: N/A
Pronouns: she/they
Are you over 18? 37+
Contact: @ GreenRives.plurk
Current Characters: N/A
Triggers: N/A
STATISTICS
Character Name: The Medicine Seller
Character Canon: Mononoke
Character Age: Unknown - at least a couple centuries, likely more.
Canon Point: End of the second Bakeneko Arc
Link to History: Summary of the first Bakeneko arc CW: Kidnapping, imprisonment, abuse, rape, animal cruelty
Summary for the rest of the 2007 tv series CW: forced abortion, violence, misogyny, domestic abuse, incest, suicide
Skills:
The Medicine Seller possesses excellent hearing, able to precisely track the sound of the scales over a decent distance. He also has a strong sense of smell. In the Nue arc, he is shown to be a formidable crafter of incense.
Physically he is fairly fit and athletic; but he's otherwise unremarkable in that department.
As a medicine seller he's well versed in herbalism and traditional kampo, along with some more modern medicinal methods (up to about the late 1920s to early 1930s) but it is a mishmash of various cherry-picked traditions of 'whatever works'. Some of it is magical in nature (such as the mystical flash grenade gunpowder mixture from Umi Bozu), some of it is mundane and some of it is probably a scam. Look, he's gotta eat, and whatever pays the bills, right?
Abilities:
Ofuda: He can create powerful talismans that are effective in warding off supernatural nasties. They have four stages depending on proximity of said nasty; blank, black writing, black writing with a closed eye motif, red writing with an open eye motif, and when the sword is unsheathed, the paper turns gold, giving them a little extra oomph. He can also create wards without the ofuda but this is shown to be very draining and even capable of outright hurting him when the bakeneko pushes back against the ward, causing deep lacerations to appear on his hand.
Sword of Exorcisms/The Other Self: The sword is a powerful tool in and of itself; when the Medicine Seller knows the Form, Truth, and Regret of a Mononoke, the sword is able to be unsheathed replacing the Medicine Seller with his other aspect known in fandom as the 'Other Self' or 'Hyper Form'. This form possesses the lion's share of his power, able to craft large and powerful barriers out of the ofuda, and exorcise Mononoke without breaking a sweat.
Note: since the sword will not be coming with him, I'd like the more chaotic aspect of his other self to be restored to the Medicine Seller, making him able to draw on that power at will, but also having the effect of destabilizing him and making him far more prone to acting out.
Scales: These are not one of his innate powers but the scales are important tools to measure the distance of a Mononoke and he uses them to track their movements by the sound of their bells.
***The scales are N/A since they won't be coming with him, but I thought I'd make note of them here since they're important in the series.
Hand Mirror: A small, ornate brass hand mirror he wears like a pendant. It can grow to many times its size to reflect magical attacks back. When used in conjunction with the smoke from his pipe, it can help form powerful illusions where the subject can project their inner nature outwards and confront their personal demons.
***Again, N/A unless he gets his hands on a comparable substitute.
Telekinesis: The Medicine Seller can move things without touching them. Rule of thumb is that they seem to have to be possessions of his or he's attached ofuda to them beforehand.
Spiritual Sensitivity: He possesses some degree of spiritual sensitivity; he can generally pinpoint a location where a Mononoke resides, he can sometimes see or sense the presence of things others can't, and he occasionally receives premonitions in the form of brief visions of coming entities (such as in the Umi Bozu arc when he saw visions of the Umi Zatou gasping and twitching on the floor and the weird bird head monsters of the ghost ship winding through the boat). His spiritual sensitivity is not particularly fine-tuned or reliable on its own, which is why he uses the scales, ofuda and sword to make up for his own shortcomings.
Longevity: The Medicine Seller is, to some degree, immortal. While he can be hurt physically, he doesn't age past his present state and has been around for at least a few centuries.
Curse Mark: Wilk
Character Canon: Mononoke
Character Age: Unknown - at least a couple centuries, likely more.
Canon Point: End of the second Bakeneko Arc
Link to History: Summary of the first Bakeneko arc CW: Kidnapping, imprisonment, abuse, rape, animal cruelty
Summary for the rest of the 2007 tv series CW: forced abortion, violence, misogyny, domestic abuse, incest, suicide
Skills:
The Medicine Seller possesses excellent hearing, able to precisely track the sound of the scales over a decent distance. He also has a strong sense of smell. In the Nue arc, he is shown to be a formidable crafter of incense.
Physically he is fairly fit and athletic; but he's otherwise unremarkable in that department.
As a medicine seller he's well versed in herbalism and traditional kampo, along with some more modern medicinal methods (up to about the late 1920s to early 1930s) but it is a mishmash of various cherry-picked traditions of 'whatever works'. Some of it is magical in nature (such as the mystical flash grenade gunpowder mixture from Umi Bozu), some of it is mundane and some of it is probably a scam. Look, he's gotta eat, and whatever pays the bills, right?
Abilities:
Note: since the sword will not be coming with him, I'd like the more chaotic aspect of his other self to be restored to the Medicine Seller, making him able to draw on that power at will, but also having the effect of destabilizing him and making him far more prone to acting out.
