Rizuka

Suggested Music: Jaya Lakshmi - Nataraj

Basic Information

Name: Midori Rizuka
Type: Dragon-Blooded Exalt
Player: NPC
Age: "It's rude to ask a woman her age, you know."
Aspect: Wood
Concept: Grass-Spider, healer
Motivation: Ease the suffering of others.
Political Affiliation: The Hallowed Order of the Grass Spiders
Anima: At low levels, the ground around Rizuka springs small lilies with petals of white essence. As her essence usage increases, the lilies begin to consolidate, entwine, and grow around her, eventually bursting above into a cherry blossom adorned with essence petals of every color imaginable.
Likes: Breezes, sewing, guqin (playing and listening), singing, limes
Dislikes: Arguments, lawlessness, wine, the Immaculate Order

Familiar: Blink (Meerkat)

Background

Rizuka is the Order's primary caretaker. Her role extends beyond stitches and salves, however - at various times and to various members, Rizuka has served as a physician, confidant, midwife, therapist, mother, and more. In all ways, she strives to assist people in ways that they cannot assist themselves. She gives no rationalization for her duty - it is simply in her nature to do so. This might seem an odd fit for a senior member of Creation's most esteemed order of assassins, but within a certain context, it isn't so strange.

A bonsai tree must be properly pruned to flourish within its confines - left unattended, it outgrows its container, eats up what remaining resources it has left, and dies. In this fashion, Creation resembles these miniature trees; it needs to be pruned of its bad leaves and branches. It must be pruned delicately - just as a machete would do little for the health of a bonsai tree, it is not productive for a king to send a thousand-strong army at his dissenters, leaving a bloody trail of destruction in its wake. The Grass Spiders provide the delicate tools necessary to prune Creation carefully, avoiding unnecessary war and death in the meantime.

Rizuka isn't so naive as to expect all of the Order's members to agree with her mindset. She knows many of them are simply in it for the thrill, and that others, no doubt, are merely looking for a profitable excuse to satisfy a murderous itch they would have scratched anyway. For all her pacifism, Rizuka is tolerant, if not oddly supportive of these divergent viewpoints - the Grass Spiders have become her family, and she loves them because of their eccentricities, not in spite of them.

On a day-to-day basis, Rizuka runs the organization's hospital. It is a large mansion central to the range home cluster, adjacent to her smaller personal cabin. The work of a Grass-Spider is dangerous and taxing; Rizuka has little trouble keeping herself busy. She has a familiar named Blink, a small meerkat who lives primarily in the hospital, entertaining patients and alerting Rizuka to anyone who needs immediate attention. Blink has a modified form of the charm Hurry Home that allows him to teleport to Rizuka's location provided she is within 25 miles of the range home complex.

Outside of her duties running the hospital, Rizuka contributes to the ongoing efforts of the Lankhmar Harvestmen to expand the Eight-Legged Harvest Promenade style. Additionally, per her requirements as a made member, she still accepts one (and only one) contract per year. She always makes certain it is in keeping with her beliefs about an assassin's purpose - she is one of the few members with enough clout to be selective about her contracts. She normally carries these out alone - only Iron Shatters Oak has ever seen her kill anyone, and not in decades. This is as much testament to her peaceful nature as it is her skill as an assassin.

Rizuka has a decidedly ancient demeanor, though she never reveals her age. She has referenced being personally involved in events that occurred centuries ago, and other stories suggest she has been a Grass-Spider for much of that time. Her strict diet and young Exaltation have kept her well-preserved - she doesn't appear to be past fifty, even by liberal estimates. She has a few odd quirks - for example, she's completely eliminated the need for sleep from her life. She only needs an hour or two each day to relax her mind, during which time she assumes a meditative position and is overcome by a surreal calm. During this time, she busies herself with something that keeps her mind idle and her hands occupied, such as knitting or softly playing her guqin. She is both endlessly sympathetic and strangely direct - she will comfort brutal killers as readily as ailing children, yet offers little padding in her opinions and diagnoses; she never sugar coats information or tries to make a bad situation seem good.

Over the years, she has mothered at least three sons, though she has only spoken at length about one of them, her youngest. The boy's father was a pirate captain who now sails as a Realm privateer. He accepted a letter of marque from the Empress in exchange for the entrance of his and Rizuka's son into the Spiral Academy. Her youngest son, a Water aspect, is now a traveling scholar and practitioner of law. Her sons do not visit the range homes, nor do their fathers, with the exception of the aforementioned privateer. If he is sailing in the East, he will occasionally visit Rizuka; several members have made his acquaintance. He and Rizuka remain on amicable, though platonic terms.