***The scales are N/A since they won't be coming with him, but I thought I'd make note of them here since they're important in the series.
***Again, N/A unless he gets his hands on a comparable substitute.
Curse Mark: Wilk
CHARACTERIZATION
FORMATIVE EXPERIENCES:
Content warnings from the history links all apply.
- FIRST EVENT: - The first Bakeneko arc in Ayakashi marked a shift in the Medicine Seller's personality. Though it is brief, he is far more relaxed and at ease than we ever see him again. His interactions are casual, sometimes even playful or friendly and there is a degree of cockiness to him when he's captured by the Sakai family and accused of Mao's murder. He isn't really taking the whole situation too seriously.
I don't think anything could have prepared him for the extent of the horrors the Sakai family committed and witnessing what they had done to Tamaki, along with the strong implication that this had been done to many other women before and after her. The whole situation left the Medicine Seller feeling rather hollow afterwards.
When we meet him again in the first episodes of Mononoke, he is much more reserved and throughout the series, he is more inclined be brusque and callous, even with people he cares about, such as with Kayo when she is worried about what fears the Umi Zatou will show her and he only responds with 'If the problem lies within yourself, no one else can help', or when Ochou's past is laid bare and she chastises the Medicine Seller for finding something amusing about it.
Kayo, who had been relatively friendly with him in Bakeneko, finds him to be a lot more suspicious in Umi Bozu, questioning his motives, who he's actually trying to protect, and calls outright his significantly chillier personality. - SECOND EVENT: - The Noppera-bo Arc gives a glimpse into the Medicine Seller's more romantic side. While we see him flirt with Kayo in the Bakeneko and Umi Bozu arcs, nothing ever really seems to come of it but this is not quite the case for Ocho.
There are some light implications that this is a person the Medicine Seller is familiar with (even if the Mononoke!Ocho is baffled by his remark about her acting completely out of character) and has a deeper relationship with than the usual people he encounters. The more ambiguous nature of the arc makes it difficult to pinpoint what that is, but it's evident between the antics of his Other Self under the guise of the masked man, and his parting words with her at the end, and his content smile when she is finally able to leave her abusive situation all point to an abiding affection for her and concern for her well-being.
Whether he acted on this affection before or after the arc's conclusion is up in the air, but it shows the Medicine Seller is capable of forming attachments to people and not all his relationships are shallow or fleeting. - THIRD EVENT: - The Nue Arc shows off the Medicine Seller's more callous side. The arc is, in and of itself, a pitch black comedy about four suitors (one of which is killed off early on and replaced by the Medicine Seller) ineptly trying to win the hand of Lady Ruri through contests of incense with underlying aspirations of getting their hands on a precious treasure.
The Medicine Seller knows that these men are already dead and have been dead for god knows only how long, with their ghosts repeating their follies over and over and over again. The Medicine Seller delights in disrupting the social mores that they seem locked into. He's an unsettling figure at the best of times, but he's really playing it up; showing off his sword from the start, bowing condescendingly when he greets the suitors, but remaining standing in the presence of Lady Ruri.
But this isn't really anything out of the ordinary for him, even if he's leaning harder into the bit than usual. The tipping point comes when the corpses of the missing first suitor and Lady Ruri's are revealed to have been horrifically murdered. Once the three suitors get over their fear of a murderer in their midst, they rush past the Medicine Seller and the corpse of the woman whose hand they were vying for only moments before, and start tearing the room apart in search of the real reason they're there; an artifact known as the Rannatai (or nick-named the Todaiji).
The Medicine Seller is visibly stunned this display of greed and disregard for the deaths of others, and while he'd been cold to them before, his mockery takes on a far more callous, contemptuous edge. These men are ghosts, it's true, and it's his job to cut their ties to this world and let them reenter the cycle of death and rebirth, but his approach becomes cruel. He poisons the incense, and reveals the murderers of the first suitor and Lady Ruri by having the perpetrators face gruesome demises, all the while finding the whole thing to be quite funny.
PHILOSOPHY:
He believes in a person’s right to make their own choices, tempered with a measure of personal responsibility and that no one has the right to control another. He shows affection towards people who are assertive and compassionate and abhors abusers and people who force their will on others - his distaste for some of the other murderers in the series makes that much evident.
He will also rarely outright lie, as much of his whole schtick involves uncovering truth. He's certainly not above deception and trickery if it inevitably leads to truth, but he tends towards being evasive and using misdirection; for example, he is particular about semantics, will lie by omission or simply roll with the assumptions others make.
DESIRES:
He is singularly focused on his duty to sever the Mononoke from this world. He does feel an obligation to protect those on the receiving end of their wrath (often by giving them ample opportunity to come clean with the information he needs), but that is secondary to breaking the mononoke's ties to this world so they can re-enter the wheel of reincarnation. He’s stated that he has no obligation to save the people involved and he doesn't really dwell on the gruesome deaths he's witnessed.
That being said, he is not so above earthly desires. He expresses anger or outright contempt at many of the murderers in the series, and relishes in tormenting the three suitors in the Nue Arc as he brings their various cruelties to light.
He's flirtatious with both Kayo/Chiyo and Ochou, though it's ambiguous how much he's actually acted on his attraction to them.
FEARS:
The Medicine Seller's greatest fear is a world without Form, Truth, or Regret. Essentially a world without any truths to it; a void of pure chaos.
In essence, the Medicine Seller fears nothingness.
Without his sword present to seal away his Other Self, he would also fear a corruption of his desires and losing agency over what he has chosen to prioritize in his life
GAMEPLAY
SUITABILITY:
The Medicine Seller is someone who would fit well in the setting and conflict with it in interesting ways. He is blazé about sex, and as something that is already bestial in nature, violence in the context of hunting for food, or killing in defense of oneself don't phase him.
The concept of the zadza needing to be fed is not entirely out of line to him. He'd be able to adapt quite quickly to the culture, and make himself very useful. After all, in a world that runs on sex and violence, there's always need for medicine and aphrodisiacs; his bread and butter so to speak.
There are also interesting ways in which the attitudes of the locals would conflict with his own philosophy. He holds crimes of passion in utter contempt; to him it is the ultimate failing of one's own self-control which results in usurping the agency of another. And being so permissive of the cyclical nature of violence is the perfect storm for the formation of beings like mononoke.
Furthermore for someone who has such iron-clad control of himself, he is now put in a position where he could lose it and the consequences could be lethal to others. He would be actively attempting to repress a part of himself that would deny the zadza which could make for interesting conflict.
SAMPLE:
Thread with Shen Yuan/Content Warnings: nudity
MONSTER: The Medicine Seller comes with a monster form pre-baked in. While there's no official confirmation about what the fuck his deal is, long-running fan theories posit that he is a zenko kitsune, and I specifically h/c him as a Kiko within the ranks of the zenko.
Since he maintains the form of a person exclusively, reverting to a bestial state would likely be gradual. His more fox-like features would be even more apparent (teeth and nails growing sharper, ears getting fluffy, his tails showing) and the more he fails to feed the zadza, the more he is unable to retain his more human traits.
Fully transformed, he would be a bit smaller than average size for a typical Ezo fox, his fur the same ashen colour as his hair, with the distinctive red markings still present on his face, and with nine bushy tails.
Kitsune, in folklore, are tricksters and seducers at their worst. Even the highest ranked zenko are not able to escape their mischievous nature. In his bestial form, the Medicine Seller may grow territorial over a place or a person, and use illusions to trick interlopers away or seduce them into doing something he wants. The more he fails to feed his urges, the more dangerous the illusions will become - starting as largely benevolent and just turning people around and away, but as his aggression progresses, he would use trickery to lead them into dangerous situations, or even driving them to madness (akin to kitsunetsuki, albeit without the element of possession)
The Medicine Seller is someone who would fit well in the setting and conflict with it in interesting ways. He is blazé about sex, and as something that is already bestial in nature, violence in the context of hunting for food, or killing in defense of oneself don't phase him.
The concept of the zadza needing to be fed is not entirely out of line to him. He'd be able to adapt quite quickly to the culture, and make himself very useful. After all, in a world that runs on sex and violence, there's always need for medicine and aphrodisiacs; his bread and butter so to speak.
There are also interesting ways in which the attitudes of the locals would conflict with his own philosophy. He holds crimes of passion in utter contempt; to him it is the ultimate failing of one's own self-control which results in usurping the agency of another. And being so permissive of the cyclical nature of violence is the perfect storm for the formation of beings like mononoke.
Furthermore for someone who has such iron-clad control of himself, he is now put in a position where he could lose it and the consequences could be lethal to others. He would be actively attempting to repress a part of himself that would deny the zadza which could make for interesting conflict.
SAMPLE:
Thread with Shen Yuan/Content Warnings: nudity
MONSTER: The Medicine Seller comes with a monster form pre-baked in. While there's no official confirmation about what the fuck his deal is, long-running fan theories posit that he is a zenko kitsune, and I specifically h/c him as a Kiko within the ranks of the zenko.
Since he maintains the form of a person exclusively, reverting to a bestial state would likely be gradual. His more fox-like features would be even more apparent (teeth and nails growing sharper, ears getting fluffy, his tails showing) and the more he fails to feed the zadza, the more he is unable to retain his more human traits.
Fully transformed, he would be a bit smaller than average size for a typical Ezo fox, his fur the same ashen colour as his hair, with the distinctive red markings still present on his face, and with nine bushy tails.
Kitsune, in folklore, are tricksters and seducers at their worst. Even the highest ranked zenko are not able to escape their mischievous nature. In his bestial form, the Medicine Seller may grow territorial over a place or a person, and use illusions to trick interlopers away or seduce them into doing something he wants. The more he fails to feed his urges, the more dangerous the illusions will become - starting as largely benevolent and just turning people around and away, but as his aggression progresses, he would use trickery to lead them into dangerous situations, or even driving them to madness (akin to kitsunetsuki, albeit without the element of possession)